As the Malignant Fascist's "move fast and break things" reign of error crashes along, the federal judiciary, at least for now, is standing up for the rule of law:
Deportations without due process
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a second man must be returned from the El Salvador megaprison where he was hastily deported by President Donald Trump’s administration in March.
The man, referred to in court documents by the pseudonym Cristian, was among those swept up by immigration officials and flown to a brutal facility where inmates are told they will never leave. Cristian, age 20, is a native of Venezuela.
The Trump administration has already been ordered to “facilitate” the return of another man who was on the flights, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, although he has remained in El Salvador while the administration fights to keep him there.
In Cristian’s case, Trump-appointed Judge Stephanie Gallagher nodded to Abrego Garcia and said “this Court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States.”
Her order came in response to an emergency motion made in a class-action suit originally filed back in 2019 against the Department of Homeland Security, which included Cristian among its plaintiffs. The parties reached a settlement in 2024 stipulating that they could remain in the country while their individual asylum claims were processed in the courts. All had been brought into the country as children.
Gallagher wrote that facilitating Cristian’s return “includes, but is not limited to, ... a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by USCIS,” or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
She further ordered the administration not to remove any other individuals covered under the settlement agreement...
A federal judge in California on Thursday barred the Trump administration from denying or conditioning the use of federal funds to “sanctuary” jurisdictions, saying that portions of President Donald Trump’s executive orders were unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued the injunction sought by San Francisco and more than a dozen other municipalities that limit cooperation with federal immigration efforts.
Orrick wrote that defendants are prohibited “from directly or indirectly taking any action to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funds” and the administration must provide written notice of his order to all federal departments and agencies by Monday...
President Donald Trump’s efforts to crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion programs suffered a major legal blow Thursday as three separate judges – two of them appointed by the president – ruled against a Department of Education policy that threatened to withhold federal funding for schools engaging in DEI or incorporating race in certain ways in many other aspects of student life.
The policy was first laid out in a so-called Dear Colleague letter sent to schools in February. Starting this month, schools receiving federal funding would be subject to certain certification mandates requiring that they turn over information regarding their compliance with the Trump administration’s prohibitions.
US District Judge Landya McCafferty said in a scathing opinion that the administration’s policy, was “textbook viewpoint discrimination,” likely violating the First Amendment’s free speech protections. She and another judge, US District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, also concluded that the policy was likely unconstitutionally vague.
She also concluded that the National Education Association, the administration’s opponent in the case, was likely to succeed in its arguments that the policy was unconstitutionally vague and that the agency ran afoul of procedural steps required by law in how it implemented the policy.
“The ban on DEI embodied in the 2025 Letter leaves teachers with a Hobson’s Choice,” McCafferty, a Barack Obama appointee who sits in New Hampshire, wrote, noting that the educators must choose between teaching curricula that invites penalty from the federal government or risking their professional credentials by aiding the Trump policy.
“The Constitution requires more,” she wrote...
These are all being set up for Supreme Court review, where there may be an emerging coalition (minus Alito and Thomas) who are seeing the MF's constant assertions of unprecedented executive power and authority not backed by the Constitution or law as a challenge to the checks and balances inherent in our system of government (such as it's become). We're not overly sanguine that they'll uphold the rule of law as the lower courts, in large part, are doing, but we likely won't have to wait long to find out.
No comments:
Post a Comment