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      Hegseth suggests judge who blocked trans troops ban abused her power

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      The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, joined the mounting criticism of federal judges by Donald Trump and others in his administration on Saturday, mocking the judge who blocked a ban on transgender troops in the US military and suggesting she had exceeded her authority.The US district judge Ana Reyes in Washington ruled that Trump’s 27 January executive order, one of several issued by the Republican president targeting legal rights for transgender Americans, likely violated the US constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.Hegseth in a post on social media mockingly called the judge “Commander Reyes” and suggested she was abusing her power by making decisions about warfare.“Since ‘Judge’ Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids,” Hegseth wrote. “After that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare.”Reyes was appointed by the Democratic former president Joe Biden. There have been rising tensions between Trump’s administration and members of the federal judiciary who have issued rulings impeding some of Trump’s actions since he returned to office in January, and rising concern about the safety of judges.Trump, his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, the attorney general Pam Bondi and other administration officials have assailed judges in recent weeks. For instance, Trump on Tuesday called for the impeachment of the judge presiding over a legal challenge to deportation flights, calling him a “Radical Left Lunatic” and a “troublemaker and agitator” – prompting the US supreme court chief justice to issue a rare rebuke of the president.Federal courts are hearing more than 100 lawsuits challenging various initiatives by Trump and his administration, with some judges imposing nationwide injunctions to block policies, such as his move to curtail automatic birthright citizenship.Hegseth, a military veteran and former Fox News television host, has made culture war issues such as banning transgender troops and abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the US military a top priority.After Hegseth took over the Pentagon, Trump also relieved the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, General CQ Brown, who is Black, and the Navy’s top admiral, who was the first woman to hold the position. Hegseth had previously questioned whether Brown only got the job because he was Black.While Trump and Hegseth have broad authority to relieve US military officers, their efforts to ban transgender service members have triggered numerous lawsuits.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe military said on 11 February it would no longer allow transgender individuals to join the military and would stop performing or facilitating medical procedures associated with gender transition for service members. Later that month, the military said it would begin expelling transgender members.Plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Reyes argued the order was illegal, pointing to a 2020 US supreme court ruling that found that employment discrimination against transgender people is a form of illegal sex discrimination.Lawyers for the administration have argued in court that the military is entitled to bar people with certain conditions that make them unsuitable for service, also including bipolar disorder and eating disorders. At a 12 March hearing, they told Reyes she should defer to the judgment of the current administration that transgender people are not fit for service. More

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      White House buoyed by submission of major law firm attacked by Trump

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      Inside the White House, advisers to Donald Trump reveled in their ability to bully Paul, Weiss – one of the largest law firms in the US – and see its chair criticize a former partner as he tried to appease the US president into rescinding an executive order that threatened the firm’s ability to function.Trump last week issued an executive order that suspended the firm’s lawyers from holding security clearances, terminated any of its federal government contracts and prevented its employees from entering federal government buildings on national security grounds.That executive order was withdrawn on Thursday after Trump decided he had scored major concessions and the Paul, Weiss chair, Brad Karp, expressed criticism of Mark Pomerantz, who had tried to build a criminal case against Trump in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.As part of the deal, the firm also committed to providing $40m in free legal services over the next four years to causes Trump has championed, and agreed to an audit of its employment procedures to wipe away any diversity, equity and inclusion recruiting initiatives.The most extraordinary part of the deal, widely seen as humiliating for Paul, Weiss, was that Trump had not made any explicit requests of the firm, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The commitments and most notably the sacrificing of Pomerantz were offered up proactively by Karp at a White House meeting this week, the people said.The deal marked a significant new chapter in Trump’s campaign of retribution against several top law firms he sees as having supported efforts to prosecute him during his time out of office – and how he has used the far-reaching power of the presidency to bring them to heel.It raises the prospect that Trump and his advisers, victorious over Paul, Weiss, will now feel emboldened to launch similar strikes against firms that tangle with the administration. After the executive order was withdrawn, some aides privately gloated that a precedent had been set.It also underscored how Trump has fractured the legal industry as it struggles to coalesce behind a singular strategy. Paul, Weiss opted to negotiate instead of following Perkins Coie, which was punished for once employing a lawyer connected to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.The deal with Paul, Weiss materialized in recent days over the course of several stunning moves that neither a major law firm of its ilk nor a president has perhaps ever countenanced, the people said.Trump’s executive order targeting Paul, Weiss took Washington by surprise, as it came two days after a federal judge in Washington ruled that the nearly identical order against Perkins Coie was likely unconstitutional and issued a temporary restraining order blocking it from taking effect.But Trump has been increasingly undeterred by adverse court rulings at the start of his second term, and announced he was punishing Paul, Weiss for its ties to Pomerantz and another lawyer who brought a lawsuit against January 6 Capitol rioters.The order was expansive and threatened to cause lasting damage to Paul, Weiss’s ability to operate. Its lawyers need security clearances to review sensitive contracts and documents at issue for its clients, and being denied entry to government buildings could include federal courthouses.Over the weekend, the leadership of Paul, Weiss convened meetings in which they discussed possible responses, including whether to strike a deal of concessions with Trump or to retain William Burck, the co-managing partner of the firm Quinn Emanuel, to represent them in a lawsuit against Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Paul, Weiss prepared for the possibility of having to go to court, it also pursued a strategy to back-channel with Trump and his aides personally and offered a deal at the start of the week.Trump’s advisers knew they were in a position of relative strength over Paul, Weiss because the firm had already started to lose clients as a result of the executive order, the people said. Paul, Weiss disclosed in court filings this week that Steven Schwartz, the former chief legal officer of Cognizant Technologies, had fired the firm from a case.Karp went to the White House on Wednesday to deliver his proposal, which included condemning Pomerantz to Trump and a tight circle of advisers, including the chief of staff Susie Wiles, the envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s personal counsel Boris Epshteyn.During the roughly one-hour meeting, Trump also called Robert Giuffra of Sullivan and Cromwell, the head of one of Paul, Weiss’s direct competitors, to ask for his input. Ultimately, Trump agreed to the deal, but inserted what appears to have been a final surprise humiliation.The language that Karp had ostensibly agreed upon with the White House made no mention of Pomerantz and DEI, according to a person familiar with the matter. But when Trump announced the deal on social media, it included a statement from the White House that said Karp had “acknowledged the wrongdoing” of Pomerantz. More

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      Trump ramps up retribution campaign against legal community

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      Donald Trump expanded his retribution campaign against law firms on Friday night as he ordered his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to refer what she determines to be partisan lawsuits to the White House and recommend punitive actions that could harm the firms involved.The directives were outlined in a sweeping memo in which Trump alleged that too many law firms were filing frivolous claims designed to cause delays. It came after a week of setbacks, in which a slew of judges issued temporary injunctions blocking the implementation of Trump’s agenda.Trump’s memo directed Bondi to seek sanctions against the firms or disciplinary actions against the lawyers. But imposing sanctions is up to federal judges, and perhaps in recognition of the uncertainty that his attorney general would prevail, Trump also ordered referrals to the White House.“When the attorney general determines that conduct by an attorney or law firm in litigation against the federal government warrants seeking sanctions or other disciplinary action, the attorney general shall … recommend to the president … additional steps that may be taken,” the memo said.The memo, as a result, created a formal mechanism for Trump to unilaterally decide whether to impose politically charged sanctions through executive orders that strip lawyers of the security clearances they need to perform their jobs or prevent them from working on federal contracts.Multiple legal experts suggested the memo would theoretically allow Bondi to decide a particular lawsuit that triggered a temporary injunction was causing an unnecessary delay, and refer the firm that filed the suit to face the effects of a punitive executive order.That could cause a chilling effect and lead to the volume of litigation against the Trump administration to decline, the experts said. Even if the lawsuits are in fact for a legitimate purpose, there’s fear that their representation could put them in the president’s cross hairs and endanger their legal practices.Trump also directed Bondi to open a review into the “conduct” of lawyers and their respective law firms in litigation against the federal government reaching back to the start of his first term in 2017 – and recommend whether it warranted additional punitive actions.The memo comes as Trump in recent weeks has used executive orders targeting law firms to great effect.Most recently, Trump stripped lawyers at the firm Paul Weiss of their security clearance and barred its employees from entering federal government buildings over his long-held complaint about a former partner, Mark Pomerantz, who tried to build a criminal case against him in New York.The executive order targeting Paul Weiss was nearly identical to an order that punished the firm Perkins Coie over its ties to a lawyer who once worked with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, and another aimed at Covington and Burling, which represented the former special counsel Jack Smith.Paul Weiss had its order withdrawn on Thursday after its chair, Brad Karp, offered a series of concessions including offering up criticism of Pomerantz apparently to appease Trump. He committed to providing $40m worth of legal services to causes that Trump has championed.But Trump has stewed for days, according to people familiar with the matter, over a series of temporary restraining orders that have slowed the implementation of his political agenda and, in one instance, branded Elon Musk’s cost-cutting drive as likely unconstitutional.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe case that has aggravated Trump the most has been the challenge in a federal district court in Washington against his use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members without due process as he seeks to ramp up deportations.In that lawsuit, the US district judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to turn around any deportation flights that were in the air and temporarily barred any further deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.The case has turned into a headache for the administration, after it failed to recall two flights on the basis that the judge did not replicate his verbal instruction in a written order, leading the judge to effectively open an inquiry into whether the White House had flouted a court order.“You felt that you could disregard it because it wasn’t in the written order. That’s your first argument? The idea that because my written order was pithier so it could be disregarded, that’s one heck of a stretch,” Boasberg said at a recent hearing.The administration has insisted it did not violate the order, but at the heart of the dispute is the administration’s belief that the judge lacked jurisdiction to hear the case in the first instance, ignoring the reality that federal courts can review whether statutes are properly invoked.Against that backdrop, as Trump has continued to rail against the injunction itself, the administration has adopted an increasingly combative stance towards Boasberg and said it was considering whether to invoke the rarely used state secrets privilege to stonewall the judge’s inquiry. More

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      Here’s what you need to know about your rights when entering the US

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      Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, he has carried out the hardline immigration policies he promised on the campaign trail.Trump’s administration sent migrants to the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba – with little access to legal counsel – and singled out two pro-Palestinian academics for deportation. The administration also failed to return El Salvador-destined deportation flights in potential violation of a court order.But in recent weeks, immigration authorities have also repeatedly detained US-bound tourists at the border, sparking public and diplomatic outrage abroad and fears among many people planning trips to the US, or living in the country on visas.Examples have made global headlines. A British woman said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detained her for three weeks after a mixup at the US-Canada border. Canadian businesswoman and actor Jasmine Mooney said she was detained by Ice for two weeks. Jessica Brösche, a 29-year-old tattoo artist from Germany, was held in immigration detention for six weeks before returning home.There’s suspicion that in some cases people were turned away over anti-Trump views. Among them is a French scientist who was denied entry after immigration officers at an airport found messages on his phone that were critical of Trump, France’s minister of higher education said.With serious concerns growing about whether visitors can safely travel to the US without fear of landing in immigration detention, here is a brief guide to international visitors’ rights.I have valid travel documents. Can customs officers stop and search me?Yes. US customs officers can stop people at entry points to assess whether they can come into the US. They are permitted to search travelers’ belongings for contraband, according to the ACLU of Pennsylvania.They can do this even if there’s nothing suspicious about you or your belongings. Customs agents are not allowed to search you or conduct another inspection “based on your religion, race, national origin, gender, ethnicity or political beliefs”.What about my mobile phone?The government asserts that their authority to search travelers without individualized suspicion also includes searches of electronic devices, including cellphones and laptops. That said, this assertion remains “a contested legal issue”, the ACLU said. Customs officers have at times asked travelers to give them their phone or laptop passwords when they going to or from the US.And if I refuse to unlock my devices?Citizens of the US can’t be denied entry if they refuse to provide passwords or unlock their devices. However, if they refuse, it could prompt a delay, still more questioning and customs officers taking their phone for further inspection.This should also be true for US lawful permanent residents who have been admitted to the US before and maintain their immigration status, as their green cards “can’t be revoked without a hearing before an immigration judge”. For visa holders and travelers from visa waiver countries, they are at risk of being denied entry if they refuse to unlock devices, the ACLU said.If my country is in the visa waiver program, can I enter?In general, the visa waiver program allows citizens of about four dozen countries to enter for up to 90 days without a visa for tourism or business. Citizens of the US, in turn, can travel up to 90 days in program countries.However, travelers from waiver program countries still need valid Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) approval before they come here for at least 72 hours prior to getting on a flight, the New York Times explains.The tricky part is that you can’t get an ESTA if you traveled to certain places after specified times, such as Cuba after 12 January 2021, the Times said. Without an ESTA, a tourist visa is necessary.I have an ESTA. Does that mean I can work?Visitors coming to the US with an ESTA are prohibited from studying or engaging in permanent work. ESTA visitors also give up many rights, such as the right to fight deportation – meaning that persons traveling with an ESTA could wind up facing “mandatory detention”, the Times said.Does a visa allow me to work?There are three types of visas for non-immigrant visitors to the US. There is a visitor visa allowing temporary entry for business purposes, a tourism visa, and a visa for business and travel.The three visas last as long as a decade but visitors with these visas can stay a maximum of six months in the US. Among other things, visitors with these visas are not allowed to do permanent work or study, or engage in paid performances, according to the New York Times.Even if your documents are in order, that doesn’t guarantee admission into the US. According to the Department of State, customs officials “have authority to permit or deny admission to the United States”.What happens if I’m detained?Civil rights advocates now suggest that visitors into the US, especially people who are not citizens, bring information to call an immigration lawyer or emergency contact if they encounter problems. “The stories are definitely concerning,” Noor Zafar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told the Washington Post.Zafar reportedly said that if travelers are detained, it’s advisable to comply with immigration officers’ directions – and get in touch with a lawyer immediately.So what rights do I actually have?Visitors to the US do have the right to remain silent. But choosing to do so at an entry point could jeopardize entry.If a customs agent asks a visitor with a tourist visa whether they were going to work during their stay, and that person doesn’t answer, then it could result in their being denied entry.If a visitor is not allowed to enter the US, they can “withdraw” their intent to do so and be permitted to return home. Typically their visa gets canceled and they fly back right away.An officer could deny this withdrawal, however, and detain the visitor. That is because these encounters technically take place outside the US and constitutional protections don’t hold. As a result, detainees in this situation don’t automatically have the right to an attorney.How does this work?“If you’re a foreign national, first understand you haven’t affected an entry despite being physically on US soil until you’re admitted properly,” said immigration attorney Michael Wildes, managing partner of Wildes and Weinberg and a professor at the Cardozo School of Law.“It’s a term of art when you’re admitted fully to the United States,” he said. When a person lands on US soil but is not technically admitted, “you might be considered to be what’s called an ‘arriving alien’.“You have greater rights as a criminal than as a foreign national coming with a visa.” More

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      Trump rescinds executive order after law firm agrees to provide $40m in free services

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      Donald Trump rescinded an executive order targeting a prominent Democratic-leaning law firm after it agreed to provide $40m in free legal services to support his administration’s goals.The White House has targeted law firms whose lawyers have provided legal work that Trump disagrees with. Last week, he issued an order threatening to suspend active security clearances of attorneys at Paul, Weiss and to terminate any federal contracts the firm has.But the president suddenly reversed course following a meeting between Trump and Brad Karp, the chair of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, over the White House order.Trump’s order singled out the work of Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked at the firm and who oversaw an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into Trump’s finances before Trump became president. Pomerantz once likened the president to a mob boss.To avoid the consequences of Trump’s order, the White House said, the firm had agreed to “take on a wide range of pro bono matters that represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society”. The firm reportedly agreed to disavow the use of diversity, equity and inclusion considerations in its hiring and promotion decisions and to dedicate the equivalent of $40m in free legal services to support Trump administration policies on issues including assistance for veterans and countering antisemitism.The firm, the White House claimed, also acknowledged the wrongdoing of Pomerantz, the partner involved in the investigation into Trump’s hush-money payments to an adult film actor. It was unclear whether Karp was aware of that claim.In a statement issued by the White House, Karp said: “We are gratified that the President has agreed to withdraw the Executive Order concerning Paul, Weiss. We look forward to an engaged and constructive relationship with the President and his Administration.”The firm becomes the latest corporate target to make concessions to the president to avoid his ire.Meta and ABC made settlement payments to Trump’s future presidential library to end lawsuits filed by Trump. Other tech and financial firms have publicly rolled back DEI programs in line with Trump’s policy interests.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEarlier executive orders have targeted the law firms of Perkins Coie, which last week sued in federal court in Washington, and Covington & Burling. More

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      Judge demands answers from White House on deportation flights to El Salvador

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      A federal judge instructed the Trump administration on Thursday to explain why its failure to turn around flights carrying deportees to El Salvador did not violate his court order in a growing showdown between the judicial and executive branches.James Boasberg, the US district judge, demanded answers after flights carrying Venezuelan immigrants alleged by the Trump administration to be gang members landed in El Salvador after the judge temporarily blocked deportations conducted under an 18th-century wartime law. Boasberg had directed the administration to return planes that were already in the air to the US when he ordered the halt.Boasberg had given the administration until noon Thursday to either provide more details about the flights or make a claim that they must be withheld because they would harm “state secrets”. The administration resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition.In a written order, Boasberg called Trump officials’ latest response “woefully insufficient”. The judge said the administration “again evaded its obligations” by merely repeating “the same general information about the flights”. He ordered the administration to “show cause” as to why it didn’t follow his court order to turn around the planes, increasing the prospect that he may consider holding administration officials in contempt of court.The justice department has said the judge’s verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed and that it couldn’t apply to flights that had already left the US. A DoJ spokesperson said Thursday that it “continues to believe that the court’s superfluous questioning of sensitive national security information is inappropriate judicial overreach”.A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told the judge Thursday the administration needed more time to decide whether it would invoke the state secrets privilege in an effort to block the information’s release.Boasberg then ordered Trump officials to submit a sworn declaration by Friday by a person “with direct involvement in the Cabinet-level discussions” about the state secrets privilege and to tell the court by next Tuesday whether the administration will invoke it.In a deepening conflict between the judicial and executive branches, the US president and many of his allies have called for impeaching Boasberg, who was nominated to the federal bench by Barack Obama. In a rare statement earlier this week, John Roberts, the supreme court chief justice, rejected such calls, saying “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump on Thursday urged the supreme court to limit federal judges’ ability to issue orders blocking the actions of his administration nationwide, writing on social media: “STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” More

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      Judge blocks Elon Musk’s Doge from accessing social security records

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      A federal judge on Thursday blocked Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from accessing social security records as part of its hunt under Donald Trump for fraud and waste, calling the effort a “fishing expedition”.Judge Ellen Hollander granted a temporary restraining order that prevents Social Security Administration (SSA) workers from allowing Doge to have access to records that contain personally identifiable information.Musk, the world’s richest man and a huge political backer of Trump, has been tasked by the US president with slashing costs and employees at the federal government: a mission that has caused chaos and disruption across the US amid mass firings and huge numbers of government projects and contracts being canceled.The Trump administration says Doge has a 10-person team of federal employees at the SSA, seven of whom have been granted read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information.The lawsuit challenging Doge’s access to sensitive records was brought in February by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Alliance for Retired Americans and the American Federation of Teachers.Attorneys for the government argued the Doge access did not deviate significantly from normal practices inside the agency, where employees are routinely allowed to search its databases. But attorneys for the plaintiffs called the access unprecedented.In her ruling Hollander also instructed Doge to “disgorge and delete” any non-anonymized data it has obtained from the SSA since Trump took office, and said the agency cannot install or access any software in social security systems.Social security payments are a lifeline for millions of elderly Americans across the country and any effort to cut back the system is widely seen as a political minefield. However, Musk has claimed the system – without providing much convincing evidence – is rife with fraud. More

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      White House calls judge challenging Trump deportation order a ‘Democrat activist’

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      The White House on Wednesday labeled the federal judge challenging the Trump administration on whether it defied his court order to halt flights deporting migrants without a hearing “a Democrat activist”.The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, singled out by name at a White House press briefing federal judge James Boasberg, who weighed the legality of Donald Trump’s deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, and is now evaluating the government’s compliance.Boasberg had attempted over the weekend to prevent planes carrying the migrants from leaving, and has since demanded from the government details of the aircrafts’ exact itineraries to determine if they complied with his order. That argument is continuing in court, with the administration saying all flights took off before Boasberg’s order, while that is disputed and the judge has demanded a detailed itinerary. On Wednesday he threatened consequences if his order was violated, while giving the administration more time to present evidence.Leavitt said: “The judge in this case is essentially trying to say that the president doesn’t have the executive authority to deport foreign terrorists from our American soil. That is an egregious abuse of the bench. This judge cannot, does not have that authority.”She added: “And it’s very, very clear that this is an activist judge who is trying to usurp the president’s authority under the Alien Enemies Act. The president has this power, and that’s why this deportation campaign has continued, and this judge, Judge Boasberg is a Democrat activist.”Republican president George W Bush appointed Boasberg to the district of Columbia’s superior court, then Democratic president Barack Obama elevated him to the federal court.Boasberg is considered a centrist Democrat and was a roommate of US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, while both were studying at Yale University, the New York Times reported, as an aside.Meanwhile, Trump has repeated his declaration that he would not defy a court ruling, even as controversy swirls about whether his administration has already ignored several of them following a spate of negative judgments that threaten to block his governing agenda.Asked by Fox News on Tuesday night if he would ever defy a court ruling, Trump said he would not – but launched an attack on Boasberg, though without naming him.“I never did defy and I wouldn’t in the future, no. You can’t do that,” he said. “However, we have very bad judges, and these are judges that shouldn’t be allowed. I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.“The judge that we’re talking about is you look at his other rulings … He’s a lunatic.”Trump renewed his assault in a later post on his Truth Social platform: “If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our country because a radical left lunatic judge wants to assume the role of president, then our country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!”The comments followed a rare rebuke from John Roberts, the conservative-leaning chief justice of the US supreme court, who criticised demands by Trump and his supporters, including his wealthiest backer, Elon Musk, that Boasberg be impeached.Fears over the administration’s readiness to defy the courts – widely seen as the only obstacle to Trump’s rampant agenda in the absence of meaningful resistance from a Republican-ruled Congress – seemed likely to intensify after high-profile negative rulings on Tuesday.In one, a US district court judge, Theodore Chuang, ruled that Musk and his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit had violated the constitution in “multiple ways” in attempting to dismantle USAid.A separate ruling barred the Pentagon from enforcing Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military, saying it was “soaked in animus”.Another order on Wednesday by Judge Jesse Furman rebuffed the administration’s effort to dismiss an attempt by Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist, to fight a deportation order and said the case must be heard in New Jersey, rather than Louisiana, where he is now detained.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn yet another case, the government has been forced to rehire more than 7,000 workers at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) who had not finished their probationary period after they were sent unsigned letters telling them they were being fired for poor work performances.The letters were sent despite an IRS lawyer warning officials that they contained “false statements” that amounted to “fraud”, ProPublica reported.Trump’s insistence that he would obey the courts is at odds with previous statements from the vice-president, JD Vance, who has suggested he should defy them.In a 2021 interview with Politico, Vance said Trump – if he were re-elected – should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, [and] every civil servant in the administrative state … and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”The statement attributed to Jackson, president from 1829 to 1837, is widely believed to be apocryphal.Vance reiterated the sentiment in a social media post in February of this year following an earlier injunction against Doge.“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he wrote. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”Legal commentators have warned that a president openly ignoring court orders could portend a slide into dictatorship.Michael Luttig, a former federal judge, told NBC that Trump had already “declared war on the rule of law”.“In the past few weeks, the president himself has led a full frontal assault on the constitutional rule of law, the federal judiciary, the American justice system and the nation’s legal profession,” Luttig said. “America is in a constitutional crisis.” More