judge

A few months into President Trump’s second term, federal appeals court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III — a conservative appointee of President Reagan — issued a scathing opinion denouncing what he found to be the Trump administration’s unlawful removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to his native El Salvador, despite a previous court order barring it.

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” Wilkinson wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

Two months later, U.S. District Judge William G. Young, also a Reagan appointee, ripped into the Trump administration from the bench for its unprecedented decision to terminate hundreds of National Institutes of Health grants based on their perceived nexus to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Young ruled the cuts were “arbitrary and capricious” and therefore illegal. But he also said there was a “darker aspect” to the case that he had an “unflinching obligation” to call out — that the administration’s actions amounted to “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”

“I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young said, explaining a decision the Supreme Court later reversed. “Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

In the year since an aggrieved and combative Trump returned to the White House, his administration has strained the American legal system by testing and rejecting laws and other long-standing policies and defending those actions by arguing the president has a broad scope of authority under the U.S. Constitution.

Administration officials and Justice Department attorneys have argued that the executive branch is essentially the president’s to bend to his will. They have argued its employees are his to fire, its funds his to spend and its enforcement powers — to retaliate against his enemies, blast alleged drug-runners out of international waters or detain anyone agents believe looks, sounds and labors like a foreigner — all but unrestrained.

The approach has repeatedly been met by frustrated federal judges issuing repudiations of the administration’s actions, but also grave warnings about a broader threat they see to American jurisprudence and democracy.

When questioning administration attorneys in court, in stern written rulings at the district and appellate levels and in blistering dissents at the Supreme Court — which has often backed the administration, particularly with temporary orders on its emergency docket — federal judges have used remarkably strong language to call out what they see as a startling disregard for the rule of law.

Legal critics, including more than a hundred former federal and state judges, have decried Trump’s attacks on individual judges and law firms, “deeply inappropriate” nominations to the bench, “unlawful” appointments of unconfirmed and inexperienced U.S. attorneys and targeting of his political opponents for prosecution based on weak allegations of years-old mortgage fraud.

In response, Trump and his supporters have articulated their own concerns with the legal system, accusing judges of siding with progressive groups to cement a liberal federal agenda despite the nation voting Trump back into office. Trump has labeled judges “lunatics” and called for at least one’s impeachment, which drew a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

After District Judge Brian E. Murphy temporarily blocked the administration from deporting eight men to South Sudan — a nation to which they had no connection, and which has a record of human rights abuses — Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, the administration’s top litigator, called the order “a lawless act of defiance” that ignored a recent Supreme Court ruling.

After District Judge James E. Boasberg began pursuing a criminal contempt investigation into the actions of senior administration officials who continued flights deporting Venezuelan nationals to a notorious Salvadoran prison despite Boasberg having previously ordered the planes turned back to the U.S., government attorneys said it portended a “circus” that threatened the separation of powers.

While more measured than the nation’s coarse political rhetoric, the legal exchanges have nonetheless been stunning by judicial standards — a sign of boiling anger among judges, rising indignation among administration officials and a wide gulf between them as to the limits of their respective legal powers.

“These judges, these Democrat activist judges, are the ones who are 100% at fault,” said Mike Davis, a prominent Republican lawyer and Trump ally who advocates for sweeping executive authority. “They are taking the country to the cliff.”

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg began pursuing a criminal contempt investigation into the actions of senior administration officials who continued flights deporting Venezuelan nationals to a notorious Salvadoran prison.

(Valerie Plesch / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The judges “see — and have articulated — an unprecedented threat to democracy,” said UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “They really are sounding the alarm.”

“What the American people should be deeply concerned about is the rampant increase in judicial activism from radical left-wing judges,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson. “If this trend continues it threatens to undermine the rule-of-law for all future presidencies.”

“Regardless of which side you’re on on these issues, the lasting impact is that people mistrust the courts and, quite frankly, do not understand the role that a strong, independent judiciary plays in the rule of law, in our democracy and in our economy,” said John A. Day, president of the American College of Trial Lawyers. “That is very, very troubling to anybody who looks at this with a shred of objectivity.”

California in the fight

Last month, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced his office’s 50th lawsuit against the Trump administration — an average of about one lawsuit per week since Trump’s inauguration.

The litigation has challenged a range of Trump administration policies, including his executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of many immigrants; his unilateral imposition of stiff tariffs around the world; the administration’s attempt to slash trillions of dollars in federal funding from states, and its deployment of National Guard troops to American cities.

The battles have produced some of the year’s most eye-popping legal exchanges.

In June, Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to federalize and deploy California National Guard troops in Los Angeles, after days of protest over immigration enforcement.

An attorney for the administration had argued that federal law gave Trump such authority in instances of domestic “rebellion” or when the president is unable to execute the nation’s laws with regular forces, and said the court had no authority to question Trump’s decisions.

But Breyer wasn’t buying it, ruling Trump’s authority was “of course limited.”

“I mean, that’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George,” he said from the bench. “This country was founded in response to a monarchy. And the Constitution is a document of limitations — frequent limitations — and enunciation of rights.”

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to federalize and deploy California National Guard troops to Los Angeles.

(Santiago Mejia / San Francisco Chronicle)

Francesca Gessner, Bonta’s acting chief deputy, said she took Breyer’s remarks as his way of telling Trump and his administration that “we don’t have kings in America” — which she said was “really remarkable to watch” in an American courtroom.

“I remember just sitting there thinking, wow, he’s right,” Gessner said.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently paused Breyer’s order, allowing the troops to remain in Trump’s control.

In early October, U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut barred the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to Portland, finding that the conditions on the ground didn’t warrant such militarization. The next day, both Oregon and California asked her to expand that ruling to include California National Guard troops, after the Trump administration sent them to Portland in lieu of Oregon’s troops.

Before issuing a second restraining order barring deployments of any National Guard troops in Oregon, a frustrated Immergut laid into the Justice Department attorney defending the administration. “You’re an officer of the court,” she said. “Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order, which relies on the conditions in Portland?”

More recently, the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration in a similar case out of Chicago, finding the administration lacked any legal justification for Guard deployments there. Trump subsequently announced he was pulling troops out of Chicago, Los Angeles and other Democratic-led cities, with California and other states that had resisted claiming a major victory.

Bonta said he’s been pleased to see judges pushing back against the president’s power grabs, including by using sharp language that makes their alarm clear.

U.S. District Court Judge Karin J. Immergut, shown at her 2018 confirmation hearing, barred the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to Portland.

(Win McNamee / Getty Images)

“Generally, courts and judges are tempered and restrained,” Bonta said. “The statements that you’re seeing from them are carefully chosen to be commensurate with the extreme nature of the moment — the actions of the Trump administration that are so unlawful.”

Jackson, the White House spokesperson, and other Trump administration officials defended their actions to The Times, including by citing wins before the Supreme Court.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said the Justice Department “has spent the past year righting the wrongs of the previous administration” and “working tirelessly to successfully advance President Trump’s agenda and keep Americans safe.”

Sauer said it has won rulings “on key priorities of this administration, including stopping nationwide injunctions from lower courts, defending ICE’s ability to carry out law enforcement duties, and removing dangerous illegal aliens from our country,” and that those decisions “respect the role” of the courts, Trump’s “constitutional authority” and the “rule of law.”

‘Imperial executive’ or ‘imperial judiciary’?

Just after taking office, Trump said he was ending birthright citizenship. California and others sued, and several lower court judges blocked the order with nationwide or “universal” injunctions — with one calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”

In response, the Trump administration filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court challenging the ability of district court judges to issue such sweeping injunctions. In June, the high court largely sided with the administration, ruling 6 to 3 that many such injunctions likely exceed the lower courts’ authority.

Trump’s policy remains on hold based on other litigation. But the case laid bare a stark divide on the high court.

In her opinion for the conservative majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that universal injunctions were not used in early English and U.S. history, and that while the president has a “duty to follow the law,” the judiciary “does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation.”

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett accused Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of pursuing a “startling line of attack” that unconstitutionally aggrandized the powers of judges at the expense of the president.

(Mario Tama / Getty Images)

In a dissent joined by fellow Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that enforcement of Trump’s order against even a single U.S.-born child would be an “assault on our constitutional order,” and that Barrett’s opinion was “not just egregiously wrong, it is also a travesty of law.”

Jackson, in her own dissent, wrote that the majority opinion created “a zone of lawlessness within which the Executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes, and where individuals who would otherwise be entitled to the law’s protection become subject to the Executive’s whims instead.”

As a result, the president’s allies will fare well, the “wealthy and the well connected” will be able to hire lawyers and go to court to defend their rights, and the poor will have no such relief, Jackson wrote — creating a tiered system of justice “eerily echoing history’s horrors.”

In a footnote, she cited “The Dual State” by Jewish lawyer and writer Ernst Fraenkel, about Adolf Hitler creating a similar system in Germany.

Barrett accused Jackson of pursuing a “startling line of attack” that unconstitutionally aggrandized the powers of judges at the expense of the executive. “Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

Jackson questioned why the majority saw a “power grab” by the courts instead of by “a presumably lawless Executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the Constitution.”

What’s ahead?

Legal observers across the political spectrum said they see danger in the tumult.

“I never have been so afraid, or imagined being so afraid, for the future of democracy as I am right now,” Chemerinsky said.

He said Trump is “continually violating the Constitution and laws” in unprecedented ways to increase his own power and diminish the power of the other branches of government, and neither Republicans in Congress nor Trump’s cabinet are doing anything to stop him.

While the Supreme Court has also showed great deference to Trump, Chemerinsky said he is hoping it will begin reaffirming legal boundaries for him.

“Is the court just going to be a rubber stamp for Trump, or, at least in some areas, is it going to be a check?” he said.

Davis said Trump has faced “unprecedented, unrelenting lawfare from his Democrat opponents” for years, but now has “a broad electoral mandate to lead” and must be allowed to exercise his powers under Article II of the Constitution.

“These Democrat activist judges need to get the hell out of his way, because if they don’t, the federal judiciary is gonna lose its legitimacy,” Davis said. “And once it loses its legitimacy, it loses everything.”

Bonta said the Constitution is being “stress tested,” but he thinks it’s been “a good year for the rule of law” overall, thanks to lower court judges standing up to the administration’s excesses. “They have courage. They are doing their job.”

Day, of the American College of Trial Lawyers, said Trump “believes he is putting the country on the right path” and wants judges to get out of his way, while many Democrats feel “we’re going entirely in the wrong direction and that the Supreme Court is against them and bowing to the wishes of the executive.”

His advice to both, he said, is to keep faith in the nation’s legal system — which “is not very efficient, but was designed to work in the long run.”

BOSTON — A federal judge said Friday that she expects to temporarily block efforts by the Trump administration to end a program that offered temporary legal protections for more than 10,000 family members of citizens and green card holders.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said at a hearing that she planned to issue a temporary restraining order but did not say when it would be issued. This case is part of a broader effort by the administration to end temporary legal protection for numerous groups and comes just over a week since another judge ruled that hundreds of people from South Sudan may live and work in the United States legally.

“The government, having invited people to apply, is now laying traps between those people and getting the green card,” said Justin Cox, an attorney who works with Justice Action Center and argued the case for the plaintiffs. “That is incredibly inequitable.”

This case involved a program called Family Reunification Parole, or FRP, and affects people from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras. Most of them are set to lose their legal protections, which were put in place during the Biden administration, by Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security terminated protections late last year.

The case involves five plaintiffs, but lawyers are seeking to have any ruling cover everyone that is part of the program.

“Although in a temporary status, these parolees did not come temporarily; they came to get a jump-start on their new lives in the United States, typically bringing immediate family members with them,” plaintiffs wrote in their motion. “Since they arrived, FRP parolees have gotten employment authorization documents, jobs, and enrolled their kids in school.”

The government, in its brief and in court, argued that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has the authority to terminate any parole program and gave adequate notice by publishing the termination in the federal registry. It also argued that the program’s termination was necessary on national security grounds because the people had not been property vetted. It also said resources to maintain this program would be better used in other immigration programs.

“Parole can be terminated at any time,” Katie Rose Talley, a lawyer for the government told the court. “That is what is being done. There is nothing unlawful about that.”

Talwani conceded that the government can end the program but she took issue with the way it was done.

The government argued that just announcing in the federal registry it was ending the program was sufficient. But Talwani demanded the government show how it has alerted people through a written notice — a letter or email — that the program was ending.

“I understand why plaintiffs feel like they came here and made all these plans and were going to be here for a very long time,” Talwani said. “I have a group of people who are trying to follow the law. I am saying to you that, we as Americans, the United States needs to.”

Lower courts have largely supported keeping temporary protections for many groups. But in May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants for now, pushing the total number of people who could be newly exposed to deportation to nearly 1 million.

The justices lifted a lower-court order that kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The decision came after the court allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case.

The court did not explain its reasoning in the brief order, as is typical on its emergency docket. Two justices publicly dissented.

Casey writes for the Associated Press.

SEATTLE — A federal judge Friday blocked President Trump’s administration from enforcing most of his executive order on elections against the vote-by-mail states Washington and Oregon, in the latest blow to his efforts to require documentary proof of citizenship to vote and to require that all ballots be received by election day.

U.S. District Judge John H. Chun in Seattle found that those requirements exceeded the president’s authority, following similar rulings in a Massachusetts case brought by 19 states and in a Washington, D.C., case by Democratic and civil rights groups.

“Today’s ruling is a huge victory for voters in Washington and Oregon, and for the rule of law,” Washington Atty. Gen. Nick Brown said. “The court enforced the long-standing constitutional rule that only States and Congress can regulate elections, not the Election Denier-in-Chief.”

The executive order, issued in March, included new requirements that people provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a demand that all mail ballots be received by election day. It also put states’ federal funding at risk if election officials didn’t comply.

Officials in Oregon and Washington, which accept ballots as long as they are postmarked by election day, said that could disenfranchise thousands of voters. During the 2024 general election, officials in Washington counted nearly 120,000 ballots that were received after election day but postmarked by it. Oregon officials received nearly 14,000 such ballots.

The judge found that Trump’s efforts violated the separation of powers. The Constitution grants Congress and the states the authority to regulate federal elections, he noted.

Oregon and Washington said they sued separately from other states because, as exclusively vote-by-mail states, they faced particular harms from the executive order.

Trump and other Republicans have promoted the debunked idea that large numbers of people who are not U.S. citizens might be voting. Voting by noncitizens is rare and, when they are caught, they can face felony charges and deportation.

Johnson writes for the Associated Press.

A federal judge in New York has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to freeze $10 billion in child-care funds in five Democrat-led states including California.

The ruling Friday afternoon capped a tumultuous stretch that began earlier this week when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told California officials and those in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York that it would freeze federal funding over fraud concerns.

On Thursday the states sued the administration in federal court in Manhattan. The states sought a temporary restraining order, asking the court to block the funding freeze and the administration’s demands for large volumes of administrative data.

An attorney for the states argued Friday morning that there was an immediate need for funding — and that withholding it would cause chaos by depriving families of their ability to pay for child care, and would harm child-care providers who would lose income.

In a brief ruling, Judge Arun Subramanian said that “good cause has been shown for the issuance of a temporary restraining order.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The federal government’s effort has been viewed as a broad attack on social services in California, and jolted tens of thousands of working families and the state’s child-care industry. Providers told The Times that the funding freeze could imperil child-care centers, many of which operate on slim margins.

“The underscoring issue is that child care and these other federally funded social services programs are major family supports,” said Nina Buthee, executive director of EveryChild California. “They are essential infrastructure that our communities need and depend on, and should not be political tools. So the fact that this judge went in and blocked this very dramatic freeze, I think is only a good thing.”

In a trio of Jan. 6 letters addressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it was concerned there had been “potential for extensive and systemic fraud” in child care and other social services programs that rely on federal funding, and had “reason to believe” that the state was “illicitly providing illegal aliens” with benefits.

The letters did not provide evidence to support the claims. State officials have said the suggestions of fraud are unsubstantiated.

Newsom has said he welcomes any fraud investigations the federal government might conduct, but said cutting off funding hurts families who rely on the aid. According to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, about $1.4 billion in federal child-care funding was frozen per the letters from Health and Human Services.

“You want to support families? You believe in families? Then you believe in supporting child care and child-care workers in the workforce,” Newsom told MS NOW.

After Subramanian issued the ruling, Newsom’s press office said on X that “the feds went ghost-hunting for widespread ‘fraud’ (with no evidence) — and ended up trying to rip child care and food from kids.”

“It took a federal judge less than 24 hours to shut down Trump’s politically motivated child care cuts in California,” the account posted.

In instituting the freeze, Health and Human Services had said it would review how the federal money had been used by the state, and was restricting access to additional money amid its inquiries. The federal government asked for various data, including attendance documentation for child care. It also demanded beefed-up fiscal accountability requirements.

“Again and again, President Trump has shown a willingness to throw vulnerable children, seniors, and families under the bus if he thinks it will advance his vendetta against Democratic-led states,” Bonta said in a statement following the ruling. “Cutting funding for childcare and other family assistance is cruel, reckless, and most importantly, illegal.”

For Laura Pryor, research director at the California Budget & Policy Center, it is “a sigh of relief.”

The city of Los Angeles violated the state’s open meeting law when council members took up a plan to clear 9,800 homeless encampments behind closed doors, a judge ruled this week.

In a 10-page decision, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin said the City Council ran afoul of the Ralph M. Brown Act by approving the encampment strategy during a Jan. 31, 2024, closed session.

The encampment plan was part of a larger effort by the city to comply with a legal settlement with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, which had sued over the city’s handling of the homelessness crisis.

Kin, in his ruling, said the city is allowed under the Brown Act to confer with its attorneys in closed-door meetings to discuss legal strategy.

“However, what the City cannot do under the Brown Act is formulate and approve policy decisions in a closed session outside the public eye merely because such decisions are in furtherance of a settlement agreement,” Kin wrote.

Karen Richardson, a spokesperson for City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, said her office had no comment on the decision, which was issued earlier this week.

The ruling delivered a victory to the Los Angeles Community Action Network, which advocates for homeless residents and had sued the city over the closed-door deliberations.

Lawyers for LA CAN have warned that the city’s goal of removing 9,800 encampments over four years has created a quota system that could make sanitation workers more likely to violate the property rights of unhoused residents. Under the agreement, the city must reach its encampment removal target this summer.

“The City Council approved an extremely controversial plan to clear almost 10,000 encampments entirely in secret,” said Shayla Myers, the group’s attorney. “They never disclosed the plan before they voted on it, or even after, and the only one they disclosed the plan to was the business community.”

Lawyers for the city have offered contradictory explanations for what transpired during the Jan. 31, 2024, meeting. Now, LA CAN is seeking a court order requiring that the city produce all records — including audio of the closed-door deliberations — to show what transpired.

The city’s strategy for clearing 9,800 encampments has become a major sticking point in its long-running legal battle with the LA Alliance. U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter ruled that a tent discarded by sanitation workers can only count toward the city’s numerical goal if its owner has been offered housing or shelter first.

Feldstein Soto’s legal team, in a memo to the council, said later that the judge had “reinterpreted” some of the city’s settlement obligations.

In this week’s ruling, Kin found that the city violated the Brown Act a second time in May 2024, when the council went behind closed doors to take up another agreement — this one between the city and L.A. County on the delivery of homeless services.

The LA Alliance first sued the city and county in 2020, alleging that too little was being done to address the homelessness crisis, particularly in Skid Row. The city settled the case two years later, agreeing to create 12,915 new shelter beds or other housing opportunities by June 2027.

After that deal was struck, the city began negotiating an accompanying agreement with the LA Alliance to reduce the number of street encampments. Those talks dragged on for more than a year.

The LA Alliance ran out of patience, telling Judge Carter in February 2024 that the city was 447 days late in finalizing its plan and should be sanctioned. The group submitted to the court a copy of the encampment removal plan, saying it had been approved by the City Council on Jan. 31, 2024.

Video from that day’s meeting shows that council members went behind closed doors to discuss the LA Alliance case. When they returned, Deputy City Atty. Jonathan Groat said there was nothing to report from the closed session.

LA CAN demanded that the city produce any vote tally on the encampment plan. The city declined to do so, saying there was no vote.

“To this day, [we] still don’t know who voted for it, or even if a vote was taken at all,” Myers said.

Lawyers for the city have argued that they were not required to issue any report from that closed session meeting. They also have said that the Brown Act allowed the two agreements — the one on encampment removals and the other with the county — to be discussed behind closed doors.

Carter ruled last year that the city had failed to comply with the terms of its settlement agreement with the L.A. Alliance. On Tuesday, he ordered the city to pay $1.6 million to cover the group’s legal fees.

The judge also instructed the city to pay about $201,000 for fees incurred by LA CAN and the LA Catholic Worker, which have intervened in the LA Alliance case.

On Thursday, lawyers for the city notified the court that they intend to appeal the order to pay the various groups.

A mental health diversion granted to a former Kern County politician is coming under fire from numerous California lawmakers and child welfare advocates, who say a repeatedly amended state law is allowing an accused child abuser to avoid prosecution and possible jail time.

Zack Scrivner, a former Kern County supervisor, was charged with felony child abuse in February after he was accused of inappropriately touching one of his children in 2024. But because of a Dec. 19 ruling by a judge, he will avoid a trial and instead be funneled into a mental health diversion program — an initiative aimed at helping defendants with mental health disorders get treatment instead of imprisonment for certain crimes.

While supporters say mental health diversions help certain defendants get needed mental health treatment, lawmakers in both parties have blasted the Scrivner decision and the legislative changes that led to it. Assemblymember Dr. Jasmeet Bains (D-Delano) issued a scathing statement, describing the ruling as an “Epstein loophole,” a reference to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“I specialize in family and addiction medicine, so I know the value of mental health diversion … It was designed to help people get treatment and rehabilitation in appropriate cases, not to provide an escape hatch to sexually assault children,” she said. “This Epstein loophole needs to be closed.”

At the end of their 2018 legislative session, California lawmakers approved a number of legal reforms, many aimed at keeping homeless people out of jail. One of these altered what defendants could qualify for mental health diversions. The change specifically excluded people accused of crimes such as murder, rape and child sex crime but did not exclude those accused of child abuse. Then, in 2022, another amendment to the law directed courts to allow a diversion if a diagnosed mental health disorder played a significant role in the alleged crime unless there is “clear and convincing” evidence it wasn’t a motivating factor.

Since then, controversies have arisen over several judicial decisions. In 2024, a judge granted a mental health diversion to a Pasadena doctor accused of trying to kill his family by driving the family Tesla off a cliff with his wife and two children inside. In Sacramento County, Sheriff Jim Cooper and other officials have criticized a mental health diversion granted to a father arrested in connection with the death of 1-year-old “Baby A,” who had suffered from severe injuries while in her father’s custody.

Emergency personnel respond to a vehicle over the side of Highway 1 on Jan. 1, 2023, in San Mateo County. A Pasadena doctor, Dharmesh Patel, was charged that year with three counts of attempted murder in crashing the car over a cliff, injuring his two young children and his wife. A judge granted him a mental health diversion in 2024, allowing him to live with his parents while receiving treatment.

(Sgt. Brian Moore / Associated Press)

“People are becoming very skeptical of mental health treatment because it’s being used in ways nobody ever intended,” said Matthew Greco, deputy district attorney of San Diego County and author of the California Criminal Mental Health Handbook. The 2022 law change limited the discretion of judges — one reason the California District Attorneys Assn. opposed it, he said. Greco has since heard from judges across the state that they feel their hands are tied. In San Diego County, the number of mental health diversions granted has steadily risen since 2019.

The 2018 law establishing the program had good intentions, he said, but lacked proper legislative vetting.

“We know the central premise behind mental health diversion is that if we obtain mental health treatment for those that are mentally ill that are committing crimes, the public will be safer,” he said. “But we need to have both public safety and treatment.”

In Kern County, Scrivner has numerous political connections in the Republican Party and beyond. He served for 13 years as a county supervisor before resigning in August 2024. He also served on the Bakersfield City Council and had spent four years working for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Kern County Dist. Atty. Cynthia Zimmer is also the aunt of Scrivner, and before recusing herself from the case, she played a key role in alerting law enforcement to his actions.

At a news conference in April 2024, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said he received a call from Zimmer that Scrivner was armed and experiencing “some type of psychotic episode” at his Tehachapi home. Deputies responded and found that Scrivner had fought with his children, with one of them stabbing him in his torso amid allegations that he had sexually assaulted another of his children, Youngblood said. While Scrivner’s four minor children were at the house at the time, his wife, who had previously filed for divorce, was not.

According to Youngblood, detectives obtained a search warrant and ended up seizing 30 firearms, psychedelic mushrooms, electronic devices and possible evidence of sexual assault in the house.

Things got complicated at that point, given that Kern County’s district attorney was obligated to recuse herself and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office took over the case.

In February 2025, Bonta’s office charged Scrivner with two felony counts of possessing assault weapons and three felony counts of child abuse. The charges, however, did not include sexual assault, even though the state’s complaint said Scrivner had “consumed mind and/or mood altering drugs and substances, got into bed” with a child and inappropriately touched the child.

On Dec. 19, a Kern County Superior Court judge approved a motion filed by Scrivner’s attorney, H.A. Sala, to allow the former county supervisor to enter a mental health diversion program. Sala, who has not returned multiple requests for comment, presented the court with a medical diagnosis conducted by doctors that Scrivner had been suffering from mental health disorders, including alcohol-use disorder, depression and anxiety, according to a report in the Bakersfield Californian. Sala argued that a treatment program would be the best option for Scrivner, in keeping with the intent of the Legislature.

ln her ruling, Superior Court Judge Stephanie R. Childers sided with Sala, noting the state had “offered no alternative” to the medical diagnosis of Scrivner that had been submitted to the court, according to the Bakersfield Californian.

In response, the state attorney general’s office released a statement saying that it opposed the judge’s decision and “we are reviewing our options.” It added that the office filed charges that it believes the state “can prove beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.” So far, the Kern County Superior Court has declined to release Scrivner’s attorney’s motion, stating it is confidential.

During Scrivner’s Dec. 19 court appearance, according to the Californian, Deputy Atty. Gen. Joe Penney stated that Scrivner “got into bed with the minor victim — while he had alcohol, Ambien, benzos (benzodiazepines) and cocaine metabolites in his system — and fondled her breast area and genital area for a period about 10 minutes while she was frozen in fear.”

State Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) is one of the lawmakers calling for reform of the program in light of Scrivner’s case. She questioned when the state justice system would prioritize vulnerable victims over “the monsters who harm them.”

“A program intended to promote treatment must never be allowed to erode accountability for the most serious and violent crimes against children,” she said in a statement online.

Several lawmakers have introduced bills to modify the mental health diversion law. In 2024, Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento) was unsuccessful in her attempt to exclude defendants from qualifying from the program if they had been charged with child abuse and endangerment, domestic violence that causes great bodily harm or human trafficking.

Krell, a former deputy attorney general, said cases that have stirred outrage seem to be appearing in just about every county, including in her district.

“We should ensure that people who are mentally ill are receiving treatment,” she said, but there has to be accountability when people break the law as well. Krell said she intends to try to submit the bill again. “We need to give courts discretion to make these determinations. We also need to make sure we’re keeping victims safe. There’s just too many examples where this has failed.”

Although some elected officials are seeking reforms to the program, Kern County organizer Flor Olvera said she thinks the focus should include whether Scrivner received preferential treatment.

“You can have a mental health diversion granted, but what is the justice system doing to hold people accountable?” she said. “When it’s people in these powerful positions, it does seem like the system moves differently for them.”

In a Dec. 20 statement, Bains said she sent a letter asking U.S. Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon and U.S. Atty. Eric Grant to investigate whether Scrivner violated federal civil rights statutes by leveraging his former status as an elected official.

“This is not justice, and this is not over,” she said.

In a Dec. 24 interview with radio host Ralph Bailey, Sheriff Youngblood said that deputies arrived at Scrivner’s home that day in 2024 and confirmed that the county supervisor was unarmed. Scrivner then got on the phone and asked the sheriff to send the deputies away.

“My response was, ‘no, they’re going to do what they have to do,’” he said. A deputy said there was more to investigate, and Youngblood supported it. Zimmer, the Kern County district attorney, did not ask for a favor, Youngblood said.

Yet questions remain as to why deputies did not arrest Scrivner immediately. Speaking to local media, Youngblood said he had no one who could arraign the supervisor within a limited time frame, but Kern County prosecutors dispute that. Late Wednesday, the sheriff’s office directed inquiries to the state attorney general’s office, after declining to respond to questions over the last week.

Joseph A. Kinzel, the county’s assistant district attorney, said in an email that because Scrivner was not arrested that night, there was no request from law enforcement that charges be filed. Kinzel said that the office immediately determined it would be inappropriate to get involved with the case, and that the office “did everything it should have to ensure that a conflict-free prosecution would occur.”

In the radio interview, Youngblood said that he believed the state attorney general’s office “didn’t do their job correctly” by letting Scrivner avoid a sex crime charge.

“I can only speak for the sheriff’s office, and I can tell you that the deputies that investigated that did absolutely the right thing,” he said. “I believe that the children were all on board and would have done exactly what the court asked them to do, and that is, tell the truth. So from my standpoint, this stinks.”

Jan. 7 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s first pick to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia has been ordered to explain why she is still using the title despite her appointment being ruled unlawful.

U.S. District Judge David Novak ordered Lindsey Halligan to give an explanation of her continued use of the U.S. attorney title within seven days. Novak said her use of the title, including in court documents, may amount to false or misleading statements.

False and misleading statements in a court of law can result in punishment, including charges of perjury, fines and imprisonment.

Halligan, a Trump loyalist, was the president’s original pick to serve in the Eastern District of Virginia last year. A federal judge determined that the Department of Justice illegally appointed Halligan and barred her from assuming the role.

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie ruled in November that Halligan was never eligible to hold the position of U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Her appointment had circumvented the standard appointment process, including a Senate confirmation. She also has no experience as a prosecutor.

Despite the ruling, the Justice Department has kept Halligan in office.

On Tuesday, Novak said that Halligan and the department cannot continue to ignore the ruling.

“It remains the binding precedent in this district and is not subject to being ignored,” Novak said in his order.

Erik Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia prior to Halligan’s appointment, resigned in September after refusing to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James.

After her appointment, Halligan filed charges against James and former FBI Director James Comey, who investigated Trump’s ties to Russia during Trump’s first term.

Both cases were dismissed when Currie ruled that Halligan was not qualified for the U.S. attorney role.

In a massive blow to LGBTQIA+ rights, a federal judge has ruled that teachers can out queer and trans students to their parents.

Back in April 2023, two middle school teachers from the Escondido Union School District sued the district, the California State Board, and a handful of educational officials over a policy protecting LGBTQIA+ students.

Under the guidance in question, which has since been withdrawn, teachers and school staff were instructed to recognise a student’s gender identity changes and desired pronouns. It also prohibited disclosing students’ identities to their parents or guardians without their consent.

In the suit, the two teachers alleged that the policy violated their free speech and religious beliefs

After nearly a two-year legal battle, which included the case being converted to a class-action suit, US District Judge Roger Benitez ruled in favour of the plaintiffs on 23 December.

Under the order, employees in the California statewide education system are prohibited from “misleading the parent or guardian of a minor child in the education system about their child’s gender presentation at school.”

This includes “directly lying” to the student’s parent or guardian, preventing the parent or guardian from accessing the student’s educational records, and using “a different set of preferred pronouns/names when speaking with the parents than is being used at school.”

Shortly after Judge Benitez’s ruling, the state filed an appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“A stay pending appeal – and at a minimum a brief stay to seek relief from the Court of Appeals – is warranted in this case,” the state wrote in the request.

“The Court has issued a statewide injunction that abruptly enjoins State Defendants from enforcing long-standing state laws that protect vulnerable transgender and gender nonconforming students.

“If the Orders are allowed to stay in effect before the Court of Appeals has a chance to review them, they would irrevocably alter the status quo and will create chaos and confusion among students, parents, teachers, and staff at California’s public schools.”

At the start of the month, the appeals court granted the state a short-term administrative stay of ruling, per Education Week.

The recent development comes more than a year after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the LGBTQIA+ inclusive SAFETY Act into law, which stops school districts from requiring staff to share information about a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity to parents.

It also protects teachers and other school employees from retaliation, like being fired, if they choose not to out a student’s sexuality or gender identity to parents.

Over the last few days, LGBTQIA+ advocates and organisations have called out Judge Benitez’s rulling.

Christine Parker, senior staff attorney with the Gender, Sexuality, and Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said: “This decision denies the realities the California Legislature recognised when it adopted the SAFETY Act last year, and the Student Success and Opportunity Act back in 2013, to help ensure all students feel safe and respected at school, even if they are not ready or able to be out at home or are navigating a less-than-supportive family dynamic.

“A culture of outing harms everyone—students, families, and school staff alike—by removing opportunities to build trust. LGBTQ+ students deserve to decide on their own terms if, when, and how to come out, and to be able to be themselves at school.”

The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus echoed similar sentiments in a statement posted to their website.

“The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus strongly condemns the recent ruling by Judge Benitez in Mirabelli v. Olson. While the decision formally addresses a narrow Escondido Union School District policy, it deliberately injects confusion into the public understanding of the SAFETY Act (AB 1955) and signals an alarming willingness to undermine long-standing constitutional rights to privacy and nondiscrimination protections across California law,” the group wrote.

Jan. 3 (UPI) — Former Milwaukee County (Wisc.) Judge Hannah Dugan resigned on Saturday following her federal felony conviction for obstruction of law enforcement in April.

Dugan, 66, submitted her resignation letter to Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Saturday and said it is effective immediately.

“Behind the bench, I have presided over thousands and thousands of cases — with a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberatively and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves,” Dugan said in the resignation letter.

She said that she is the “subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings” that “present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary.”

A federal jury found her guilty of obstruction last month for her effort to help an “undocumented immigrant” from Mexico elude Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents when they arrived at the county courthouse to arrest him.

Dugan is appealing her conviction, but she is resigning amid a potential impeachment effort by Wisconsin Assembly Republicans.

Dugan served on the bench for nine years, and Evers’ spokesperson, Britt Cudaback said the governor acknowledged receiving the letter of resignation on Saturday and won’t delay in filling the vacant bench seat.

Embattled Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted of obstruction last month for helping an immigrant evade federal officers, has sent her resignation letter to the governor.

The letter was sent Saturday. Republicans had been making plans to impeach her since her Dec. 19 conviction. A spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers said his office received Dugan’s letter, and he would work to fill the vacancy without delay.

Dugan wrote that over the last decade she handled thousands of cases with “a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberately and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves.”

But she said the case against her is too big of a distraction.

“As you know, I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary. I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary,” Dugan said in her letter.

Last April, federal prosecutors accused Dugan of distracting federal officers trying to arrest a Mexican immigrant outside her courtroom and leading the man out through a private door. A federal jury convicted her of felony obstruction.

The case against Dugan was highlighted by President Trump as he pressed ahead with his sweeping immigration crackdown. Democrats insisted the administration was trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.

Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos praised Dugan’s decision.

“I’m glad Dugan did the right thing by resigning and followed the clear direction from the Wisconsin Constitution,” Vos said.

Democrat Ann Jacobs, who is chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission board, said she agreed with Dugan that Milwaukee should have a permanent judge in place while this fight plays out.

“Despite her situation, she is ever the champion of justice, wanting to remove the judiciary from a political battle over her fate. I’m sure this is terribly hard for her but she is true to her faith and her principles,” Jacobs said in a post on X.

On April 18, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.

Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and directed them to the office of her boss, Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley, because she told them their administrative warrant wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest Flores-Ruiz.

After the agents left, she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.

Funk writes for the Associated Press.

Jan. 2 (UPI) — A Washington, D.C., federal magistrate judge ruled Friday that a man who allegedly set pipe bombs outside of political party headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021, must stay behind bars before his trial.

Brian Cole Jr., 30, faces charges of transporting an explosive device and attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials. The charges have a maximum sentence of 30 years.

He allegedly placed two bombs in front of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters, though the bombs never detonated. He was arrested Dec. 4 and hasn’t entered a plea.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Jones filed a request on Dec. 30 to keep Cole in jail while he awaits trial. Cole’s attorneys wanted him released into the custody of his grandmother.

Judge Matthew Sharbaugh wrote in his ruling filed on Friday: “Although home incarceration and a GPS monitor would provide some check against Mr. Cole’s ability to carry out any menacing or dangerous conduct in the community, the Court is simply not satisfied these conditions rise to the necessary level.

“This is particularly true based on the severity of the potential danger Mr. Cole is alleged to pose, given his alleged persistent acquisition and retention of so-called ‘bombmaking parts,’ and given his reported penchant and capacity to create explosive devices and deploy them in public settings.

“If the plan had succeeded, the results could have been devastating: creating a greater sense of terror on the eve of a high-security Congressional proceeding, causing serious property damage in the heart of Washington, D.C., grievously injuring DNC or RNC staff and other innocent bystanders, or worse,” Sharbaugh wrote.

Sharbaugh announced Dec. 30 that Cole was indicted on the two charges but that he has not yet accepted the indictment because the Justice Department’s move seeking federal charges from a local grand jury is part of an ongoing debate in the courts. That case is pending in the federal appeals court.

According to a court filing, Cole told investigators that he disliked both political parties and was “watching everything, just everything getting worse.”

He believed the allegation that the 2020 election was stolen.

“If people feel that their votes are like just being thrown away, then … at the very least someone should address it,” Cole said, according to the filing.

“According to the defendant, he was not really thinking about how people would react when the bombs detonated, although he hoped there would be news about it,” the filing said.

“The defendant stated that he had not tested the devices before planting them. He claimed that when he learned that the devices did not detonate, he was ‘pretty relieved,’ and asserted that he placed the devices at night because he did not want to kill people.

“The defendant denied that his actions were directed toward Congress or related to the proceedings scheduled to take place on January 6,” the filing said.

Cole is from Woodbridge, Va., where he lives with his mother and other family members.

The case baffled law enforcement for almost five years. The pipe bombs were made of 1-inch galvanized pipes, 8 inches long with end caps, homemade black powder, wires, metal clips and a kitchen timer. The FBI has said the bombs were viable and could have hurt people nearby if they had detonated. The bombs sat for 15 hours before being discovered.

WASHINGTON — A federal magistrate judge on Friday refused to order the pretrial release of a man charged with planting two pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican national parties on the eve of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh ruled that Brian J. Cole Jr. must remain jailed before trial. The magistrate concluded there are no conditions of release that can reasonably protect the public from the danger that Cole allegedly poses.

Justice Department prosecutors say Cole confessed to placing pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee headquarters only hours before a mob of President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. According to prosecutors, Cole said he hoped the explosives would detonate and “hoped there would be news about it.”

“Mercifully, that did not happen,” Sharbaugh wrote. “But if the plan had succeeded, the results,” he said, could have been devastating, “creating a greater sense of terror on the eve of a high-security Congressional proceeding, causing serious property damage in the heart of Washington, D.C., grievously injuring DNC or RNC staff and other innocent bystanders, or worse.”

After his arrest last month, Cole told investigators that he believed someone needed to “speak up” for people who believed the 2020 election, which Democrat Joe Biden won, was stolen and that he wanted to target the country’s political parties because they were “in charge,” according to prosecutors.

If convicted of both charges against him, Cole faces up to 10 years of imprisonment on one charge and up to 20 years of imprisonment on a second charge that also carries a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence.

Cole’s attorneys asked for him to be released on home detention with GPS monitoring. They said Cole doesn’t have a criminal record, has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and lives in a stable home that he shared with his parents in Woodbridge, Va.

“Mr. Cole simply does not pose a danger to the community,” defense attorneys wrote. “Whatever risk the government posits is theoretical and backward-looking, belied by the past four years where Mr. Cole lived at home with his family without incident.”

Cole continued to purchase bomb-making components for months after the Jan. 6 riot, according to prosecutors. They said Cole told the FBI that he planted the pipe bombs because “something just snapped.”

“The sudden and abrupt motivation behind Mr. Cole’s alleged actions presents concerns about how quickly the same abrupt and impulsive conduct might recur,” Sharbaugh wrote.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that the Constitution remains a sturdy pillar for the country, a message that comes after a tumultuous year in the nation’s judicial system with pivotal Supreme Court decisions on the horizon.

Roberts said the nation’s founding documents remain “firm and unshaken,” a reference to a century-old quote from President Coolidge. “True then; true now,” Roberts wrote in his annual letter to the judiciary.

The letter comes after a year in which legal scholars and Democrats raised fears of a possible constitutional crisis as President Trump’s supporters pushed back against rulings that slowed his far-reaching conservative agenda.

Roberts weighed in at one point, issuing a rare rebuke after Trump called for the impeachment of a judge who had ruled against him in a case over the deportation of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members.

The chief justice’s Wednesday letter was largely focused on the nation’s history, including an early 19th-century case establishing the principle that Congress shouldn’t remove judges over contentious rulings.

While the Trump administration faced pushback in the lower courts, it has scored a series of some two dozen wins on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket. The court’s conservative majority has allowed Trump to move ahead for now with banning transgender people from the military, clawing back billions of dollars of congressionally approved federal spending, moving aggressively on immigration and firing the Senate-confirmed leaders of independent federal agencies.

The court also handed Trump a few defeats over the last year, including in his push to deploy the National Guard to U.S. cities.

Other pivotal issues are ahead for the high court in 2026, including arguments over Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship and a ruling on whether he can unilaterally impose tariffs on hundreds of countries.

Roberts’ letter contained few references to those issues. It opened with a history of the seminal 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense,” written by Thomas Paine, a “recent immigrant to Britain’s North American colonies,” and closed with Coolidge’s encouragement to “turn for solace” to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence “amid all the welter of partisan politics.”

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

Dec. 30 (UPI) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to reinstate temporary protected status against deportation for citizens of South Sudan.

U.S. District Court of Massachusetts Judge Angel Kelley, in a four-page ruling, ordered an administrative stay of the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for those from South Sudan as of Jan. 6.

“Because of the serious consequences at stake, both for the plaintiffs and the defendants, the court finds an administrative stay appropriate as it would ‘minimize harm’ while allowing the assigned district court judge the time this case deserves,” Kelley said.

The stay does not represent the merits of the case and instead gives the court time to weigh arguments and evidence before rendering a decision.

Kelley, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden in 2021, gave plaintiffs through Jan. 9 to file their arguments and the Trump administration through Jan. 13.

She will rule on the matter after reviewing the respective arguments.

The federal lawsuit was filed on Dec. 22 by African Communities Together on behalf of four unnamed plaintiffs and all others similarly situated, which makes it a class action.

The defendants are the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the federal government.

African Communities Together says 232 South Sudanese nationals benefit from TPS, plus another 73 who have applied for TPS protection.

The Obama administration first provided TPS protection for those from South Sudan in 2011, and the status repeatedly was extended over the past 14 years.

South Sudan became an independent nation in 2011 in East Africa, but it has been subject to war and conflict since then.

Noem in November announced conditions in South Sudan have changed and no longer merit TPS status for its citizens in the United States.

TPS status enables recipients to stay in the United States and obtain work authorizations when their home countries are subject to armed conflict, environmental disasters and other “extraordinary conditions.”

While the plaintiffs oppose deportations of South Sudanese to their nation of citizenship, the Supreme Court recently approved the Trump administration’s deportation of eight others — seven of whom are citizens of other countries — to South Sudan.

Trump is seeking to end protected status for South Sudan, claiming country no longer poses danger to those returning.

A federal judge has blocked the administration of President Donald Trump from stripping temporary protections from deportations for South Sudanese citizens living in the United States.

US District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston, Massachusetts, granted an emergency request on Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by several South Sudanese nationals and an immigrant rights group.

The order prevents the temporary protected status (TPS) for South Sudanese citizens from expiring on January 5 as the Trump administration has sought.

The lawsuit, led by the African ‍Communities Together, accuses the US Department of Homeland Security of acting unlawfully in its effort to strip South Sudanese citizens of TPS, a US immigration status granted to citizens of countries experiencing natural disasters, conflict or other extraordinary circumstances that could make return to their homelands dangerous.

The status was initially granted for South Sudan in 2011 when the country officially broke away from Sudan. It has been repeatedly renewed amid repeated bouts of fighting, widespread displacement and regional instability.

​The status allows eligible individuals to work and receive temporary protection from deportation.

The lawsuit further alleged that the Trump administration exposed South Sudan citizens to being deported to a country facing what is widely considered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in a notice published on November ‌5, had argued the country no longer met the conditions for TPS.

“With the renewed peace in South Sudan, their demonstrated commitment to ensuring the safe reintegration of returning nationals, and improved diplomatic relations, now is the right time to conclude what was always intended to ‌be a temporary designation,” she said, appearing to refer to a tenuous 2018 peace agreement.

The statement contradicted the findings of a panel of United Nations experts, who wrote in a report to the UN Security Council in November that “while the contours of the conflict may be altered, the resulting human suffering has remained unchanged.”

“Ongoing conflict and aerial bombardments, coupled with flooding and the influx of returnees and refugees from the Sudan, have led to near-record levels of food insecurity, with pockets of famine reported in some of the communities most affected by renewed fighting,” it added.

The Trump administration has increasingly targeted TPS as part of its crackdown on immigration and its mass deportation drive.

It has moved to similarly ‌end TPS for foreign nationals from countries including Syria, Venezuela, Haiti, ⁠Cuba and Nicaragua, prompting several court challenges.

It has also sought to deport individuals to countries in Africa, even if they have no ties there.

A federal judge this week canceled the trial of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration, and scheduled a hearing on whether the prosecution is being vindictive in pursuing a human smuggling case against him.

Abrego Garcia has become a centerpiece of the debate over immigration after the Trump administration deported him in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.

Abrego Garcia has denied the allegations, and argued that prosecutors are vindictively and selectively targeting him. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. wrote in Tuesday’s order that Abrego Garcia had provided enough evidence to hold a hearing on the topic, which Crenshaw scheduled for Jan. 28.

At that hearing, prosecutors will have to explain their reasoning for charging Abrego Garcia, Crenshaw wrote, and if they fail in that, the charges could be dismissed.

When Abrego Garcia was pulled over in 2022, there were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. But Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.

A Department of Homeland Security agent previously testified that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration had to work to bring Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, where he was deported.

Years earlier, Abrego Garcia had been granted protection from deportation to his home country after a judge found he faced danger there from a gang that targeted his family. That order allowed Abrego Garcia, who has an American wife and child, to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision.

The Trump administration has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang. He has denied the accusations and has no criminal record.

Abrego Garcia’s defense attorney and the U.S. attorney’s office in Nashville did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Bedayn writes for the Associated Press.

Dec. 26 (UPI) — A federal judge has blocked the deportation of a British man targeted by President Donald Trump.

Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, was one of five people placed on a visa ban after the government accused him of censorship.

Ahmed filed suit against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi to prevent “the imminent prospect of unconstitutional arrest.”

The suit said the case comes from “the federal government’s latest attempt to abuse the immigration system to punish and punitively detain noncitizens for protected speech and silence viewpoints with which it disagrees.”

Ahmed is a legal permanent resident of the United States, where he lives with his American wife and child. He praised the judge’s decision.

“I will not be bullied away from my life’s work of fighting to keep children safe from social media’s harm and stopping antisemitism online,” Ahmed said.

The speed of the judge’s decision was telling, said his lawyer Roberta Kaplan.

“The federal government can’t deport a green card holder like Imran Ahmed, with a wife and young child who are American, simply because it doesn’t like what he has to say,” the BBC reported she said.

Rubio said in a statement Tuesday that the five had “led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize and suppress” the views of Americans with whom they disagreed.

“These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states — in each case targeting American speakers and American companies,” Rubio said. He described the five as “agents of the global censorship-industrial complex.”

The others included in the ban are former European Union technology commissioner Thierry Breton; Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of Berlin-based non-profit HateAid; Clare Melford, co-founder of Global Disinformation Index.

Ahmed told The Guardian that it was another attempt to deflect accountability and transparency.

“This has never been about politics,” he said. “What it has been about is companies that simply do not want to be held accountable and, because of the influence of big money in Washington, are corrupting the system and trying to bend it to their will, and their will is to be unable to be held accountable. There is no other industry that acts with such arrogance, indifference and a lack of humility and sociopathic greed at the expense of people.”

Ahmed said he had not formally received any notification from the government.

“I’m very confident that our first amendment rights will be upheld by the court,” he told The Guardian.

He is expected to be in court Monday, when the protective order will be confirmed.

In 2023, Elon Musk‘s company X sued the CCDH after it reported on a rise in hate speech on the platform since Musk’s takeover. The case was dismissed but X appealed the decision.

A US judge has temporarily stopped the Trump administration from detaining British activist Imran Ahmed after he sued officials over an entry ban for alleged online censorship.

The founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate is among five people denied US visas after the state department accused them of seeking to “coerce” tech platforms into censoring free speech.

The move brought a backlash from European leaders defending the work of organisations monitoring online content.

Mr Ahmed, a US permanent resident, had warned that being detained and possibly deported would tear him away from his American wife and child.

Praising the judge’s decision, he told BBC News he would not be “bullied”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said online that the individuals were blocked over concerns that they had organised efforts to pressure US platforms to censor and “punish American viewpoints they oppose“.

Mr Ahmed filed a legal complaint on Wednesday against officials including Rubio and US Attorney General Pamela Bondi over the decision to have him sanctioned.

In court documents seen by the BBC, US District Judge Vernon S Broderick said on Thursday he had granted Mr Ahmed’s request for a temporary restraining order.

The judge also temporarily blocked the officials from detaining Mr Ahmed without the chance for his case to be heard.

The BBC has contacted the state department and White House for comment.

When approached by AFP news agency, a state department spokesperson was quoted as saying: “The Supreme Court and Congress have repeatedly made clear: the United States is under no obligation to allow foreign aliens to come to our country or reside here.”

Mr Ahmed said: “I will not be bullied away from my life’s work of fighting to keep children safe from social media’s harm and stopping antisemitism online.”

His lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said the speed of the judge’s decision was telling.

“The federal government can’t deport a green card holder like Imran Ahmed, with a wife and young child who are American, simply because it doesn’t like what he has to say,” she said.

In 2023, Mr Ahmed’s centre was sued by Elon Musk’s social media company after it reported on a rise in hate speech on the platform since the billionaire’s takeover of the firm, now called X.

The case was dismissed but an appeal is pending.

A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Justice Department counterpart from “sweeping” civil arrests at immigration courthouses across Northern California, teeing up an appellate challenge to one of the Trump administration’s most controversial deportation tactics.

“This circumstance presents noncitizens in removal proceedings with a Hobson’s choice between two irreparable harms,” Judge P. Casey Pitts wrote in his Christmas Eve decision.

“First, they may appear in immigration court and face likely arrest and detention,” the judge wrote. “Alternatively, noncitizens may choose not to appear and instead to forego their opportunity to pursue their claims for asylum or other relief from removal.”

Wednesday’s decision blocks ICE and the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review from lying in wait for asylum seekers and other noncitizens at routine hearings throughout the region — a move that would effectively restore pre-Trump prohibition on such arrests.

“Here, ICE and EOIR’s prior policies governing courthouse arrests and detention in holding facilities provide a standard,” the judge said.

Authorities have long curbed arrests at “sensitive locations”— such as hospitals, houses of worship and schools — putting them out of reach of most civil immigration enforcement.

The designation was first established decades ago under ICE’s predecessor agency, Immigration and Naturalization Services. ICE absorbed the prohibitions when the agency was formed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Courts were added to the list under President Obama. The policy prohibiting most courthouse arrests was suspended during the first Trump administration and reinstated by President Biden.

Internal ICE guidance from the Biden era found “[e]xecuting civil immigration enforcement actions in or near a courthouse may chill individuals’ access to courthouses and, as a result, impair the fair administration of justice.”

Nevertheless, the agency’s courthouse policy was reversed again earlier this year, leading to a surge in arrests, and a staggering drop in court appearances, court records show.

Most who do not show up are ordered removed in absentia.

Monthly removal in absentia orders more than doubled this year, to 4,177 from fewer than 1,600 in 2024, justice department data show.

More than 50,000 asylum seekers have been ordered removed after failing to appear in court hearings since January — more than were ordered removed in absentia in the previous five years combined.

“ICE cannot choose to ignore the ‘costs’ of its new policies—chilling the participation of noncitizens in their removal proceedings —and consider only the policies’ purported ‘benefits’ for immigration enforcement,” Pitts wrote in his stay order.

That ruling likely sets the San Francisco case on a collision course with other lawsuits seeking to curb ICE’s incursions into spaces previously considered off-limits. This suit was brought by a group of asylum seekers who braved the risk and were detained when they showed up to court.

One, a 24-year-old Guatemalan asylum seeker named Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio, was spared detention only because her breastfeeding 11-month-old was with her in court, records show. Administration lawyers told the court ICE would almost certainly pick her up at her next hearing.

Such arrests appear arbitrary and capricious, and are unlikely to survive scrutiny by the courts, Judge Pitts ruled Wednesday.

“That widespread civil arrests at immigration courts could have a chilling effect on noncitizens’ attendance at removal proceedings (as common sense, the prior guidance, and the actual experience in immigration court since May 2025 make clear) and thereby undermine this central purpose is thus ‘an important aspect of the problem’ that ICE was required, but failed, to consider,” Pitts wrote.

A district judge in Manhattan ruled the opposite way on a similar case this fall, setting up a possible circuit split and even a Supreme Court challenge to courthouse arrests in 2026.

For now, the Christmas Eve decision only applies to ICE’s San Francisco Area of Responsibility, a region encompassing all of Northern and Central California, as far south as Bakersfield.

The geographic limit comes in response to the Supreme Court’s emergency decision earlier this year stripping district judges of the power to block federal policies outside narrowly-tailored circumstances.

The administration told the court it intends to appeal to the 9th Circuit, where Trump-appointed judges have swung the bench far to the right of its longtime liberal reputation.

HONOLULU — A federal judge’s ruling clears the way for Hawaii to include cruise ship passengers in a new tourist tax to help cope with climate change, a levy set to go into effect at the start of 2026.

U.S. District Judge Jill A. Otake on Tuesday denied a request seeking to stop officials from enforcing the new law on cruises.

In the nation’s first such levy to help cope with a warming planet, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green signed legislation in May that raises tax revenue to deal with eroding shorelines, wildfires and other climate problems. Officials estimate the tax will generate nearly $100 million annually.

The levy increases rates on hotel room and vacation rental stays but also imposes a new 11% tax on the gross fares paid by a cruise ship’s passengers, starting next year, prorated for the number of days the vessels are in Hawaii ports.

Cruise Lines International Assn. challenged the tax in a lawsuit, along with a Honolulu company that provides supplies and provisions to cruise ships and tour businesses out of Kauai and the Big Island that rely on cruise ship passengers. Among their arguments is that the new law violates the Constitution by taxing cruise ships for the privilege of entering Hawaii ports.

Plaintiff lawyers also argued that the tax would hurt tourism by making cruises more expensive. The lawsuit notes the law authorizes counties to collect an additional 3% surcharge, bringing the total to 14% of prorated fares.

“Cruise tourism generates nearly $1 billion in total economic impact for Hawai‘i and supports thousands of local jobs, and we remain focused on ensuring that success continues on a lawful, sustainable foundation,” association spokesperson Jim McCarthy said in a statement.

According to court records, plaintiffs will appeal. They asked the judge to grant an injunction pending an appeal and requested a ruling by Saturday afternoon, given that the law takes effect Jan. 1.

Hawaii will continue to defend the law, which requires cruise operators to pay their share of transient accommodation tax to address climate change threats to the state, state Atty. Gen. Anne Lopez said in a statement.

The U.S. government intervened in the case, calling the tax a “scheme to extort American citizens and businesses solely to benefit Hawaii” in conflict with federal law.

Kelleher writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a March presidential memorandum to revoke the security clearance of prominent Washington attorney Mark Zaid, ruling that the order — which also targeted 14 other individuals — could not be applied to him.

The decision marked the administration’s second legal setback on Tuesday, after the Supreme Court declined to allow Trump to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area, capping a first year in office in which President Trump’s efforts to impose a sweeping agenda and pursue retribution against political adversaries have been repeatedly slowed by the courts.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington granted Zaid’s request for a preliminary injunction, after he sued the Trump administration in May over the revocation of his security clearance. Zaid’s request called it an act of “improper political retribution” that jeopardized his ability to continue representing clients in sensitive national security cases.

The March presidential memorandum singled out Zaid and 14 other individuals who the White House asserted were unsuitable to retain their clearances because it was “no longer in the national interest.” The list included targets of Trump’s fury from both the political and legal spheres, including former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former President Joe Biden and members of his family.

The action was part of a much broader retribution campaign that Trump has waged since returning to the White House, including directing specific Justice Department investigations against perceived adversaries and issuing sweeping executive orders targeting law firms over legal work he does not like.

In August, the Trump administration said it was revoking the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials. Ordering the revocation of clearances has been a favored retributive tactic that Trump has wielded — or at least tried to — against high-profile political figures, lawyers and intelligence officials in his second term.

Zaid said in his lawsuit that he has represented clients across the political spectrum over nearly 35 years, including government officials, law enforcement and military officials and whistleblowers. In 2019, he represented an intelligence community whistleblower whose account of a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy helped set the stage for the first of two impeachment cases against Trump in his first term.

“This court joins the several others in this district that have enjoined the government from using the summary revocation of security clearances to penalize lawyers for representing people adverse to it,” Ali wrote in his order.

Ali emphasized that his order does not prevent the government from revoking or suspending Zaid’s clearance for reasons independent of the presidential memorandum and through normal agency processes. The preliminary injunction does not go into effect until January 13.

Zaid said in a statement, “This is not just a victory for me, it’s an indictment of the Trump administration’s attempts to intimidate and silence the legal community, especially lawyers who represent people who dare to question or hold this government accountable.”

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

Dec. 23 (UPI) — A judge in Oregon ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration cannot require states to account for how deportations have affected their populations in order to receive emergency or disaster preparedness funds.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Amy Potter’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit from 11 states challenging new requirements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which they argued created undue burdens on access to hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to prepare for floods, storms, acts of terrorism and other potential catastrophes.

The ruling is a setback for President Donald Trump as he has sought to remake the federal agency that is central to responding to disasters after earlier calling for it to be dissolved.

The ruling concerned a new FEMA policy that shortened the duration of grants to states from three years to one. The agency argued that the shorter period would allow it to better gauge the effectiveness of how states were using the money.

FEMA also required states to provide updated figures on their populations to reflect the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation efforts. Population counts have traditionally been the responsibility of the U.S. Census Bureau.

A group of 11 states – including Michigan, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Kentucky – sued in response to the new requirements.

They argued that the requirements violated the Administrative Procedures Act and imperiled funding used for outreach programs in Hawaii, the deployment of emergency management personnel in North Carolina during tropical storms and staff to respond to flash floods in Maryland.

“This abrupt change in policy is particularly harmful to local emergency management,” wrote Potter.

In Oregon, affected funds were used to help cover the expenses of local emergency managers across the state, she wrote.