Attention to the Unseen

Business Insider reports: President Donald Trump’s deal with Paul Weiss was his first big win in his war against Big Law. In court, it’s coming back to haunt him. For the law firms choosing to fight Trump’s executive orders targeting them, rather than striking deals with the president, the Paul Weiss deal has turned into a potent weapon. They have cited Trump’s quick revocation of the order — just six days after it was initially issued — to argue that…

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The New York Times reports: A newly declassified memo released on Monday confirms that U.S. intelligence agencies rejected a key claim President Trump put forth to justify invoking a wartime statute to summarily deport Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. The memo, dovetailing with intelligence findings first reported by The New York Times in March, states that spy agencies do not believe that the administration of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, controls a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua. That determination…

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The New Arab reports: A federal judge instructed the Trump administration on Wednesday to detail the legal precedent for its plan to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist whose presence in the country the government alleges could harm U.S. foreign policy interests. District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz in Newark, New Jersey, ordered the administration to supply a catalogue of every case in which U.S. officials have employed the law being used against Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student. The judge…

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  It was nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice. In recent weeks, President Trump has signed orders against several law firms — orders with the power to destroy them. That matters because lawsuits have been a check on the president’s power. Many firms and attorneys have been targeted, among them Marc Elias, a long time opponent of Trump who is the only lawyer the president…

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The Washington Post reports: Justice Department lawyers defending the Trump administration’s policies are encountering mounting criticism and frustration from federal judges, a sign of deepening tension between the executive branch and courts weighing its aggressive uses of power. In recent hearings and rulings, judges appointed by presidents of both parties have criticized the statements and behavior of administration officials, accusing them of defying court orders, submitting flimsy evidence, providing inadequate answers to questions and even acting like toddlers. The cases…

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Politico reports: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson forcefully condemned attacks by President Donald Trump and his allies on judges who have blocked Trump administration policies, warning Thursday that the increasingly hostile rhetoric poses a dire threat to the country’s political fabric. “The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity,” Jackson told a judges’ conference in Puerto Rico. “The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of…

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Reuters reports: When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled in April that Trump administration officials could face criminal contempt charges for deporting migrants in defiance of a court order, the blowback was immediate. The president’s supporters unleashed a wave of threats and menacing posts. And they didn’t just target the judge. Some attacked Boasberg’s brother. Others blasted his daughter. Some demanded the family’s arrest – or execution. U.S. District Judge John McConnell’s family endured similar threats after he ruled that…

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Jewish News Syndicate reports: The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions has postponed votes on a pair of measures designed to combat antisemitism after a tense hearing as well as the passage of amendments that threaten to kill the measures if brought to a vote. The Antisemitism Awareness Act would enshrine the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism into law under the Civil Rights Act of 1965. But a testy hearing on Wednesday covered objections to…

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The New York Times reports: A federal judge on Thursday permanently barred the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to deport Venezuelans it has deemed to be criminals from the Southern District of Texas, saying that the White House’s use of the statute was illegal. The decision by the judge, Fernando Rodriguez Jr., was the most expansive ruling yet by any of the numerous jurists who are currently hearing challenges to the White House’s…

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The New York Times reports: As they addressed reporters inside the Oval Office in mid-April, President Trump and his Salvadoran counterpart appeared to be operating in lock step. The United States had just deported more than 200 migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, and President Nayib Bukele said his country was eager to take more. He scoffed at a question from a reporter about whether he would release one of the men who a federal judge said had…

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The New York Times reports: A top Trump appointee in the Justice Department ordered an aggressive investigation in the last several months of student protesters at Columbia University, raising anger and alarm among career prosecutors and investigators who saw the demand as politically motivated and lacking legal merit, people familiar with the episode said. The demand for the inquiry into students who protested Israel’s conduct of the conflict in Gaza also prompted pushback from a federal magistrate judge, who believed…

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