Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“A federal judge has indefinitely extended her order banning the Trump administration from mass firing federal employees during the government shutdown.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/28/government-shutdown-federal-workers-rifs-ruling-00626042
““In Portland, protests have endured for months, and the [Portland police have] been either unwilling or unable to respond to the disturbances,” the appeals judges wrote.
Nelson and Bade said Immergut relied too heavily on Trump’s social media commentary — calling Portland “war ravaged” — to conclude that his deployment was “untethered” from reality, noting that the unrest had required a surge of law enforcement from the Federal Protective Service to contain.
The 9th Circuit panel majority repeatedly cited a similar decision issued by three colleagues permitting Trump’s deployment of Guard troops to Los Angeles earlier this year. In the ruling, the judges said Trump is owed great deference in determining whether civil unrest reaches a point in which the military may be called in for support.
The majority said Immergut used a faulty definition of rebellion in her decision, but the appeals judges did not address whether Trump had a valid claim that such unrest was underway when he sent in the Guard. (They did say they were not endorsing Trump’s description of Portland as a “war zone.”)
The appeals panel’s dissenting judge, Clinton appointee Susan Graber, called the majority’s decision ”absurd,” pleaded with her 9th Circuit colleagues to quickly reverse it and urged the public to “retain faith in our judicial system for just a little longer.”
“We have come to expect a dose of political theater in the political branches, drama designed to rally the base or to rile or intimidate political opponents. We also may expect there a measure of bending—sometimes breaking—the truth,” Graber wrote. “By design of the Founders, the judicial branch stands apart. We rule on facts, not on supposition or conjecture, and certainly not on fabrication or propaganda.”
Graber emphasized that even though there had been unruly protests in Portland in June, they had largely subsided and by September routinely featured 30 or fewer demonstrators and virtually no violence or requests for local police assistance.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/20/national-guard-deployment-oregon-ruling-00615660
“Young’s ruling came in response to one of the Trump administration’s signature policies, its attempts to shut down Palestinian solidarity protests by deporting Palestinian students and their supporters. The American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association sued a few days after the arrest of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, arguing that the policy violates freedom of speech, both by intimidating foreign academics in America and preventing American academics “from hearing from, and associating with, their noncitizen students and colleagues.”
Ruling that administration officials indeed “acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target non-citizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech,” Young promised to hold a hearing on the specific measures he will order. He wrote that “it will not do simply to order the Public Officials to cease and desist in the future,” given the current political environment.
…
The ruling itself meticulously outlined how several different activists—Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yunseo Chung, and Badar Khan Suri—were targeted for deportation and how the administration justified it, both internally and publicly. Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly claimed in the media that the deportations were meant to target “riots” on campus, Young shows that the students were often targeted based on their opinions alone, with vague chains of association linking them to violent protests.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/01/reagan-appointed-judge-slams-trumps-crackdown-on-pro-palestinian-students/
“A federal judge has paused the Trump administration’s plan to lay off more than 500 employees of the U.S. Agency for Global Media — most from Voice of America — while warning that senior officials there had repeatedly failed to comply with his orders to preserve the international broadcaster’s key operations.”
The Trump administration is defying the courts.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/29/judge-pauses-cuts-to-us-agency-for-global-media-00586081
“Lawyers for the men say that as soon as they reached Ghana, they were informed that they would be quickly transferred to their home countries, even though they had won protection from U.S. immigration courts from being returned to their homes for fear of persecution or torture.
…
“For over three decades, through five presidential administrations, this country has adhered to its obligations to treat refugees humanely and to comply with the Constitutional requirement of due process, which is afforded to all persons present in this country, regardless of their citizenship status. In recent months, the government has embarked upon a series of deportations which signal a drastic change of course,” Chutkan wrote.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/15/ghana-deportations-trump-administration-ruling-00565188
“The judge found that many of those swept up in immigration raids were taken to the basement of a federal building in Los Angeles to a room known as “B-18” meant to temporarily house arrestees while they are being processed. Frimpong found that many detainees were held there for hours without access to counsel.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/11/federal-judge-blocks-roving-immigration-arrests-amid-los-angeles-crackdown-00449914
“Under the Fifth Amendment, Boasberg notes, the government’s assertion that it infallibly identifies the guilty “does not suffice.” As the Supreme Court confirmed in Trump v. J.G.G., which addressed a temporary restraining order (TRO) that Boasberg issued during an earlier round of the ACLU’s litigation, “‘it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law’ in the context of removal proceedings,” meaning “the detainees are entitled to notice and opportunity to be heard ‘appropriate to the nature of the case.'” Specifically, the justices said, “AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.””
https://reason.com/2025/06/05/a-federal-judge-orders-relief-for-alleged-gang-members-deported-and-imprisoned-without-due-process/
A story of police incompetence resulting in an innocent man killed.
“At that point, according to the complaint, the officers “finally announced themselves, and Kimberly Dotson told them that someone had shot her husband and requested their help.” She “did not realize even at that moment that the three police officers had killed her husband,” which she did not learn “until she was finally told eight hours later at the police station where she was detained.”
After the shooting, the lawsuit says, “the officers involved did not disclose to investigators that they were at the wrong address, which was the error leading to the tragic result and without which it would not have occurred.” The mistake “was discovered by other officers who arrived at the scene.””
…
“In Garcia’s view, the late-night visit at the wrong house that resulted in Dotson’s death did not amount to such recklessness. He is not alone in concluding that police cannot reasonably be expected to make sure they are in the right place when they approach or even break into someone’s home.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/21/a-federal-judge-says-new-mexico-cops-reasonably-killed-an-innocent-man-at-the-wrong-house/
“The Trump-appointed judge found that the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act “exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.””
https://reason.com/2025/05/01/federal-judge-rules-trumps-alien-enemies-act-proclamation-is-unlawful/
“In an opinion issued on Wednesday, a federal judge found that the evidence “strongly support[s]” the conclusion that the Trump administration “willfully disobeyed” a March 15 order temporarily barring the removal of suspected Venezuelan gang members as “alien enemies.” James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says the government’s actions “demonstrate a willful disregard” for that order, “sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.””
https://reason.com/2025/04/16/federal-judge-in-deportation-case-finds-probable-cause-to-hold-the-trump-administration-in-contempt/