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      What We Know About Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan’s Arrest

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      Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of obstructing justice after directing a migrant out of her courtroom as federal agents waited to arrest him. Her arrest has raised several questions.F.B.I. agents arrested on Friday a Milwaukee judge accused of obstructing justice by directing an undocumented immigrant out of her courtroom through a side door while federal immigration agents waited in a hallway to arrest him.The arrest of the judge, Hannah C. Dugan, quickly drew condemnation from Democratic leaders and prompted protests in the Wisconsin city.But the U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi, defended the move, saying Judge Dugan’s arrest sent a “strong message” to judges that the Trump administration will prosecute them if they obstruct justice by “escorting a criminal defendant out a back door.”A protest was held in front of the Milwaukee County Courthouse to support Judge Dugan on Friday.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesAnd after the arrest, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, posted a photo of her in handcuffs on X, adding, “No one is above the law.”The arrest has raised several questions — many of which remain unanswered. Here’s what we know so far.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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      Judges Worry Trump Could Tell U.S. Marshals to Stop Protecting Them

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      The marshals are in an increasingly bitter conflict between two branches of government, even as funding for judges’ security has failed to keep pace with a steady rise in threats.On March 11, about 50 judges gathered in Washington for the biannual meeting of the Judicial Conference, which oversees the administration of the federal courts. It was the first time the conference met since President Trump retook the White House.In the midst of discussions of staffing levels and long-range planning, the judges’ conversations were focused, to an unusual degree, on rising threats against judges and their security, said several people who attended the gathering.Behind closed doors at one session, Judge Richard J. Sullivan, the chairman of the conference’s Committee on Judicial Security, raised a scenario that weeks before would have sounded like dystopian fiction, according to three officials familiar with the remarks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations: What if the White House were to withdraw the protections it provides to judges?The U.S. Marshals Service, which by law oversees security for the judiciary, is part of the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump is directly controlling in a way that no president has since the Watergate scandal.Judge Sullivan noted that Mr. Trump had stripped security protections from Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, and John Bolton, his former national security adviser. Could the federal judiciary, also a recent target of Mr. Trump’s ire, be next?Judge Sullivan, who was nominated by President George W. Bush and then elevated to an appellate judgeship by Mr. Trump, referred questions about his closed-door remarks to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which stated its “complete confidence in those responsible for judicial security.”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 Executive Order Makes It Easier to Fire Probationary Federal Workers

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      The order declares that employees will only attain full employment status if their managers review and sign off on their performance, adding a new obstacle for probationary workers to clear.President Trump issued an executive order on Thursday making it easier for the government to fire federal employees who are in a probationary period.Probationary government workers already have far fewer job protections than their established colleagues, and they were the Trump administration’s first targets for mass firings earlier this year. At least 24,000 of those terminations have led to court-ordered reinstatements that were overturned on appeals.Normally, probationary federal employees attain full status in one or two years, depending on the job — unless the agency they work for takes steps to dismiss them, which usually involves citing poor performance.Under the executive order, whose implications were outlined in a White House fact sheet, probationary employees will only attain full status if their managers review and sign off on their performance.“This is a very big step,” said Donald F. Kettl, professor emeritus and the former dean of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. “The administration has been looking for ways to cut probationary employees, and this puts more power in the hands of agency managers.”Probationary workers can range from young people entering the work force to longtime employees promoted to new positions. Many probationary employees are highly skilled, were recruited for specific roles and have been vetted throughout the government’s hiring process.Tens of thousands of probationary workers targeted by the Trump administration’s cuts have been in limbo for months. Most are on administrative leave and are getting paid, but have no indication of how long that will continue.Mr. Kettl said that the executive order Mr. Trump issued on Thursday suggested that the administration had learned some lessons from the court challenges to its mass firings.Once the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources arm, formally issues the new policy, the government will be in a better legal position to fire probationary employees, he said. More

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      An Urgent Supreme Court Order Protecting Migrants Was Built for Speed

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      There are sculptures of tortoises scattered around the Supreme Court grounds. They symbolize, the court’s website says, “the slow and steady pace of justice.”But the court can move fast when it wants to, busting through protocols and conventions. It did so around 1 a.m. on Saturday, blocking the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law.The court’s unsigned, one-paragraph order was extraordinary in many ways. Perhaps most important, it indicated a deep skepticism about whether the administration could be trusted to live up to the key part of an earlier ruling after the government had deported a different group of migrants to a prison in El Salvador.That unsigned and apparently unanimous ruling, issued April 7, said that detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law, “within a reasonable time,” and in a way that would allow the deportees to challenge the move in court before their removal.There were indications late Friday that the administration was poised to violate both the spirit and letter of that ruling. Lawyers for the detainees said their clients were given notices that they were eligible to be deported under the law, the Alien Enemies Act. The notices were written in English, a language many of them do not speak, the lawyers said. And they provided no realistic opportunity to go to court.The American Civil Liberties Union, racing against the clock, filed its emergency application to the Supreme Court on Friday evening — Good Friday, as it happened — and urged the court to take immediate action to protect the detainees as part of a proposed class action.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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      Judge Temporarily Halts Mass Firings at Consumer Bureau

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      One day after the Trump administration sent layoff notices to the vast majority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s workers, a federal judge temporarily blocked the action and ordered a hearing to determine whether the attempted mass firing violated an injunction she imposed last month.In a brief court session Friday morning, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington pressed Justice Department lawyers for details about layoff notices sent Thursday to nearly 1,500 of the consumer bureau’s 1,700 workers. The messages told workers that they would lose access to their email accounts and work systems on Friday evening.Judge Jackson issued an oral order, followed by a written one, barring the government from carrying out that plan until at least April 28, when she plans to hold an evidentiary hearing on the issue. Her ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the consumer bureau’s staff union and other parties.“Once again, the court is confronted with evidence that gives rise to concerns that there will be no agency standing by the time it gets to consider the merits,” she said in her written order.Russell T. Vought, director of the White House budget office, became the consumer bureau’s acting director in early February and immediately began dismantling the agency — which cannot be closed without congressional action. Judge Jackson issued an injunction last month freezing those actions, saying that she wanted to make sure the agency existed long enough for courts to evaluate whether Mr. Vought’s actions were lawful.One week ago, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit pared back Judge Jackson’s order and said Trump officials could fire workers whom they decided — after a “particularized assessment” — were not needed to fulfill the agency’s legally mandated responsibilities.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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      Judge Says One DOGE Member Can Access Sensitive Treasury Dept. Data

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      Nineteen state attorneys general had sued to block Elon Musk’s government efficiency team from accessing Treasury systems that include Americans’ bank account and Social Security information.A Manhattan federal judge ruled on Friday that one member of Elon Musk’s government efficiency program could have access to sensitive payment and data systems at the Treasury Department, as long as that person goes through appropriate training and files disclosures.The order by the judge, Jeannette A. Vargas, came nearly two months after she had ruled that Mr. Musk’s team, members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, would be banished from the agency’s systems until the conclusion of a lawsuit that claims the group’s access is unlawful.Friday night’s order partly dissolves the earlier preliminary injunction by granting Ryan Wunderly, who was hired as a special adviser for information technology and modernization, access to the Treasury systems in dispute, Judge Vargas wrote.To gain the access, however, Mr. Wunderly will have to complete hands-on training “typically required of other Treasury employees granted commensurate access” and submit a financial disclosure report, the judge wrote.The case stems from a lawsuit filed in February by 19 state attorneys general, led by Letitia James of New York, who sued to block the Trump administration’s policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” who work with Mr. Musk to access the systems. The systems contain some of the country’s most sensitive information, including Americans’ bank account and Social Security data.The attorneys general argued that only career civil servants who have received training and security clearances should have access. The untrained members of Mr. Musk’s team should not have “unfettered access,” they said.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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      Menendez Brothers Win Ruling in Bid for Resentencing

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      The men, who killed their parents in 1989, are pursuing several efforts to be released after decades in prison.An effort to resentence the Menendez brothers can proceed after a Los Angeles judge cleared the way Friday for additional hearings next week.The ruling by the judge, Michael Jesic, in a Los Angeles courtroom, advances Lyle and Erik Menendez on one front in their push for freedom after decades in prison for killing their parents. If the brothers are ultimately resentenced, they could almost immediately walk free.Separately, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, is weighing clemency for the brothers and has scheduled parole board hearings for Lyle and Erik Menendez on June 13. The ruling by Judge Jesic has no effect on the brothers’ bid for clemency.The Menendez brothers brutally murdered their parents inside the family’s home in Beverly Hills, Calif., more than 35 years ago. They were eventually convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances, and were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.For a time, it appeared their best chance to walk free would be through the resentencing efforts playing out in court this month. But those efforts have been complicated by the election of a new top prosecutor in Los Angeles, Nathan Hochman, who opposes any resentencing.The purpose of the hearing on Friday was to deal with a motion Mr. Hochman filed. Last year, Mr. Hochman’s predecessor as district attorney, George Gascón, asked a court to resentence the brothers, declaring, “I believe they have paid their debt to society.”Mr. Hochman subsequently sought to withdraw the resentencing motion filed by Mr. Gascón. On Friday, Judge Jesic denied Mr. Hochman’s request to pull back his predecessor’s resentencing motion. The parties will reconvene late next week to argue the issue more broadly.Lyle and Erik Menendez attended the Friday hearing virtually, appearing via video in blue jumpsuits.The brothers killed their parents in 1989 when Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18. Their first trial, in 1993, ended in a mistrial after separate juries deadlocked and was closely watched by a national audience on TV. In their second trial, the judge limited testimony about sexual abuse they had said they had suffered at the hands of their father and banned cameras in the courtroom. The brothers were convicted in 1996.Their case has garnered renewed interest and momentum over the last year or two, thanks in part to a hugely popular docudrama and a documentary on Netflix and an advocacy campaign powered by young people.With Mr. Hochman looking on, prosecutors spent much of the morning on Friday laying out what they said was a series of lies the brothers had told during their initial trial. The prosecutors displayed graphic photos of the crime scene, leading the brothers’ lawyer, Mark Geragos, to fervently object.In the end, Judge Jesic said that many of the arguments prosecutors brought forward would better serve them at next week’s hearings. More

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      House Votes to Curb National Injunctions, Targeting Judges Who Thwart Trump

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      The House passed legislation on Wednesday that would bar federal district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions, part of an escalating Republican campaign to take aim at judges who have moved to halt some of President Trump’s executive orders.The bill, approved mostly along party lines on a vote of 219 to 213, would largely limit district court judges to issuing narrow orders that pertain to parties involved in a specific lawsuit, rather than broader ones that can block a policy or action from being enforced throughout the country. It would make an exception in cases that were brought by multiple states, which would need to be heard by a three-judge panel.It faces a slim chance of becoming law because of the obstacles it faces in the Senate, where seven Democrats would have to join Republicans to allow it to advance. So far, similar bills have not been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.House Republicans have framed the legislation, named the No Rogue Rulings Act, as a necessary constitutional check on what they claim is an abuse of power by judges attempting to wield political influence from the bench.Citing an increase in nationwide injunctions since Mr. Trump took office, Republican lawmakers have argued that an unelected federal judge in one district should not be able to block the executive branch from implementing nationwide policies, a duty they say should be left to appeals courts or the Supreme Court.The Supreme Court “must reach a majority in order to make something the law of the land, and yet a single district judge believes that they can make the law of the land,” Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who introduced the bill, said on the House floor on Wednesday.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