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    US judge overturns Trump order targeting major law firm Jenner & Block

    A US judge on Friday overturned Donald Trump’s executive order targeting Jenner & Block, a big law firm that employed a lawyer who investigated him.Trump’s executive order, called Addressing Risks from Jenner & Block, suspended security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and restricted their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work.Trump accused the law firm of engaging in activities that “undermine justice and the interests of the United States”, claiming that it participated in politically driven legal actions. In the executive order, Trump specifically criticized the firm for hiring Andrew Weissmann, an attorney who worked on Robert Mueller’s investigation into allegations of Russian influence in Trump’s 2016 campaign.The firm sued to block Trump’s order, arguing it violated the constitution’s first and fifth amendments.US district judge John D Bates ruled on Friday that Trump’s directive violated core rights under the US constitution, mirroring a 2 May ruling that struck down a similar executive order against law firm Perkins Coie.Bates did not mince words when calling a Trump executive order unconstitutional, which sought to target Jenner & Block.Trump’s order, Bates wrote, “makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed”.“Going after law firms in this way is doubly violative of the constitution,” Bates said.The justice department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The administration can appeal Bates’ order to the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit.Trump signed an executive order in March, targeting Jenner & Block by suspending security clearances and restricting their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work. This was, Trump claimed, because of politically motivated “lawfare” the firm engaged in.By attempting to push forward this executive order, Trump attempted to “chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the executive branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers”.Bates added that the Trump executive orders against law firms “follow the same recipe: other than personalized touches in their first sections, they generally direct the same adverse actions towards each firm and decry the threat each firm poses to national security and the national interest”.Bates was appointed to the District of Columbia in 2001 by George W Bush. He blocked Trump’s executive order completely.Apart from Jenner and Perkins Coie, two other firms – WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey – have sued the Trump administration to permanently block executive orders he issued against them.Nine law firms, including Paul Weiss, Milbank, Simpson Thacher and Skadden Arps, have pledged nearly $1bn in free legal services to causes the White House supports and made other concessions to avoid being targeted by Trump.The justice department has defended Trump’s executive orders against Jenner and other law firms as consistent with the broad reach of presidential authority.Reuters contributed reporting More

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    What is temporary protected status and who is affected by Trump’s crackdown?

    Millions of people live legally in the United States under various forms of temporary legal protection. Many have been targeted in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.The latest move has been against people who have what’s known as “temporary protected status” (TPS), which grants people the right to stay in the US legally due to extraordinary circumstances in one’s home country such as war or environmental catastrophe.The Trump administration has in recent weeks announced its plan to end TPS for Haitians, Venezuelans, Afghans and Cameroonians. The move may force more than 9,000 Afghan refugees to move back to the country now ruled by the Taliban. The administration also is ending the designation for roughly half a million Haitians in August.Here’s what to know about TPS and some other temporary protections for immigrants:What is temporary protected status?Temporary protected status allows people already living in the United States to stay and work legally for up to 18 months if their homelands are unsafe because of civil unrest or natural disasters.The Biden administration dramatically expanded the designation. It covers people from more than a dozen countries, though the largest numbers come from Venezuela and Haiti.The status does not put immigrants on a long-term path to citizenship and can be repeatedly renewed. Critics say renewal has become effectively automatic for many immigrants, no matter what is happening in their home countries. According to the American Immigration Council, ending TPS designations would lead to a significant economic loss for the US. The non-profit found that TPS households in the country earned more than $10bn in total income in 2021, and paid nearly $1.3bn in federal taxes.What is the latest supreme court ruling on Venezuelans?On Monday, the supreme court allowed the administration to end protections that had allowed some 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants to remain in the United States.Many Venezuelans were first granted TPS in 2021 by the Biden administration, allowing those who were already in the US to apply for protection from deportation and gain work authorization. Then, in 2023, the Biden administration issued an additional TPS designation for Venezuelans, and in January – just before Trump took office – extended those protections through October 2026.The Trump administration officials had ordered TPS to expire for those Venezuelans in April. The supreme court’s decision lifted a federal judge’s ruling that had paused the administration’s plans, meaning TPS holders are now at risk of losing their protections and could face deportation.What other forms of legal protection are under attack?More than 500,000 people from what are sometimes called the CHNV countries – Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – live in the US under the legal tool known as humanitarian parole, which allows people to enter the US temporarily, on the basis that they have an urgent humanitarian need like a medical emergency. This category, however, is also under threat by the Trump administration.In late March, the Trump administration announced plans to terminate humanitarian parole for approximately 530,000 Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians. In April, a federal judge issued a temporary order barring the elimination of the humanitarian parole program.But last week, the administration took the issue to the supreme court, asking it to allow it to end parole for immigrants from those four countries. The emergency appeal said a lower-court order had wrongly encroached on the authority of the Department of Homeland Security.US administrations – both Republican and Democratic – have used parole for decades for people unable to use regular immigration channels, whether because of time pressure or bad relations between their country and the US.The case now returns to the lower courts. For the California-based federal court, the next hearing is on 29 May. For the Massachusetts case, no hearings are scheduled and attorneys are working on a briefing for the motion to dismiss filed by the government, according to WGBH, a member station of National Public Radio in Massachusetts. The appeals court hearing will be the week of 11 July. More

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    California school district must halt ban on critical race theory, court rules

    A small southern California school district must immediately pause its ban on critical race theory (CRT), a California appeals court ruled on Thursday morning .The 4th district court of appeals ruling put a halt to the Temecula Valley unified school district ban until its litigation is settled in the California legal system. The decision is the latest in a long-running legal battle over the CRT ban, which was first adopted as a resolution by the Temecula Valley Board of Education in December 2022 as they attempted to purge elementary school textbooks that reference gay rights icon Harvey Milk.The recent decision, authored by Judge Kathleen O’Leary, and concurred by the panel’s other two judges, said that the vague nature and lack of legal or academic terminology in the resolution jeopardized its constitutionality.“The Resolution defined CRT as ‘a divisive ideology that assigns moral fault to individuals solely on the basis of an individual’s race’ and, therefore, is itself a racist ideology,” O’Leary’s ruling said. “The Resolution operates as if this definition is universally accepted, but the text does not indicate where this definition is derived, or whether it is shared with anyone else besides the Board.”The ruling pointed to the resolution’s lack of examples of CRT, and lack of guidance for teachers looking to modify their curriculum.O’Leary’s other primary concern revolved around “confusion and fear” from educators due to the policy, and negative impacts on education provided. One fourth grade teacher submitted a letter of evidence stating that under the doctrine, “she did not know what a permissible response was when her students asked her how and why slavery happened.”“Teachers are left to self-censor and potentially overcorrect, depriving the students of a fully informed education and further exacerbating the teachers’ discomfort in the classroom,” O’Leary wrote. “Rather than lead the classroom and moderate healthy discussion, the teachers are forced to leave children’s questions unanswered.”The conflict over CRT in education has been divisive in Temecula, a historically conservative southern California city of just more than 100,000 people. The battle has followed familiar lines, with three conservative school board members elected in 2022 after running in opposition to mask and vaccine mandates, as well as “sexualized” material in school curriculums. The school board president also famously labeled Milk as a “pedophile” and originally rejected a state-issued social studies textbook including the assassinated gay rights activist. Gavin Newsom, the California governor, threatened a $1.5m fine in response.While the school district may have run into opposition in their community and at the appeals court, headwinds at the federal level are in their favor. In late January, Donald Trump signed executive orders to promote school choice, or the use of public dollars for private education, and to remove funding from schools accused of “radical indoctrination”. Trump also revived a “1776 commission” to “promote patriotic education”. More

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    Trump officials deported Vietnamese and Burmese migrants to South Sudan, say lawyers

    Immigrant rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of deporting about a dozen migrants from countries including Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court order, and asked a judge to order their return.The advocates made the request in a motion directed to a federal judge in Boston who had barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first hearing any concerns they had that they might be tortured or persecuted if sent there.Lawyers for a group of migrants pursuing the class action lawsuit before US district judge Brian Murphy said they learned that nearly a dozen migrants held at a detention facility in Texas were flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.Those migrants included an individual from Myanmar whose lawyer received an email on Monday from an official with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement informing the attorney of the intent to deport his client to South Sudan.The migrant’s lawyers said they learned their client had been flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.The spouse of a Vietnamese man who was held at the same detention center in Texas emailed his lawyer, meanwhile, saying he and 10 other individuals were deported as well, according to the motion.The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSouth Sudan, the world’s youngest country, gained independence from Sudan in 2011, and has since struggled with armed conflict and poverty. Between 2013 and 2018, fighting between factions loyal to the current president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and his vice-president, Riek Machar, killed nearly 400,000 people. More

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    New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver charged with assault after clash at detention center

    US representative LaMonica McIver, a Democrat, was charged with assaulting federal agents after a clash outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey, the state’s federal prosecutor announced on Monday.Alina Habba, interim US attorney, said in a post on social media that McIver was facing charges “for assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” when she visited the detention center along with two other Democratic members of the New Jersey congressional delegation on 9 May.“No one is above the law – politicians or otherwise,” Habba said in a statement. “It is the job of this office to uphold justice impartially, regardless of who you are. Now we will let the justice system work.”McIver on Monday accused federal law enforcement of escalating the situation, saying that it was the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents who “created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation”.“The charges against me are purely political – they mischaracterise and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalise and deter legislative oversight,” she said.At the same time, Habba announced her office was dismissing a misdemeanor trespassing charge against Ras Baraka, the Democratic mayor of Newark, whose arrest instigated the clash with federal agents.Baraka, the mayor of New Jersey’s largest city and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, was arrested and charged with trespassing as he sought to join the congressional delegation at Delaney Hall, a privately run federal immigration detention center.Habba, who served as Trump’s personal lawyer before being named to the post, said she had dismissed the charge “for the sake of moving forward” and offered to personally accompany Baraka on a tour of the facility, declaring the government has “nothing to hide”.View image in fullscreenKristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on X that McIver was being charged after a “thorough review of the video footage and an investigation”.Body camera footage released by the agency and shared with Fox News shows a chaotic scene outside the facility’s chain-link fence as the mayor is arrested. During the scuffle, McIver walks through the gate and appears to make contact with a law enforcement officer wearing fatigues and a face covering. It is unclear if the contact is intentional, accidental or the result of being caught in the scrum.Meanwhile, footage from witnesses on the scene appears to contradict the government’s claim that members of Congress stormed the facility.Paul Fishman, an attorney for McIver called the decision to charge the congresswoman “spectacularly inappropriate”, arguing she had the “right and responsibility to see how Ice is treating detainees”.“Rather than facilitating that inspection, Ice agents chose to escalate what should have been a peaceful situation into chaos,” Fishman, the former US attorney for the District of New Jersey, said in a statement.Democrats and legal advocates reacted with alarm on Monday, casting the prosecution of the congresswoman as an attempt to deter legislative oversight and stifle opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, which have included raids and deportations without due process.In a joint statement, House Democratic leaders on Monday condemned the charges as “extreme, morally bankrupt and [lacking] any basis in law or fact”.“There is no credible evidence that Rep McIver engaged in any criminal activity,” the Democrats said, noting that after the incident, Trump administration officials led the members of Congress on a tour of the facility, which they said would not have been permitted “had she done anything wrong”.In a statement on Monday, Bakara welcomed the dismissal of charges against him, but said he would “continue to advocate for the humane treatment of detainees” and “continue to press the facility to ensure that it is compliant with City of Newark codes and regulations”. He also made clear that he stood with McIver, whom he called a “daughter of Newark”. “I fully expect her to be vindicated,” he said.Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU, and Amol Sinha, executive director of ACLU-NJ, warned that the charges against a sitting member of Congress were “more suited for authoritarianism than American democracy”.“If the Trump administration can target elected officials who oppose its extreme agenda, it can happen to any one of us,” they wrote. “We demand that they drop the charges against Rep McIver, and we implore her fellow members of Congress to call for the same.” More

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    Trump officials reportedly reach $5m settlement in January 6 wrongful death suit

    The Trump administration has reportedly reached an agreement to pay nearly $5m to the family of the woman who was fatally shot by police while participating in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol carried out by the president’s supporters.Citing multiple sources, the Washington Post reported on Monday that the Trump administration had agreed to pay the family of Ashli Babbitt to settle the wrongful death lawsuit they filed after the attack.Babbitt was attempting to force her way into the lobby of the US House speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi, when the Trump supporter was shot dead by a Capitol police officer. The payment of about $5m at the center of the settlement is meant to resolve the litigation from Babbitt’s estate, which initially sought $30m in damages.Attorneys for both Babbitt’s family and the federal government each informed a judge earlier in May that they had agreed to settle the case in principle. The case was scheduled to be tried in July 2026.Although a binding agreement had not yet been signed and details of the settlement were not revealed during a court hearing on 2 May,Judge Ana Reyes of the US district court in Washington DC instructed both parties to provide an update by Thursday.Sources with knowledge of the agreement told the Post that Trump’s justice department would pay just less than $5m, with approximately one-third allocated to the family’s legal team, which includes Judicial Watch, a politically conservative organization, and attorney Richard Driscoll of Alexandria, Virginia. These sources requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing case, the Post reported.Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, reacted to the news of the settlement by calling it a “slap in the face” to the American people.Jeffries said that the settlement was “totally done without any communication to the chief of the Capitol police or his lawyers, and appears solely the result of a political determination that Donald Trump and Republicans are going to try to whitewash what happened on January 6.“This settlement is just an extension of what they’ve previously done, which is to pardon violent felons who violently attacked the Capitol on January 6, including police officers, and now have all been pardoned and sent back to communities across the country where in some cases they’re re-engaging in criminal activity,” he added.“Donald Trump and the extreme Maga Republicans are not going to be able to erase what happened on January 6, no matter how hard they try.”The January 6 Capitol attack that Babbitt chose to partake in was a desperate attempt by a pro-Trump mob to keep him in the White House despite his first presidency ending in defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The attack has been linked to at least eight other deaths, including the suicides of police officers who were left traumatized having defended the Capitol that day.Babbitt’s social media activity showed that she was deeply engaged for months with a conspiracy theory that painted Democratic lawmakers as evil pedophiles with whom Trump was locked in mortal combat. And she also believed lies from Trump and his allies that electoral fraudsters had handed Biden the 2020 election.For weeks before she joined the mob in DC, Babbitt had been retweeting those false claims from Trump himself, as well as the pro-Trump lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, alleging massive voter fraud before his decisive electoral loss to Biden.Trump then clinched a second presidency after defeating Kamala Harris in November’s election. More

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    Judge blocks Trump officials’ efforts to dismantle US Institute of Peace

    A federal judge on Monday blocked efforts by the Trump administration and its so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to dismantle the US Institute of Peace, at least temporarily.Doge, initially overseen by billionaire Donald Trump supporter Elon Musk, took over the congressionally created and funded thinktank in March and had fired most employees by a late-night email after the US president targeted the institute and three other agencies with an executive order.The takeover prompted a couple of lawsuits against Doge and the Trump administration, including from fired employees, trying to impede the institute’s dismantling. The White House claimed the thinktank was in “non-compliance” with Trump’s executive order, whose purported aim was to shrink the federal government’s size. And Doge staff forcefully entered the thinktank’s building after cancelling its contract for private security.US district court judge Beryl Howell on Monday ruled that Doge illegally took over the institute through “blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies”.The judge ruled as “null and void” all actions against the US Institute of Peace – including the removal of its board and the transfer of its property to the government services administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe institute employed about 300 people. Besides human resources staffers and a few overseas employees, most at the institute were fired.A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, claimed in an email that the institute was taken over and most of its employees dismissed because it “has failed to deliver peace” – and that Trump “is carrying out his mandate to eliminate bloat and save taxpayer dollars”.A statement from an attorney who filed the dismissed US Institute of Peace’s employees suit said their workplace’s takeover “was a case of egregious government overreach”.The statement added: “Armed agents forcing their way into an independent nonprofit’s privately-owned headquarters, seizing its assets, and destroying records – all in the name of so-called ‘efficiency.’”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    US judges who rule against Trump are being barraged with abuse and threats, experts warn

    US judges who have increasingly rebuked the Trump administration’s harsh deportation agenda and other Maga policies are facing intense verbal assaults from the president and his allies, which seem to be spurring other dangerous threats against judges, say legal experts and former judges.The Trump administration’s escalating fight with the courts has come as more than 200 lawsuits have challenged executive orders and policies on multiple issues including immigrant deportations, penalizing law firms with links to political foes, agency spending and workforce cuts, and other matters.The wave of litigation has resulted in more than 100 executive orders by Trump and other initiatives being halted temporarily or paused by court rulings from judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans including some by Trump.Increasingly, ex-judges and legal experts warn the verbal attacks by Trump, his attorney general, Pam Bondi, and Maga allies are creating a hostile climate that endangers the safety of judges and their families.“The constant mischaracterization by Trump and his allies of judicial rulings as political in nature, together with their false, vituperative and ad hominem attacks on individual judges who make them, skews the public’s perception of the work of the federal judiciary,” said ex-federal judge John Jones, who is now the president of Dickinson College.Jones added: “These attacks foment a climate where the safety of judges and their families is at high risk.”Those risks were underscored when the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, Richard Durbin, this month wrote to Bondi and the FBI director, Kash Patel, requesting an investigation into anonymous pizza deliveries to at least a dozen judges that seem aimed at intimidating them as they handle cases involving the administration.Durbin’s letter noted some of the pizza deliveries were made in the name of US district judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl, who was fatally shot in 2020 by a lawyer who pretended to be a delivery person, according to an April missive from Salas and attorney Paul Kiesel.Elsewhere, Jones and more than two dozen other ex-judges issued a strong statement on Law Day this month announcing a new Article III Coalition linked to the non-partisan group Keep Our Republic to back judicial independence and warn of the dangers to judges posed by the Trump administration’s vitriolic attacks.On a related track more than 150 ex-federal and state judges from both parties in early May signed a letter to Bondi and Patel denouncing the administration’s rising attacks on the judiciary and the unusual arrest of a Milwaukee judge charged with impeding federal agents from arresting an allegedly undocumented migrant in Wisconsin.A federal grand jury on 13 May indicted the judge on charges of obstructing a proceeding and concealing a person from arrest.“The circumstances of the arrest of the Milwaukee judge – her arrest, the perp walk, the picture of her handcuffs, the comments of the FBI director and the attorney general – was so far out of line with accepted practice and rules,” said Nancy Gertner, a former judge who now teaches at Harvard law school.“It clearly was intended to intimidate other judges; there was no justification for it whatsoever,” added Gertner, who helped to coordinate the letter to Bondi and Patel with J Michael Luttig, a former assistant attorney general and ex-judge.Gertner’s concerns were underscored when Bondi soon after the judge’s arrest threatened other judges who may balk at their legal agenda. “They’re deranged,” Bondi told Fox News. “ I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not. We will come after you and we will prosecute you.”Gertner stressed: “I’m hearing everywhere that judges are worried about their own safety. There are people who are inflamed by the incendiary comments of our president and members of Congress about judges. Public officials have legitimized attacks on judges with whom they disagree.”Some Trump judicial appointees and other judges appointed by presidents of both parties have irked the administration with their rulings and incurred Trump’s wrath.Trump in March urged the impeachment of the DC federal judge James Boasberg and falsely branded him a “radical left lunatic” after he issued a ruling to halt the deportation to El Salvador of scores of Venezuelan immigrants with alleged gang ties.Although he didn’t mention Trump’s attack on Boasberg, Chief Justice John Roberts hours later criticized political attacks on the judiciary and warned against calls to impeach judges for their decisions.Roberts in a year-end report in December warned pointedly about threats aimed at judges, noting there had been a sizable rise in threats of violence, defiance of court rulings and disinformation.In another legal dustup, in May the US district judge Beryl Howell issued a blistering decision that an executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie, which had represented Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, violated the first, fifth and sixth amendments.Howell labeled the Trump order a “blunt exercise of power” that “is not a legitimate use of the powers of the US government or an American president”.One Trump appointee, the Texas judge Fernando Rodriguez, this month echoed two other rulings to bar the Trump administration from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act – which had only been used three times before – to deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, spurring a Trump attack on social media.“Can it be so that Judges aren’t allowing the USA to Deport Criminals, including Murderers, out of our Country and back to where they came from? If this is so, our Country, as we know it, is finished!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.Despite the uptick in adverse rulings, the Trump administration is getting some court rulings backing at least part of its arguments.A federal judge in Pennsylvania on 13 May ruled for the first time that Trump can use the Alien Enemies Act to accelerate deporting accused gang Venezuelan gang members, but stipulated significantly that targeted migrants have to be given at least three weeks’ notice and a chance to challenge their removals.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStill, legal scholars and ex-judges warn the Trump administration has created a hostile climate with many judges by pushing factually and legally dubious cases, and trying to smear judges who ruled against them.“Federal courts have always been ready to rebuke a justice department lawyer for concealing or misstating the facts or the law,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a law professor at Columbia. “Now judges are increasingly presented with Trump administration emissaries who are poorly prepared to assist courts and who stand by when their leaders respond to adverse decisions by personally attacking judges. The credibility the government has with judges has long been a priceless asset. It’s disappearing fast.”The former Republican congressman Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania said the Trump administration’s court setbacks were linked to their legally flawed cases.“It appears the president is being beaten in court on a regular basis because many of his executive orders are legally and constitutionally questionable,” Dent said. “His lawyers are trying to argue weak cases and that’s why they’re losing.”Dent added that Trump was “throwing mud against the wall to see what sticks. If it doesn’t stick he blames the courts.”Gertner stressed: “Trump has pushed constitutional and statutory limits beyond recognition especially with regard to the Alien Enemies Act … Anyone on US soil has due process rights under the constitution, which means at the minimum a hearing.”Some judges who have tangled with Trump and federal prosecutors over the administration’s radical deportation policies have been ensnared in extended court battles to get straight answers and facts from government lawyers.Boasberg, who has been appointed at different times by presidents of both parties, opened a contempt hearing against the administration after it flouted an injunction to block Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport dozens of suspected Venezuelan gang members.In response, the Trump administration invoked the State Secrets Act to block his inquiry into whether it defied a Boasberg order to turn around planes deporting Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador.Another high-profile deportation ruling that angered the Trump administration and led to lengthy court battles involves a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a dangerous prison in El Salvador which Ice has acknowledged was a mistake.Despite court orders, including from the supreme court to “facilitate” the man’s return, the administration has failed to do so while offering dubious excuses.The dangerous fallout from the administration’s flouting of court rulings and attacks on judges seems to have led to the anonymous pizza deliveries to the homes of judges.Durbin’s letter to Bondi and Patel requested a full accounting of how many anonymous or pseudonymous pizza deliveries have been made to judges or their families since the Trump administration took office, the number of judges who have been affected and the districts or circuits where these judges are based.The pizza deliveries started towards the end of February, as government lawyers sought to thwart rising legal challenges to Trump’s policies, and as Trump and Maga allies began frequent attacks against judges whose rulings they disdained.The US Marshals Service, which provides security for federal judges and courthouses, has been investigating the deliveries, but it is unclear what role, if any, the justice department headquarters and the FBI have played to date.Many of the pizzas were reportedly sent to the residences of judges presiding over cases the administration has been defending.The Durbin letter to Bondi and Patel asked them to report by 20 May whether they had identified suspects, initiated prosecutions, or found evidence that the deliveries were coordinated, and describe what steps their agencies have taken to protect judges and their families.To ex-judge Jones, the reports of pizza deliveries that seem aimed at scaring judges are “disgusting. They’re a direct result of the toxic comments about the federal judiciary by Trump and members of the executive branch and some DoJ officials including AG Pam Bondi.”More broadly, some ex-prosecutors too voice alarms over the rising political attacks on judges. Ex-prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig blasted intimidation efforts against judges as “shameful expressions of authoritarian attacks on the rule of law”. More