Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

The Supreme Court, taking its first action on President Trump’s sweeping campaign to dismantle federal agencies and programs, temporarily blocked today a cutoff of nearly $2 billion in funding for foreign aid. The order, though, was very narrow and will soon be overtaken by events developing in lower courts. By a 5-to-4 vote on Wednesday… Read More

Exactly 228 years ago today, March 4, 1797, George Washington finished his second term as President, ready to retire quietly to being a plantation farmer at Mount Vernon. Four years from now, America could be asking itself: will President Trump be willing to step aside? In fact, Trump and some of his followers already are… Read More

The first test to reach the Supreme Court of President Trump’s sweeping claims of unchecked constitutional power over the government resulted Friday night in a brief setback, keeping a fired federal official in his job for another five days. Little of final meaning can be read into the Court’s ruling, which amounted only to a… Read More

America may face an economic calamity if the Supreme Court rules too broadly on President Trump’s power to fire government officials, a starkly worded legal brief by professors specializing in finance law told the Justices on Tuesday afternoon. No matter how the Justices rule on a pending case involving Trump’s sudden removal, without cause, of… Read More

UPDATED Sunday evening: Arguing that federal judges across the nation are wrongly blocking major policies of the new Trump Administration, Justice Department lawyers rushed to the Supreme Court on Sunday seeking emergency help.  The 35-page filing asked for an immediate order to undo, temporarily, a trial court judge’s order reinstating an official fired by President… Read More

A historic Supreme Court ruling that has been a sturdy part of the Constitution’s checks on the awesome powers of the Presidency could be the next landmark to fall. The Trump Administration plans to ask the Court to overrule that 90-year-old decision as part of wide-ranging efforts to build up presidential authority. In a letter… Read More

President Trump’s bold attempt to take away from thousands of newborn children one of the most basic rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution – the right to citizenship at birth — failed completely on Wednesday night in its first significant test in a federal court. A jurist in the Maryland suburb of Greenbelt, U.S. District… Read More

President Trump, claiming power that the Constitution does not give him, has ordered government officials not to enforce the new federal law banning TikTok, the very popular social media platform. As a result of that law, TikTok was shut down for just a few hours this week. Congress, in passing the law last April, had… Read More

A federal judge in Florida on Tuesday pushed further out of public reach the federal prosecutors’ detailed account of why Donald Trump held onto, and what he did with, highly sensitive secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago private club after he left the Presidency four years ago. U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon of Fort… Read More

(Note to readers: This report deals with the situation as of mid-morning Saturday. It is very fluid, with a number of “ifs” noted, and could change at any time.) Between now and Sunday night, the final government report on what happened with highly sensitive, secret documents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private club might vanish or… Read More