judge

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes suspends use of law to reduce prison sentences, pending further review.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has barred the implementation of a law that could dramatically reduce the prison sentence of former President Jair Bolsonaro for involvement in a coup plot after his loss in the 2022 election.

De Moraes ordered the law’s suspension on Saturday until the Supreme Court can convene a full hearing to consider appeals challenging its constitutionality.

Bolsonaro’s conviction for involvement in a plot to remain in office after losing to left-wing rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2022 has become a cause celebre for the country’s political right, which has pushed for Bolsonaro’s release from prison.

The Supreme Court sentenced the former far-right president to 27 years in prison in September, but a law passed by Brazil’s conservative-majority Congress in December would apply to Bolsonaro and others convicted in the plot, paving the way for reductions in their sentences.

President Lula vetoed the bill in January, but a vote led by Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress overrode the veto in late April.

Plaintiffs have subsequently asked the Supreme Court to overturn the bill, stating it is unconstitutional.

Lawyers for those convicted must file individual requests for sentence reduction. The ruling by de Moraes essentially suspends such requests until the court has had the opportunity to decide on the law’s constitutionality.

Lawyers for the 71-year-old Bolsonaro filed a new appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking it to overturn what they called a “miscarriage of justice”.

Bolsonaro’s conviction and sentencing remain a matter of controversy in Brazil, where his allies have decried it as a political witch-hunt.

Opponents have welcomed it as a necessary form of accountability, from which not even former presidents are exempt.

WASHINGTON  — Louisiana’s state attorneys on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to stand aside for now and to uphold an appeals court ruling that would stop the mailing of abortion pills nationwide.

They blamed former President Biden for undermining the state’s strict bans on abortion and the Trump administration for slow-walking a study on the federal regulations that permit sending the pills through the mail.

The justices are likely to act soon on emergency appeals filed by two makers of mifepristone. They argued the pills have been shown to be safe and effective for ending an early pregnancy.

But last week, the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled for Louisiana and revived an earlier regulation that would require women to obtain the pills in person from a doctor.

The three-judge panel also took the unusual step for putting its order into effect immediately. On Monday, Justice Samuel A. Alito, who oversees the 5th Circuit, issued an administrative stay that will keep the case on hold through Monday.

The justices have to decide whether Louisiana had standing to sue over the federal drug regulations, and if so, whether judges have the authority to overrule the Food and Drug Administration.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court by a 9-0 vote dismissed a similar challenge to the abortion pills that came from the 5th Circuit. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts has said in the past that judges should usually defer to the federal agency that is responsible fo regulating drugs.

In response to anti-abortion advocates, Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. agreed to have the FDA review the safety record of mifepristone.

It was approved in 2000 as safe and effective for ending early pregnancies. And in the past decade, the agency had relaxed earlier restrictions, including a requirement that pregnant women visit a doctor’s office to obtain the pills.

But the FDA said last month its review is far from complete.

In October, Louisiana Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill decided to bypass the FDA review and went to federal court seeking a ruling that would prevent the pills being sent by mail.

A federal judge refused to decide on the issue while the FDA was undertaking its review. But the 5th Circuit chose to act now. The Louisiana state attorney put the focus on the Biden administration.

When the Supreme Court was considering the Dobbs case, which overruled Roe vs. Wade and the right to abortion, “the Biden Administration was preparing a plan that predictably would undermine that decision,” she wrote in Thursday’s response.

“Although Louisiana law generally prohibits abortion and the dispensing of mifepristone to pregnant women, out-of-state prescribers—freed from the in-person dispensing requirement — are causing approximately 1,000 illegal abortions in Louisiana each month by mailing FDA-approved mifepristone into the state,” she said.

The Trump administration has yet to tell the court of its views on this case.

WASHINGTON — A federal magistrate judge on Monday pressed a jail official to explain why a man charged with trying to storm the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner and attempting to kill President Trump was placed on restrictive suicide watch after his arrest.

Officials at the city jail in Washington removed Cole Tomas Allen from its designated “suicide status” over the weekend after his attorneys complained that he had been unnecessarily confined in a padded room with constant lighting, repeatedly strip-searched and placed in restraints outside his cell.

But the relaxed conditions didn’t satisfy U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui’s concerns that Allen may have received disparate, punitive treatment in violation of his due process rights. Faruqui noted that the D.C. jail routinely houses convicted killers and others charged with violent crimes without placing them on 24-hour lockdown.

“It could drive a person crazy to be in that situation,” he said.

Faruqui apologized to Allen over his confinement conditions. In response to a news report on that apology, U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro criticized him in a social media post that said Faruqui “believes a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the president is entitled to preferential treatment in his confinement compared to every other defendant.”

Allen’s lawyers said he wasn’t showing any suicidal risk factors after his arrest. But a jail psychiatrist evaluated him and initially concluded that he posed a suicide risk, according to Tony Towns, acting general counsel for the city’s corrections department.

“Every case is different, your honor,” Towns said.

Allen was moved into protective custody after the jail lifted the suicide prevention measures. His attorneys didn’t object to his new confinement status. They had asked the magistrate to cancel Monday’s hearing, but Faruqui forged ahead with it due to his “grave concerns” about Allen’s treatment in jail.

Allen was injured but was not shot during the April 25 attack at the Washington Hilton, which disrupted one of the highest-profile annual events in the nation’s capital.

Allen was armed with guns and knives when he ran through a security checkpoint and pointed his weapon at a Secret Service agent, who fired back five times, authorities said. Pirro has said that Allen fired a shot that struck the agent’s bullet-resistant vest.

Allen later told FBI agents that he didn’t expect to survive the attack, which could help explain why he was deemed to be a possible suicide risk, said Justice Department prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine.

Allen, 31, of Torrance, is charged with attempted assassination of the president and two additional firearms counts. He faces up to life in prison if convicted of the assassination count alone.

Defense attorney Eugene Ohm said Allen was prohibited from having anything in his cell. He asked for a Bible and a visit from a chaplain but hasn’t received either, according to Ohm.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge told the U.S. government Monday not to cut down more than 10 trees without first providing notice amid a legal dispute at a historic Washington golf course that President Trump plans to renovate.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said during a remote hearing that she wasn’t going to issue a temporary restraining order just yet in the case brought by the DC Preservation League. She also told the National Park Service that it should first discuss any plans with government lawyers if it was going to cut down more than 10 trees.

Monday’s hearing came after the plaintiff’s emergency petition seeking to stop work at the course, citing news reports that major renovations were to begin Monday.

Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the Park Service, said during the hearing there was no plan to begin such work Monday but added that a safety assessment was underway.

Reyes told the parties she didn’t want to play the role of the “Parks and Rec” department, an allusion to the sitcom, but said she also didn’t want trees being bulldozed.

“I’m no Amy Poehler,” she said referring to the show’s star.

At one point during Monday’s hearing, the judge said she was made aware that closure signs had been put up at the site, which led to Griess’ asking someone to check. He later reported that there were no such signs. Reyes asked that if any such signs were found that the government’s attorney be told.

The complaint filed against the Department of the Interior argues that the Trump administration’s reconstruction of East Potomac Park, including the East Potomac Golf Course, would violate the congressional act that created the park in 1897. The roughly 130-year-old act established the park for the “recreation and the pleasure of the people.” The course itself opened in 1919.

Trump, an avid golfer, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.

May 2 (UPI) — A Texas judge on Friday temporarily paused the state’s ban on smokable hemp products, such as flower and joints, after three industry groups and multiple companies based in the state sued over it.

The state in March expanded its limit on THC in hemp products from 0.3% levels of Delta-9 THC to cover any form of THC beyond the state’s previous limit of 0.3% total THC in dry weight of the intoxicating group of chemicals.

This variety of chemicals includes Delta-8, various forms of Delta-9, and all other cannabinoids, with the exception of CBD and CBG.

The rule adopted by the state’s health department effectively banned all smokable forms of hemp because vapes and e-cigarettes that contain any form of cannabinoid were banned in Texas last September, the Texas State Law Library reported.

Since the federal government fully legalized hemp with low levels of Delta-9 THC, companies have produced hemp with boosted levels of other cannabinoids, including THCA, a non-psychoactive chemical that converts to Delta-9 THC when heated.

The groups that used the state contend that the health department overstepped their constitutional authority and that the new rules have done irreparable harm to the Texas hemp industry, CBS Austin reported.

“We are obviously excited about this ruling,” said Jason Snell, one of the attorneys that represents the industry groups and companies, KUT News reported.

“[The judge] issued a statewide injunction which prohibits what we believe are illegal rules from going into effect, which would cripple the hemp industry statewide and deprive consumers and every day Texans from access to legal products,” Snell said.

The Texas legislature last May passed a bill that would have effectively banned all of the products, but Texas Gov. Greg Abbot vetoed, which led the health department attempting to ban the products itself.

A previous temporary restraining order on the rule was set to expire Friday afternoon at 5 p.m., but the ruling — which covers all consumable hemp products — will now allow the industry to keep doing business.

, wit

When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the president’s mass deportation effort.

Instead, a top Justice Department official insisted the ruling wasn’t binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.

By February, the district court judge, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes, a nominee of President Biden, accused Trump officials in a ruling that month of seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers,” adding that they could “only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist.”

Hardly isolated, the case illustrates a broader pattern of defiance of lower court decisions in President Trump’s second term.

The failure of Trump officials to follow court orders has been highlighted most notably in individual immigration cases. But a review of hundreds of pages of court records by the Associated Press also shows an extraordinary record of violations in lawsuits over policy changes and other moves.

In the administration’s first 15 months in office, district court judges ruled it was violating an order in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including mass layoffs, deportations, spending cuts and immigration practices, the AP’s review of court records found. That’s about 1 out of every 8 lawsuits in which courts have at least temporarily blocked the administration’s actions.

The Trump administration’s power struggle with federal courts — which is testing basic tenets of U.S. democracy — reflects an expansive view of executive authority that has also challenged the independence of federal agencies, a president’s ethical obligations and the U.S. role in the international order.

Widespread noncompliance found

The Trump administration violations in the 31 lawsuits are in addition to more than 250 instances of noncompliance that judges have recently highlighted in individual immigration petitions — including failing to return property and keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.

Legal scholars and former federal judges said they could recall at most a few violations of court rulings over the full four-year terms of other recent presidential administrations, including Trump’s first time in office. They also noted previous administrations were generally apologetic when confronted by judges; the Trump administration’s Justice Department has been combative in some cases.

“What the court system is experiencing in the last year and a half is just qualitatively completely different from anything that’s preceded it,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who studies federal courts and is tracking litigation against the Trump administration.

Though Trump officials eventually backed down in about a third of the 31 lawsuits, legal experts say their treatment of court orders poses serious dangers.

“The federal government should be the institution most devoted to the rule of law in this country,” said David Super, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University. “When it ceases to feel itself bound, respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country.”

The White House’s aggressive policy moves have prompted a barrage of lawsuits — more than 700 and counting.

Higher courts boost Trump efforts

The AP’s review also found that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, overruled the district courts and sided with the White House in nearly half of the 31 cases. Critics say those decisions are emboldening the administration to ignore judges’ orders.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the higher courts had overturned “unlawful district court rulings.” The administration will “continue to comply with lawful court rulings,” she added in a written statement.

“President Trump’s entire Administration is lawfully implementing the America First agenda he was elected to enact,” the statement said.

Among other instances of noncompliance, judges found the White House defied rulings when it deported scores of accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, withheld billions of dollars in foreign aid and failed to restore programming at the Voice of America. The three cases date to the first few months of the new administration, but judges have continued to find violations since then, including in two cases in April.

“The danger is that this gets normalized,” said JoAnna Suriani, counsel at the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, which is tracking noncompliance cases. The group is also involved in litigation against the administration.

‘Ham-handed,’ ‘hallucinating’

In October, U.S. District Judge William Smith took little time to conclude Homeland Security officials were flouting one of his orders. Smith, a nominee of President George W. Bush, had blocked them from making billions of dollars in disaster relief funding to states contingent on cooperation with the president’s immigration priorities.

The Department of Homeland Security responded by keeping the immigration requirement on some grants, but making it contingent on a higher court overriding Smith’s injunction. The judge called the move “ham-handed” and said the agency was trying to “bully the states.”

In a case over the suspension of refugee admissions, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden nominee, accused the Justice Department last May of “hallucinating new text” in an appellate court order and “rewriting” it to achieve the government’s preferred outcome.

In four additional cases the AP reviewed, judges stopped short of a clear written finding of noncompliance but still criticized the administration’s response to their orders.

Of the judges who have confirmed violations, 22 were appointed by Democratic presidents and seven by Republican presidents.

Former federal judges Jeremy Fogel and Liam O’Grady said jurists are losing trust in the integrity of the Department of Justice.

That’s making them “more aggressive in accusing the government of bad faith,” said O’Grady, who along with Fogel is part of the nonpartisan democracy group Keep Our Republic.

Fogel said judges are also getting frustrated.

“They make orders and the orders don’t get complied with, and then they have to inquire why the orders are not being complied with, and that’s where it gets very mushy and very political,” he said.

Education case raises alarms

In Eureka, Calif., school administrator Lisa Claussen is worried about the impact on her students’ mental health if a judge does not find the Education Department in violation of a court order on federal grants.

Grant money allowed the school district in the poor coastal community in Northern California to hire more than a dozen psychologists and social workers to help students struggling with drug use and suicidal thoughts.

Education officials in the Trump administration told schools in California and other states last year that it was discontinuing the grants; the administration opposed diversity considerations in the grant process.

U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson blocked the move permanently in December, but California and 15 other states now say the administration is making an end run around her injunction by imposing new rules, including an initial limit of six months of funding.

Attorneys for the Education Department said they wanted to see whether schools were making progress on performance goals before releasing additional funds. The judge’s order did not block the six-month limit, they added in a court filing.

Evanson, a Biden nominee, has yet to rule.

In the absence of a one-year funding guarantee, Eureka City Schools and other districts say they have already issued layoff notices to mental health providers or eliminated positions.

“We have many kids who don’t trust adults for very good reason, and to be able to just swipe this grant like they’re doing … ,” Claussen said in a phone interview, her voice trailing off. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Justice Department response

In court filings, Justice Department attorneys have generally disputed accusations that the government was not complying. They have argued over the meaning of words, cited favorable appellate court rulings and said they were acting outside the scope of the court’s order, among other legal maneuvering.

Outside of court, Trump and White House officials have railed against federal judges. Vice President JD Vance has even suggested the president could ignore court orders.

Will Chamberlain, senior counsel with the conservative legal advocacy group the Article III Project, said many of the judges who have found violations are ignoring laws that clearly prohibit their rulings.

Trump officials are “generally complying, appealing and winning,” he said. “If they were defying orders left and right, they’d be losing them.”

A justice’s rebuke

In March, a federal appeals court ruled Sykes, the judge in California, had probably exceeded her authority in requiring bond hearings nationwide and blocked her February decision.

The outcome was not unusual.

In 15 of the 31 lawsuits the AP reviewed, an appellate court or the Supreme Court either allowed the administration’s underlying policy, limited the district court’s efforts to correct or punish the noncompliance, or both.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her fellow justices after one such ruling.

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” she wrote in June in a dissent joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. “Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

Thanawala writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.

In a hearing about competing protective order filings from reality TV star Taylor Frankie Paul and her ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen, a Utah judge granted Thursday that both orders go into effect, though he delayed making a decision on a custody arrangement.

The orders, which were issued by third district court commissioner Russell Minas, are in place for three years and require Paul and Mortensen to stay at least 100 feet away from each other. He also warned that they both could be subjected to criminal charges if there’s a violation of the orders.

“I do think it’s important that there be mutual orders,” Minas said. “I am just concerned that if I don’t order both of them to stay away from each other, there’s going to be some additional problems.”

Addressing Paul and Mortensen, Minas said: “I’m hoping that you’re not people who just thrive on the drama and the conflict … I do want to work with both of you to try to restore some sense of normalcy. I just think right now, you two need to stay away from each other and there needs to be orders that will result in consequences if you attempt to try to engage each other because I still think you have this attraction to each other, physical or otherwise.”

“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star, 31, and Mortensen, 33, both appeared in Utah court for the hearing, which was livestreamed, the first time they’ve been seen in the same room together since news broke last month that they were involved in domestic violence investigations involving multiple allegations.

In the weeks leading up to the ruling, the judge had granted Mortensen custody of their son, with up to eight hours per week of supervised visitation for Paul, known as one of the stars of Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” That arrangement will stay in place until the judge offers his recommendation on parent time on or before May 11.

Dakota Mortensen in the courtroom on Thursday.

(Bethany Baker / Associated Press)

A review hearing is set for June, once mental health and domestic violence assessments of Paul and Mortensen ordered as part of the safety plan by child protective services have been completed and processed.

Paul’s attorney, Eric M. Swinyard, described the hearing as a “significant step forward.”

“Taylor was incredibly candid with the Court that she is not perfect and owned her faults,” read part of his statement. “She looks forward to continuing to cooperate with the Court to make progress in the custody case.”

The Times also reached out to Mortensen for comment.

Paul and Mortensen had been under investigation by both the Draper City Police Department and West Jordan Police Department regarding a series of allegations each made that the other had acted violently during altercations in February, as well as an incident that took place in 2024. After the February allegations made headlines, a video of Paul in 2023 that led to her arrest was leaked; it showed the reality star throwing bar stools at Mortensen while her daughter was present. (Paul pleaded guilty in abeyance to aggravated assault following that incident and her probation in that case will be up in August.) Amid the investigation, Mortensen and Paul filed competing protective orders against each other.

The Salt Lake County district attorney’s office and the Draper City prosecutor both declined to file charges against Paul in April, citing insufficient evidence to prove allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.

The situation between the embattled exes also resulted in the pausing of filming of “Mormon Wives” Season 5. The show has documented the pair’s tumultuous relationship since it’s launch in 2024. It also led to the shelving of Season 22 of ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” which featured Paul as its heroine.

But Thursday’s ruling on the orders comes a week after reports surfaced that “Mormon Wives” has resumed production on its fifth season, without Paul and Mortensen’s involvement — though, Paul reportedly has the option to return. The fate of the unaired season of “The Bachelorette” remains unclear.

Alexandra Del Rosario contributed reporting.

One judge claims his colleagues have adopted a “gangster mentality” in order to shut him up.

Another compared the state board accusing him of serious misconduct to “the Russian mafia.”

Judicial elections are usually sleepy affairs, subject to little political fanfare or interest. But two battles on the June ballot in Los Angeles have raised the temperature this campaign season and invited questions about the lengths members of the insular local bench will go to protect their own.

Lawyers who aspire to become judge often run for open seats. The challengers in these races, however, say they specifically targeted incumbents they believe are unfit for the office, which carries an annual salary of more than $244,000.

One of the contests could unseat 84-year-old Judge Robert Draper, who is seeking reelection despite having spent the last three years relegated to a room at the Santa Monica courthouse without a computer or caseload, which two other judges described to The Times as a “closet.”

In 2023, then-Presiding Justice Samantha Jessner said Draper was “unable to carry out the duties and responsibilities of a judge” due to deteriorating mental and physical health, according to a letter she sent to the state’s Commission on Judicial Performance.

Draper denied all wrongdoing in an interview with The Times, and said that although he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he remains fit for the bench. He has also been accused of sexual harassment and making improper and biased comments by the judicial commission. He is contesting those claims. A hearing that could result in his removal began Monday and is expected to last into early May.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Thompson at Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The other incumbent fighting to save his seat is Judge Pat Connolly, 61, a former prosecutor who has drawn support from several other sitting L.A. County judges. But his opponent, Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Thompson, has called Connolly a “rogue judge” who needs to be replaced.

Connolly has been disciplined multiple times in his 18-year judicial tenure for improper comments toward litigants and, in one case, exhibiting bias against a defense attorney against whom he was weighing contempt charges, according to state judicial commission records.

Thompson, who gained notoriety for his role winning a rape conviction against Harvey Weinstein, purchased the rights to the domain name “patconnolly4judge.com,” which now redirects to one of the commission’s admonishments of Connolly.

“What I see is a man who repeatedly prioritizes his own goodwill over that of the community and the public he is serving … a man who has been repeatedly disciplined for prioritizing his own interests,” said Thompson, who has been endorsed by the L.A. County Democratic Party.

In a bizarre turn, the race was linked to the recent shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner after conservative influencers posted a picture of a Thompson campaign sign on the Torrance lawn of the suspected gunman, Cole Tomas Allen.

Thompson lives next door to the Allen family and described the suspect’s parents as great neighbors. He said he didn’t know their son and dismissed “internet trolls” for trying to tie his campaign to political violence.

This year’s election has sparked conversations about the unwavering support incumbent judges seem to enjoy among their colleagues.

Despite the concerns about Draper’s health, a political action committee run by fellow judges gave $72,500 to his campaign, state election finance records show. The PAC gave the same amount to Connolly.

Judge Maria Lucy Armendariz, who oversees the PAC, did not return a call seeking comment.

“The PAC has some explaining to do here. Why is there this show of support for someone who is facing so many challenges?” asked Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at Loyola Law School. “It doesn’t reflect well on the bench.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Tal Khan Valbuena at Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Draper’s opponent is Deputy Dist. Atty. Tal Khan Valbuena, a refugee from Pakistan who works in the Hollywood mental health court. Khan Valbuena believes his lived experience as a gay Muslim who has faced bigotry will bring a compassionate perspective to a bench some complain is overrun with old-school tough-on-crime prosecutors.

But he also expressed concern about Draper’s mental decline after meeting him for lunch earlier this year.

“His honor had exemplified disorganized thought behavior, tangential thought … things I see on a day-to-day basis [in mental health court],” Khan Valbuena said, while acknowledging that he is not a doctor.

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. issued its ratings for every judicial candidate last week. Connolly graded best among the judges in the contentious races, described as “well qualified.” Thompson and Khan Valubena were rated as “qualified.” Draper was one of only three candidates labeled “unqualified.”

In 2022, Judge Eric Taylor said he noticed a sharp change in Draper’s behavior that included sending “abusive” and “incoherent” e-mails to colleagues that contained racist and profane language, according to a letter Taylor sent to the state judicial commission.

“He has demonstrated a flagging handle on reality,” Taylor wrote.

Draper was accused of sexual harassment, making racist remarks and callous behavior all over the course of one hearing. According to the state judicial complaint and testimony at Draper’s removal hearing on Monday, the judge allegedly stroked a female lawyer’s hair after going on a tangent to a Black attorney about “Black history, Black football players, the Civil Rights Act, and the Black Lives Matter movement,” even though the case had nothing to do with those issues.

Judge Robert Draper outside the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in Los Angeles.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Later in chambers that same day, he made crude remarks to a group of female attorneys while reflecting on his time as a civil attorney, recalling how male lawyers would deride female secretaries, insisting they learn to “f— better than they could type,” according to testimony given by attorney Janice Brown at Draper’s hearing.

Brown told the review panel that Draper’s behavior left her “aghast” and “perplexed.”

Draper denied much of what was in the complaint. He says that he never touched a lawyer’s hair, and that the comments about Black culture were meant to express his pride at racial progress in America. He criticized the Commission on Judicial Performance.

“This is like the Russian mafia, it’s like Germany,” he said. “There’s no due process for any judge.”

Draper’s attorney, Ashley Posner, said his client would routinely walk up seven flights of stairs when he was assigned to the downtown Stanley Mosk courthouse and remains sharp.

“Things were set up to portray him in the worst light possible … he’s been portrayed as a bigot. He’s been portrayed as doddering and demented, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” Posner said.

In court on Monday, Posner suggested the complaint was part of a broader campaign to force Draper to retire and accused the L.A. County Superior Court’s leadership of ageism. A court spokesperson said they could not comment on personnel matters.

The race between Connolly and Thompson has also focused heavily on alleged misconduct.

Connolly’s past admonishments by the state commission include complaints that he yelled at attorneys for appearing remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The judge also told a recently acquitted defendant that he knew the man was guilty, records show.

“I don’t think it’s as much what I’ve said as how I have said it. I think that they have taken issue with the terms that I’ve used,” Connolly said, noting he has never been accused of ethical violations or moral impropriety.

L.A. County Superior Court Judge Pat Connolly at the Compton Courthouse.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

A legal expert raised questions in 2023 about the propriety of Connolly seeking to disqualify a fellow judge from ruling on a petition to resentence a convicted cop killer that Connolly had prosecuted in the late 2000s. The state commission is also currently reviewing two additional complaints against Connolly, according to e-mails seen by The Times. Connolly said he couldn’t comment on either situation.

In an interview with The Times, Connolly said he was surprised by the “venom” Thompson had injected into the race.

He said he sees himself as a fair jurist with a knack for finding creative solutions to cases that balance public safety and alternatives to incarceration. In 2022, court records show, he negotiated a plea deal for an NFL player facing prison time for weapons charges, ordering him to organize sports camps for underprivileged youth.

“I’m one of those who listens to both sides, who gives both sides the opportunity to voice their positions,” he said.

Connolly enjoys the support of many sitting judges and law enforcement leaders, including former Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley and the head of the court’s criminal division, Ricardo Ocampo.

Thompson says some of Connolly’s allies on the bench have come after his supporters.

When Thompson launched his campaign, he published an endorsement from L.A. County Superior Court Judge Scott Yang on his campaign website. Within weeks, Thompson said, Yang asked him to take the endorsement down, claiming he was being pressured by other judges.

Yang, who presides over a court in the Antelope Valley, said his colleagues on the bench exhibited a “gangster mentality” when they told him to withdraw his endorsement in a judicial election, according to a text message reviewed by The Times.

“They were going to target him. They were going to run at him. They were potentially going to make false disciplinary reports around him,” Thompson said.

Connolly was not accused of being involved in the alleged harassment and declined to discuss the matter. Yang did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A court spokesperson said they had not received any reports of threats made against Yang, but a law enforcement source said Yang told them he was harassed by fellow judges over his endorsement of Thompson. The source spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the bench.

The conflict has generated whispers among L.A. County judges, one of whom requested anonymity due to concerns of backlash for speaking publicly. Word of the threats against Yang, the judge said, left some fearing they too could face retribution for breaking ranks.

“It’s totally concerning,” the judge said. “How different is that than the deputy gangs?”

On March 13, 2013, Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan, a judge at Idlib’s Civil Court of Appeal, publicly defected from the Syrian regime – an act that led him to be sentenced to death in absentia.

In December 2024, more than a decade later, Bashar al-Assad’s regime – the very one he had defected from – was overthrown, and al-Aryan was able to finally return to Syria’s judiciary.

In the latest step on al-Aryan’s journey from defection to exile to return, he was the presiding judge on Sunday at the opening of the trial of Atef Najib, a cousin of former President al-Assad and the former head of political security in the southern province of Deraa who faces charges of premeditated murder, torture leading to death and crimes against humanity.

Al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, a former top military commander, are also being tried in absentia. Both men fled to Russia after their 2024 overthrow.

Fadel Abdulghany, the founder of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), told Al Jazeera that the moment carries deep symbolic weight.

“A judge once sentenced to death by the Assad regime for defending the rule of law has returned to the bench to apply that same law to one of the regime’s most extensively documented perpetrators of violations,” Abdulghany explained. “This reversal of power dynamics reflects the promise of the rule of law so rarely fulfilled in post-authoritarian transitions. The significance of this moment lies not in spectacle but in its adherence to due process.”

Defection and return

Al-Aryan was a judicial adviser during the early years of Syria’s uprising, which began in March 2011, as protests intensified and the state increasingly relied on security-based rule.

By 2013, he decided that he had to break from the Syrian state and defected in a recorded statement that framed his decision as a matter of legal and moral responsibility.

“In light of the responsibility placed on the shoulders of judges, who are the guardians of justice and truth, and as a result of the massacres committed by the regime against civilians, children and women, … I announce my defection from the Ministry of Justice and my joining the Independent Syrian Judicial Council … to be a strong shield for justice and equality,” he said in the video.

After his defection, al-Aryan joined the judicial bodies of the then-Syrian Interim Government and became involved in building what was described as a parallel judicial track in opposition-held areas.

As part of that, he worked on establishing alternative courts, handling legal cases and documenting alleged crimes committed by the now former regime.

In response, the authorities sentenced al-Aryan to death in absentia and confiscated his property, including assets later sold at public auction.

After the fall of al-Assad’s regime, al-Aryan’s name re-emerged in June after a presidential decree reinstating dismissed judges. That process culminated in his appointment as head of the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus, positioning him at the centre of the country’s first transitional judicial proceedings.

Najib’s links to repression of Syrian revolution

The transformation in al-Aryan’s life mirrors that of the man on trial in his courtroom on Sunday.

The position of the al-Assad family member as a top security official in Deraa in 2011 placed Najib at the centre of some of the first major confrontations between civilians and state security officers. Deraa is called the “cradle of the revolution” after government repression of protesters there inspired al-Assad’s opponents in other areas of the country to rise up.

One specific incident – the arrest and torture of schoolchildren detained after scrawling, “The people want the fall of the regime,” and the killing of one of them, 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb – is widely regarded as the spark for the country’s revolution.

Najib’s connection to that incident and the death of Hamza is one of the reasons why his trial is so significant in Syria.

The former official was arrested in January 2025 in the Latakia region, where some former regime loyalists had taken refuge.

Transitional justice

For the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the trial is significant because of how it is being conducted and not just who is being tried.

Abdulghany stressed that “this is neither a revolutionary court nor a victors’ court” but a case that has moved through formal legal stages, including arrest by the Ministry of Interior, investigation, prosecution and referral to a criminal court in Damascus.

The charges include premeditated murder and torture leading to death, classified as crimes against humanity under international law. This framing, Abdulghany said, is deliberate: It places domestic proceedings within the framework of international criminal standards, which is essential for the credibility of any verdict.

Abdulghany also highlighted the institutional message of the trial and in particular the inclusion of the former president and his brother as defendants despite their absence from the proceedings and from Syria.

“Physical absence does not amount to legal immunity,” he said.

Despite this, Abdulghany stressed that the trial was not the end of the transitional justice process in a country where hundreds of thousands of people died and disappeared during the war and the five-decade rule of al-Assad and his father, Hafez. There is still little information in many of the cases of the disappeared and imprisoned. The SNHR has documented at least 177,000 cases of enforced disappearances since 2011 with the vast majority attributed to the former government.

Abdulghany explained that accountability in Syria cannot be reduced to criminal trials alone and instead must include four interconnected pillars: criminal accountability, truth-seeking, reparations and institutional reform.

These, he argued, must function together under a unified structure rather than as separate or sequential processes.

Abdulghany placed particular emphasis on institutional reform, noting that Syria’s judiciary was previously used as a tool of repression rather than justice.

“Without these reforms, transitional justice trials risk being conducted through judicial institutions that have not themselves been transformed,” he said, pointing to the need to dismantle exceptional courts and rebuild judicial independence.

Truth-seeking, he added, is equally essential.

Families of victims have a right to know what happened to their relatives, and this right exists independently of criminal prosecutions, Abdulghany said.

“They deserve answers,” he said, adding that recognition of truth, justice and reparations must be unconditional if any durable reconciliation is to be achieved.

Dylan Carter, a contestant on Season 24 of “The Voice,” died in a car accident on Saturday.

According to the NBC affiliate serving the Lowcountry region of South Carolina, the musician died in a single-vehicle crash on a rural road in Colleton County. He was 24.

Country music legend Reba McEntire, who was Carter’s coach on “The Voice,” posted a tribute on social media Monday morning, writing, “We will miss Dylan so much. He was a brilliant, kind and talented young man who brought a huge ray of sunshine to The Voice. Rest in peace, my dear friend.”

Moncks Corner Mayor Thomas Hamilton Jr. also memorialized the Lowcountry singer, writing on Facebook that his family was “heartbroken” to hear about the accident.

“As a gifted singer, he frequently entertained our community with his performances at Town events,” read the post. “His kindness and charm earned him immense respect, and his absence will be deeply felt.

“To the loved ones and acquaintances of Dylan, we offer our sincerest condolences during this difficult period. The Town of Moncks Corner, its Council, and entire staff extend their deepest sympathies. He was much more to our family than an entertainer he was our friend and we are deeply saddened.”

Carter was slated to perform Monday night at the town of Moncks Corner’s “Music on Main” event. The organizer posted that the event had been canceled, and the comments section was filled with an outpouring of shock and grief.

Carter competed on Season 24 of “The Voice” in 2023. During his blind audition, he sang Whitney Houston’s “I Look to You,” which he dedicated to his mother, who had died the year before. During his audition, all four judges turned their chairs for the contestant, with Gwen Stefani hitting her red button during the song’s first verse.

“You only get four chairs if you really move the room,” said judge Niall Horan, who called his performance spectacular.

McEntire was choked up and said she could feel and hear Carter’s emotion while he sang. “That’s when you know you’ve got a great song and a great singer,” she said. “When it touches your heart.”

“When I saw y’all turn around, I saw my mom,” Carter told the judges. “She passed back in October and she wanted me to sing it at her funeral, so I did it — I tried, but I couldn’t make it through it. This was the best second chance. I just made her so proud.”

After Carter was eliminated from the competition series, he posted on Instagram, reflecting on his experience: “Well last night did not go as we all were hoping, but I am proud to say that I went out there on that stage and gave it MY ALL.”

Carter admitted that he felt defeated when he was eliminated, adding, “but it did not take me long to realize that I actually didn’t lose anything, instead I gained EVERYTHING!”

“I came to The Voice unsure of myself, unsure of my future, and still grieving the loss of my mom. I left LA with confidence in myself and my future, with a sure purpose as to why I was put on this Earth, and with peace of mind moving on from my mom’s death. I’ve been afraid of moving on from my mom’s death because I thought moving on meant forgetting her. Boy was I wrong!!! I’m moving forward with her, as she shines through me! All she ever wanted was for me to find myself, to find my voice, and for me to be happy…. I left LA with all of that plus more!!! I even gained all of you guys.”

The South Carolina Highway Patrol is investigating the accident.

Jada Pinkett Smith is asking a judge to make Bilaal Salaam cover the $49,000 in legal fees she racked up fighting claims he made in a December lawsuit.

According to a motion filed April 20 and obtained by The Times, Pinkett Smith is asking that Salaam pay $49,181.23, consisting of “reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred” in connection with Pinkett Smith’s successful special motion to strike Salaam’s complaint, “plus further fees and costs associated with this motion.”

Salaam — Will Smith’s former best friend of 40 years who also goes by Brother Bilaal — filed a lawsuit against the “Bad Moms” actor in December, alleging emotional distress and seeking $3 million in damages.

Salaam claimed that in September 2021, he attended a private birthday party for Will Smith at the Regency Calabasas Commons. According to his lawsuit, he was in the lobby of the movie theater when Pinkett Smith approached him with about seven members of her entourage and threatened him. Salaam’s suit claims that Pinkett Smith told him he would “end up missing or catch a bullet” if he kept “telling her personal business.” She also allegedly pressured him to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

In November 2023, Salaam appeared on the “Unwine With Tasha K” podcast and alleged that he walked into Duane Martin’s dressing room and saw Will Smith having a sexual encounter with the “All of Us” actor. He also made claims about Pinkett Smith’s sexual habits.

Pinkett Smith swiftly responded during an appearance on “The Breakfast Club” and said that Salaam started the rumors as part of a broader “money shakedown” and that his claims were “ridiculous and nonsense.”

“It’s not true and we’re going to take care of it,” she said. “We’re about to take legal action.”

Salaam beat Pinkett Smith to the courthouse and sued her in December, but Pinkett Smith asked the judge to toss the case in February.

According to the motion filed this week, the former “Red Table Talk” host argues Salaam should pay her hefty legal bills because she “prevailed on her anti-SLAPP motion” and the court struck all allegations relating to media statements “that formed the basis for Plaintiff’s three causes of action, as well as additional allegations regarding a cease-and-desist letter.”

April 22 (UPI) — A judge in rural Virginia on Wednesday blocked the results of Tuesday’s state referendum, barring lawmakers, at least temporarily, from implementing a new congressional map that favored Democrats in November’s midterm elections.

The five-page ruling by Judge Jack Hurley of the Tazewell County Circuit Court sided with the Republican National Committee, which was challenging the results of Tuesday’s special election.

On Tuesday, 51.4% of the more than 3 million Virginians who voted approved amending the state’s Constitution to permit a mid-decade congressional district map redraw, according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections.

The new map is expected to favor Democrats to win 10 of the state’s 11 congressional districts. The Democrats currently hold six of the state’s 11 congressional seats and Republicans hold five.

Hurley agreed with each of the RNC’s claims, including that the legislation supporting the map redraw violated General Assembly rules and that the question voters were asked — “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections” — was “a flagrantly misleading question to the voters, and because the ballot language did not accurately describe the proposed amendment as it was passed by the General Assembly.”

The order declares that all votes from the referendum are “ineffective,” and the state is enjoined from certifying them and instituting the new congressional district map.

“This ruling is a major victory for Virginians,” RNC Chair Joe Gruters said in a statement.

“Democrats attempted to force an unconstitutional scheme to tilt congressional maps in their favor, but the court recognized it for what it is — a blatant power grab.”

Virginia said it will immediately appeal the ruling.

“As I said last night, Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge should not have veto power over the people’s vote,” Virginia’s Democratic attorney general, Jay Jones, said in a statement.

“We look forward to defending the outcome of last night’s election in court.”

Virginia Democrats first moved for a mid-decade congressional map redraw in the fall after Texas, under pressure from President Donald Trump, approved a map expected to favor Republicans, kicking off a gerrymandering arms race. Four Republican-led states have approved new maps compared with two Democratic-led states, though several other states under majority leadership of each party are seeking to do likewise.

Trump — who has repeatedly warned Republicans that losing the House in November could lead to his impeachment — has taken several executive actions, including tightening voting regulations, that could affect November’s midterms and that Democrats and critics argue are unlawful measures that could help Republicans maintain their narrow House majority.

He has also repeatedly cast doubt on election legitimacy.

On Wednesday, Trump made unfounded claims that the Virginia referendum was “RIGGED,” citing mail-in voting, a common voting practice that the president has targeted as a vehicle for election fraud, though Trump himself has voted by mail in Florida.

“The Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory,” he said in a statement on his Truth Social media platform before Hurley’s ruling. “Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice.'”

Hurley previously ruled to block the Democrats’ redistricting plan twice, though the Supreme Court of Virginia allowed the referendum to move forward amid litigation.

Democratic-led states California and Virginia pursued their redraws through voter-approved ballot measures, while GOP-led Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina passed actions through their Republican-controlled state institutions, without voter-approved measures.

WASHINGTON  — A man carrying a gun and a cellphone entered a federal credit union in a small town in central Virginia in May 2019 and demanded cash.

He left with $195,000 in a bag and no clue to his identity. But his smartphone was keeping track of him.

What happened next could yield a landmark ruling from the Supreme Court on the 4th Amendment and its restrictions against “unreasonable searches.”

Typically, police use tips or leads to find suspects, then seek a search warrant from a judge to enter a house or other private area to seize the evidence that can prove a crime.

Civil libertarians say the new “digital dragnets” work in reverse.

“It’s grab the data and search first. Suspicion later. That’s opposite of how our system has worked, and it’s really dangerous,” said Jake Laperruque, an attorney for the Center for Democracy & Technology.

But these new data scans can be effective in finding criminals.

Lacking leads in the Virginia bank robbery, a police detective turned to what one judge in the case called a “groundbreaking investigative tool … enabling the relentless collection of eerily precise location data.”

Cellphones can be tracked through towers, and Google stored this location history data for hundreds of millions of users. The detective sent Google a demand for information known as a “geofence warrant,” referring to a virtual fence around a particular geographic area at a specific time.

The officer sought phones that were within 150 yards of the bank during the hour of the robbery. He used that data to locate Okello Chatrie, then obtained a search warrant of his home where the cash and the holdup notes were found.

Chatrie entered a conditional guilty plea, but the Supreme Court will hear his appeal on April 27.

The justices agreed to decide whether geofence warrants violate the 4th Amendment.

The outcome may go beyond location tracking. At issue more broadly is the legal status of the vast amount of privately stored data that can be easily scanned.

This may include words or phrases found in Google searches or in emails. For example, investigators may want to know who searched for a particular address in the weeks before an arson or a murder took place there or who searched for information on making a particular type of bomb.

Judges are deeply divided on how this fits with the 4th Amendment.

Two years ago, the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled “geofence warrants are general warrants categorically prohibited by the 4th Amendment.”

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s liberals in a 4th Amendment privacy case in 2018.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

Historians of the 4th Amendment say the constitutional ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures” arose from the anger in the American colonies over British officers using general warrants to search homes and stores even when they had no reason to suspect any particular person of wrongdoing.

The National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers relies on that contention in opposing geofence warrants.

Its lawyers argued the government obtained Chatrie’s “private location information … with an unconstitutional general warrant that compelled Google to conduct a fishing expedition through millions of Google accounts, without any basis for believing that any one of them would contain incriminating evidence.”

Meanwhile, the more liberal 4th Circuit in Virginia divided 7-7 to reject Chatrie’s appeal. Several judges explained the law was not clear, and the police officer had done nothing wrong.

“There was no search here,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote in a concurring opinion that defended the use of this tracking data.

He pointed to Supreme Court rulings in the 1970s declaring that check records held by a bank or dialing records held by a phone company were not private and could be searched by investigators without a warrant.

Chatrie had agreed to having his location records held by Google. If financial records for several months are not private, the judge wrote, “surely this request for a two-hour snapshot of one’s public movements” is not private either.

Google changed its policy in 2023 and no longer stores location history data for all of its users. But cellphone carriers continue to receive warrants that seek tracking data.

Wilkinson, a prominent conservative from the Reagan era, also argued it would be a mistake for the courts to “frustrate law enforcement’s ability to keep pace with tech-savvy criminals” or cause “more cold cases to go unsolved. Think of a murder where the culprit leaves behind his encrypted phone and nothing else. No fingerprints, no witnesses, no murder weapon. But because the killer allowed Google to track his location, a geofence warrant can crack the case,” he wrote.

Judges in Los Angeles upheld the use of a geofence warrant to find and convict two men for a robbery and murder in a bank parking lot in Paramount.

The victim, Adbadalla Thabet, collected cash from gas stations in Downey, Bellflower, Compton and Lynwood early in the morning before driving to the bank.

After he was robbed and shot, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective found video surveillance that showed he had been followed by two cars whose license plates could not be seen.

The detective then sought a geofence warrant from a Superior Court judge that asked Google for location data for six designated spots on the morning of the murder.

That led to the identification of Daniel Meza and Walter Meneses, who pleaded guilty to the crimes. A California Court of Appeal rejected their 4th Amendment claim in 2023, even though the judges said they had legal doubts about the “novelty of the particular surveillance technique at issue.”

The Supreme Court has also been split on how to apply the 4th Amendment to new types of surveillance.

By a 5-4 vote, the court in 2018 ruled the FBI should have obtained a search warrant before it required a cellphone company to turn over 127 days of records for Timothy Carpenter, a suspect in a series of store robberies in Michigan.

The data confirmed Carpenter was nearby when four of the stores were robbed.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, joined by four liberal justices, said this lengthy surveillance violated privacy rights protected by the 4th Amendment.

The “seismic shifts in technology” could permit total surveillance of the public, Roberts wrote, and “we decline to grant the state unrestricted access” to these databases.

But he described the Carpenter decision as “narrow” because it turned on the many weeks of surveillance data.

In dissent, four conservatives questioned how tracking someone’s driving violates their privacy. Surveillance cameras and license plate readers are commonly used by investigators and have rarely been challenged.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer relies on that argument in his defense of Chatrie’s conviction. “An individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in movements that anyone could see,” he wrote.

The justices will issue a decision by the end of June.

Judge Troy Nunley was fed up.

Federal immigration officials had once again flouted his authority by keeping a man locked up in a California City detention center after Nunley ordered him released. When he was finally set free, the man was booted onto the street with no passport, driver’s license or other personal effects. The judge’s demand that the items be returned were met with silence.

And so on Tuesday, Nunley, the chief judge of the Eastern District of California, slapped Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Yu with an official sanction and a $250 fine.

In a scathing order, Nunley laid out why he was compelled to take such a rare step. The fine may have been less than some traffic tickets, but it’s nearly unheard for a judge to formally admonish a government lawyer.

By Yu’s own admission, he was drowning in work. In his order, Nunley recounted the attorney’s claim he’d been assigned more than 300 nearly identical cases in the last three months, all of immigrants in detention who argued they were being held without cause.

Court filings show many California cases involve longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly hauled off to jail after routine check-ins with immigration officials. One was an Afghan who’d helped the American war effort. Another a Cambodian grandmother of eight who fled Pol Pot’s killing fields as a girl nearly 50 years ago.

Until last year, most would have fought deportation on bond after a brief hearing with an immigration judge. Now, their only hope of release is to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus — a legal maneuver once typically reserved for death row inmates and suspected terrorists — inundating the country’s busiest federal courts with thousands of emergency suits.

The Trump administration attorney said he was trying to “triage” the situation, but Nunley found he repeatedly failed to comply, leaving people with the right to walk free stuck behind bars.

“The Court is not persuaded,” he wrote, issuing the sanctions.

The order came days after Nunley took the unusual step of announcing a “judicial emergency” in the district, which covers nearly half of California, stretching from the Oregon border to the Mojave Desert in the inland part of the state, including Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.

In the last year, the Eastern District has received more petitions from immigration detainees than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States: More than 2,700 since January, compared to fewer than 500 last year and just 18 in 2024. Similar crises are playing out elsewhere, with federal courts in Minnesota briefly paralyzed amid the Trump administration’s enforcement blitz there last winter.

People detained are seen behind fences at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.

(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

In an interview with The Times, Nunley said dealing with the surge of activity since last summer has been “like being hit over the head with a bat.”

“We’re up all night doing these cases,” he said.

So far this year, the Eastern District’s six active judges have ordered almost people 2,000 freed.

“The majority of the cases that we see are cases where people should not be detained,” Nunley said. “They should be receiving hearings to determine whether or not they are to remain in this country, and until they receive those hearings, they should be free.”

Since last July, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered that all immigrants it arrests are subject to “mandatory detention” — a policy that had previously only applied to those caught at the border.

The change came four days after President Trump signed a spending bill that earmarked $45 billion to expand the federal network of immigrant lockups.

“This has been a sea change in the way the government has read the law,” said My Khanh Ngo, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Almost every judge who has looked at this has agreed these people should get bond, and yet thousands of people are still sitting in detention.”

Elizabeth Vega, 15, right, and Darlene Rumualdo, 15, from Torres High School join labor organizers, clergy leaders and immigrant rights groups to protest immigration raids nationwide at La Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles on January 23, 2026.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Longtime U.S. residents who might once have fought removal from home — where they can more easily gather evidence to support their case and confer with lawyers — are instead being held indefinitely.

Many have no criminal record. Some have been in the U.S. so long that the countries they came from no longer exist.

“People are locked up in the same facilities as people accused of crimes, people who’ve been convicted of crimes … and then you’re telling people, you have no shot of getting out,” Ngo said. “Detaining people and not giving them the chance to get out of detention is a way of coercing people to give up their claims.”

The habeas process can take weeks or months depending on the judge and the district.

“When the immigration cases dropped on our district, we got hit harder than any other outside West Texas,” Nunley said. “Initially we had more cases than anyone else.”

Today, data compiled by ProPublica and legal activist groups including the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative show almost a quarter of the roughly 30,000 active habeas petitions in the United States are in California courts. Nunley’s own tabulations show half the California cases are in his district, where a perfect storm of stepped-up enforcement, a large population of immigrant workers and a concentration of detention centers produced a flash flood of habeas petitions.

The cases rely on the Constitution’s guarantee of due process before being deprived of life, liberty or property. But according to court filings, in some instances the government has argued “the Fifth Amendment does not apply” to detained immigrants.

DOJ lawyers responding to the bids for freedom now regularly complain they’re being crushed under paperwork.

Judges accustomed to having government lawyers comply with their orders have been left fuming.

In California’s Central District, which includes L.A. and surrounding areas, Judge Sunshine Sykes wrote a fiery decision earlier this year that said the Trump administration is inflicting “terror against noncitizens.”

Sykes is one of several federal judges across the country that have tried to compel the government to resume bond hearings. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that decision in March, leaving the habeas system in place for now. But with challenges or recent decisions across multiple circuits, experts say the fight is fated for the Supreme Court.

“ICE has the law and the facts on its side, and it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email to The Times.

A woman holds a “ICE not welcome here!” sign at a vigil in San Pedro in January.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

The lawyers fighting to free those jailed under the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy say they were not initially equipped for these legal battles because they used to be exceedingly rare.

Most federal judges had only seen a handful of habeas petitions before last summer — then suddenly they had hundreds of requests for urgent relief, according to Jean Reisz, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic.

Reisz said there are efforts to get pro bono law groups trained on how to effectively argue habeas cases, “but it takes a while to get up to speed.”

A federal agent asks residents to move back after a shooting during an immigration enforcement operation in Willowbrook on January 21, 2026.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

At the same time, Reisz said, lawyers are pushing judges who oversee the cases to act swiftly, since interminable procedural delays ensure people remain incarcerated.

“Most of the habeas petitions include a motion for temporary restraining orders, and that requires emergency decisions from the courts, which requires the courts to act very fast,” Reisz said.

In California’s federal district courts, the backlog remains thousands deep. Nunley said the system is struggling to keep up with the crush of cases.

“There’s nothing that says that noncitizens should not be entitled to due process,” Nunley said. “These are our people, they reside in our district. They’re entitled to the same due process that you and I are entitled to.”

April 17 (UPI) — A federal judge on Friday blocked a lawsuit against the state of Hawaii that the federal government filed to prevent it from suing oil companies.

The Department of Justice last year sued Hawaii to stop a suit against fossil fuel companies for the impact of climate change on the state, but Senior Judge Helen Gillmor of the U.S. District Court in Hawaii said they it has no standing, The Hill and The New York Times reported.

In the ruling, Gillmor said that an “abstract, theoretical future harm” is not a valid basis for a lawsuit because stating an intention to file suit — which the state’s governor declared on television that he planned to do — does not amount to “concrete harm” that would allow an entity to sue.

Gillmor blocked the lawsuit because the DOJ’s theory of harm would require predicting claims brought against unknown companies; predicting that the lawsuit would be successful; “guessing” that oil companies would react in specific way; and then hypothesizing that the reaction would somehow harm the United States’ commerce and future energy policy, she wrote in the 30-page decision.

The DOJ’s suit, which was filed by now-former Attorney General Pam Bondi, alleged that Hawaii’s action was a “burdensome and ideologically motivated” lawsuit that could cause “crippling damages” with the energy and climate policies the state allegedly is pursuing.

“We disagree with the Hawaii District Court’s ruling, which ignored Supreme Court precedent regarding the United States’ interest in the supremacy of federal law,” the DOJ’s principal deputy assistant attorney general Adam Gustafson said in a statement. “We are exploring all options.”

PHOENIX — The top election official in Arizona’s most populous county will get more authority in running elections after a judge sided with his office in a prolonged legal fight with the local board that shares responsibility for overseeing the vote.

The decision could have broad implications in one of the nation’s most prominent battleground states, which will have several high-profile races this fall. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, has been roiled by election conspiracy theorists ever since President Trump lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden during his bid for reelection in 2020.

Justin Heap, the Republican recorder in Maricopa County, sued the predominantly Republican county board of supervisors last summer, alleging it had illegally taken control of certain aspects of election administration. Heap claimed the board transferred funding, IT staff and some key functions — including management of ballot drop boxes and establishing early voting sites — away from his office through an agreement negotiated with his predecessor, whom he had recently defeated in a GOP primary.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney mostly sided with Heap’s office in his ruling, which was filed Thursday but appeared on the public docket Friday. The board of supervisors “acted unlawfully and exceeded its statutory authority by seizing the Recorder’s personnel, systems and equipment and refusing to return them” to the recorder, he wrote.

Blaney also ruled that the recorder’s office is responsible for overseeing in-person early voting, among other duties, while the board is responsible for other operations, such as selecting election day voting locations, supplying polling locations and hiring poll workers.

“The Board’s assertion of plenary authority over election administration through its general supervisory powers is inconsistent with Arizona law,” the judge wrote.

Board Chairwoman Kate Brophy McGee said the board will consider an appeal.

“I disagree with other portions of the ruling, and I will explore all options with the Board of Supervisors, including an expeditious appeal,” McGee, a Republican, said in a statement. “From day one, the Board of Supervisors has provided Recorder Heap the resources and staffing needed to fulfill his statutory duties. We will continue to do so because voters always come first.”

In a statement, Heap praised the ruling as a “clear and decisive victory for the rule of law and for the voters of Maricopa County.”

“The court confirmed that the Board cannot override state law, use funding as leverage, or take control of election duties assigned to the Recorder,” Heap said. “This ruling restores both the authority and the resources necessary for my office to do its job.”

Heap, a former Republican state lawmaker, was elected in 2024 after unseating incumbent Stephen Richer in the GOP primary and defeating a Democratic candidate in the general election. In the past, Heap has stopped short of repeating false claims that the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen but has said voters don’t trust the state’s voting system and that it’s poorly run.

False claims of fraud since the 2020 presidential election led to threats of violence against Richer and others in the Maricopa County elections office. Richer blamed Heap for contributing to an atmosphere of distrust and vitriol directed toward the office.

“He catered to the really ugly stuff that the people in that office had to live through,” Richer said of Heap, in an interview last month. “And he allied with people who were very much in the eye of the storm in terms of creating it.”

Once he took office, Heap terminated a previous agreement that was reached between Richer and the board that had revised how election operations were divided between the two offices. Heap filed his lawsuit with the backing of America First Legal, a conservative public interest group founded by Stephen Miller, now deputy chief of staff in the White House.

Kelety writes for the Associated Press.

Ruling is latest loss for Trump administration, which has sought access to state voter data ahead of the US midterms.

A federal judge in the United States has dismissed a Department of Justice lawsuit seeking to access voter data from Rhode Island.

The decision on Friday was the latest loss for the administration of President Donald Trump, which has sought to access voter data in dozens of states across the country.

In the ruling, US District Court Judge Mary McElroy sided with election officials and civil rights groups, writing that the Justice Department does not have the authority “to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here”.

Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore praised the ruling in a statement afterwards.

“The executive branch seems to have no problem taking actions that are clear Constitutional overreaches, regularly meddling in responsibilities that are the rights of the states,” Amore wrote.

“But the power of our democratic republic, built on three, coequal branches of government, is clearer than ever before.”

The Justice Department has sued at least 30 states for their voter information, maintaining it needs the information to secure election security. State officials have said that turning over the data raises an array of privacy concerns.

Under the US Constitution, state officials administer elections. Only Congress can pass laws related to how states oversee voting.

But Trump has sought to transform election administration, claiming that voting has been marred by widespread fraud.

In particular, Trump has continued to maintain that the 2020 election, in which he lost to former President Joe Biden, was “stolen”.

No evidence has ever been put forward to support the claims.

Federal judges have rejected attempts in California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon to force the states to hand over voter files to the federal government. At least 12 states, however, have willingly provided or pledged to provide voter information to the Trump administration.

The push for voter information is one of several actions that have raised concerns over how the Trump administration will approach the midterm elections in November, which will decide the makeup of the US Congress.

He is currently calling on Republicans to pass the so-called SAVE America Act, a bill that would create higher documentation standards for voters to prove their citizenship when registering to vote and casting ballots.

The majority of Republican lawmakers have embraced Trump’s claim that the law is needed to prevent non-citizens from registering to vote, despite studies showing that instances of voter fraud are glancingly rare.

Critics say the measure would risk disenfranchising millions of voters, particularly those who have legally changed their names, which is a common practice in US marriages.

A federal judge has blocked Nexstar Media Group’s $6.2-billion acquisition of its rival, upending the already consummated union of the nation’s two largest television station groups.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Troy L. Nunley on Friday issued a preliminary injunction that forbids Nexstar, which owns KTLA-TV Channel 5 in Los Angeles, and its takeover-target, Tegna Inc., from combining operations amid a legal dispute with California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and seven other state attorneys general.

The order takes effect Tuesday.

“Nexstar must permit Tegna to continue operating as a separate and distinct, independently managed business unit from Nexstar,” Nunley wrote in his 52-page order. “And Nexstar must put measures in place to maintain Tegna as an ongoing, economically viable, and active competitor.”

The injunction is Nexstar’s latest setback in the controversial deal championed by President Trump.

Bonta and the others are opposed to the merger, arguing it violates a 112-year-old U.S. antitrust law by knocking out a major competitor. The deal would give Irving, Texas-based Nexstar control of 265 television stations across the country, up from 164. And, in dozens of markets, including San Diego and Sacramento, Nexstar would own multiple TV network affiliates.

That duplication has raised concerns about staff consolidations and widespread newsroom layoffs.

“This is a critical win in our case,” Bonta said in a statement. “This merger is illegal, plain and simple. The federal government may have thrown in the towel, but we’ll keep fighting for consumers, for workers, for affordability and for our local news.”

Nexstar, in a statement, said that it will appeal the ruling, but that it has taken steps to comply with the court order.

“For nearly thirty years, Nexstar has provided free over-the-air access to all its broadcast stations — local news, weather, and community-focused programming alongside major network programming,” Nexstar said. “This procompetitive transaction will make local stations stronger and support continued investment in local journalism and fact-based news.”

Bonta and other state attorneys general sued to block the merger March 18. The state officials, all Democrats, alleged the union would create “a broadcast behemoth” with the “power to raise prices for television consumers” and diminish “local news and sports,” their lawsuit stated.

El Segundo-based DirecTV separately sued. It alleged the merger would dramatically tilt the pay-TV playing field, forcing DirecTV to pay dramatically higher fees for the rights to carry Nexstar-Tegna station programming, including local news and NFL football. Those costs, DirecTV said, would be passed along to its 10 million customers.

Trump had been agitating for the deal, writing in a February social media post: “GET THAT DEAL DONE!”

On March 19, the day after the lawsuits, the Trump administration approved the deal. The U.S. Justice Department terminated its antitrust review and the Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau authorized the transfer of Tegna’s station licenses to Nexstar.

Within an hour, Nexstar announced that it had finalized the purchase of its McLean, Va.-based rival.

Tegna was dissolved and its stockholders were paid out — raising questions about the fate of Tegna’s stations.

“Nexstar must not influence the management of the held-separate TEGNA business unit,” Nunley wrote. “Tegna personnel must maintain control over Tegna’s decisionmaking, including … negotiations [with pay-TV partners], newsroom personnel, operations and programming, product and service offerings, product development, advertisement sales, and personnel.”

Nexstar has complained about the unusual nature of blocking a transaction after-the-fact. But the plaintiffs noted that Nexstar had been aware of the state attorneys general concerns since at least March 10 — more than a week before DirecTV and the state regulators sued.

Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia have joined California in the lawsuit.

The merger was not approved by the full FCC commission, prompting two U.S. senators — Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) — to question the FCC’s handling of the matter.

“This decision raises serious concerns about the Commission’s use of delegated authority in matters involving significant legal, policy, and economic consequences,” the two lawmakers wrote in a March 30 letter to the FCC. “The transaction is unprecedented in scale, resulting in the largest local broadcast television group in U.S. history.”

Nexstar has built itself into a colossus through a series of acquisitions, including its $6.2-billion takeover of Tribune Broadcasting, the longtime owner of KTLA, in 2019 — during the first Trump term.

Opponents have argued that Nexstar’s proposed purchase of Tegna gives Nexstar stations in 44 states covering 80% of the U.S. population — exceeding a 39% ownership cap set by Congress.

DirecTV has argued that the combination of the nation’s two largest television station groups could harm its pay-TV business by raising prices for consumers and potentially increasing programming blackouts.

The judge late last month combined the two lawsuits.

During a two-hour hearing earlier this month, Nexstar attorneys argued against the injunction, saying it had obtained the necessary federal approvals to take control of the Tegna stations.

“Setting aside the unusual FCC clearance process here, the Court does not find Defendants’ arguments persuasive,” Nunley wrote.

Nexstar contends the deal would strengthen TV station economics, allowing stations to bolster their news gathering and expand the number of newscasts. But DirecTV countered that in markets where Nexstar owns two stations, it relies on just one newsroom to program both channels.

“We commend the Court’s decision, which reinforces the coalition of states’ and our shared belief that unchecked station consolidation will force consumers to pay more for less by reducing the quality and variety of local news coverage,” DirecTV said in a statement.

Nexstar attorney Alexander Okuliar said the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the merger posed an immediate threat to the public.

Nunley, who was appointed by former President Obama, wrote in his order that the plaintiffs demonstrated they had a path to prevail at a trial due to the merits of their arguments.

Nexstar had asked the judge to require the plaintiffs to post a $150-million bond to compensate it for damages it would suffer from any delays in closing the deal.

But the judge denied that request, writing that Nexstar did not offer a “financial analysis or documentary evidence to support a bond in this amount” or any evidence that it would incur financial losses should the injunction be overturned.

April 17 (UPI) — All above-ground construction of the White House ballroom must be stopped amid litigation, a federal judge ordered Thursday, reprimanding the Trump administration for trying to justify continued work on the building as necessary for national and presidential security concerns.

“National security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said.

The ruling comes almost three weeks after Leon issued a preliminary injunction against the $400 million project, finding that construction at the White House requires congressional approval. While ordering the construction halt amid appeal, Leon carved out an exception for the government to continue underground work deemed necessary for the White House’s safety and security.

That prompted litigation over the scope of the carve-out and the Trump administration argue that construction of the ballroom above ground was needed as security elements ran through the entire facility.

“Defendants argue that the entire ballroom construction project, from tip to tail, falls within the safety-and-security exception and therefore may proceed unabated. That is neither a reasonable nor a correct reading of my order!” Leon said Thursday.

“It is, to say the least, incredible, if not disingenuous, that defendants now argue that my order does not stop ballroom construction because of the safety-and-security exception!”

The federal government has filed an appeal against the Thursday ruling.

“We are pleased the court upheld the preliminary injunction and halted above-ground construction of the White House ballroom until Congress approves the project,” Carol Quillen, CEO and president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which filed the initial lawsuit, said in a statement.

Trump has said building a White House ballroom has been his dream since before he was president, and has said its price tag, which has ballooned from an initial $200 million, is to be covered by private donors.

In December, as construction was underway following the October demolition of the East Wing, the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to stop the project, arguing U.S. law mandates the project be authorized by Congress, resulting in the March 31 injunction and the Trump administration filing an appeal.

After the Thursday ruling, Trump chastised Leon in a series of posts on his Truth Social platform, calling him an “out of control Trump hating” judge whose ruling “severely jeopardizes the lives and welfare of the people who work, and will be working, at the White House.”

“The underground doesn’t work, isn’t necessary and would indeed be useless without the above-ground section,” he said in a Truth Social post.

“This highly political Judge, and his illegal overreach, is out of control, and costing our Nation greatly,” he said in another statement.

“This is a mockery of our Court System! The Ballroom is deeply important to our National Security, and no judge can be allowed to stop this Historic and Militarily Imperative Project.”

WASHINGTON — A federal judge must end his “intrusive” contempt investigation of the Trump administration for failing to comply with an order to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador last year, a divided appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.

Chief Judge James Boasberg abused his discretion in forging ahead with criminal contempt proceedings over the March 2025 deportation flights, according to the majority opinion by a three-judge panel from U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

President Trump’s administration has a “clear and indisputable” right to the termination of the contempt proceedings, Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

“The legal error at the heart of these criminal contempt proceedings demonstrates why further investigation by the district court is an abuse of discretion,” Rao wrote. “Criminal contempt is available only for the violation of an order that is clear and specific. (Boasberg’s March 2025 order) did not clearly and specifically bar the government from transferring plaintiffs into Salvadoran custody.”

Rao was nominated by Trump, a Republican. Boasberg, chief judge of the district court in Washington, D.C., was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama.

On March 15, 2025, two planes transporting Venezuelan migrants from the U.S. to El Salvador were in the air when Boasberg ordered the administration to turn them around.

Administration officials claim Boasberg is biased and overstepped his authority.

Boasberg has said the Trump administration may have acted in bad faith by trying to rush Venezuelan migrants out of the country in defiance of his order blocking their deportations to El Salvador. In an April 16, 2025 order, the judge said he gave the administration “ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions” but concluded that “none of their responses has been satisfactory.”

Trump has called for impeaching Boasberg. Last year, the Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint accusing Boasberg of making improper public comments about Trump and his administration. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts publicly rejected calls for Boasberg’s impeachment.

The case is assigned to Rao and Circuit Judges Justin Walker and J. Michelle Childs. Walker, also a Trump nominee, wrote a separate opinion concurring with Roa’s. Childs, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, dissented from the majority.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

Dismissed lawsuit follows Wall Street Journal’s report on a letter allegedly signed by Trump for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

A United States federal judge has dismissed US President Donald Trump’s $10bn defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch over a story on Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Miami-based ‌US District Judge Darrin Gayles said on Monday that Trump did not meet the “actual malice” standard that public figures must clear in defamation cases.

That means public figures must prove not only that a public statement about them was false, but also that the media outlet or person who made the statement ‌acted with reckless disregard for the truth or should have known that it was false.

“This complaint comes nowhere close to this standard,” Gayles wrote. “Quite the opposite.”

The judge noted that reporters from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reached out to Trump for comment beforehand and printed his denial. That allowed readers to decide for themselves what to conclude, cutting against Trump’s assertion that the newspaper acted with actual malice, the judge said.

Gayles said Trump could file an amended version of ⁠the lawsuit by April 27.

In ⁠his lawsuit, Trump called a birthday greeting that he allegedly sent to Epstein, a convicted sex offender, a “fake”. The US president sought $10bn for what he called damage to ‌his reputation. News Corp’s Dow Jones & Company, the WSJ’s parent company, defended the accuracy of its July ‌17, ‌2025 article.

Trump filed the lawsuit after promising to sue the paper almost immediately after it put a new spotlight on his well-documented relationship with Epstein by publishing an article that described a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper said bore Trump’s signature and was included in a 2003 album compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

The letter was subsequently released publicly by the US Congress, which subpoenaed the records from Epstein’s estate.

The ruling marks yet another blow in the Trump administration’s efforts to manage fallout over its release of the Epstein files and the president’s attempts to use the legal system to curb reporting that he finds critical of him.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request by AP for comment.