by Jordan Rubin | Apr 10, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Supreme Court will hear arguments later this month on the Trump administration’s quest to end humanitarian immigration protections for Haitians and Syrians, in a case that could affect immigrants from many countries. Ahead of the hearing, lawyers challenging the administration alerted the justices to evidence they say undercuts the government’s position.
On Thursday, they filed a letter regarding evidence produced by the government in discovery, namely three documents that, the plaintiffs wrote to the high court, “undercut the Government’s stated rationale for the termination” of the humanitarian relief at issue, called Temporary Protected Status.
The first document is a September 2025 email in which a researcher at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services wrote that her supervisor was “forcing” her “to include a section” in a Haiti report “on how TPS is a pull factor” for unlawful migration. The researcher wrote that she would do so if they “had any empirical evidence to support that claim,” but they didn’t. She wrote that she was “obeying” her supervisor’s “command” but that she wanted to “go on record” that she was “concerned” about “making such claims without empirical support.”
Another document is an email sent by the same USCIS researcher the following month that said there were no known or suspected terrorist “hits for Haiti,” and said that claim was removed from their analysis because it didn’t support “the termination argument.”
A third document referenced in the letter is an email from a different USCIS employee that said “DHS data” showed that “0.06%” of the Haiti TPS population had “public safety records” and that none were associated with known or suspected terrorist records.
The justices agreed last month to consider the issue that
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 9, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Whether it’s acting Attorney General Todd Blanche or any of the other contenders who wind up leading President Donald Trump’s Justice Department after Pam Bondi’s ouster, the DOJ still faces a crucial hurdle in its effort to use federal prosecution as a weapon on the president’s behalf: Americans.
One of the most remarkable stories of Trump’s second term has been grand juries rejecting some of the administration’s most politicized and meritless attempts to bring criminal cases. That stunning pattern has emerged in the failures to secure indictments against both prominent and everyday people.
We’ve seen it in the DOJ’s failure to secure charges in Washington against Democratic lawmakers who released a video urging soldiers not to follow illegal orders, after which the Republican president accused them in a social media post of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Through their refusal to return an indictment earlier this year, grand jurors effectively said the politicians’ actions should not be punishable at all.
The quest to revive charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James has likewise faltered. The DOJ has appealed the dismissal of charges against her and former FBI Director James Comey, which a judge dismissed due to the illegal appointment of the Trump-aligned lawyer who brought the cases, Lindsey Halligan. The judicial dismissal serves as a reminder of the courts as a bulwark against revenge-based prosecutions, too.
Everyday people on grand juries have also stood up for everyday people whom the Trump DOJ has sought to charge with assaults on law enforcement officers in Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles. Notable examples include sandwich thrower Sean Dunn, as well as Sidney Reid, whom grand jurors refused to indict a whopping three times. When prosecutors plowed forward to trial on misdemeanor charges
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 8, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
President Donald Trump’s failed U.S. attorney nominee-turned-pardon attorney Ed Martin is trying to move his DC Bar disciplinary proceedings to federal court. It’s a move that another Trump-aligned lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, previously tried and failed.
The DC Bar is looking into Martin based on his actions while serving as the district’s acting U.S. attorney, before bipartisan opposition blocked his confirmation (which ultimately went to Jeanine Pirro).
Among Martin’s unusual activities during his interim top prosecutor stint was writing, in February 2025, to the dean of Georgetown Law School, a private Catholic and Jesuit institution, about the school’s alleged “DEI” practices, which Martin deemed “unacceptable” and said his office would not hire students from schools with such practices. The dean responded in a March 2025 letter that the First Amendment prevents the government from telling Georgetown what to teach and how to teach it.
Martin reiterated that he wanted answers to his DEI questions and noted Georgetown’s status as a federally funded nonprofit, adding that no Georgetown Law students would be considered for positions in his office. Martin also wrote to the university’s president and board chair, complaining that the dean had not responded and stating answers to his questions were relevant to the university’s nonprofit status and federal funding.
Phillip Argento, a Georgetown graduate and retired judge, wrote to the DC Bar, requesting an investigation of what he called Martin’s apparent professional misconduct. Argento wrote that, as someone who teaches at his church, he viewed Martin’s letter to the school as an attack on religious freedom.
The bar initiated formal disciplinary proceedings. In a filing specifying the charges last month, bar disciplinary counsel Hamilton Fox alleged Martin “knew or should have known that, as a government
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 7, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Politically diverse voices have raised the prospect of using the 25th Amendment to sideline President Donald Trump as he brings us to the brink of World War III.
Whatever the likelihood of such a move, you might wonder: How would that constitutional process play out?
Section 4 of the amendment gives the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet (or another body designated by Congress) the power to declare that the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” If such a declaration is made here, then Vice President JD Vance would, as the amendment says, “immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
But that would not end the matter. Section 4, which has never been invoked, goes on to give the president the power to then tell Congress that he’s able to serve. In that case, he regains the office unless the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet (or another body designated by Congress) say he’s unable to serve. If that happens, then it’s up to Congress to decide, with the amendment requiring a two-thirds vote in both chambers, that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” If Congress makes that determination, the vice president continues acting as president; otherwise, the president resumes serving.
So, although the initial action can come from the White House, Congress ultimately has a role to play, and Republicans control both chambers.
Discussion of the amendment surfaced during Trump’s first term, too. For example, following the Jan. 6 insurrection, his vice president at the time, Mike Pence, whom Trump supporters said they wanted hanged, declined to invoke it.
The 25th Amendment is distinct
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 6, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
After he attended last week’s Supreme Court hearing and saw that his anti-birthright citizenship order will likely be struck down, Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social: “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!”
The U.S. isn’t the only country with birthright citizenship. But the president’s emotional reaction reflected his apparent understanding that he will likely lose the case when the justices rule later in the spring or early summer. Indeed, Trump telegraphed his resignation to the probable defeat long before the oral argument, when he wrote on Truth Social in February that the court “will find a way to come to the wrong conclusion” on citizenship, like it did when he lost the tariffs case.
The president doesn’t seem any more confident in the days after the hearing. In a social media post that published at 12:57 a.m. ET on Monday, he wrote:
It’s too bad that the Supreme Court can’t watch and study the Mark Levin Show tonight on the Birthright Citizenship Scam. If they saw it they would never allow that money making HOAX to continue. THEY SHOULD USE THEIR POWERS OF COMMON SENSE FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY. They failed miserably on Tariffs, needlessly costing the USA Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in potential rebates for the benefit haters and scammers. Why??? Don’t do it again! The Country can only withstand so many bad decisions from a Court that just doesn’t seem to care.
Nothing is stopping Supreme Court justices from watching or studying Mark Levin’s Fox News show. But Trump’s social media complaint makes the same mistake that Solicitor General John Sauer did last week during oral argument, by
by Jordan Rubin | Apr 6, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Supreme Court on Monday granted the Trump Justice Department’s request to vacate an appeals court ruling against Steve Bannon, after the Department of Justice told the high court that it wants to dismiss the matter that was brought against the Donald Trump ally during the Biden administration.
The high court relief doesn’t officially dismiss the case, but it clears a path for that conclusion, as the DOJ has a pending motion in the trial court seeking dismissal. The next step will play out in the lower courts.
Bannon was convicted in 2022 for not complying with the House Jan. 6 select committee. He served a four-month sentence after the justices refused in the summer of 2024 to let him stay free while he appealed. He continued his appeal after serving his time, filing a petition with the justices in October after his appeals court loss.
The legal issue centered on the government’s burden of proof in contempt cases. Bannon claimed he reasonably believed, based on legal advice, that he didn’t have to respond to the committee’s subpoena. To the extent that he raised an important legal question, it will remain unresolved with Monday’s Supreme Court action.
Notably, the Trump DOJ initially waived its right to respond to Bannon’s petition at the high court, which would have typically led to the court denying it and letting his conviction stand. But in November, the court requested a response from the DOJ — which, in a typical criminal case, would have been a brief opposing Supreme Court review and seeking to uphold the conviction.
Yet the DOJ instead responded by seeking the bespoke treatment granted by the justices on Monday.
As is typical in such cases, the Supreme Court didn’t
