In his first few weeks in office, Drumphf has established a dizzying barrage of Executive Orders and actions — from DOGE descending on USAID and Treasury to mass buyouts of federal workings — but in recent days the courts have begun to strike back.
A second judge has blocked Drumphf’s “Birthright citizenship” declaration against the children of migrants.
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge in Boston on Friday will consider a request from 18 state attorneys general to block President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the U.S. illegally.
The hearing comes after a federal judge in Seattle blocked the order Thursday and decried what he described as the administration’s treatment of the Constitution, saying Trump was trying to change it with an executive order. The Seattle ruling in a lawsuit brought by four states and an immigrant rights group followed one by a Maryland federal judge, who on Wednesday issued a nationwide pause on the order in a separate but similar case.
In the Boston case, the state attorneys general, along with the cities of San Francisco and Washington, are asking Judge Leo Sorokin to issue a preliminary injunction.
They argue that the principle of birthright citizenship is “enshrined in the Constitution” and that Trump does not have the authority to issue the order, which they called a “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”
Here are some of the details from Michael Popok of Meidas Touch on DOGE accessing Treasury data.
Continued...
More on these cases from Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders.
While Democrats are still getting their shit together and dozens of Anti-Drumphf protests were held this week…
...the courts are making a difference.
DOJ Attorneys have agreed to limit DOGE access to the Treasury payment systems.
Attorneys for the Justice Department have reportedly agreed to temporarily limit tech billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Treasury Department's payment system.
The agreement, reported by NBC News, comes after union members and retirees sued the Treasury Department, saying that giving such access to the payment and collections system, as well as the large amount of Americans' data in it, violated federal privacy laws.
The Trump administration asked a court Wednesday night to enter a proposed order detailing the terms, according to the report.
"The Defendants will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained by or within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service," the proposed order said.
Two special government workers at the department would be allowed exceptions to the rule "as needed" to perform their duties, according to the proposed order, "provided that such access to payment records will be 'read only.'"
Musk and DOGE have been blocked from accessing government employee personnel files.
The U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., ruled Thursday morning that Elon Musk and his team of coders have been blocked from further accessing government databases.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved the temporary restraining order outlining the conditions.
Kollar-Kotelly previously served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) and appointed to it by the late conservative Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. She was first appointed to be a judge by President Ronald Reagan.
Norm Eisen posted on Blue Sky a "big win by us at the State Democracy Defender's Action and our partners, including Public Citizen."
The case alleged that Musk and his team had access to the personal information of government employees and others without having the proper security clearance and congressional oversight.
The ruling barred "any person who is an employee (but not a Special Government Employee) of the Department of the Treasury and who has a need for the record or system of records in the performance of their duties."
"This Order shall remain in effect until such time as the Court rules on the Plaintiffs' forthcoming Preliminary Injunction Motion," the ruling said.
The level of delusion and denial by the GOP over Musk and DOGE is truly unreal.
There was some confusion Thursday on the set of CNN's "News Central" when Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) claimed the U.S. has spent millions of dollars on condoms for the Taliban.
Carter is on the DOGE Caucus, charged with finding inefficiencies in government spending, and his assertion took anchor Boris Sanchez aback.
Carter claimed, "The U.S. aid that was cut off should have been cut off. I mean, $15 million in condoms for the Taliban? $47,000 for a transgender opera in Columbia? Please!"
"Wait, sir -- woah, woah, woah, woah, woah!" Sanchez exclaimed. "$15 million for the Taliban?"
"That's what they discovered," Carter said.
"Are you conflating things?" Sanchez asked. "Are you talking about the $50 million that was supposedly meant for condoms in Gaza? Are you conflating those, sir?"
"I am not," Carter assured him. "This is the type of thing they're finding and this is the type of thing we want them to find. There is inefficiency there. When you find a government as big and as bloated as we have you're going to find inefficiencies like this. And that's why we need DOGE. That's why we need to identify these efficiencies. I was born at night but I wasn't born last night. Don't try to pull this over me here, OK? And that's what we're talking about here."
"I will look into that supposed $10 million [sic] for the Taliban. It sounds a little like the false claim that we've heard about $50 million for Gaza, which is way incorrect. Actually, it was $100 million the last time I heard President Trump say it."
According to the International Medical Corp., “No U.S. government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms, nor provide family-planning services” to Hamas in Gaza.
Yeah, “Taliban Condoms” are why DOGE is gutting USAID. That is merely an excuse
Drumphf’s Federal Spending Freeze has been blocked.
Funding freeze: A federal judge in the District of Columbia on Tuesday afternoon temporarily blocked President Trump’s order to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans until they could be vetted to ensure they aligned with his plan to purge the government of what he calls a “woke” ideology. But the freeze order had already disrupted Medicaid and a variety of other programs, leaving millions unsure if they would lose access to jobs, services and health care.
The “Fork in the Road” has been bypassed.
A federal judge has temporarily paused Thursday's deadline for federal workers to decide whether to accept a buyout offer from Donald Trump's administration.
Massachusetts-based judge George O'Toole, a Bill Clinton appointee, ordered the deadline for accepting the administration's "Fork in the Road" buyout to be extended until at least Monday, and possibly longer, while parties to the case engage in emergency litigation over implementation of the program.
“We are pleased the court temporarily paused this deadline while arguments are heard about the legality of the deferred resignation program," said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees. "We continue to believe this program violates the law, and we will continue to aggressively defend our members’ rights."
FBI Agents have sued to protect themselves from j6 retaliation.
FBI agents have reportedly filed a class action lawsuit against the Department of Justice to halt efforts to compile a list of officials who worked on cases against Jan. 6 rioters or President Donald Trump.
Politico first reported the agents were anonymously suing the DOJ for fear of retaliation.
The lawsuit was said to include screenshots of a three-page survey being used by the DOJ to identify agents who worked on cases involving Trump or the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
According to CBS News, the survey asks "what role the respondent may have played in many cases, such as acting as an agent, providing management support, or collecting online data."
"The survey also asks if the respondent made any arrests, conducted interviews, participated in search warrants, testified in court, or appeared before a grand jury."
The DOJ ordered the FBI to submit the survey results by Tuesday afternoon. The Trump administration could purge thousands of officials from the FBI, CNN reported.
"It's a purge," former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said on Monday. "We admit it."
"I heard there was 1,000 agents or something that were going to defy Trump's efforts, and defy Trump, and defy the cleanup of this mess," he added. "Should President Trump put up with this nonsense, or just go in there and just get rid of the whole whatever's left of the seventh floor, just get rid of them?"
[DOJ now says they won’t release the names of these agents.]
Federal workers have sued over the shutdown of USAID.
The largest US government workers’ union and an association of foreign service workers sued the Trump administration on Thursday in an effort to reverse its aggressive dismantling of the US Agency for International Development.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington, DC federal court by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, seeks an order blocking what it says are “unconstitutional and illegal actions” that have created a “global humanitarian crisis”.
President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are among the named defendants, but the text of the suit focuses extensively on actions, and statements on social media, by Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” initiative,
“The humanitarian consequences of defendants’ actions have already been catastrophic,” the plaintiffs said. “USAid provides life-saving food, medicine, and support to hundreds of thousands of people across the world. Without agency partners to implement this mission, US-led medical clinics, soup kitchens, refugee assistance programs, and countless other programs shuddered to an immediate halt.”
[The judge has today issued a TRO staying the placing of USAID workers on leave.]
Federal workers have sued to shut down the DOGE OPM Server.
Federal workers have filed an emergency lawsuit demanding that courts mandate that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency shuts down the server it has set up at the US Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) headquarters.
Wired reports that an attorney representing two unidentified government workers is alleging that "the server’s continued operation not only violates federal law but is potentially exposing vast quantities of government staffers’ personal information to hostile foreign adversaries through unencrypted email."
The complaint alleges that the DOGE server was installed "without OPM—the government’s human resources department—conducting a mandatory privacy impact assessment required under federal law," writes Wired.
DOGE Staffer resigns over Racist Social Media posts.
A 25-year-old Department of Government Efficiency engineer who sent shockwaves through Capitol Hill by his access to sensitive U.S. Treasury payment systems has stepped down from his role at DOGE over scrutiny about racist internet posts, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Marko Elez, who worked for Elon Musk-owned companies SpaceX, Starlink and X before signing on for a role at DOGE, resigned Thursday over questions about his ties to a social media account that promoted "racism and eugenics," the Journal reported.
His resignation came after the publication questioned the White House about his connections to the now-deleted social media account, the report added.
“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” the account wrote on X in September, a Wall Street Journal review of archived posts found. “Normalize Indian hate,” the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post "noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley," the Journal said.
Elez, who attended Rutgers University and focused on artificial intelligence while working at Musk’s companies, had full control over the computer code that directs Security payments, tax returns and other payments owed to Americans – which raised concerns for lawmakers on Capitol Hill and became the center of a lawsuit filed by federal workers.
Good riddance.
University officials and professors have sued to block Drumphf’s DEI attacks.
University officials and education organizations are suing to block President Trump's executive orders that roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, arguing they exceed executive authority and violate constitutional rights.
"In the United States, there is no king," the lawsuit, filed Monday in a Maryland US District Court, asserts. "The President can exercise only those powers the Constitution grants to the executive, and only in ways that do not violate the rights the Constitution grants to the American people."
The lawsuit was filed by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, and the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore.
They argue Trump's orders threaten academic freedom and could impose severe financial retaliation on institutions that don't comply. It faults the policy for vague language and explains it risks punishing over 130 universities "with endowments over $1 billion."
"The elimination of DEI programs and initiatives at public academic institutions are a threat to the democratic purposes of higher education as a public good," AAUP President Todd Wolfson said in a statement. "The AAUP is proud to stand up and defend our campuses and communities from this vague and destructive executive order."
Trump’s DOD has backed down on their transgender ban since they’ve been sued.
Donald Trump's efforts to target transgender people working in government, including the military, took a hit late Wednesday when the Defense Department backed down and allowed a transgender woman soldier to return to the women's barracks. The woman had initially been isolated in a one-person room.
Judge Ana Reyes didn't issue a Temporary Restraining order, but according to legal analyst Chris Geidner, the judge ordered the government to notify the plaintiffs of any changes while she considered the order. Geidner called it "a TRO-in-waiting."
"So, the DOD stood down for now," he wrote on Blue Sky.
Further, Drumphf’s orders to segregate prisoners by their “birth gender” has been blocked.
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Bureau of Prisons from enacting President Trump’s executive order to house transgender women with male inmates and stop medical treatment related to gender transitions.
Judge Royce C. Lamberth, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that three transgender prisoners who brought a suit to stop the order had “straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow” if their request for a restraining order were to be denied. Judge Lamberth was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan.
The lawsuit was one of a barrage of legal actions seeking to stop President Trump’s agenda, including several brought on behalf of transgender prisoners, military service members and young people under 19.
Congress has put a pause on Drumphf’s $1 Billion arms sale to Israel.
Congress has placed a hold on the $1 billion arms sale package for Israel on Tuesday – the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration requested Congress approve the sale of bombs and other military hardware to Israel earlier this week.
Congress placed a hold on the sale, a move pushed by Democratic lawmakers Tuesday, sources told The Hill newspaper.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have the authority to halt sales packages if it exceeds a certain amount of money.
Democrats have been pushing back against lots of Trump's recent orders, including the halting of U.S. foreign aid.
Step by step Drumphf’s House of Wet Illegal cards is being dismantled. The Executive Branch does not have the power to fire baseline government workers without justification since they have Civil Service protection. They have to trick them into retiring. The Administration does not have the power to pick and choose when money that has been allocated by Congress will or won’t be spent. Congress controls the spending. Nearly all of these efforts are blatantly unconstitutional and illegal.
We don’t yet know what will happen as these cases reach the Right-Wing SCOTUS but through the district and appellate courts — this is a total shut out.
None of these efforts are going to fly. All of them are going to crash and burn.
And that’s a good thing. For now.
If you’d like to support these efforts:
