US judges block aspects of Trump agenda on voting, immigration and DEI in education
As a number of rulings have come in this afternoon with federal judges blocking several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he’s tried to enact via vehicles such as executive orders, here’s a brief roundup of those developments.
A judge blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters. The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections. US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agreed with that argument. She also blocked a portion of the executive order that required federal agencies to assess the citizenship of individuals applying to vote at a public assistance agency before they offered them a chance to vote. The order would have made it significantly harder to register to vote, even for eligible voters.
Meanwhile, a federal judge said the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes. US district judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.
And on immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement. US district judge Stephanie Gallagher also ordered the administration not to deport other migrants covered by the settlement. She said the settlement agreement that she approved in November on behalf of thousands of migrants required immigration authorities to process the asylum application by the 20-year-old Venezuelan man, identified only as Cristian, before deporting him. The settlement applies to thousands of migrants who came to the US unaccompanied as children and have applied for asylum. While the administration argued that deporting Cristian didn’t violate the settlement agreement because he had been deemed an “alien enemy” under the Alien Enemies Act, making him ineligible for asylum. But Gallagher said the settlement applies to anyone with a pending asylum application, and not only those who are eligible for asylum. Gallagher considered only whether Cristian’s deportation violated the settlement and not whether the law was properly invoked, which is at issue in cases such as that of Kilmar Ábrego García’s.
And another judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown. US district judge William Orrick said a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Trump’s executive order was warranted as the local jurisdictions had established that it likely unconstitutionally imposed conditions on federal funding without congressional authorization and ran afoul of the localities’ due process rights.
Key events
Hegseth reportedly had unsecured internet connection set up to use Signal in his Pentagon office
US defense secretary Pete Hegseth had an unsecured internet connection set up in his Pentagon office so that he could bypass government security protocols and use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer, two people familiar with the line told the Associated Press.
The fact that Hegseth was evading Pentagon security filters to connect to the internet this way raises the possibility that sensitive defense information could have been put at risk of potential hacking or surveillance.
Earlier this week, the Guardian confirmed a New York Times report that Hegseth had shared sensitive operational information about strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen on a private Signal group chat he set up himself to communicate with his wife, brother, personal lawyer and nine associates.
In 2016, when it was reported that Hillary Clinton used a private email server to conduct official business when she was secretary of state, Hegseth told Fox News that “any security professional — military, government or otherwise — would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct, and criminally prosecuted. The fact that she wouldn’t be held accountable for this, I think blows the mind of anyone who’s held our secrets dear, who’s had a top secret clearance, like I have”.
Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday, one aimed at boosting the deep-sea mining industry, as the US searches for an alternative source of critical minerals imported from China, and a second that sought to change probationary rules for federal workers to make it easier to fire them.
As Reuters reports, parts of the Pacific Ocean are estimated to contain large amounts of potato-shaped rocks known as polymetallic nodules filled with the building blocks for electric vehicles and electronics. More than 1 billion metric tons of those nodules are estimated to be in US waters and filled with manganese, nickel, copper and other critical minerals, according to an administration official.
“We want the U.S. to get ahead of China in this resource space under the ocean, on the ocean bottom,” the unnamed official told the news agency.
Environmental groups have called for deep-sea mining to be banned, warning that industrial operations on the ocean floor could cause irreversible biodiversity loss.
The order on “strengthening probationary periods” for federal workers casts the changes as a way “to remove appointees whose continued employment is not in the public interest”. But the White House press secretary, Karoline Lavitt, suggested on Tuesday that it was important to find ways to remove federal workers who are insufficiently loyal to the president, arguing that because he was elected, he represents the will of the American people. Trump, Leavitt said, “believes that bureaucrats should be acting in accordance to the will of the American public, who duly elected this president”.
“If you work for the government, you should be adhering to the will of the American public, and advancing the administration’s goals and interests” Leavitt added. “And if you are not doing that, you should go find another job”.
Trump directs attorney general to investigate Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue based on unsubstantiated rightwing claim
Rachel Leingang
The Republican president is taking aim at a Democratic fundraising platform, issuing a presidential memorandum to crack down on supposed foreign contributions to elections, an unsubstantiated claim from the right..
Donald Trump announced the memo on Thursday, directing the attorney general to investigate, and report to the president, “concerning allegations regarding the use of online fundraising platforms to make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions and to make foreign contributions to US political candidates and committees, all of which break the law”.
ActBlue, the largest online donation platform on the left, has anticipated the presidential action. Its CEO and president, Regina Wallace-Jones, sent an email this week saying the organization expected an executive order targeting it, and that the threat of these investigations had “caused many in the ecosystem anxiety and distress”.
Trump pardons Las Vegas Republican convicted of using donations for plastic surgery, rent and daughter’s wedding
Donald Trump has pardoned Michele Fiore, a former Las Vegas councilwoman and Nevada state lawmaker who was convicted of fraud in federal court last year, for using more than $70,000 in donations intended to pay for a statue of a police officer who was killed in the line of duty for her own personal expenses.
As the Nevada Independent reports, the pardon was first announced by the Republican politician on Facebook and then filed in court on Thursday, days before Fiore was set to be sentenced on six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
As US district judge Jennifer Dorsey wrote last week, when she denied Fiore’s request for a new trial, the politician “was found guilty of fleecing donors out of tens of thousands of dollars that she told them would be used for a memorial statue of a fallen police officer”. The evidence presented to the jury, the judge noted, “showed that a development company paid for the statue, and not a dime of the money that Fiore raised was used for that purpose. Instead, each check was quickly converted to cash and spent on Fiore’s personal expenses like rent, cosmetic procedures, and her daughter’s wedding.”
In a 2021 campaign ad, at the start of her run for governor, Fiore boasted that she had been called the “Lady Trump” by Politico, and took aim with a pistol at three beer bottles, labeled: “Vaccine Mandates”, “CRT” and “Voter Fraud”.
Nevada’s attorney general, Aaron Ford, condemned the pardon in a social media post, writing:
Donald Trump’s blatant disregard for law enforcement is sickening, and pardoning someone who stole from a police memorial fund is a disgrace. As Nevada’s top cop, I believe there’s no room for reprieve when it comes to betraying the families of fallen officers. I will continue to stand with our men and women in uniform.
Trump starts selling “Trump 2028” hats as poll finds vast majority of Americans oppose unconstitutional third term
The Trump store is now selling “Trump 2028” hats to fans of the president, who is barred by the US constitution from serving a third term, despite the fact that a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that three-quarters of respondents said Trump should not even try to run. Just a narrow majority of Republicans, 53%, endorsed the idea.
On the Trump store site, the sales pitch for the hat, which is modeled by the president’s son Eric, reads: “The future looks bright! Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat.”
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The store also offers a “Trump 2028” T-shirt, which includes the parenthetical slogan: “(Rewrite the Rules)“.
The day so far
Federal judges blocked aspects of Trump’s agenda on voting, immigration and DEI in education. One blocked Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters. Another partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts. And on immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement. Another blocked the administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown.
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Trump issued a rare rebuke against Vladimir Putin, and said he has his own deadline for the Russia-Ukraine war and that he still thinks the Russian leader will listen to him. In a sign of his growing frustration, Trump turned his criticism to the Putin today, urging him to stop his attacks on Ukraine. He wrote in a Truth Social post: “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!” Full story here. Trump told reporters he remains optimistic about striking a peace deal: “We are thinking that, very strongly, that they both want peace,” Trump said, “but they have to get to the table.” Meanwhile Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he believed that a document with proposals for ending the war that emerged from Wednesday’s talks in London was now on Donald Trump’s desk. The Ukrainian president, who was the subject of Trump’s ire yesterday, reiterated that anything unconstitutional (i.e. recognising Russia’s annexation of Crimea) would be unacceptable.
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Trump refuted China’s insistence that the two countries have not engaged in talks on trade. The president told reporters at the White House, declining to say to whom he was referring. “It doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China.” Earlier on Thursday China had denied multiple assertions from the White House that the two countries were engaged in active negotiations over tariffs.
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The Trump administration asked the US supreme court to allow implementation of his order banning transgender people from serving in the military. The justice department in a filing requested that the court lift US district judge Benjamin Settle’s nationwide order blocking the military from carrying out Trump’s prohibition on transgender service members while a legal challenge to the policy proceeds. Settle found that Trump’s executive order likely violates the US constitution’s fifth amendment right to equal protection under the law.
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Legislators are pleading with Trump to reconsider his decision to deny federal disaster relief funds to the people of Arkansas, which saw dozens of people die from a series of deadly tornados last month. Full story here.
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Pete Hegseth reportedly had Signal installed on a desktop computer in his Pentagon office, adding yet another layer to the mushrooming scandal that is Signalgate. Hegseth and his aides apparently discussed “how they could circumvent the lack of cellphone service in much of the Pentagon and more quickly coordinate with the White House and other top Trump officials using the encrypted app”. But it was also “a work-around that enabled him to use Signal in a classified space, where his cellphone and other personal electronics are not permitted”. The defense secretary also denied reports that he has ordered the installation of a makeup studio in the Pentagon for his television appearances, with a defense official insisting the secretary of state does his own makeup.
US judges block aspects of Trump agenda on voting, immigration and DEI in education
As a number of rulings have come in this afternoon with federal judges blocking several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he’s tried to enact via vehicles such as executive orders, here’s a brief roundup of those developments.
A judge blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters. The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections. US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agreed with that argument. She also blocked a portion of the executive order that required federal agencies to assess the citizenship of individuals applying to vote at a public assistance agency before they offered them a chance to vote. The order would have made it significantly harder to register to vote, even for eligible voters.
Meanwhile, a federal judge said the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes. US district judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.
And on immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement. US district judge Stephanie Gallagher also ordered the administration not to deport other migrants covered by the settlement. She said the settlement agreement that she approved in November on behalf of thousands of migrants required immigration authorities to process the asylum application by the 20-year-old Venezuelan man, identified only as Cristian, before deporting him. The settlement applies to thousands of migrants who came to the US unaccompanied as children and have applied for asylum. While the administration argued that deporting Cristian didn’t violate the settlement agreement because he had been deemed an “alien enemy” under the Alien Enemies Act, making him ineligible for asylum. But Gallagher said the settlement applies to anyone with a pending asylum application, and not only those who are eligible for asylum. Gallagher considered only whether Cristian’s deportation violated the settlement and not whether the law was properly invoked, which is at issue in cases such as that of Kilmar Ábrego García’s.
And another judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown. US district judge William Orrick said a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Trump’s executive order was warranted as the local jurisdictions had established that it likely unconstitutionally imposed conditions on federal funding without congressional authorization and ran afoul of the localities’ due process rights.
Federal judge blocks Trump effort that could disenfranchise millions of voters
Sam Levine
A federal judge on Thursday blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters.
The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections.
US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the federal district court in Washington, agreed with that argument on Thursday.
“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States – not the President – with the authority to regulate federal elections,” she wrote in a 120-page opinion. “No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”
Kollar-Kotelly also blocked a portion of the executive order that required federal agencies to assess the citizenship of individuals applying to vote at a public assistance agency before they offered them a chance to vote.
The order would have made it significantly harder to register to vote, even for eligible voters. Nearly 10% of eligible voters lack easy access to documents, such as a US passport or birth certificate, that would be required to prove their citizenship, a 2024 survey found.
Reuters notes that Trump has long questioned the US electoral system and continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic president Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud. Trump and his Republican allies also have made baseless claims about widespread voting by non-citizens, which is illegal and rare.
Judge partially blocks Trump’s effort to ban DEI from K-12 education
The Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes, a federal judge said on Thursday.
ABC News reports that in an 82-page order, US district judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.
“Ours is a nation deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,” Judge McCafferty wrote, adding that the “right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is … one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes”.
“In this case, the court reviews action by the executive branch that threatens to erode these foundational principles,” she wrote.
The judge stopped short of issuing the nationwide injunction, instead limiting the relief to any entity that employs or contacts with the groups that filed the lawsuit, including the National Education Association and the Center for Black Educator Development.
US judge orders Trump administration to facilitate return of second migrant wrongly deported to El Salvador
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison in El Salvador back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement.
Late on Wednesday, US district judge Stephanie Gallagher in Baltimore said the settlement agreement that she approved in November on behalf of thousands of migrants required immigration authorities to process the asylum application by the 20-year-old Venezuelan man, identified only as Cristian, before deporting him.
The ruling could set up another showdown between the Trump administration and federal courts over immigration enforcement. The administration has also been ordered to facilitate the return of a Salvadorian man, Kilmar Ábrego García, who it acknowledged was deported in error, but a judge has said that the government is doing little to comply.
Related: Federal judge accuses White House of ‘bad faith’ in Kilmar Ábrego García case
The administration claims that Ábrego García, Cristian and more than 250 other people who were sent to a Salvadorian prison beginning last month are gang members and that it has the power to remove them under the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
Gallagher considered only whether Cristian’s deportation violated the settlement and not whether the law was properly invoked, which is at issue in Ábrego García’s and other migrants’ cases. The settlement applies to thousands of migrants who came to the US unaccompanied as children and have applied for asylum.
“A core purpose of the Settlement Agreement would be nullified if Class Members with pending asylum applications could be summarily removed from the United States and thus rendered ineligible for asylum,” wrote Gallagher, a Trump appointee.
Cristian is a class member in the 2019 lawsuit, which claimed that immigration authorities were deporting migrants before they received a final determination on their applications for asylum.
The Trump administration argued that deporting Cristian did not violate the settlement agreement because he had been deemed an “alien enemy” under the wartime law, making him ineligible for asylum. But Gallagher said the settlement applies to anyone with a pending asylum application, and not only those who are eligible for asylum.
The judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador, seeking Cristian’s release to US custody so he could return to the US. She also ordered the administration not to deport other migrants covered by the settlement.
Trump expected to sign deep-sea mining executive order on Thursday – report
Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday to advance the deep sea mining industry, the latest attempt to tap international deposits of nickel, copper and other critical minerals used widely across the economy, Reuters reports.
The order will likely fast track permitting for deep-sea mining in international waters and let mining companies bypass a United Nations-backed review process, Reuters previously reported.
Trump has taken several steps already to boost domestic production of critical minerals and combat China’s dominance of the industry that supplies the raw materials needed for a wide range of modern technologies and industries, especially those related to clean energy and defense.
Among other things, he has fast-tracked permitting on 10 mining projects across the United States and implemented an abbreviated approval process for mining projects on federal lands.
The International Seabed Authority – created by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the US has not ratified – has for years been considering standards for deep-sea mining in international waters, although it has yet to formalize them due to unresolved differences over acceptable levels of dust, noise and other factors from the practice.
Trump’s deep-sea mining order is likely to stipulate that the US aims to exercise its rights to extract critical minerals on the ocean’s floor, and to let miners bypass the ISA and seek permitting through the US Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s mining code, Reuters previously reported.
