Attention to the Unseen

Stephen I. Vladeck writes: For all of the judicial interventions we’ve seen in the first eight weeks of the new Trump administration, alarmingly little has changed on the ground. Much of the unlawfully frozen federal money is still frozen; many of the unlawfully fired federal workers are still out of work. Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate and green card holder arrested March 8 in New York on exceptionally tenuous legal grounds, remains in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana. The…

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CNN reports: President Donald Trump on Friday downplayed his involvement in invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants, saying for the first time that he hadn’t signed the proclamation, even as he stood by his administration’s move. “I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” Trump told reporters before leaving the White House on Friday evening. The president made his comments when asked to respond to Judge James Boasberg’s concerns in court…

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Nick Miroff and Jonathan Lemire writes: During the first Trump administration, when Stephen Miller’s immigration policy proposals hit obstacles in federal court, rumors would circulate about his plans to dust off arcane presidential powers. Government lawyers were wary of overreach; officials in the West Wing and at the Department of Homeland Security would sometimes snicker. LOL Stephen, they’d say, amused by his creative zealotry. No one is laughing now. Miller, Donald Trump’s Homeland Security adviser and deputy chief of staff,…

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The New York Times reports: President Trump’s intensifying conflict with the federal courts is unusually aggressive compared with similar disputes in other countries, according to scholars. Unlike leaders who subverted or restructured the courts, Mr. Trump is acting as if judges were already too weak to constrain his power. “Honest to god, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and coauthor of “How Democracies Die” and “Competitive Authoritarianism.” “We look at these comparative cases…

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The Washington Post reports: Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek said Friday that he is consulting with agency lawyers and the Justice Department as he threatens to shut down the agency in response to a court ruling blocking Elon Musk’s team from accessing sensitive taxpayer data. Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a two-week temporary restraining order Thursday that prohibits Social Security officials from sharing personally identifiable information with Musk’s U.S….

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USA Today reports: The growing clash between President Donald Trump and the judiciary took a major turn Tuesday as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked Trump’s call for the impeachment of a federal judge. “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 rare public statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” Trump’s call for impeachment escalated his increasing…

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By Andy Kroll This story was originally published by ProPublica On Feb. 20, nearly 7,000 probationary employees at the Internal Revenue Service began receiving an unsigned letter telling them that they had been fired for poor performance. Trump administration lawyers insist that the IRS and other federal agencies have acted within their authority when they ordered waves of mass terminations since Trump took office. But according to previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica, a top lawyer at the IRS warned…

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Jasmine Mooney writes: I restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it. Hours passed, with many confused opinions about my case. The officer I spoke to was kind but told me that, due to my previous issues, I needed to apply for my visa through the consulate. I told her I hadn’t been aware I needed to apply that…

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Democracy Docket reports: An independent nonprofit created by Congress to promote peace efforts around the world filed a lawsuit late Tuesday to block an aggressive takeover by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) board members, including former U.S. ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, asked the D.C. District Court to stop DOGE from “completing the unlawful dismantling of the Institute and irreparably impairing Plaintiffs’ ability to perform their vital peace promotion and conflict resolution…

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NBC News reports: Donald Trump’s allies have been calling for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg after he blocked the deportation of migrants under the Alien Enemies Act. On Tuesday, the push to get rid of Boasberg became more serious when the president himself weighed in and agreed. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump posted on social media. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts issued a rare…

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TPM reports: The federal court system warned its employees that DOGE’s cuts to building services and to executive branch staff could cause “immediate and long-term effects on court operations,” according to a Monday memo obtained by TPM . The letter focused on cuts to staff at the General Services Administration, the agency that manages buildings and maintenance across the federal government, and to the contracts maintained by that agency. GSA’s portfolio includes multiple federal court buildings, as well as services…

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