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    Musk Wins Appeal Over Tweet He Had to Delete About Union Push

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    The Fifth Circuit court ruled that the 2018 post was protected speech. It also vacated an order to reinstate a pro-union Tesla worker who was fired.A federal appeals court handed Elon Musk a victory in a freedom-of-speech case on Friday by overturning an earlier ruling in a dispute between the billionaire and the National Labor Relations Board.In March last year, three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans affirmed the board’s finding that Tesla illegally fired an employee involved in union organizing, and that Mr. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, had illegally threatened workers’ stock options in a post on Twitter if they chose to unionize. The opinion allowed the labor board to enforce its 2021 order requiring Tesla to reinstate, with back pay, the employee, Richard Ortiz, and Mr. Musk to delete the 2018 post.Mr. Musk challenged the panel’s ruling, and on Friday the full court ruled, 9 to 8, that the labor board had improperly ordered him to delete the social media post. “The agency exceeded its authority,” the 11-page ruling said. “We hold that Musk’s tweets are constitutionally protected speech.”“Deleting the speech of private citizens on topics of public concern is not a remedy traditionally countenanced by American law,” the ruling added.The court sent the matter of Mr. Ortiz’s firing back to the labor board to review, saying the board had failed “to consider the fact that the actual decision maker in Ortiz’s firing harbored no anti-union animus.”The judges did not rule on whether Mr. Musk’s online comment constituted a National Labor Relations Act violation for illegally threatening workers. (The board has held that it did.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Can Ban Guns in Parks and Bars, but Not Hospitals, Court Says

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      California and Hawaii banned guns from various public venues. A federal appeals court dusted off the history books to help determine where to allow prohibitions.A federal appeals court on Friday partly reinstated firearm bans in California and Hawaii, finding that California could, for example, prohibit guns in parks, playgrounds and bars but not in banks or hospitals.The 3-0 ruling, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, said that the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of gun rights was “seemingly arbitrary” and “hard to explain” at the moment. The court’s findings applied only to laws in those two states.The judges found that most of the prohibitions enacted last year by California and Hawaii met the constitutional standards set in a 2022 Supreme Court decision that drastically narrowed the legal standard for restrictions on firearms.That decision struck down a New York law that had strictly limited the carrying of guns outside homes. The Supreme Court found that restrictions on guns are constitutional only if courts can find an analogue “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” But, the court added, states could ban guns in “sensitive places” such as schools and courthouses.Democratic-led states rushed to rewrite laws to comply with the new interpretation, in some cases banning guns in dozens of specific locations. But federal judges last year struck down new laws in California and Hawaii.The Ninth Circuit judges ruled on Friday that California could prohibit guns in libraries, sports arenas, casinos, museums and restaurants that serve alcohol, in addition to parks, playgrounds and bars. Hawaii can ban guns on parks and beaches and in establishments serving alcohol.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Appeals $454 Million Judgment in N.Y. Civil Fraud Case

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      Lawyers for Donald J. Trump challenged the judgment handed down by Justice Arthur F. Engoron, who found that Mr. Trump had conspired to manipulate his net worth to receive favorable terms on loans.Lawyers for Donald J. Trump filed an appeal on Monday evening seeking to dismiss or drastically reduce the $454 million judgment levied against him this year in a New York civil fraud case, the latest maneuver in the former president’s multiple legal battles.The filing made a raft of arguments questioning the judgment handed down in February by Justice Arthur F. Engoron, who found that Mr. Trump had conspired to manipulate his net worth and lied about the value of his properties to receive more favorable terms on loans.The suit was brought by Attorney General Letitia James of New York, a Democrat, who hailed her victory over Mr. Trump as having demonstrated that “there cannot be different rules for different people in this country.”In their lengthy appeal to the First Department of the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, however, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that many of the deals in question in Ms. James’s suit had occurred long ago and that the statute of limitations for violations it cited had run out.They also questioned the size of the judgment awarded by Justice Engoron, calling it disproportionate and suggesting that the judge had overcounted damages and miscalculated the profits from some of the properties named in Ms. James’s suit.Taken as a whole, the appeal — peppered with talking points from Mr. Trump’s campaign and his public criticism of the case — seeks to show that the former president’s dealings were business as usual, and that no harm was caused.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Appeals Court Keeps Block on Texas Migrant Law

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      The decision in favor of the federal government left in place a trial court injunction while courts determine whether the measure is legal. A federal appeals court late Tuesday ruled against Texas in its bitter clash with the federal government, deciding that a law allowing the state to arrest and deport migrants could not be implemented while the courts wrestled with the question of whether it is legal.A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has a reputation for conservative rulings, sided in its 2-to-1 decision with lawyers for the Biden administration who have argued that the law violates the U.S. Constitution and decades of legal precedent.The panel’s 50-page majority opinion left in place an injunction imposed last month by a lower court in Austin, which found that the federal government was likely to succeed in its arguments against the law. The opinion was written by the Fifth Circuit’s chief judge, Priscilla Richman, a nominee of President George W. Bush, and was joined by Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, who was nominated to the bench by President Biden last year.Judge Richman found that Texas’ law conflicted with federal law and with Supreme Court precedent, particularly a 2012 immigration case, Arizona v. United States.“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has held that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission and removal of noncitizens — is exclusively a federal power,” she wrote. “Texas has not shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits,” she said after discussing how various arguments made by the state fell short.It was a setback for Gov. Greg Abbott but not an unexpected one: The governor has said that he anticipated the fight over the law’s constitutionality to eventually reach the Supreme Court. Mr. Abbott has said the law, which allows the state to arrest and deport migrants on its own, is necessary to deal with the record number of migrants crossing into Texas from Mexico. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Federal Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Claim of Absolute Immunity

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      The ruling answered a question that an appeals court had never addressed: Can former presidents escape being held accountable by the criminal justice system for things they did while in office?A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he was immune to charges of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election, ruling that he must go to trial on a criminal indictment accusing him of seeking to overturn his loss to President Biden.The 3-0 ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit handed Mr. Trump a significant defeat, but was unlikely to be the final word on his claims of executive immunity. Mr. Trump is expected to continue his appeal to the Supreme Court — possibly with an intermediate request to the full appeals court.Still, the panel’s 57-page ruling signaled an important moment in American jurisprudence, answering a question that had never been addressed by an appeals court: Can former presidents escape being held accountable by the criminal justice system for things they did while in office?The question is novel because no former president until Mr. Trump had been indicted, so there was never an opportunity for a defendant to make — and courts to consider — the sweeping claim of executive immunity that he has put forward.The panel, composed of two judges appointed by Democrats and one Republican appointee, said in its decision that, despite the privileges of the office he once held, Mr. Trump was subject to federal criminal law like any other American.“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”The panel’s ruling came nearly a month after it heard arguments on the immunity issue from Mr. Trump’s legal team and from prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith. While the decision was quick by the standards of a normal appeal, what happens next will be arguably more important in determining when or whether a trial on the election subversion charges — now set to start in early March — will take place.. More

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      Supreme Court Declines to Stop Nitrogen Execution in Alabama

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      Both the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court denied stays sought by Kenneth Smith, who is scheduled to die on Thursday in the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution.The U.S. Supreme Court and a federal appeals court each declined on Wednesday to intervene to stop Alabama from conducting the nation’s first-ever execution by nitrogen gas, putting the state on track to use the novel method to kill a death row prisoner.Alabama plans to use nitrogen gas to kill Kenneth Smith, who was convicted of a 1988 murder, after the state botched its previous attempt to execute him by lethal injection in November 2022. Barring any additional legal interventions, prison officials plan to bring him to the execution chamber in Atmore, Ala., on Thursday evening, place a mask on his face and pump nitrogen into it, depriving him of oxygen until he dies.The Supreme Court declined to intervene in Mr. Smith’s appeal of a state court case, in which his lawyers had argued that the second execution attempt would violate his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishments. The court’s order did not include an explanation or note any dissents.Hours later, in response to a separate challenge by Mr. Smith’s lawyers, a federal appeals court also declined to halt the execution over the dissent of one of the three judges who had heard the case. Mr. Smith’s lawyers said they would also appeal that case to the Supreme Court, potentially giving the justices another chance to intervene, though they have been reluctant to do so in last-minute death penalty appeals in recent years.Nitrogen gas has been used in assisted suicide in Europe and elsewhere, and the state’s lawyers contend that the method — known as nitrogen hypoxia — is painless and will quickly cause Mr. Smith to lose consciousness before he dies.But Mr. Smith and his lawyers have said they fear the state’s newly created protocol is not sufficient to prevent problems that could cause Mr. Smith severe suffering. The lawyers said in court papers that if the mask were a poor fit, it could allow oxygen in and prolong Mr. Smith’s suffering, or if he becomes nauseous, he could be “left to choke on his own vomit.”The execution is scheduled to take place around 6 p.m. Central time at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility, though it could be carried out any time until 6 a.m. the next morning. Mr. Smith has recently reported feeling increasingly nauseous as his anxiety grows about the looming execution, raising his lawyers’ fears about a mishap during the execution. Alabama prison officials said this week that they do not plan to allow him to have any food after 10 a.m. on Thursday in an effort to lower the likelihood that he vomits.Abbie VanSickle More

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      Democrats Need to Pick Up the Pace of Putting Judges on the Bench

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      With the outcome of the 2024 elections for the president and control of the Senate very much up in the air, Democrats must make a concerted effort to fill federal judicial vacancies before next November.Republicans did this very effectively before the end of the Trump presidency, leaving few vacancies for President Biden to fill when he took office. Now the Democrats must emulate that approach. And they must do so now.At the moment, there are two vacancies without nominees on appeals courts and 37 on district courts. Because the evaluation process of nominees takes time, it is imperative that the Biden administration quickly name nominees to those and future vacancies. The Senate then must work expeditiously to confirm those deemed suitable for the lifetime appointments.Mr. Biden has nominated 186 people to Article III judgeships, which include the Supreme Court and the federal appeals and district courts, according to the White House. At this point in their tenures, George W. Bush had nominated 211, followed by Mr. Trump’s 206, according to the Heritage Foundation’s Judicial Appointment Tracker. There have been inexplicable and troubling delays in this process. For example, two years ago, Judge Diana Motz of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., announced that she would take senior status, a form of semiretirement, when a successor was confirmed. She took senior status last year, though no replacement had been named at that time. And still no one has been nominated for this important judgeship.Time may be running out for the Biden administration.It is critical for federal judges who would like to be replaced by a Democratic president to take senior status so that Mr. Biden can appoint their successors with sufficient time to allow them to be confirmed by the current Senate. A federal judge or justice may take senior status after meeting the age and service requirements of the “Rule of 80” — the judge must be at least 65 years old, and the judge’s age and years of service must add up to 80. A total of 121 federal judges are now eligible for senior status but have not announced their plans, according to the group Balls and Strikes, which tracks that information. Of those, 44 were appointed by Democratic presidents. By Jan. 20, 2025, the date of the next presidential inauguration, that number could rise to 69.There is little reason for judges not to take senior status. They can continue to hear cases, even carry a full load of cases. And taking senior status allows the president to fill that seat on the bench. The judge can condition taking senior status on the confirmation of a successor. A senior judge typically is not allowed to participate in en banc decisions, where all (or a significant number) of the judges on the court review a matter that is particularly significant or complex. But that is the main restriction on what a senior judge may do.We are long past the time when it could be said that judges appointed by Republican and by Democratic presidents were indistinguishable. This was made clear in an analysis of Supreme Court rulings published in July 2022 by the data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight, which found the partisan divide among the current justices “is deeper than it’s been in the modern era.”And this partisan divide is not confined to the Supreme Court. There are often huge differences between how judges in the lower courts who were appointed by Democratic and by Republican presidents decide cases. For example, a federal appeals court recently upheld Tennessee and Kentucky laws prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender minors, with the two Republican-appointed judges siding with the states and a judge initially nominated by President Bill Clinton dissenting. Whether it is reproductive rights or gun rights or employee rights, or in countless other areas, the outcome often depends on which president appointed the judge or judges hearing the case.For that reason, I wrote an opinion article in The Los Angeles Times in March 2014 urging Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then 81, to retire so that President Barack Obama could replace her while there was a Democratic Senate and someone with progressive values would take her seat. She took offense at the suggestion, also raised by others, and remained on the bench until she died in September 2020, when President Trump replaced her with the conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Ginsburg gambled, and America lost.Likewise, I think of the liberal federal court of appeals judges who did not take senior status, though they were eligible during the Obama presidency. For example, Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit declined to take senior status; when he died at age 87 in 2017 President Trump replaced him with a conservative judge. By the time another liberal Ninth Circuit judge, Harry Pregerson, decided to take senior status in late 2015, he was 92, and though Mr. Obama quickly nominated a replacement, it was late in his term and got caught up in politics and President Trump ended up appointing another conservative to the seat.Creating vacancies will matter only if Mr. Biden quickly names replacements and the Senate confirms the nominees. If the president is not re-elected, the Republican president will fill any vacancies that exist upon taking office. And regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, if the Republicans take control of the Senate, the confirmation of judicial candidates nominated by a Democratic president will be far more difficult. That is why immediate action is imperative.A president’s most long-lasting legacy is arguably the judges he appoints. Many will serve for decades after the president leaves office. Republicans have tended to recognize this much more than Democrats. That needs to change, and quickly.Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.Source photographs by John Slater and SergeyChayko/Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Special Counsel Used Warrant to Get Trump’s Twitter Direct Messages

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      The nature of the messages or who exactly wrote them remained unclear, but it was a revelation that such messages were associated with the former president’s account.The federal prosecutors who charged former President Donald J. Trump this month with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election got access this winter to a trove of so-called direct messages that Mr. Trump sent others privately through his Twitter account, according to court papers unsealed on Tuesday.While it remained unclear what sorts of information the messages contained and who exactly may have written them, it was a revelation that there were private messages associated with the Twitter account of Mr. Trump, who has famously been cautious about using written forms of communications in his dealings with aides and allies.The court papers disclosing that prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, obtained direct messages from Mr. Trump’s Twitter account emerged from a fight with Twitter over the legality of executing a warrant on the former president’s social media. Days after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the platform shut down his account.The papers included transcripts of hearings in Federal District Court in Washington in February during which Judge Beryl A. Howell asserted that Mr. Smith’s office had sought Mr. Trump’s direct messages — or DMs — from Twitter as part of a search warrant it executed on the account in January.In one of the transcripts, a lawyer for Twitter, answering questions from Judge Howell, confirmed that the company had turned over to the special counsel’s office “all direct messages, the DMs” from Mr. Trump’s Twitter account, including those sent, received and “stored in draft form.”The lawyer for Twitter told Judge Howell that the company had found both “deleted” and “nondeleted” direct messages associated with Mr. Trump’s account.The warrant was first revealed last week when a federal appeals court in Washington released court papers about Twitter’s attempt to challenge certain aspects of the warrant.The court papers unsealed on Tuesday revealed that Mr. Smith’s prosecutors sought “all content, records and other information” related to Mr. Trump’s Twitter account from October 2020 to January 2021, including all tweets “created, drafted, favorited/liked or retweeted” by the account and all direct messages sent from, received by or stored in draft form by the account.The warrant, which was signed by a federal judge in Washington in January after Elon Musk took over Twitter, now called X, is the first known example of prosecutors directly searching Mr. Trump’s communications and adds a new dimension to the scope of the special counsel’s efforts to investigate the former president.Mr. Trump’s Twitter account was often managed by Dan Scavino, a longtime adviser going back to his days in his private business, and it was unclear if any direct messages were from when he was using the account.CNN earlier reported the revelation that Mr. Trump’s direct messages were sought by the search warrant.A spokesman for Mr. Trump, asked for comment, referred to a post the former president made on his social media website, Truth Social, on Monday, in which he called Mr. Smith a “lowlife” and accused him breaking into his Twitter account. “What could he possibly find out that is not already known,” Mr. Trump wrote.The election charges filed against Mr. Trump accuse him of three overlapping conspiracies: to defraud the United States, to disrupt the certification of the election at a proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and to deprive people of the right to have their votes counted.Mr. Trump’s relentless use of Twitter is detailed several times in the indictment.The indictment notes, for instance, how Mr. Trump used Twitter on Dec. 19, 2020, to summon his followers to Washington on Jan. 6 for what he described as a “wild” protest. The message ultimately served as a lightning rod for both far-right extremists and ordinary Trump supporters who descended on the city that day, answering Mr. Trump’s call.The indictment also describes how Mr. Trump used Twitter in the run-up to Jan. 6 to instill in his followers “the false expectation” that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to use his role in overseeing the certification proceeding at the Capitol “to reverse the election outcome” in Mr. Trump’s favor.On Jan. 6, Mr. Trump continued posting messages on Twitter that kept up this drumbeat of “knowingly false statements aimed at pressuring the vice president,” the indictment said. Ultimately, when Mr. Pence declined to give in, Mr. Trump posted yet another tweet blaming the vice president for not having “the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.”One minute after the tweet was posted, the indictment said, Secret Service agents were forced to evacuate Mr. Pence to a secure location. And throughout that afternoon, it added, rioters roamed the Capitol and its grounds, shouting chants like “Traitor Pence” and “Hang Mike Pence.”When the special counsel’s office obtained the warrant for Mr. Trump’s Twitter account, prosecutors also got permission from a judge to force Twitter not to inform the former president that they were scrutinizing his communications.If Mr. Trump had learned about the warrant, the court papers unsealed on Tuesday said, it “would result in destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses or serious jeopardy to this investigation.”Twitter challenged this so-called nondisclosure order, arguing that prosecutors had violated the company’s First Amendment rights by seeking to keep officials from communicating with Mr. Trump, one of its customers.The company also asked to delay complying with the warrant until the issues surrounding the provision were resolved. Otherwise, it claimed, Mr. Trump would not have a chance to assert executive privilege in a bid to “shield communications made using his Twitter account.”Ultimately, Twitter not only lost the fight but also was found to be in contempt of court for delaying complying with the warrant. Judge Howell fined the company $350,000. More

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      Trump Can’t Stop Pence From Testifying to Jan. 6 Grand Jury, Court Rules

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      The ruling by an appeals court paved the way for the former vice president to appear before a federal grand jury as early as this week.A federal appeals court rejected on Wednesday night an emergency attempt by former President Donald J. Trump to stop former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying in front of a grand jury investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The 11th-hour ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia paved the way for Mr. Pence to appear before the federal grand jury as early as this week.Mr. Pence has always been a potentially important witness in the inquiry because of conversations he took part in at the White House in the weeks leading up to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. During that time, Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed Mr. Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing the congressional count of Electoral College votes to block or delay certification of his defeat.Prosecutors have been trying to get Mr. Pence to talk about Mr. Trump’s demands for several months — first in requests by the Justice Department for an interview and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by the special counsel Jack Smith, who inherited the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.Last month, in a pair of sealed rulings, Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of Federal District Court in Washington, ordered Mr. Pence to appear before the grand jury, striking down two separate challenges that would have kept him from answering certain questions.In one of those challenges, Mr. Pence sought on his own to limit his testimony by arguing that his role as the president of the Senate on Jan. 6, when Mr. Trump’s defeat was certified by Congress, meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch — including the Justice Department. That argument was based on the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution, which is intended to protect the separation of powers.Judge Boasberg ruled that while Mr. Pence could claim some protections against testimony under the clause, he would have to answer questions about any potentially illegal acts committed by Mr. Trump. This month, Mr. Pence announced that he did not intend to appeal the decision.Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump’s lawyers took the opposite path, asking the appeals court to reverse Judge Boasberg’s ruling on their own attempts to narrow the scope of the questions Mr. Pence would have to answer. Mr. Trump’s legal team based its arguments on the concept of executive privilege, which protects certain communications between the president and some members of his administration.The appeals court’s sealed ruling on Wednesday night came in response to an emergency request — it was also sealed — to temporarily stop Mr. Pence from answering questions in front of the grand jury as the broader appeal is being considered.When Mr. Pence ends up testifying, it will mark a significant turning point in the monthslong behind-the-scenes battle waged by Mr. Trump and several witnesses close to him to block the disclosure of details about plans to overturn the election. More