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Category: Law/Crime

The overwhelming evidence that the Supreme Court is on Trump’s team

The overwhelming evidence that the Supreme Court is on Trump’s team

Ian Millhiser writes: Last month, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dropped an inflammatory allegation on most of her colleagues. On August 21, the Supreme Court handed down a baffling order that required researchers, who claim that the Trump administration illegally cut off their federal grants, to navigate a convoluted procedural maze in two different courts. Jackson labeled this decision “Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist.” Calvinball, an ever-changing game featured in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, “has only one rule: There…

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Graphite, the Israeli spyware acquired by ICE

Graphite, the Israeli spyware acquired by ICE

El País reports: The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has reactivated a $2 million contract with Paragon Solutions, an Israeli-founded spyware company whose products can hack any cell phone. The agreement includes a fully configured software package, including licensing, hardware, training, and ongoing maintenance. The original contract with Paragon was signed in September 2024 during the Biden administration, but was put on hold after reports emerged that the technology, known as Graphite, had been misused abroad. Biden’s March…

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Trump is claiming the authority to tell the military to summarily kill people

Trump is claiming the authority to tell the military to summarily kill people

Charlie Savage writes: By ordering the U.S. military to summarily kill a group of people aboard what he said was a drug-smuggling boat, President Trump used the military in a way that had no clear legal precedent or basis, according to specialists in the laws of war and executive power. Mr. Trump is claiming the power to shift maritime counterdrug efforts from law enforcement rules to wartime rules. The police arrest criminal suspects for prosecution and cannot instead simply gun…

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Federal judges voice their frustration with the Supreme Court: ‘They don’t have our backs’

Federal judges voice their frustration with the Supreme Court: ‘They don’t have our backs’

NBC News reports: Federal judges are frustrated with the Supreme Court for increasingly overturning lower court rulings involving the Trump administration with little or no explanation, with some worried the practice is undermining the judiciary at a sensitive time. Some judges believe the Supreme Court, and in particular Chief Justice John Roberts, could be doing more to defend the integrity of their work as President Donald Trump and his allies harshly criticize those who rule against him and as violent…

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Trump is erasing the boundary between law enforcement and warfare

Trump is erasing the boundary between law enforcement and warfare

The Intercept reports: President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela. “We just … shot out a drug-carrying boat, lot of drugs in that boat,” he said. “These came out of Venezuela.” A senior U.S. defense official offered a more coherent statement, confirming to The Intercept that “the U.S. military conducted a precision strike against a drug vessel operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization.”…

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Trump is using scare tactics to pressure the Supreme Court to rule in his favor on tariffs

Trump is using scare tactics to pressure the Supreme Court to rule in his favor on tariffs

Ankush Khardori writes: Donald Trump is making a last-ditch effort to salvage his beloved, beleaguered tariff policy, heading to the Supreme Court in hopes that the Republican appointees will come to his rescue. The desperation is both palpable and warranted given the conspicuous weakness of the administration’s legal arguments, as underscored by a series of lower court rulings against him. That has in turn led the president and his aides to make increasingly histrionic public claims about what will happen…

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International Association of Genocide Scholars: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

International Association of Genocide Scholars: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

The Associated Press reports: The largest professional organization of scholars studying genocide said Monday that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The determination by the International Association of Genocide Scholars — which has around 500 members worldwide, including a number of Holocaust experts — could serve to further isolate Israel in global public opinion and adds to a growing chorus of organizations that have used the term for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Israel rejects the accusation and called the resolution…

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Federal judge rules Trump can’t act as national police chief

Federal judge rules Trump can’t act as national police chief

Politico reports: A federal judge has declared President Donald Trump’s use of military troops in Los Angeles illegal, barring the Pentagon from using National Guard members and Marines from performing police functions, like arrests and crowd control. In a 52-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer warned that Trump appears intent on “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.” Trump billed his deployment of troops to Los Angeles, starting in early June, as a way of…

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The anti-Trump strategy that’s showing results

The anti-Trump strategy that’s showing results

Michael Scherer writes: Days after Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to put an end to the Justice Department’s revelations about Jeffrey Epstein, captains of the legal resistance gathered by Zoom. Norm Eisen, a former attorney for Barack Obama’s White House, had convened lawyers, Democratic communications strategists, a neoconservative Trump critic, and a former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. This one was big, Eisen said from his parked car in Baltimore, where he had traveled for a lawsuit to overturn…

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Alarm after FBI arrests army veteran for ‘conspiracy’ over protest against ICE

Alarm after FBI arrests army veteran for ‘conspiracy’ over protest against ICE

The Guardian reports: The arrest of a US army veteran who protested against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has raised alarms among legal experts and fellow veterans familiar with his service in Afghanistan. Bajun Mavalwalla II – a former army sergeant who survived a roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan – was charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Spokane, Washington….

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Trump’s troop deployments are targeting Democrats more than crime

Trump’s troop deployments are targeting Democrats more than crime

The New York Times reports: When Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump’s crackdown on crime, Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn’t keep them within state lines. Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation’s capital, according to F.B.I. statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as…

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Trump risks losing a ‘pillar’ of his trade strategy and having to refund a big chunk of $159 billion from tariff revenues

Trump risks losing a ‘pillar’ of his trade strategy and having to refund a big chunk of $159 billion from tariff revenues

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump has audaciously claimed virtually unlimited power to bypass Congress and impose sweeping taxes on foreign products. Now a federal appeals court has thrown a roadblock in his path. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Friday that Trump went too far when he declared national emergencies to justify imposing sweeping import taxes on almost every country on earth. The ruling largely upheld a May decision by a specialized federal trade…

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Most Trump tariffs are not legal, appeals court rules

Most Trump tariffs are not legal, appeals court rules

Reuters reports: A divided U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that most of Donald Trump’s tariffs are illegal, undercutting the Republican president’s use of the levies as a key international economic policy tool. The court allowed the tariffs to remain in place through October 14 to give the Trump administration a chance to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump has made tariffs a pillar of U.S. foreign policy in his second term, using them to exert political…

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White House plans to unilaterally cancel $4.9B in foreign aid in end-run around Congress’ funding power

White House plans to unilaterally cancel $4.9B in foreign aid in end-run around Congress’ funding power

The New York Times reports: The White House has informed Congress it intends to cancel $4.9 billion that lawmakers approved for foreign aid programs, invoking a little-known and legally untested power to slash spending without their approval. The 15-page notification, sent to Congress on Thursday night and reviewed by The New York Times, is the administration’s first attempt to push through what is known as a “pocket rescission.” It is an effort to unilaterally claw back money that has already…

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Israel’s onslaught on Gaza City forces thousands to flee with nowhere to go

Israel’s onslaught on Gaza City forces thousands to flee with nowhere to go

Abdel Qader Sabbah reports: Israeli tanks backed by warplanes and quadcopters are pushing deeper into Gaza City, destroying entire neighborhoods and leaving people with nowhere to go. The escalating assault comes amid a widening famine, with Palestinians starving to death every day. Airstrikes continue to pound civilians in central and southern Gaza. It has been one of the deadliest periods for journalists since Israel’s assault began, with at least 11 journalists killed in two bombardments just two weeks apart. Palestinians…

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Grand juries are repeatedly pushing back against dubious indictments

Grand juries are repeatedly pushing back against dubious indictments

The New York Times reports: Federal prosecutors on Tuesday were unable to secure a felony assault indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent on the streets of Washington this month, according to two people familiar with the matter. The remarkable failure by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington was the second time in recent days that it was unable to persuade grand jurors to bring an indictment in a felony assault case against a federal…

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