Despite two significant 6-3 rulings favoring Donald Trump’s radical immigration agenda, Legal AF’s Michael Popok noted that the lower courts also slapped down the administration’s other priorities on Thursday involving elections and the $1.776 billion slush fund.
On Thursday, a second federal judge struck down portions of Trump’s executive order purporting to overhaul how states conduct elections — once again, providing a simple civics lesson about how the U.S. constitutional order operates.
“Both Congress and the President lack any role regarding voter eligibility,” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote in a 37-page order, nixing the creation of so-called “Confirmed Citizens Lists” and enforcement mechanisms related to it, including those involving the U.S. Postal Service.
All Rise News reported on similar rulings throughout the week voiding other provisions of the executive order.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who issued an injunction blocking Trump’s fund earlier this month, rejected the Trump Justice Department’s reheated arguments that the case is moot.
Here are some show notes for more information (and original sourcing) for the topics discussed in the roughly 45 minute video above:
In case you missed it, take a deep dive into the immigration-related decisions in my interview with former Obama administration counsel Andrea Flores here.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Wolford v. Lopez overturned Hawaii’s law concealed weapons onto property property that’s open to the public, like grocery stores, coffee shops and gas stations.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson notes that she believes Justice Clarence Thomas’s ruling in Bruen, establishing a historical tradition test for gun regulations, was “wrongly decided,” but “if it is going to be our precedent, the majority should at least endeavor to apply it faithfully.”
Hawaii has a history of the some of the tightest gun laws in the country, and Jackson’s historical analysis dates back to King Kamehameha III in 1883.
Finally, viewers asked about the case of the Prairieland case in Texas, where the defendants collectively racked up hundreds of years of prison time. One officer was shot at an immigration detention center, leading the Trump Justice Department to lob anti-terrorism charges at a larger group of alleged antifa activists.
The case gained national attention as the first volley in the administration’s crackdown on anti-fascist protesters, but as discussed in the video, different defendants had varying levels of involvement. The New York Times reported that five of the government’s own cooperating witnesses disputed that they self-identified as “antifa,” a movement that has no leadership or membership.
One defendant, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, wasn’t at the protest site, but was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment for concealing leftist zines related to his wife’s investigation, in a case that drew the attention of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
To catch up on the controversy surrounding this case, read coverage of the sentences in The New York Times and The Guardian, and look out for my upcoming discussion with the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s advocacy director Seth Stern on Legal AF.
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