Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: Ten thousand losses. That’s the Trump administration’s track record in court as federal judges grapple with the way ICE agents have swept through major U.S. cities and detained thousands of people in support of President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda. More than 10,000 times, judges have said those detentions, typically carried out with no opportunity for detainees to plead their case, were illegal. That’s roughly 90 percent of all cases — a staggering rejection of a core piece…

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Politico reports: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson urged Americans on Tuesday to defend the judicial system against salvos that jeopardize its independence, warning that such threats have the potential to do serious damage to American democracy. “Equal justice under law is a key tenet to freedom in our society, and in order to have that, you have to have an independent judiciary — one that is not beholden to the political branches or beholden to people,” Jackson said during an appearance…

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The New York Times reports: Democratic leaders in Virginia asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to use a congressional map drawn by Democrats and approved by voters in a referendum in April. In an emergency application, the state’s attorney general and other officials urged the justices to overturn a decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the redistricting process had violated the state’s Constitution, a major setback for Democrats in a fierce…

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TVP World reports: Ex-minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who is facing multiple charges in Poland, confirmed he was in the US on Sunday night after media reported his visa was personally approved by President Donald Trump, despite opposition from senior US officials. Ziobro—a former justice minister who was one of the most influential figures in the previous administration led by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party—admitted to travelling to the US during an interview with Polish private conservative broadcaster TV Republika…

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The Guardian reports: The reaction speed of southern states to the US supreme court’s decision last week in Louisiana v Callais has been breathtaking for voting rights activists. One week after Callais, Louisiana’s governor has ordered the state’s ongoing congressional election to be set aside while state lawmakers redraw maps to eliminate a Democratic-majority – that is, a Black-majority – seat covering Baton Rouge. Alabama’s Republican-majority legislature is drafting legislation in a special session that will allow it to set…

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Reuters reports: The Trump administration blitz that flooded Minnesota with immigration agents also dramatically slowed other federal investigations and prosecutions into an array of serious crimes, a Reuters review of federal court records found. New gun and drug prosecutions stalled. Several top prosecutors quit. Some federal agents disappeared from drug task forces and gang cases. Others took the unusual step of bringing their investigations to state authorities. U.S. President Donald Trump touted the immigration operation as an urgent crime-fighting effort,…

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Ari Berman reports: Just a week after the Supreme Court effectively destroyed the key remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act, Tennessee on Thursday is set to become the first Southern state to pass a new redistricting map eliminating a majority-Black district. The hastily drawn map abolishes the state’s last Democratic district by splitting the city of Memphis, which is more than 60 percent Black, into three districts: all of them predominantly white Republican held seats that stretch hundreds of…

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Sarah Fitzpatrick writes: One of J. Edgar Hoover’s greatest reforms at the FBI was his embrace of fingerprinting. During the 1930s, visitors to the FBI offices in Washington, D.C., received souvenir fingerprint cards featuring his name. The men who succeeded him as FBI director were more discreet and judicious, mindful of the cult of personality that had developed around Hoover. They generally avoided giving out branded swag. But then came Kash Patel. President Trump’s FBI director has a great deal…

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Politico reports: A federal judge said Monday that the Trump administration had put her security at risk by posting a “patently false” allegation that she knowingly released an ICE detainee with an international warrant for murder. Justice Department attorney Kevin Bolan profusely apologized to Rhode Island-based U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose for the press release posted last week by the Department of Homeland Security, which Bolan acknowledged “simply was not true.” Bolan said that he didn’t tell the judge about…

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Quinta Jurecic writes: The Justice Department is entering a hyperaggressive new era, cutting legal corners in service of getting President Trump the headlines—and revenge—he wants. Last month, Trump pushed out Attorney General Pam Bondi, reportedly because he was unhappy with her failure to secure legal victories against his enemies. Todd Blanche, for now the acting attorney general, seems to be campaigning for Trump’s nomination to replace Bondi: On his watch, the department has announced a spate of new prosecutions and…

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