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      Chief justice rebukes Trump for call to impeach judge hearing deportation case

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      John Roberts, the chief justice of the US supreme court, delivered a rare rebuke on Tuesday of Donald Trump after the US president demanded the impeachment of a federal judge who had issued an adverse ruling against the administration blocking the deportation of hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members.“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a statement. “The normal appellate process exists for that purpose.”The statement came hours after Trump assailed the chief US district judge in Washington DC, James Boasberg, for issuing a temporary restraining order halting deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 that gives the president the power to conduct removals without due process.“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote about Boasberg, labelling him a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge” and a “troublemaker”.View image in fullscreenTrump’s personal attack against Boasberg reflected his broader resentment at being increasingly constrained in recent weeks by court orders he believes are wrong, and his frustration at having his signature deportation policy be halted while subject to legal scrutiny.It also followed the administration’s attempt to have Boasberg thrown off the case, complaining in a letter to the clerk of the US court of appeals for the DC circuit – a bizarre way to force a recusal – on grounds that he had overreached by improperly turning the matter into a class-action lawsuit.According to the statute, the Alien Enemies Act can be invoked in the event of war, which only Congress can declare under the US constitution, or in the event of “predatory incursions” by state actors that amount to an invasion.The Trump administration’s use of the law rests on the second clause concerning incursions. In court filings, the administration has said Trump determined that the US was being invaded by members of the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela, which acted as a proxy for the Venezuelan government.Trump has the power as president to declare an incursion under the Alien Enemies Act, the filing said, and his decision was unreviewable by the courts following the US supreme court’s 1948 decision in Ludecke v Watkins, which said that whether someone was an enemy alien was up to the president.But Trump and his political allies appeared to have conflated two issues; federal courts can still review whether Trump satisfied the conditions to declare an incursion under the Alien Enemies Act in the first instance.The problem for the Trump administration is that in deciding Boasberg’s injunction blocking the deportation flights was unlawful, they ignored a verbal order from the judge at an emergency hearing on Saturday to turn around any deportation flights that had already departed.That opened a second legal battle for the administration where the justice department was left to argue at a hearing on Monday that the orders had been unclear and that, in any event, Boasberg’s authority to compel the planes to return vanished the moment they left US airspace.The extraordinary defenses by the administration suggested the White House took advantage of its own perceived uncertainty to do as it pleased, testing the limits of the judicial system to hold to account government officials set on circumventing adverse rulings.At the hearing, the administration claimed it did not follow Boasberg’s verbal instruction to turn around planes that had already departed, because it had not been repeated in the written injunction he issued at 7.25pm ET on Saturday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Oral statements are not injunctions and the written orders always supersede whatever may have been stated in the record,” Abhishek Kambli, the deputy assistant attorney general for the justice department’s civil division, argued for the administration.The judge appeared unimpressed by that contention. “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.Kambli also suggested that even if Boasberg had included the directive in his written injunction, by the time he issued the temporary restraining order the deportation flights had been outside the judge’s jurisdiction.Boasberg expressed incredulity at that argument, too, explaining that federal judges still have authority over US government officials who make the decisions about the planes and that he had had the authority to order their return, even if the planes had been outside US airspace.The Trump administration opened a third legal front in the Alien Enemies Act case, after it asked Boasberg in a late-night 35-page filing on Monday to dissolve the injunctions and dismiss the case.The administration is currently subject to two injunctions: one order preventing the deportation of five Venezuelans who filed the initial suit challenging the use of the Alien Enemies Act, and a second order from Boasberg that expanded the initial order to cover anyone being removed under the Alien Enemies Act.Administration lawyers affirmed in a separate filing on Tuesday that no deportation flights had departed the US after Boasberg’s written injunction had been issued on Saturday evening. Two flights took off before his 7.25pm ET order. One flight took off after, but that plane carried immigrants who were being deported under a different authority from the Alien Enemies Act. More

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      White House’s defense for not recalling deportations ‘one heck of a stretch’, says judge

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      The Trump administration claimed to a federal judge on Monday that it did not recall deportation flights of hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members over the weekend despite his specific instructions because that was not expressly included in the formal written order issued afterwards.The administration also said that even if James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, had included that instruction in his formal order, his authority to compel the planes to return disappeared the moment the planes entered international airspace.The extraordinary arguments suggested the White House took advantage of its own perceived uncertainty with a federal court order to do as it pleased, testing the limits of the judicial system to hold to account an administration set on circumventing adverse rulings.An incredulous Boasberg at one stage asked the administration: “Isn’t then the better course to return the planes to the United States and figure out what to do, than say: ‘We don’t care; we’ll do what we want’?”The showdown between the administration and the judge reached a crescendo over the weekend after the US president secretly invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport, without normal due process, Venezuelans over age 14 who the government says belong to the Tren de Aragua gang.The underlying basis for Trump to invoke the statute is unclear because it historically requires the president to identify a state adversary, and Boasberg on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order blocking deportations of five Venezuelans who had filed suit against the government.At an emergency hearing on Saturday evening, Boasberg extended his injunction to block the deportation of all Venezuelan migrants using Alien Enemies Act authority, and told the administration that any deportation flights already in the air needed to be recalled.By the time of the hearing, two flights had already taken off and a third flight left after Boasberg issued his ruling. All three flights landed in El Salvador, where the deportees were taken to a special maximum security prison, after Boasberg issued his written order.The Trump administration claimed at a hearing on Monday that it believed it had complied with the written order issued by Boasberg, which did not include his verbal instructions for any flights already departed to return to the US.“Oral statements are not injunctions and the written orders always supersede whatever may have been stated in the record,” Abhishek Kambli, the deputy assistant attorney general for the justice department’s civil division, argued for the administration.The judge appeared unimpressed by that contention. “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.The administration also suggested that even if Boasberg had included the directive in his written order, by the time he had granted the temporary restraining order, the deportation flights were outside of the judge’s jurisdiction.The judge expressed similar skepticism at the second argument, noting that federal judges still have authority over US government officials who make the decisions about the planes, even if the planes themselves were outside of US airspace.“The problem is the equitable power of United States courts is not so limited,” Boasberg said. “It’s not a question that the plane was or was not in US airspace.” Boasberg added. “My equitable powers are pretty clear that they do not lapse at the airspace’s edge.”At times, the Trump administration appeared to touch on a separate but related position that the judge’s authority to block the deportations clashed with Trump’s authority to direct US military forces and foreign relations without review by the courts.Boasberg expressed doubt at the strength of that argument, as well as Kambli’s separate claim that he could not provide more details about when the deportation flights took off and how many flights left the US on Saturday, before and possibly after his order.Kambli said he was not authorized to provide those details on account of national security concerns, even in private, to the judge himself. Asked whether the information was classified, Kambli demurred. Boasberg ordered the government to provide him with more information by noon on Tuesday.The statements offered by the administration in federal district court in Washington offered a more legally refined version of public statements from White House officials about the possibility that they had defied a court order.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted on Monday that the administration acted within “the bounds of immigration law in this country” and said the Trump team did not believe a verbal order carried the same legal weight as a written order.But the White House’s “border czar” Tom Homan offered greater defiance at the court order and told Fox News in an interview that the court order came too late for Boasberg to have jurisdiction over the matter, saying: “I don’t care what the judges think.” More

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      Court lifts block on Trump order to end federal support for DEI programs

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      An appeals court on Friday lifted a block on executive orders seeking to end government support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, handing the Trump administration a win after a string of setbacks from dozens of lawsuits.The decision from a three-judge panel allows the orders to be enforced as a lawsuit challenging them plays out. The appeals court judges halted a nationwide injunction from US district judge Adam Abelson in Baltimore.Two of the judges on the fourth US circuit court of appeals wrote that Trump’s anti-DEI push could eventually raise concerns about first amendment rights but said the judge’s sweeping block went too far.“My vote should not be understood as agreement with the orders’ attack on efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Judge Pamela Harris wrote. Two of the panel’s members were appointed by Barack Obama, while the third was appointed by Trump.Abelson had found the orders likely violated free speech rights and were unconstitutionally vague since they didn’t have a specific definition of DEI.Trump signed an order his first day in office directing federal agencies to terminate all “equity-related” grants or contracts. He signed a follow-up order requiring federal contractors to certify that they don’t promote DEI.The city of Baltimore and other groups sued the Trump administration, arguing the executive orders are an unconstitutional overreach of presidential authority.The justice department has argued that the president was targeting only DEI programs that violate federal civil rights laws. Government attorneys said the administration should be able to align federal spending with the president’s priorities.Abelson, who was nominated by Joe Biden, agreed with the plaintiffs that the executive orders discourage businesses, organizations and public entities from openly supporting diversity, equity and inclusion.Efforts to increase diversity long have been under attack by Republicans, who contend the measures threaten merit-based hiring, promotion and educational opportunities for white people. Supporters say the programs help institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse populations while addressing the lasting impacts of systemic racism.Their purpose was to foster equitable environments in businesses and schools, especially for historically marginalized communities. Researchers say DEI initiatives date back to the 1960s but were expanded in 2020 during increased calls for racial justice.In addition to the mayor and the Baltimore city council, the plaintiffs include the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the American Association of University Professors and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which represents restaurant workers across the country. More

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      in Elections

      Newsmax agrees to pay $40m to settle defamation suit over false election claims

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      The conservative news outlet Newsmax agreed to pay the voting equipment company Smartmatic $40m last year as part of a settlement in a defamation suit over Newsmax’s decision to broadcast false claims about the 2020 election, a new filing revealed.The parties did not reveal details of the settlement when it was reached in September, but Newsmax disclosed the settlement amount in a public 7 March financial filing. The news outlet said it had also offered Smartmatic the option to buy stock in the company and that it had paid $20m of the settlement amount so far.A Newsmax spokesperson declined to comment beyond the statement the company issued after the settlement last year.Smartmatic voting equipment was only used in one jurisdiction in the United States during the 2020 election. Nonetheless, allies of Donald Trump and other conservative outlets repeated false claims that the company hacked votes and sent them overseas.Smartmatic sued Newsmax, the far-right network One America News and Fox for defamation, claiming they broadcast false claims about the company after the 2020 election. It previously settled with One America News and the case against Fox is ongoing. In January, A New York appellate judge said the company’s $2.7bn suit against Fox could proceed.Fox agreed to pay Dominion voting systems, another voting equipment company, $787.5m to settle a defamation suit over election claims in 2023.All of the cases are being closely watched by first amendment scholars as tests of whether libel law could be an effective tool for curbing misinformation. In the case between Dominion and Fox, for example, the legal process made public internal Fox messages showing prominent hosts and key personnel were aware the information about the company was false. More

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      in US Politics

      Judge orders Trump administration to reinstate most fired probationary staff

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      A federal judge in California granted a preliminary injunction to reinstate thousands of fired probationary workers at federal agencies as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees.The ruling by the judge William H Alsup in the US district court for the northern district of California applies to fired probationary employees at the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the Department of the Treasury.At least 30,000 probationary employees working for the federal government have been fired as part of the efforts of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” to slash the federal workforce and government expenditures.Many of the employees were fired with the cited reason being poor performance, though workers have disputed this based on positive performance evaluations.Alsup said it was a “lie” that the probationary workers who were fired had performance issues.“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said in court on Thursday.The judge also forbade the office of personnel management from providing any guidance to federal agencies on which employees should be terminated. Alsup authorized depositions and ordered further briefing on whether the administrative channel for fired workers to appeal their terminations is available or has been destroyed due to firings at the appeals board and office of special counsel personnel.“[The] AFGE is pleased with Judge Alsup’s order to immediately reinstate tens of thousands of probationary federal employees who were illegally fired from their jobs by an administration hellbent on crippling federal agencies and their work on behalf of the American public,” Everett Kelley, national president of the union said in a statement.“We are grateful for these employees and the critical work they do, and AFGE will keep fighting until all federal employees who were unjustly and illegally fired are given their jobs back.”The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that the judge overstepped his bounds.“A single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the executive branch,” she said, adding: “The Trump administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order.”Before the judge’s order, the US Department of Justice had declined to make the acting head of the office of personnel management, Charles Ezell, available to testify on the firings in court.In an earlier ruling, Alsup said on 27 February that the firing of probationary employees was illegal because the office of personnel management had no authority to order it.The OPM updated the 20 January memo on probationary employees, which the American Federation of Government Employees argued reveals an admission it unlawfully directed the firings.“OPM’s revision of its Jan 20 memo is a clear admission that it unlawfully directed federal agencies to carry out mass terminations of probationary employees – which aligns with Judge Alsup’s recent decision in our lawsuit challenging these illegal firings,” the union said in a statement earlier this month. “Every agency should immediately rescind these unlawful terminations and reinstate everyone who was illegally fired.” More

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      Judge orders Elon Musk and Doge to produce records about cost-cutting operations

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      Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, have been ordered by a federal judge to turn over a wide array of records that would reveal the identities of staffers and internal records related to efforts to aggressively cut federal government spending and programs.US district judge Tanya Chutkan’s order forces Musk to produce documents related to Doge’s activities as part of a lawsuit brought by 14 Democratic state attorneys general that alleges Musk violated the constitution by wielding powers that only Senate-confirmed officials should possess.Chutkan said in her 14-page decision that she was allowing the state attorneys general to obtain documents from Musk to clarify the scope of his authority, which would inform whether he has been operating unconstitutionally to the extent that Doge’s activities should be halted.The judge also suggested that the so-called discovery requests, which she limited to only documents and not any depositions, could include the identities of Doge staffers in order to establish the scope of the Doge operation. Chutkan’s order does not apply to Donald Trump.For weeks, Musk has taken great pains to conceal how Doge operates, starting with his own involvement in the project. Musk himself is a “special government employee”, which the White House has said means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public.The White House then subsequently said in court filings that Musk was a senior adviser to the president, a designation that it claimed meant Musk had no actual or formal authority to make government decisions, even though it contradicted how Trump had spoken publicly about Musk.The issue at the center of the lawsuit is a provision of the constitution that says government officials who act and wield power as heads of departments are “principal officers” who can exercise that authority only if first nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.Musk’s role has been ambiguous because he is not Senate confirmed but has ordered steep cuts to federal agencies and programs as the titular head of Doge, until his moves precipitated legal claims that threatened to make him vulnerable to constitutional challenges and public records requests.The White House has also tried to further resist legal discovery about Musk’s activities by citing his senior adviser title to invoke executive privilege protections. But Chutkan found that document requests and written responses were not so broad that it would burden the executive branch.It is the second setback for Doge in as many days, after another federal judge in Washington DC ruled that it was wielding so much power that its records would likely have to be subject to public records requests.US district judge Christopher Cooper, citing reporting by the Guardian, said the “unprecedented” authority of Doge and its “unusual secrecy” in how it bulldozed through the federal government meant it needed to go through thousands of pages of documents sought by a liberal watchdog group. More

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      Judge temporarily blocks Trump order punishing law firm tied to Clinton

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      A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked a vast portion of Donald Trump’s executive order that threatened to hurt a major law firm from taking effect, ruling the president used national security concerns as a pretext to punish the firm Perkins Coie for once working with Hillary Clinton.The executive order Trump issued last week stripped security clearances from Perkins Coie lawyers, mandated the termination of any contracts and barred federal government employees from engaging with its attorneys or allowing them access to government buildings.Trump said in the executive order he had deemed Perkins Coie a national security risk principally because it hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton presidential campaign in 2016, which produced the “dossier” that pushed discredited claims about Trump’s connections to Russia.The US district judge Beryl Howell rejected Trump’s contentions and entered a temporary restraining order on Wednesday that halted most of the executive order. The restraining order did not apply to the revocation of clearances, since Perkins Coie had not sought that in their request.“It sends little chills down my spine,” Howell said of Trump using national security grounds to punish Perkins Coie, comparing the executive order to a “bill of attainder” – a legislative act that inflicts punishment without a trial, and is expressly barred by the US constitution.The justice department had argued that Perkins Coie’s lawsuit was deficient because the executive order had not caused any harm to them – for instance, none of its lawyers had been stopped from entering a federal government building – and that the concerns were speculative.The department also suggested that the claim by Perkins Coie that they had lost clients as a result of the executive order could not be verified because the clients might have changed law firm for any number of reasons.Howell rejected both of those contentions, accepting a 20-page declaration by a partner at Perkins Coie that one justice department lawyer had already declined to meet with him on account of the executive order, and that some clients had expressly cited the order in dropping Perkins Coie.She also sided with Perkins Coie that financial loss counted as irreparable harm in this case – it usually does not – since the continued loss of clients in such a way threatened the very existence of the law firm, given it interacts with the federal government in the majority of its cases.The justice department accurately argued that even if Howell thought the executive order was unwise or otherwise disagreed with its motivations, the power to strip clearances and deem entities a national security threat was part of the president’s powers, and Trump did not need to provide a justification.“It is fundamentally the president’s prerogative, not reviewable by the courts, whether somebody is trustworthy with the nation’s secrets. The president has made that finding here and everything else in the executive order … flow from that determination,” said Chad Mizelle, the justice department’s chief of staff, who, in an unusual move, argued the case before Howell.But Howell took issue with the claim that Perkins Coie was a national security risk purely because Trump viewed the contents of the Fusion GPS dossier, prepared by a former British spy, as entirely false, and noted that the two lawyers involved with the Clinton campaign left the firm years ago.She also said the executive order appeared punitive because Trump had previously failed in suing Perkins Coie in his personal capacity, saying: “This ground is a personal grievance that president Trump has already attempted to pursue in a personal lawsuit that was dismissed in its entirety by a court in the southern district of New York.”“To the extent that this executive order appears to be an instance of president Trump using taxpayer dollars in government resources,” Howell said, “to pursue what is a wholly personal vendetta, advancing such political payback is not something which the government has a cognizable interest.”The roughly three-hour hearing in federal district court in Washington DC came a day after Perkins Coie requested a temporary restraining order on the advice of Williams and Connolly, another elite firm in the nation’s capital known for taking cases against government overreach.Perkins Coie had initially reached out to the firm Quinn Emanuel, which has previously represented people in Trump’s orbit, including Elon Musk, the Trump Organization itself, and New York mayor Eric Adams, whose corruption charges were dropped by the justice department last month.But Quinn Emanuel declined to take Perkins Coie as a client, as its top partners decided not to become involved in a politically-sensitive issue that could make themselves a target by association just as they have been on the rise as a power center in Washington DC.While other law firms have discussed whether to file amicus briefs or declarations supporting Perkins Coie, the firm was ultimately taken on by Williams and Connolly. They advised Perkins Coie to ask for an emergency hearing and temporary restraining order, both of which Howell granted. More