President Trump has picked dozens of fights since returning to the White House, but few have been so unrelenting as his war with the courts.
Amid nearly 250 lawsuits challenging his agenda in his first 100 days, Trump has made his focus the judges overseeing them.
In courtrooms, his Justice Department has argued that the judiciary has no place sticking its nose in the executive’s business. His own attacks are much starker, plainly contending that “crime and chaos” would result if judges usurp the president’s duties.
That war further escalated Friday when FBI Director Kash Patel announced that a sitting Wisconsin judge was arrested over allegations that she tried to help a migrant lacking permanent legal status avoid arrest after he appeared in her courtroom.
In court filings, the government said Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan heralded Mexican immigrant Eduardo Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a side door after learning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials planned to arrest him following a hearing in her court. She faces an obstruction count and a count of concealing an individual to prevent their arrest.
“What happened was terrible. That that could happen with a judge is so ashamed,” Trump told reporters Sunday.
But Democrats and some legal advocates see it as the latest instance of walls being torn down between branches of government.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) called the arrest a “gravely serious and drastic move,” suggesting it fits into a “deeply concerning pattern” of Trump undermining checks on his power, like the courts.
It adds to the fear already expressed by Democrats over the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who met with Abrego Garcia April 17, sent a letter to Trump Tuesday insisting he was defying the Supreme Court's order to “facilitate” the man’s return.
“If your Administration can strip away the constitutional rights of one man in defiance of court orders, it can do it to all of us,” Van Hollen wrote in the letter.
Trump’s first 100 days, in many ways, felt a lot like the 100 days before he ascended to the nation’s highest office.
The public attacks revisit Trump’s playbook for taking down the judiciary — the one he used to undermine judges overseeing the criminal cases against him throughout 2024, which largely crumbled when voters catapulted him back into the Oval Office.
There’s been no clearer example of Trump's past tactics at play than in his campaign against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who oversees a high-profile challenge to the administration’s swift deportation flights under the Alien Enemies Act.
Trump has called Boasberg “highly conflicted,” a “troublemaker and agitator,” “a Grandstander” and even a “radical left lunatic.”
The president has, by contrast, steered clear of criticizing the Supreme Court. But even that now seems to be shifting as his administration’s agenda increasingly reaches the justices’ bench.
In a Truth Social post last week, Trump lamented that his team is “being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The Trump administration’s legal fights show no sign of slowing down. Expect the next 100 days and beyond to be just as gripping.
In two weeks, the court will hear arguments on Trump’s efforts to partially enforce his birthright citizenship order. The justices also still need to resolve pending applications asking them to greenlight Trump’s firings of independent agency leaders, permit his ban on transgender troops openly serving in the military and block deportation flights under the Alien Enemies Act.
“Hopefully, the Supreme Court will come to the rescue of our country,” Trump told reporters Sunday.
Welcome to The Gavel, The Hill’s weekly courts newsletter from Ella Lee (elee@thehill.com) and Zach Schonfeld (zschonfeld@thehill.com). Email us tips, or reach out to us on X (@ByEllaLee, @ZachASchonfeld) or Signal (elee.03, zachschonfeld.48).
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In Focus
Mystery emerges in Abrego Garcia’s case
The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador who has garnered national attention for weeks, has taken a perplexing turn.
Let’s start by rewinding the clock two weeks: A frustrated U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis was stepping up the pressure after the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. Exasperated at the administration’s lack of progress, Xinis mandated officials sit for depositions, hand over documents and answer written questions.
“There are no business hours while we do this — there are going to be two intense weeks of discovery,” said Xinis, an appointee of former President Obama.
Something has suddenly changed.
Last week — hours before Xinis’s deadline to complete the depositions — the Trump administration asked to put the judge’s demands on hold. The request was filed under seal.
Such a motion isn’t unusual in itself. The Trump administration asks judges to pause unfavorable rulings all the time.
Except this time, Xinis remarkably granted the request.
Her brief order contained no explanation, but she said her decision to temporarily halt discovery came “with the agreement of the parties.”
The development also landed hours after the Trump administration filed its daily update about Abrego Garcia’s status and efforts to return him under seal. It’s a shift from the previous updates, which are all on the public docket.
And on Tuesday, the government filed yet another motion under seal.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Abrego Garcia, did not return requests for comment. The Department of Justice declined to comment.
It remains unclear what spurred the latest developments. But observers watching the case seem to agree something is happening.
We may know more soon: Xinis’s pause expires today at 5:00 p.m. EDT.
Filings provide window into CFPB's dismantling
As the Trump administration seeks to shutter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), its dirty laundry is being aired out in court.
Exhibits filed this week in a lawsuit challenging the dismantling of the agency show how top officials rushed to complete a planned reduction-in-force, or RIF, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit at first let the layoffs move forward.
They also show the internal strife that caused.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, granted a preliminary injunction last month that blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Trump officials from winding down CFPB.
But weeks later, on April 11, the appeals court entered a temporary stay that allowed layoffs to move forward if a “particularized assessment” had been completed deciding which employees are not necessary to perform the CFPB’s statutorily required duties.
Top CFPB officials and DOGE began planning the RIF the next day, a dated Post-it note filed with the court shows. Notices were sent to affected employees by April 17.
Adam Martinez, chief operating officer of the CFPB, detailed some of the strife in an email updating top officials about the status of the reduction-in-force. It seemed to show that the DOGE and CFPB staff members were still figuring out who would be terminated after the RIF notices were sent out.
“We are three positions off, but we are reconciling it,” Martinez told chief legal officer Mark Paoletta and others. “I apologize. My team doing all the number/name crunching are running on low fuel and have not slept for a couple of days.
“They also happen to be RIFing themselves,” he added.
The chaos didn’t go unnoticed by employees lower down the chain. In a Microsoft Teams message made public in court filings, CFPB’s human capital operations and systems lead said that Martinez was “having a nervous breakdown.”
“It’s awful, Adam is yelling at me because Gavin is yelling at him,” wrote Nikki DiPalma, referencing DOGE appointee Gavin Kliger. “I told Adam to just have Gavin take it over since he is so unhappy with the team.”
All this was set to play out before Jackson, who called for an evidentiary hearing after the agency moved to lay off roughly 90 percent of its staff. She temporarily blocked the terminations until she could hear from Martinez and Paoletta under oath, scheduling a hearing for Tuesday afternoon.
But the D.C. Circuit got involved, again. The appeals panel said it would reinstate the block of any mass layoffs until it resolves the case rather than allow Jackson to continue the saga of whether CFPB conducted the necessary assessment.
The D.C. Circuit did so on its own accord (sua sponte, for any Latin enthusiasts out there), and Jackson called off her hearing the night before it was set to begin.
So, what’s next?
Martinez and Paoletta won’t be taking the stand anytime soon, but the D.C. Circuit will hear oral arguments in the government’s appeal on May 16, which the court emphasized is a “substantially” expedited schedule.
“At that time, we will carefully consider the separation-of-powers and other arguments raised by the parties,” the court noted in its recent order.
Santos changes his tune
George Santos said for months that he wouldn’t ask Trump for a pardon.
But that was before he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
“I believe that 7 years is an over the top politically influenced sentence and I implore that President Trump gives me a chance to prove I’m more than the mistakes I’ve made,” the expelled Republican congressman wrote in a statement to X after his sentencing Friday, marking his first public appeal to the president.
The about-face comes literally days after Santos vowed not to seek a pardon, following months of similar promises made after he pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges.
He told The New York Times in an interview published a day before his sentencing that to “seek a pardon is to deny accountability and responsibility.”
“The president knows my predicament,” he told the Times, suggesting that Trump could grant him clemency, but he wouldn’t be asking for it.
In 2023, he chastised one of our colleagues for even asking the question.
“Why is that little brain of yours going there?” Santos said, adding that he wouldn’t be “dwelling into the future.”
Santos’s appeal to Trump adds him to the ranks of other public officials — some disgraced, and some spared that misfortune — who turned to Trump as a final Hail Mary amid criminal charges or convictions, no matter their political stripe.
After ex-Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for bribery and corruption charges, he sought the president's attention by comparing their criminal trials, which took place just blocks apart in Manhattan.
“President Trump was right,” Menendez said outside the courthouse where he was sentenced for accepting lavish bribes in exchange for his political clout. “This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”
Then, there was New York City Mayor Eric Adams, also a Democrat, whose cozying up with Trump resulted in his Justice Department dropping the mayor’s bribery charges altogether.
The president has pardoned some political allies — like the Libertarian icon and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, Nevada’s so-called “Lady Trump” and a Republican donor — and his DOJ has moved to drop charges against at least one former Republican lawmaker.
If you have any guesses about who's next, you know how to reach us.
Petitions Pile
Chanel Nicholson is seeking to revive her 2021 racial discrimination lawsuit against various Houston-area adult entertainment clubs she danced at.
Nicholson, who is Black, says that the clubs turned her away when she showed up to work because there were “too many Black girls” already working.
After previously tossing all but two clubs from the suit, the district court dismissed Nicholson’s remaining claims by finding they were barred by a four-year statute of limitations.
Although Nicholson acknowledges she first experienced discrimination at the two clubs in 2014 and 2016 and didn’t sue until 2021, she claims she was subjected to subsequent “discrete acts” of discrimination that reset the clock.
Nicholson has no attorney, and the Supreme Court agreed to waive her docketing fee.
It appears that at least one justice is taking a close look at the case, Nicholson v. W.L. York, Inc.
The petition was fully briefed and ready to be discussed at conference in late February. Yet, the court kept taking it off the list before each conference, rescheduling it seven times in all.
For the first time, it made it on the final list for the justices’ conference last week. And now it is relisted for this week’s meeting on Friday.
The Order List
Read Monday’s full order list here.
In: Federal diversity jurisdiction
The Supreme Court took up one new case at its recent conference, a petition we highlighted in last week’s edition.
In The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. v. Palmquist, the justices will grapple with a thorny question over federal diversity jurisdiction.
Sarah and Grant Palmquist are suing over alleged heavy metal contamination in Hain’s baby food that the parents say caused physical and mental disorders in their toddler.
The parents sued both Hain’s and Whole Foods, where the product was sold, in Texas state court.
Hain’s then moved the case to federal court. However, federal diversity jurisdiction exists only when no plaintiff and defendant are based in the same state, and Whole Foods and the parents are both domiciled in Texas.
A federal judge allowed the case to proceed in their court after dropping Whole Foods as an improper party. After extensive litigation and a two-week trial, the judge ultimately entered final judgment in favor of Hain’s.
When the parents appealed, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Whole Foods was dropped in error. It went on to wipe the final judgment, ruling that the district court lacked jurisdiction to enter it and the lawsuit needed to start from scratch in state court.
Hain’s and Whole Foods are appealing that decision to the justices, arguing that the lower judge’s judgment can be left intact.
Out: California gun show restrictions
In B&L Productions v. Newsom, the court declined to take up a challenge to California’s laws that crack down on gun shows.
The laws prevent someone from purchasing a firearm at a gun show, and the state has stopped allowing such events on state property.
B&L Productions, which operates a traveling gun show called Crossroads of the West, challenged the law under both the First and Second Amendments, accusing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of insubordination by not abiding by the high court’s recent expansion of gun rights.
“If the results obtained below stand, then no legal doctrine—not the First Amendment, not the Second Amendment, not even ordinary contract law—is safe from the mind virus demonizing the ‘gun culture’ in California and the Ninth Circuit,” the petition reads.
The group’s petition got the backing of the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Sidebar
Another one bites the AI dust: A federal judge accused attorneys for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell of using AI to generate fake case citations in a defamation lawsuit brought by a former Dominion Voting Systems employee. Lindell’s attorneys say they mistakenly submitted a “draft” version of the filing and asked the judge to withhold sanctions. DOGE’s power mystery: New court filings seem to show DOGE is calling the shots more frequent than DOJ lawyers have admitted to federal judges. Rulebook refresh: The Supreme Court released the annual amendments to the federal civil procedure rules, appellate procedure rules, and bankruptcy procedure rules (no changes to evidence or criminal procedure this year). SCOTUS has ObamaCare questions: Following last week’s oral arguments challenging an ObamaCare requirement that insurance companies cover certain preventive care recommended by an expert panel, the Supreme Court in a rare moved asked for an additional round of written briefing. Gone, but not forgotten: A federal magistrate judge in Michigan was no fan of Dragon Lawyers PC watermarking a multi-colored dragon dressed in a suit on every page of a lawsuit the firm filed earlier this month. Check out the lawsuit here. Dugan, the Milwaukee judge who was arrested, has added the conservative legal powerhouse and top Supreme Court advocate Paul Clement to her legal team, Reuters reported.On the docket
Today
The Supreme Court will announce opinions at 10 a.m. EDT. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over whether Oklahoma officials can approve the nation's first publicly funded religious charter school. A federal judge in Vermont will hold a hearing over whether to release from custody Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia University student and lawful permanent resident of the U.S. who was arrested and detained during his naturalization interview. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., is set to hold a preliminary injunction hearing in a challenge by several anonymous FBI agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases seeking to keep their identities from being publicly disclosed. Another federal judge in Washington, D.C., is set to hold a summary judgment hearing in two of three Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board challenge to their firings. Another Washington, D.C,. federal judge is set to hold a preliminary injunction hearing in a lawsuit challenging the administration’s efforts to dismantle the Institute for Museum and Library Services. A federal judge in New York is set to hold a preliminary injunction hearing in a challenge to the administration’s efforts to dismantle the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.Thursday
A federal judge in Alexandria, Va., is set to hold a motions hearing in a lawsuit brought by Badar Khan Suri, a Muslim postdoctoral scholar and professor at Georgetown, challenging his detention. A Texas federal judge is set to hold an evidentiary hearing in a challenge to Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, which gives the federal government additional authority to regulate non-citizens in times of war, on behalf of two Venezuelan nationals detained in Texas.Friday
A Washington, D.C., federal judge is scheduled to hold a preliminary injunction hearing in a challenge to DOGE’s recordkeeping practices that seeks to subject it to FOIA.Monday
The Supreme Court will announce orders. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear oral arguments in a challenge to DOGE's takeover efforts at several federal agencies. Hearings involving the Alien Enemies Act are scheduled in Texas, Pennsylvania and California. A federal judge in Washington, D.C. is scheduled to hold a preliminary injunction hearing in a challenge to Trump’s efforts to gut collective bargaining for federal workers.Tuesday
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear oral arguments in 20 Democratic attorneys general’s lawsuit challenging the mass terminations of probationary employees across the federal bureaucracy.What we're reading
Bloomberg Law’s Jacqueline Thomsen and Suzanne Monyak: US Courts Up Budget Requests for Security, Public Defenders The New York Times’s Nick Corasaniti and Eduardo Medina: A Lengthy Legal Battle in North Carolina Could Show How to Flip an Election The Los Angeles Times’s Jenny Jarvie: State Bar of California admits it used AI to develop exam questions, triggering new furor Vulture’s Claudia Rosenbaum: A Guide to the 63 and Counting Lawsuits Against Diddy The New York Times’s Benjamin Mullin: The Dispatch Buys SCOTUSblog, a Supreme Court MainstayWe’ll be back next Wednesday with additional reporting and insights. In the meantime, keep up with our coverage here.
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