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Jimmy Carter’s Art of the Deal

Early one morning in spring 1978, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s sharp-elbowed national security adviser, walked into the Oval Office to find the U.S. president…

mingooland · · 5 min read
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Trump asks justices to lift judge’s order pausing mass federal layoffs

<img src="https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-loaded/v1/eRLS60EgagbJmf0NHsrmc3n9ye8UNv30" border=0 width="1" height="1" alt="Trump asks justices to lift judge’s order pausing mass federal layoffs" title="Trump asks justices to lift judge’s order pausing mass federal layoffs"> <p>The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Friday afternoon, asking the justices to temporarily block an order by a federal judge in San Francisco that bars the Trump administration from implementing an executive order and a related memorandum calling for large-scale reductions in the federal workforce – the elimination of jobs, followed by the transfer or firing of the employees who did those jobs. </p> <p>U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A1106/358981/20250516121951847_Trump_v_AFGE_Stay_Appl.pdf">told the court</a> that the order by Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Illston has “caused mass confusion throughout the Executive Branch.” “Neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has ever intended to make federal bureaucrats ‘a class with lifetime employment, whether there was work for them to do or not,’” Sauer wrote.</p> <span id="more-528616"></span> <p>According to law professor Stephen Vladeck, who closely tracks emergency applications at the Supreme Court, this was the Trump administration’s 15th request for emergency relief in the 16 weeks since Trump’s second inauguration. Yesterday the justices heard oral arguments in another of Trump’s request for emergency relief, asking the justices to partially block three orders by federal judges that bar the government from enforcing Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship. </p> <p>The dispute in this case began after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in February instructing federal agencies to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law.” </p> <p>Several labor unions, advocacy groups, and local governments went to federal court, seeking to bar the Trump administration from implementing both the executive order and a memo issued to federal agencies by the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget to carry out the order. </p> <p>Illston issued a temporary restraining order on May 9 that prohibited the Trump administration from planning any RIFs and proceeding with any existing RIFs, and she ordered the administration to provide the plaintiffs with documents related to the RIFs. (Illston has, Sauer noted, “temporarily paused” the disclosure requirement, although he added that she could “reinstate that order as early as next week.”)</p> <p>The Trump administration went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, asking it to pause Illston’s order while it appealed. The court of appeals set a briefing schedule on the government’s stay request that will finish on May 22, one day before the TRO is slated to expire. </p> <p>Stressing that Illston had “entered a nationwide injunction that governs the personnel practices of 21 federal agencies, including 11 Cabinet-level agencies, and grants universal relief that far exceeds anything necessary to remediate the parties’ putative injuries,” Sauer urged the court to put Illston’s order on hold while the government’s appeal continues in the lower courts. He told the justices that the order “suffers from multiple fatal flaws.” Federal law, he contended, bars the plaintiffs from directly challenging the RIFs in federal court; they cannot do an “end-run” around that prohibition by instead asking a federal judge to pause implementation of Trump’s executive order and the OMB/OPM memo. </p> <p>The justices should also intervene because Illston’s order has caused “ongoing and severe harm” to the government, Sauer continued. In particular, he contended, it “has brought to a halt numerous in-progress RIFs at more than a dozen federal agencies, compelling the government to retain — at taxpayer expense — thousands of employees whose continuance in federal service is determined by agencies not to be in the government and public interest.” </p> <p>Finally, Sauer asked the justices to impose an administrative stay – that is, to temporarily pause Illston’s order while they consider the government’s request. “Every day that the district court’s order remains in effect,” he lamented, “a government-wide program to implement agency RIFs is being halted and delayed, maintaining a bloated and inefficient workforce while wasting countless taxpayer dollars.” </p> <p>The post <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/05/trump-asks-justices-to-lift-judges-order-pausing-mass-federal-layoffs/">Trump asks justices to lift judge’s order pausing mass federal layoffs</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com">SCOTUSblog</a>.</p>

mingooland · · 4 min read
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Supreme Court again bars Trump from removing Venezuelan nationals

<img src="https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-loaded/v1/RYLKduA8EWMk6Qq2rHg4LHn9ye8UNv30" border=0 width="1" height="1" alt="Supreme Court again bars Trump from removing Venezuelan nationals" title="Supreme Court again bars Trump from removing Venezuelan nationals"> <p>The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon extended its ban on the removal from the United States of Venezuelan men currently in immigration custody in the northern region of Texas. In <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a1007_g2bh.pdf">an eight-page unsigned opinion</a>, the justices sent the case back to a federal appeals court for another look and blocked the Trump administration from removing any of the men from the United States under an 18th-century wartime law until the appeals are resolved. </p> <p>The court instructed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to determine the kind of procedures to which detainees are entitled to challenge the removals. But it indicated that the procedures that the government used in April, when it was ready to carry out removals before the Supreme Court stepped in, were not enough to satisfy the Constitution’s guarantee of fair treatment. </p> <span id="more-528608"></span> <p>Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s order, in a 14-page opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. In Alito’s view, the Supreme Court had “no authority to issue any relief.” </p> <p>Friday’s opinion was yet another chapter in a dispute that began in March, when the Trump administration initiated efforts to remove noncitizens who it designated as members of a Venezuelan gang, known as Tren de Aragua, pursuant to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/invocation-of-the-alien-enemies-act-regarding-the-invasion-of-the-united-states-by-tren-de-aragua/">a March 15 executive order</a> issued by President Donald Trump. The order relied on the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that gives the president the power to detain or remove citizens of an enemy nation without a hearing or any other review by a court if Congress declares war or there is an “invasion” or “predatory incursion.” The law has only been invoked three times, during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. </p> <p>In his March 15 order, Trump indicated that members of Tren de Aragua were “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion” against the United States. Therefore, he concluded, any Venezuelan citizen in the United States who is 14 years old or older can be “apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as” an alien enemy. </p> <p>Even before Trump’s order went into effect, a group of detainees went to federal court in Washington, D.C., asking Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to stop their removal and challenging their designation under the Alien Enemies Act. </p> <p>Boasberg directed the federal government not to remove anyone under the Alien Enemies Act, but news reports later indicated that more than 200 noncitizens were taken to El Salvador from the United States on March 15, after Boasberg issued his order. The detainees were taken to El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security prison. </p> <p>On April 7, the Supreme Court put Boasberg’s order on hold. It explained that the detainees had brought their challenge in the wrong place: Because they were challenging their designation as alien enemies, they should have filed their lawsuits as petitions for habeas corpus in Texas, where they were being held, rather than in Washington. </p> <p>The Supreme Court also told the government that it should provide anyone who was designated for removal under the Alien Enemies Act with notice of that designation, which must be provided in a time and manner that will allow them to challenge the removal before it occurs. </p> <p>In the wake of those instructions, a group of Venezuelan men in immigration custody in the northern region of Texas went to federal court on April 16, seeking once again to block their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. </p> <p>U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix denied their request, indicating that the detainees were likely “not facing such an imminent threat.” </p> <p>The detainees returned to Hendrix and renewed their request, telling him that some of them had been notified that their removal could indeed occur at any moment. Moreover, they told him, even the men who had received notices had only received notices in English, even though most of them speak only Spanish, and the notices did not inform the men that they can challenge their designation as “alien enemies.” </p> <p>When Hendrix had not yet acted on their request, the detainees went to the 5th Circuit and then to the Supreme Court. Shortly before 1 a.m. on April 19, the Supreme Court ordered the government “not to remove any member of” the would-be class of detainees from the United States unless and until the Supreme Court indicates otherwise. </p> <p>In its unsigned opinion on Friday afternoon, the justices explained that the court of appeals was wrong when it dismissed the detainees’ appeal on the ground that it lacked the power to review it. Appeals courts, the court reasoned, have the power to review non-final orders that “have ‘the practical effect of refusing an injunction.’” When a federal district court does not take action “in the face of extreme urgency and a high risk of ‘serious, perhaps irreparable,’ consequences may have” precisely that effect – as Hendrix’s failure to rule on the detainees’ request for more than 14 hours did, the court concluded. </p> <p>Turning to the question of the notice that the detainees in this case received and whether they had a meaningful opportunity to challenge their removals, the court observed that the Trump administration did not challenge the detainees’ description of the barebones notice provided to them, or that it was preparing to carry out removals before the Supreme Court intervened on April 19. Moreover, the justices added, when the Trump administration has said that it cannot “provide for the return” of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man whom the government admits was mistakenly sent to an El Salvadoran prison, the “detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty.” </p> <p>In this case, the justices concluded, the notice that the government did provide to detainees – “roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to” contest that removal, “surely does not pass muster.” But the court of appeals, rather than the Supreme Court, should “determine in the first instance the precise process necessary to satisfy the Constitution in this case,” the justices wrote. </p> <p>Finally, the justices stressed that they were not addressing whether the detainees can actually be removed under the Alien Enemies Act. Instead, they merely “recognize[d] the significance of the Government’s national security interest as well as the necessity that such interests be pursued in a manner consistent with the Constitution. In light of the foregoing, lower courts should address AEA cases expeditiously.” </p> <p>Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a short separate concurring opinion in which he emphasized that the court’s opinion today “simply ensures that the Judiciary can decide <em>whether</em> these Venezuelan detainees may be lawfully removed under the Alien Enemies Act <em>before</em> they are in fact removed.” He added that, if it were up to him, he would have kept the case in the Supreme Court to resolve the “critical legal issues” quickly, rather than sending it back to the lower courts. </p> <p>In his dissent, Alito disputed the majority’s suggestion that Hendrix had effectively denied the detainees’ request by failing to act on it, calling it a “mischaracterization of what happened in the District Court.” Instead, he posited, the detainees had made an “extraordinary demand,” and Hendrix was simply working very hard to respond to it quickly but carefully. </p> <p>Alito also argued that the detainees were not entitled to emergency relief because they had not shown that they were likely to succeed on the merits – one of the requirements for temporary relief. But although the detainees needed to show “that they were likely to establish that class relief is available in a habeas proceeding” and that a class could be certified, Alito contended, they likely would be unable to do either of those things. </p> <p>The post <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/05/supreme-court-again-bars-trump-from-removing-venezuelan-nationals/">Supreme Court again bars Trump from removing Venezuelan nationals</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com">SCOTUSblog</a>.</p>

mingooland · · 7 min read
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Politics

Supreme Court revives excessive force suit against officer in deadly Houston-area traffic stop

<img src="https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-loaded/v1/EwCvuj_SiBXyD1RXHZ9zBHn9ye8UNv30" border=0 width="1" height="1" alt="Supreme Court revives excessive force suit against officer in deadly Houston-area traffic stop" title="Supreme Court revives excessive force suit against officer in deadly Houston-area traffic stop"> <p>The Supreme Court on Thursday revived a lawsuit filed by the mother of a Texas man who was shot and killed during a traffic stop by a police officer on a highway outside Houston. </p> <p>Roberto Felix of the Harris County Constable’s Office pulled Ashtian Barnes, who was Black, over because his girlfriend’s rental car, which he was driving to pick up her daughter from day care, had unpaid tolls. When Barnes began to drive away, with the driver’s door still open, Felix jumped on the running board and fired twice on Barnes, killing him at the scene. </p> <p>Barnes’ mother, Janice Hughes Barnes, filed a civil rights lawsuit, but her suit was dismissed when a lower court found that the officer had not used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Eight years after her son’s death, she then brought the case to the Supreme Court. </p> <span id="more-528581"></span> <p>The question before the justices was whether a federal appeals court had used the correct test to determine whether Felix had violated Barnes’s constitutional rights by using excessive force against him. In <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1239_onjq.pdf">a unanimous decision</a> written by Justice Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court concluded that it had not, and the justices sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit for another look. </p> <p>The case dates back to 2016, when Felix stopped the Toyota Corolla that Barnes was driving because he had received a radio alert that the car had unpaid toll violations. When asked for his license and proof of insurance, Barnes said that he did not have his license with him, and that his girlfriend had rented the car. </p> <p>Felix told Barnes to get out of the car. Barnes opened the door but then turned the car back on, prompting Felix to jump onto the car’s doorsill as the car began to move forward. Felix fired two shots into the car and Barnes stopped the car, as <a href="https://www.click2houston.com/news/2016/09/01/dashcam-footage-shows-fatal-shooting-of-ashtian-barnes/">recorded by dashcam footage</a>. Barnes died on the scene. </p> <p>Janice Barnes, Ashtian’s mother, went to federal court, where she alleged that Felix had violated her son’s right under the Fourth Amendment to be free of excessive force. </p> <p>The lower courts threw out her claim. Under the Fourth Amendment, the question is whether the force that Felix used was reasonable. But when an officer uses deadly force, the court of appeals explained, courts use a test known as the “moment of threat” doctrine, which looks only at whether the officer “was ‘in danger at the moment of the threat that resulted in his use of deadly force.’” Anything that happened in the moments leading up to that time, the court of appeals emphasized, were “not relevant.” </p> <p>In Barnes’s case, the court of appeals reasoned, the “moment of the threat” was the two-second period when Felix was standing on the doorsill of the Corolla while it was moving forward – a period in which, the court of appeals concluded, Felix could have reasonably believed that his life was in danger. </p> <p>Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote separately in that decision to express concern over the 5th Circuit’s use of the moment-of-threat doctrine and its reliance on analysis of the “precise moment” of deadly force. “A routine traffic stop has again ended in the death of an unarmed black man,” he wrote. </p> <p>Janice Barnes came to the Supreme Court, which on Thursday threw out the 5th Circuit’s decision. In a nine-page opinion, Kagan explained that a court’s “inquiry into the reasonableness of police force requires analyzing the ‘totality of the circumstances,’” which can in turn involve a highly fact-bound analysis. But, she stressed, such an inquiry “has no time limit,” and – the 5th Circuit’s suggestion to the contrary notwithstanding – courts can consider the facts and events leading up to the use of force, because they “may bear on how a reasonable officer would have understood and responded to later ones.” “A court deciding a use-of-force case,” she concluded, “cannot review the totality of the circumstances if it has put on chronological blinders.” </p> <p>Indeed, Kagan observed, it is so clear that the 5th Circuit’s rule is wrong that even Felix himself does not dispute it. Instead, he simply argues that the 5th Circuit does allow courts to consider the broader facts and circumstances. But even if that is generally true, Kagan wrote, “the decisions below applied a rule about timing,” looking “only to a two-second snippet of the encounter.” </p> <p>Kagan also emphasized that the justices were not weighing in on whether or who courts should consider, as part of their reasonableness analysis, the extent to which a police officer may have contributed to the dangerous situation leading to the use of force. “The courts below never confronted the issue,” she said, “precisely because their inquiry was so time-bound.” </p> <p>The justices therefore sent the case back to the lower courts “for them now to consider the reasonableness of the shooting, using the lengthier timeframe we have prescribed.” </p> <p>Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett, to note the dangers of traffic stops for police officers. When assessing whether the use of force against a fleeing driver was reasonable, he suggested, courts should consider not only whether the underlying traffic violation creates a risk for broader public safety but also whether the driver’s decision to flee the traffic stop does so. A Fourth Amendment analysis, Kavanaugh wrote, should take into account “the suspect’s attempt ‘to evade’ the officer” and “the extraordinary dangers and risks facing police officers and the community at large.”</p> <p>The post <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/05/supreme-court-revives-excessive-force-suit-against-officer-in-deadly-houston-area-traffic-stop/">Supreme Court revives excessive force suit against officer in deadly Houston-area traffic stop</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com">SCOTUSblog</a>.</p>

mingooland · · 5 min read
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