by Jordan Rubin | Jan 13, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
A federal judge ruled in November that Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully installed by the Trump administration as the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. That led a different judge to order Halligan to explain why she kept calling herself the district’s U.S. attorney in court papers.
Among her defenses: Jack Smith did it, too.
In her response Tuesday, Halligan recalled that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents indictment in Florida on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel. “Yet in the days and weeks that followed, the Government continued — openly and without objection by any Court — to file documents identifying Jack Smith by his title as Special Counsel while appellate review proceeded,” Halligan wrote.
She added that Smith continued to refer to himself as special counsel in Trump’s separate election interference case in Washington, D.C., and that “as far as the Government is aware, no court — much less any judge — ever threatened Smith with attorney discipline for making purportedly ‘false or misleading statement[s],’ ‘knowingly disobey[ing]’ a court order, or engaging in ‘professional misconduct,’” Halligan wrote, referring to the order that demanded her response, which was issued by U.S. District Judge David Novak, a Trump appointee in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Yet Cannon’s 2024 order dismissing the documents indictment specified that it was “confined to this proceeding” in the Florida case, so it’s unclear how it could’ve led Smith to think he couldn’t refer to himself as special counsel in D.C., where Cannon’s ruling would not apply anyway.
Still, Halligan argues that the orders finding she was unlawfully appointed don’t stop her from holding herself out as the district’s U.S. attorney. Those orders came in November
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 13, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Supreme Court has ruled against transgender people in a string of recent cases, approving a ban on gender-affirming care for minors and green-lighting the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies on military service and passports. Heading into Tuesday’s hearings on transgender female athletes playing women’s and girls’ sports, their best realistic hope might be that the court doesn’t decide the issue at all.
It’s a dim possibility, but it’s nonetheless a procedural failsafe available to the court if, for whatever reason, the justices wind up looking for a way out. However remote the likelihood of such an outcome, it’s one to watch for as the justices question the parties on the merits of the issue as well.
‘Promoting female athletic opportunities’
The two cases in which the court is hearing arguments are Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.
In the first case, Idaho Gov. Brad Little is defending the state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, the first law of its kind, passed in 2020, that banned transgender women and girls from participating in women’s student sports.
Lindsay Hecox, who’s now in her mid-20s and a senior at Boise State University, sued in 2020 when she was a freshman and wanted to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams. She won a preliminary injunction in the trial court, and the federal appeals court that covers Idaho said the trial court didn’t abuse its discretion in finding the ban likely violates equal protection guarantees. Hecox failed to make the teams but wound up playing for the women’s club soccer team.
The legal question presented in her case, as framed by the state, is whether laws that seek to protect women’s and girls’ sports by limiting participation to women
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 12, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
News that the Justice Department is investigating Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell comes just ahead of a Supreme Court hearing over President Donald Trump’s bid to fire Lisa Cook from the Fed’s Board of Governors.
While the high court’s Republican-appointed majority has broadly blessed Trump’s firing powers and doesn’t seem to care much for independent federal agencies in general, the court has nonetheless signaled it wants to insulate the Fed from Trump’s consolidation of agency power. Indeed, the court let Cook stay on the board pending the outcome of the litigation, which the court hasn’t allowed for many other agency members.
Against that backdrop, news of the Powell probe might not help the Trump administration in the Cook case. It’s unclear whether the new investigation will come up directly in the appeal, but the addition of further apparent evidence that the administration is weaponizing the DOJ to carry out the president’s policy goals could make the high court even more likely to take steps to secure the central bank’s independence.
In a video statement Sunday night, Powell said the DOJ served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas on Friday, threatening prosecution related to his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee last June. The testimony was about renovations to Fed office buildings.
Yet, Powell said the “threat” wasn’t really about his testimony or buildings. He said those are “pretexts” and that the “threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”
While that pretext is clear to anyone watching this unfold, it’s nonetheless remarkable to hear Powell call that
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 10, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. I wasn’t planning on mentioning Thomas Paine in back-to-back newsletters. But then the Nicolás Maduro case happened.
Last week, Paine surfaced in Chief Justice John Roberts’ year-end report, in which Roberts celebrated the nation’s founding charters that were inspired by the revolutionary figure. The “Common Sense” author’s relevance this week is also Supreme Court-related, even if the connection is a little less obvious.
The connection comes through a 1992 Supreme Court case that could surface in Maduro’s prosecution. The high court’s ruling addressed the forcible abduction of Dr. Humberto Álvarez-Machaín from Mexico. The Mexican citizen was charged in the U.S. with participating in the kidnapping and murder of U.S. drug enforcement agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena Salazar. He was accused of prolonging Camerena’s life to lengthen his torture and interrogation. In a 6-3 ruling led by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the court said that even if the abduction was “shocking” and contrary to international law, that still wouldn’t stop Álvarez-Machaín from standing trial in the U.S.
The dissent, penned by the late Justice John Paul Stevens, argued that even if Álvarez-Machaín helped carry out “an especially brutal murder of an American law enforcement agent,” that wouldn’t justify “disregarding the Rule of Law that this Court has a duty to uphold.” Stevens quoted Paine’s warning that an “avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty,” because it leads a country “to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.” The justice closed his dissent with the revolutionary’s reminder: “‘He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.’”
Safe
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 3, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. I hope you all had better things to do on New Year’s Eve than read Chief Justice John Roberts’ year-end report on the federal judiciary — unless you’re into that sort of thing.
The annual offering typically consists of the chief relaying a historical anecdote or theme that leaves room for speculation over its intended application to the present day. There’s also the question of how much his views matter these days, anyway, on the court with five other Republican appointees who don’t need his vote to form a majority.
But that was the high-court meal we were served this week, so let’s dig into this year’s fare, set against the backdrop of the Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary.
The first line caught my eye, where Roberts referred to Thomas Paine as a “recent immigrant” to the North American colonies in the late 1700s. Though it’s a straightforward description of the man who inspired American independence, the word “immigrant” is a dirty one for the nativist Trump administration, whose gravest legal violations have come in the immigration context.
On that note, the justices are set to rule by July on the administration’s misbegotten bid to upend birthright citizenship, in what could be one of the Roberts Court’s most important decisions yet. The chief justice’s normal phrasing is hardly a promise to reject the appeal that flies in the face of the Constitution, but it struck me as a notable word choice in any event.
I was also thinking about birthright citizenship when reading Roberts’ recitation of the Reconstruction Amendments — the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments that abolished slavery and guaranteed due process, equal protection and “the right to vote to Black
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 2, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
“What goes on behind the scenes at the Supreme Court after they have listened to oral arguments? Do they just close the doors to their offices and make up their minds about how to vote, or do they discuss issues and then decide? Do they try to convince each other?” — Karen
Hi Karen,
After the court hears oral arguments in a case, the justices privately vote on how they want to rule. If Chief Justice John Roberts is in the majority, then he’ll write the opinion himself or assign it to another justice in the majority. If he’s in the minority, then the senior justice in the majority plays that role.
All of this happens behind the scenes. The court doesn’t announce who’s drafting the opinions. We only see the final product when it’s published.
Of course, there was the leak ahead of the 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. “Justices circulate draft opinions internally as a routine and essential part of the Court’s confidential deliberative work,” the court said in a press release after the Dobbs draft leak, adding that Justice Samuel Alito’s draft “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”
The court’s statement underscores the fact that justices can change their minds during the drafting process, even if that didn’t happen in Dobbs. Along with publishing the leaked draft in May 2022, Politico reported that the other four GOP appointees aside from Roberts had voted with Alito in their private conference. That five-justice majority stayed the same in the opinion published the following month, with the chief justice adding a concurring opinion
