Male, October 12: The Secretariat of Parliament has accepted the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP)-initiated motion of no-confidence against Speaker Mohamed Nasheed and has notified parliament members, the legislature’s administrative body has confirmed.
According to the rules of procedures, a motion of no confidence in the Speaker or Vice-Speaker must be sent to the Secretary-General, the Speaker, and the Members of Parliament (MPs) within three days of the motion.
MDP withdrew its first no-confidence motion after its candidate President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih finished second in the first round of the presidential elections and while it was attempting to seek support from The Democrats, Nasheed’s party, which finished third. Despite its political machinations, MDP decided to revisit the issue of Nasheed’s removal following the party’s defeat in the presidential election runoff.
The current no-confidence motion has the support of 49 MPs.
Nasheed contends that it would be difficult to entertain another no-confidence motion in the same term, an assertion partly based on Article 89(c) of the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament, which states that a rejected bill cannot be reintroduced in the same term. However, some legal experts point out that no-confidence motions are different from bills.
The parliamentary secretariat later announced that it would accept the MDP’s motion and confirmed the decision in a social media post.
A motion of no confidence in the Speaker can proceed if it is backed by one-fourth of the total number of MPs, or at least 22 members. It would then be tabled in Parliament, presided over by the Deputy Speaker, and can result in the Speaker’s removal if passed by a majority of the MPs present and voting.
<img src="https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-loaded/v1/trpnQWcR3IaW-B2GuuhHwXn9ye8UNv30" border=0 width="1" height="1" alt="Venezuelan TPS recipients tell justices to let status stand" title="Venezuelan TPS recipients tell justices to let status stand"> <p>Lawyers for a group of Venezuelan nationals urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to keep in place a ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco that prohibits Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem from ending their designation under a special immigration program giving them temporary protection from deportation. </p> <p>Granting the government’s request and putting the order by Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen on hold “would radically shift the status quo,” <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A1059/358400/20250508162539890_2025.05.08%20NTPSA%20-%20SCOTUS%20-%20Opposition%20to%20Stay.pdf">wrote Ahilan Arulanantham</a>, a UCLA law professor representing the Venezuelan citizens. It would mean that “nearly 350,000 people would immediately lose the right to live and work in this country,” Arulanantham emphasized.</p> <span id="more-505844"></span> <p>The plaintiffs in this case are beneficiaries of the Temporary Protected Status program, which allows them to stay in the United States and work. Under federal law, the DHS secretary can designate foreign citizens under the TPS program when she determines that they cannot return safely to their home country because of a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions in the foreign state.” When a country no longer meets those criteria, the law provides, the secretary should terminate the TPS designation. </p> <p>The initial designation of Venezuela under the TPS program was made in 2021, by then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who subsequently extended the program. </p> <p>In February, Noem ended both the TPS designation and efforts to extend it for a particular group of Venezuelan nationals. The plaintiffs in this case then went to federal court in San Francisco, asking Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen to delay Noem’s termination. </p> <p>Chen issued an order on March 31 that prohibited Noem from ending the TPS designation, calling her conduct “unprecedented” and suggesting that the decision to revoke the designation had been based on negative stereotypes about Venezuelan migrants. </p> <p>When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit turned down the government’s request to pause Chen’s ruling while its appeal continued, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to intervene. He emphasized that the TPS program “implicates particularly discretionary, sensitive, and foreign-policy-laden judgments of the Executive Branch.” </p> <p>The Venezuelan nationals told the justices that putting Chen’s order on hold “would cause more harm than it would prevent, inflicting massive injury on” them “through lost employment and widespread deportations to an unsafe country.” By contrast, they suggested, the government has not pointed to any “harm it has suffered or will suffer between now and when the Ninth Circuit decides its appeal, which is set for argument on July 16.” Indeed, they noted, the government did not even ask the Supreme Court to step in for “nearly two full weeks after” the 9th Circuit declined to do so. </p> <p>Moreover, the group added, they are likely to win on the merits of their claim – one of the key criteria the justices consider in determining whether to grant temporary relief – because although federal immigration law gives the DHS secretary significant discretion in deciding whether to designate a country for TPS or to redesignate it, she has substantially less discretion once those designations are made, “both as to the timing of the review process and what criteria the Secretary must use in deciding whether to extend or instead terminate TPS protection.” And federal law does not give her any power to vacate or rescind an extension, the plaintiffs emphasized. </p> <p>The Venezuelan nationals’ filing in this case came on the same afternoon that <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A1079/358354/20250508121118618_Kristi_Noem_v_Svitlana_Doe_et_al_%20application_stay.pdf">the Trump administration asked the court</a>to intervene in another immigration dispute, involving a ruling by a federal district judge in Massachusetts that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from revoking the Biden administration’s grant of parole – that is, permission to temporarily stay in the United States for humanitarian or public interest reasons – to more than 500,000 noncitizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. </p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/05/venezuelan-tps-recipients-tell-justices-to-let-status-stand/">Venezuelan TPS recipients tell justices to let status stand</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com">SCOTUSblog</a>.</p>
<img src="https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-loaded/v1/md9HHjpx7ssNnWZS_LGH_Xn9ye8UNv30" border=0 width="1" height="1" alt="Lessons about home and humility from Justice Souter " title="Lessons about home and humility from Justice Souter "> <p><em>This article is <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/category/tributes-to-justice-david-souter/">part of a series</a> on the legacy and jurisprudence of the late Justice David Souter. </em></p> <p><em>Michael Mongan currently serves as the California Solicitor General. He clerked for Justice David Souter from 2007 to 2008.</em><strong><em></em></strong></p> <p>In the days since Justice Souter passed away, I’ve struggled to assemble words that convey the depth of my feelings about him.</p> <p>Some portion of that difficulty might be attributed to the private and humble manner in which he lived his life. He generally avoided making public remarks outside the courtroom (with a few notable exceptions, like his outstanding <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCxaDwOCXD8">speech</a> at Harvard in 2010). He spent much of his time and energy in the confines of his judicial chambers, along with those lucky few whom he hired to serve as clerks and assistants. Many of the deeds and remarks that define him in my mind arose in that confidential setting and will go with me and my colleagues to our graves. </p> <span id="more-528559"></span> <p>The greater part of the problem is that words are imperfect substitutes for human emotions. Although I earn my living by describing complex legal subjects, when it comes to describing my admiration and love for David Hackett Souter, the written word seems inadequate for the task at hand.</p> <p>What I can say is that he profoundly influenced who I am, as a lawyer and a human being, for reasons quite apart from his piercing intellect and his principled jurisprudence.</p> <p>To begin, Justice Souter taught me the value of home. For him, home was not an abstract concept but a precise physical location: the hamlet of Weare, New Hampshire. He moved there with his parents at a young age to live in a farmhouse handed down from his mother’s family, and his heart never left. </p> <p>Living in New Hampshire grounded him in a community that shaped and shared his basic values. It preserved the bonds with his oldest friends and his most cherished memories. And it distanced him from the pressures inherent in any place to which people move for the purpose of amassing wealth or power.</p> <p>That attachment to home was a lodestar of his adult life. With his smarts and credentials, he could have been an immediate success in academia, on Wall Street, or anywhere else. But he chose to return from Harvard to his home, entering the private practice of law at a small, local firm; rising through the ranks of state government to become New Hampshire Attorney General; then rising through the state judiciary to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. His later public prominence came despite his geographical choices, not because of them.</p> <p>Eventually, after President George H.W. Bush called on him to serve on the Supreme Court, he relocated to Washington for part of each year. But he never gave up his true home and he returned there as often as possible. The broadest smile I ever saw on his face was in June 2008, at the end of the term during which I clerked for him, as he walked to his Volkswagen to drive back to New Hampshire — as rapidly as the traffic laws allowed.</p> <p>Justice Souter’s undying relationship with his home was an object lesson for me. A California kid with an interest in law and politics, I assumed my only option was to locate my career in Washington. After my clerkship, I worked in the Obama administration. I loved the professional buzz of Washington as well as the friends I made there. And the career opportunities for someone with my credentials seemed more attractive in Washington than anywhere else. </p> <p>But my true home — my Weare — was in the San Francisco Bay Area, where my family had lived for generations and my oldest friends remained. When my wife and I were expecting our first child in 2010, Justice Souter gave me the courage to return to my home. With his example in mind, I knew that returning would be the better move for me and my family, come what might professionally. And — as so often happens — the best move personally turned into the best move professionally, leading to a fulfilling career in private practice and government service in my native state. </p> <p>Justice Souter also showed me how to be a public servant. His models of public service were not the well-known names that populate our history books, but the forgotten early statesmen of the Massachusetts Bay Colony — once described by Nathaniel Hawthorne as men who “had fortitude and self-reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril, stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide.” For them, public service was a pursuit worthwhile not for fame or power, but for the greater satisfaction that comes from quietly and resolutely advancing the rule of law and safeguarding their political community.</p> <p>And done right, there was joy in it too. For Justice Souter, doing it right meant working hard — seven days a week, often late into the evening. It meant doing most of the work himself. (I’m not spilling any chambers secrets to say that the distinctive nineteenth-century prose that characterizes his opinions in the United States Reports could only have been written by him personally.) And it meant approaching the job with an intellectual rigor and humility befitting the indeterminacy of so many of the legal questions that reach the Supreme Court. </p> <p>That may not be everyone’s idea of a good time. But it made Justice Souter happy. He was one of those fortunate few who united his avocation and vocation, to steal a line from one of his favorite poets.</p> <p>Last, Justice Souter taught me (and everyone else who encountered him) the meaning of the word mensch. </p> <p>Despite his popular reputation as a bit of a curmudgeon, he was the most charming and witty person I’ve known: a raconteur of the highest order, with a wry smile and a humorous story fit for any circumstance.</p> <p>He was unfailingly kind to those around him — no matter their position. It seemed to me that he knew the name of every custodian, elevator operator, and police officer in the building. Not just their name, but their spouse’s name, and their kids’ names, and their family history. He invested in those relationships not for show, but because of a fundamental human decency that transcended ordinary courtesy. He genuinely cared about other human beings.</p> <p>He was the embodiment of honesty and judicial ethics.</p> <p>And he was a terrific boss: solicitous of our ideas, generous with his time and mentorship, encouraging when we needed it, and empathetic when we made mistakes. </p> <p>I will miss him more than I can say.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/05/lessons-about-home-and-humility-from-justice-souter/">Lessons about home and humility from Justice Souter </a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com">SCOTUSblog</a>.</p>
