Law

Now that Trump has chosen to strike out in a broad and highly destabilizing fashion that puts both the U.S. and our allies at serious risk, his actions will leave him more isolated and subject to greater scrutiny. The resulting pushback will be as much political as legal and thus will likely depend at least in part on the speed and efficacy with which Trump can accomplish (or abandon) his purported objectives, as well as the broader contours of how Trump manages his domestic political constituencies and the United States manages its international relations. But this is simply a reflection of the fact that in war powers, as in many areas of law that are not readily subject to clean judicial enforcement, the two are not so easily separated. It doesn’t mean that the law doesn’t matter; it just means that law isn’t the only thing that matters.

A federal judge in West Virginia has given the Trump administration an ultimatum: Stop illegally detaining immigrants or face contempt rulings and “monetary sanctions against responsible officials.”

But experts say that it has become clear during Trump’s second term in office that he has not given much heed to legal standards, particularly international law. That has been seen in both the U.S. abduction of former Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro in January and also Trump’s threats at one point to take Greenland, potentially by force, from NATO ally Denmark.

A draft emergency executive order to declare a national emergency to allow President Donald Trump to take unprecedented control over voting is being circulated by anti-voting activists who said they are in coordination with the White House.

Direct link to the Kentucky Supreme Court decision (26 pages): http://opinions.kycourts.net/sc/2024-SC-0022-TG.pdf

A district court in New York set the Trump administration off on Wednesday by naming the replacement for one of the DOJ’s several “not lawfully serving” acting U.S. attorneys, leading to a swift “you are fired” announcement on social media and a near replay of a standoff from the summer.

In first-of-its-kind complaint, state accused four fossil fuel majors and US oil lobbying group of climate disinformation

The one-sentence summary is “real advocates argue both sides of a Shakespeare-derived legal dispute to a panel of real judges”. The event takes place at Harman Hall in DC, on 17 February at 19:30 (ET). There is a livestream ticket for $25, to accommodate people who cannot physically attend.

Civil law notarial acts can be executed immediately. Meaning seizing money or property without a court.

Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges. Undoubtedly, mistakes were made, and orders that should have appeared on this list were omitted.

“The Secret Service came to my door today because of a tweet. No threats. No violence. Just words. That’s where we are now,” she wrote on X in a thread about the ordeal.

“I find it breathtaking that I have been compelled on the evidence to find the conduct of such high-level officers of our government—Cabinet secretaries—conspired to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States,” Young said, alluding to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “These Cabinet secretaries have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.”

This case seeks to end a startling pattern of abuse spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) that is fundamentally altering civic life in the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota. Masked federal agents in the thousands are violently stopping and arresting countless Minnesotans based on nothing more than their race and perceived ethnicity irrespective of their citizenship or immigration status, or their personal circumstances. At the center of DHS’s campaign are Somali and Latino people, who are being targeted for stops and arrests based on racial profiling motivated by prejudice.