Rising This Week: The trial of Judge Dugan

Donald Trump's attacks on the judiciary head for a reckoning this week — in more ways than one.

The sign above Judge Dugan’s courtroom (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Don’t miss a single live dispatch from the courtroom.

On Monday, a jury of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan’s peers will hear opening statements in a trial with potentially major ramifications for an independent judiciary in the United States.

The 12-member jury will consider whether the steps taken by Dugan to control her courtroom earlier this year amounted to a felony and a misdemeanor.

All Rise News will be inside the courtroom for the historic trial.

Dugan pleaded not guilty to the charges in a case widely seen as Exhibit A in the Trump Justice Department’s attacks on the judiciary in the name of immigration enforcement.

When Department of Homeland Security agents showed up outside her courtroom on March 18, 2025, Judge Dugan became “visibly angry” about the federal interference, prosecutors say. Dugan had been presiding over the domestic violence case of an undocumented immigrant named Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, and she demanded to know whether the agents had a judge-signed warrant to arrest the defendant. Agents replied that they only had an administrative warrant, and Dugan referred them to the court’s chief judge for further legal advice.

What happened next is the controversy at the heart of the criminal case: Prosecutors say that Dugan steered Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to evade arrest, but agents saw Flores-Ruiz standing with his attorney later in a public hallway. It’s undisputed that a DHS agent shared an elevator with Flores-Ruiz, who was later apprehended by federal agents outside the courthouse following a “foot chase.” Flores-Ruiz was deported last month.

The jury will decide whether Dugan obstructed federal agents and tried to conceal an individual to prevent his arrest, but the national conversation surrounding the trial will grapple with far weightier questions.

• Can Trump’s Justice Department send a state court judge who takes measures to control her courtroom to prison for up to six years?

• Will courts no longer remain safe spaces during the Trump 2.0 era, driving criminal defendants and crime victims underground?

For now, the verdicts are unwritten.

There are tens of thousands of newsletters on Substack and scores of full-fledged media outlets.

Still, few of them, including some of the most established newsletters, invest their revenue into the tools of firsthand news-gathering: transcripts, court records, Pacer database bills, and traveling to where the stories break. Insights, expertise, commentary and analysis matter and deserve to be well-compensated, but these alone won’t solve the crisis facing the U.S. news media in the Trump 2.0 era.

If the next media mega-merger by Trump cronies compromises a news giant’s editorial independence, what outlets will fulfill the core functions of covering U.S. institutions?

An independent press must operate and compete in the same spaces as traditional news media without the compromises and uncertainties that come with corporate consolidation.

That’s been my conviction since founding All Rise News earlier this year, and subscribers intuitively understand this.

Your support has brought this newsletter to critical hearings in the most important cases for the defense of the rule of law in the United States, including James Comey and Letitia James in Virginia; Kilmar Abrego Garcia in Maryland and Tennessee; the birthright citizenship litigation in New Hampshire; and soon, the Dugan trial in Milwaukee, Wisc.

I am able to cover these cases because subscribers have seen the value of live court reporting provided in real time. This editorial ethos is a personal conviction, a sound business model and a direction that independent media must take.

If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, and you can afford to become one, your support sends a message that you agree and will ultimately allow me to scale up this mission as All Rise News continues to grow.

Below the paywall:

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