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Judge bars Trump from denying federal funds to ‘sanctuary’ cities
Court Watch |
2025/04/20 07:36
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A federal judge in California on Thursday barred the Trump administration from denying or conditioning the use of federal funds to “sanctuary” jurisdictions, saying that portions of President Donald Trump’s executive orders were unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued the injunction sought by San Francisco and more than a dozen other municipalities that limit cooperation with federal immigration efforts.
Orrick wrote that defendants are prohibited “from directly or indirectly taking any action to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funds” and the administration must provide written notice of his order to all federal departments and agencies by Monday.
One executive order issued by Trump directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to withhold federal money to sanctuary jurisdictions. The second order directs every federal agency to ensure that payments to state and local governments do not “abet so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation.”
At a hearing Wednesday, Justice Department lawyers argued that it was much too early for the judge to grant an injunction when the government had not taken any action to withhold specific amounts or to lay out conditions on specific grants.
But Orrick, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, said this was essentially what government lawyers argued during Trump’s first term when the Republican issued a similar order.
“Their well-founded fear of enforcement is even stronger than it was in 2017,” Orrick wrote, citing the executive orders as well as directives from Bondi, other federal agencies and Justice Department lawsuits filed against Chicago and New York.
San Francisco successfully challenged the 2017 Trump order and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court that the president exceeded his authority when he signed an executive order threatening to cut funding for “sanctuary cities.”
There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces immigration laws nationwide but seeks state and local help in alerting federal authorities of immigrants wanted for deportation and holding that person until federal officers take custody.
Leaders of sanctuary jurisdictions say their communities are safer because immigrants feel they can communicate with local police without fear of deportation. It is also a way for municipalities to focus their dollars on crime locally, they say.
Besides San Francisco and Santa Clara County, which includes a third plaintiff, the city of San José, there are 13 other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which include Seattle and King County, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; New Haven, Connecticut; and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Supreme Court sides with the FDA in its dispute over vaping products
Court Watch |
2025/04/15 11:35
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled for the Food and Drug Administration in its crackdown on sweet-flavored vaping products following a surge in teen electronic cigarette use.
But the justices’ unanimous decision throwing out a federal appeals court ruling is not the final word in the case, and the FDA could change its approach now that President Donald Trump has promised to “save” vaping.
The high court ruled that the FDA, during President Joe Biden’s administration, did not violate federal law when it denied an application from Dallas-based company Triton Distribution to sell e-juices like “Jimmy The Juice Man in Peachy Strawberry” and “Suicide Bunny Mother’s Milk and Cookies.” The products are heated by an e-cigarette to create an inhalable aerosol.
Yolonda Richardson, president and CEO of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, called the decision “a major victory for the health of America’s kids and efforts to protect them from the flavored e-cigarettes that have fueled a youth nicotine addiction crisis.”
The FDA has rejected applications for more than a million nicotine products formulated to taste like fruit, dessert or candy because their makers couldn’t show that flavored vapes had a net public benefit, as required by law.
It has approved some tobacco-flavored vapes, and recently it allowed its first menthol-flavored e-cigarettes for adult smokers after the company provided data showing the product was more helpful in quitting.
But the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Triton, agreeing that the FDA changed its standards with little warning in violation of federal law.
While mainly ruling for the FDA on Wednesday, the Supreme Court noted that the agency had said the company’s marketing plan would be an important factor in evaluating its application. But it ultimately did not consider the marketing plan, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court.
Attorney Eric Heyer, who represented the company, expressed disappointment with the ruling but said Triton believes “in the great harm reduction potential” of the products and plans to continue litigation.
The appeals court was ordered to consider if the failure to do so is an important mistake that might still lead to a decision in Triton’s favor.
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Turkish court orders key Erdogan rival jailed pending trial on corruption charges
Court Watch |
2025/03/21 05:57
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A court formally arrested the mayor of Istanbul, a key rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Sunday and ordered him jailed pending the outcome of a trial on corruption charges.
Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was detained following a raid on his residence earlier this week, sparking the largest wave of street demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade. It also deepened concerns over democracy and rule of law in Turkey.
His imprisonment is widely regarded as a political move to remove a major contender from the next presidential race, currently scheduled for 2028. Government officials reject the accusations and insist that Turkey’s courts operate independently.
The prosecutor’s office said the court decided to jail Imamoglu on suspicion of running a criminal organization, accepting bribes, extortion, illegally recording personal data and bid-rigging. A request for him to be imprisoned on terror-related charges was rejected although he still faces prosecution. Following the court’s ruling, Imamoglu was transferred to Silivri prison, west of Istanbul.
The Interior Ministry later announced that Imamoglu had been suspended from duty as a “temporary measure.” The municipality had previously appointed an acting mayor from its governing council.
Alongside Imamoglu, 47 other people were also jailed pending trial, including a key aide and two district mayors from Istanbul, one of whom was replaced with a government appointee. A further 44 suspects were released under judicial control.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said Sunday that 323 people were detained the previous evening over disturbances at protests.
Largely peaceful protests across Turkey have seen hundreds of thousands come out in support of Imamoglu. However, there has been some violence, with police deploying water cannons, tear gas, pepper spray and firing plastic pellets at protesters in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, some of whom hurled stones, fireworks and other missiles at riot police.
The formal arrest came as more than 1.5 million members of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, began holding a primary presidential election to endorse Imamoglu, the sole candidate.
The party has also set up symbolic ballot boxes nationwide to allow people who are not party members to express their support for the mayor. Large crowds gathered early Sunday to cast a “solidarity ballot.”
“This is no longer just a problem of the Republican People’s Party, but a problem of Turkish democracy,” Fusun Erben, 69, said at a polling station in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district. “We do not accept our rights being so easily usurped. We will fight until the end.”
Speaking at a polling station in Bodrum, western Turkey, engineer Mehmet Dayanc, 38, said he feared that “in the end we’ll be like Russia, a country without an opposition, where only a single man participates in elections.”
In a message posted on social media, Imamoglu called on people to show “their struggle for democracy and justice to the entire world” at the ballot box. He warned Erdogan that he would be defeated by “our righteousness, our courage, our humility, our smiling face.”
“Honestly, we are embarrassed in the name of our legal system,” Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas, a fellow member of Imamoglu’s CHP, told reporters after casting his vote, criticizing the lack of confidentiality in the proceedings.
CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said Imamoglu’s imprisonment was reminiscent of “Italian mafia methods.” Speaking at Istanbul City Hall, he added: “Imamoglu is on the one hand in prison and on the other hand on the way to the presidency.”
The Council of Europe, which focuses on promoting human rights and democracy, slammed the decision and demanded Imamoglu’s immediate release.
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Under threat from Trump, Columbia University agrees to policy changes
Court Watch |
2025/03/16 05:58
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Under threat from the Trump administration, Columbia University agreed to implement a host of policy changes Friday, including overhauling its rules for protests and conducting an immediate review of its Middle Eastern studies department.
The changes, detailed in a letter sent by the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, came one week after the Trump administration ordered the Ivy League school to enact those and other reforms or lose all federal funding, an ultimatum widely criticized in academia as an attack on academic freedom.
In her letter, Armstrong said the university would immediately appoint a senior vice provost to conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of its regional studies programs, “starting immediately with the Middle East.”
Columbia will also revamp its long-standing disciplinary process and bar protests inside academic buildings. Students will not be permitted to wear face masks on campus “for the purposes of concealing one’s identity.” An exception would be made for people wearing them for health reasons.
In an effort to expand “intellectual diversity” within the university, Columbia will also appoint new faculty members to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies department. It will also adopt a new definition of antisemitism and expand programming in its Tel Aviv Center, a research hub based in Israel.
The policy changes were largely in line with demands made on the university by the Trump administration, which pulled $400 million in research grants and other federal funding, and had threatened to cut more, over the university’s handling of protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The White House has labeled the protests antisemitic, a label rejected by those who participated in the student-led demonstrations.
A message seeking comment was left with a spokesperson for the Education Department. As a “precondition” for restoring funding, federal officials demanded that the university to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.”
They also told the university to ban masks on campus, adopt a new definition of antisemitism, abolish its current process for disciplining students and deliver a plan to ”reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices.”
Historians had described the order as an unprecedented intrusion on university rights long treated by the Supreme Court as an extension of the First Amendment.
On Friday, freedom of speech advocates immediately decried Columbia’s decision to acquiesce. |
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Musk gives all federal workers 48 hours to explain what they did last week
Court Watch |
2025/02/18 09:56
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Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been given little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week, sparking confusion across key agencies as billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the size of federal government.
Musk, who serves as President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting chief, telegraphed the extraordinary request on his social media network on Saturday.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Shortly afterward, federal employees — including some judges, court staff and federal prison officials — received a three-line email with this instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”
The deadline to reply was listed as Monday at 11:59 p.m., although the email did not include Musk’s social media threat about those who fail to respond.
The latest unusual directive from Musk’s team injects a new sense of chaos across beleaguered multiple agencies, including the National Weather Service, the State Department and the federal court system, as senior officials worked to verify the message’s authenticity Saturday night and in some cases, instructed their employees not to respond.
Thousands of government employees have already been forced out of the federal workforce — either by being fired or offered a buyout — during the first month of Trump’s administration as the White House and Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency fire both new and career workers, tell agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions in force” and freeze trillions of dollars in federal grant funds.
There is no official figure available for the total firings or layoffs so far, but The Associated Press has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside of Washington. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.
Labor union leaders quickly condemned the ultimatum and threatened legal action.
AFGE President Everett Kelley called the new order an example of Trump and Musk’s “utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.”
“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” Kelley said. “AFGE will challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country.”
Musk on Friday celebrated his new role at a gathering of conservatives by waving a giant chainsaw in the air. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy” and said, “Waste is pretty much everywhere” in the federal government.
McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson at the Office of Personnel Management, confirmed Musk’s directive and said that individual agencies would “determine any next steps.”
What happens if an employee is on leave or vacation? Again, she said individual agencies would determine how to proceed.
In a message to employees on Saturday night, federal court officials instructed recipients not to respond.
“We understand that some judges and judiciary staff have received an email ... directing the recipient to reply with 5 accomplishments from the prior week. Please be advised that this email did not originate from the Judiciary or the Administrative Office and we suggest that no action be taken,” officials wrote.
Judges around the country got emails from Musk’s team in late January, apparently by mistake, U.S. District Judge Randolph Daniel Moss said earlier this month. Moss said he’d also gotten a message and ignored it.
The National Weather Service leadership acknowledged some confusion in a message to its employees late Saturday as well.
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Investment Fraud Litigation |
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Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a practice that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of the securities laws. Securities Arbitration. Generally speaking, securities fraud consists of deceptive practices in the stock and commodity markets, and occurs when investors are enticed to part with their money based on untrue statements.
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The content contained on the web site has been prepared by Securities Law News as a service to the internet community and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a substitute for consultation with a licensed legal professional in a particular case. | Affordable Law Firm Website Design by Law Promo |
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