The Wisconsin Supreme Court has elected to hear a case about whether education grants for students of certain ethnic backgrounds are constitutional.
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The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in a case over a policy to allow only sex assigned at birth to be used on a passport application. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to continue carrying out, for now, its policy requiring that passports only list a person’s sex assigned at birth.
The nation’s highest court paused a lower court order that temporarily barred the administration from enforcing the policy, codified in an executive order Trump signed in January.
The executive order made it the “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female” and called on the State Department to “implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”
Under then-President Joe Biden, the State Department allowed people to “select an ‘X’ as their gender marker on their U.S. passport application.”
In the unsigned court order, the majority noted that “displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth — in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, indicating a 6-3 decision.
Jackson, who authored the dissent, wrote that the court “fails to spill any ink considering the plaintiffs, opting instead to intervene in the Government’s favor without equitable justification, and in a manner that permits harm to be inflicted on the most vulnerable party.”
“This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification,” she wrote. “Because I cannot acquiesce to this pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion, I respectfully dissent.”
In February, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the administration on behalf of seven transgender and nonbinary people over the suspension of the Biden-era policy.
A federal judge in Massachusetts in June temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing the policy. The judge had issued an earlier preliminary injunction in April that applied to six of the case’s plaintiffs.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit kept in place the district court’s order in September, prompting the administration to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
Victor Schwartz, founder and president of VOS Selections, spoke to reporters outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. Schwartz, a New York-based wine and spirits importer of 40 years, was the lead plaintiff in the case against President Donald Trump's sweeping emergency tariffs. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court during lengthy arguments Wednesday weighed whether President Donald Trump violated the Constitution when he became the first U.S. president to impose sweeping global tariffs under an economic emergency powers statute usually reserved to combat rare and unusual threats.
Justices in both the conservative 6-3 majority and liberal minority questioned the sweeping presidential power the administration is claiming under IEEPA, including Chief Justice John Roberts. Questions about how Trump officials interpret the statute and view its limits, or lack thereof, revealed their skepticism.
Members of the president’s Cabinet, members of Congress and even comedian John Mulaney packed into the high court for the first major case of Trump’s second term to be fully argued before the justices.
Tariffs are the centerpiece of Trump’s foreign policy, and he credits them in his recent negotiations to reach several unfinalized trade framework agreements with the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and China, among other nations.
For nearly three hours the justices poked and prodded at the language of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, a 1970s-era sanctions law that Trump has invoked since January in a series of emergency declarations and proclamations triggering import taxes on goods from nearly every country.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer.
Not far down the crowded rows were U.S. House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
Mulaney sat a few rows from the back, and was reportedly there to support former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who argued Wednesday on behalf of several private small businesses who sued Trump over the tariffs. Katyal, who served under President Barack Obama and hosts the “COURTSIDE” podcast, has collaborated with Mulaney on his show.
The case centered on whether the president has unilateral authority to impose tariffs under IEEPA.
Trump became the first president to ever invoke import taxes under the 1977 emergency powers law, which has traditionally used sanctions to control economic transactions of hostile groups and individuals. For example, IEEPA was first invoked during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and later used to freeze assets of terrorist groups after 9/11. In all, presidents have declared 77 national emergencies under the statute.
Small business owners who challenged Trump’s usage of the law argued the president doesn’t have the authority to tax them, and that the policy is upending their livelihoods.
Since Trump declared emergencies around fentanyl smuggling and imbalanced trade relationships, U.S. businesses have been paying anywhere from 10% to upwards of 50% on imports, depending on country of origin.
“It’s American businesses like mine and American consumers that are footing the bill for the billions of dollars collected,” Victor Schwartz, founder and president of the family-owned wine and spirits importer VOS Selections and lead plaintiff, said outside the courthouse following arguments.
Small businesses and Democratic state attorneys general led the charge in the two separate cases, consolidated before the Supreme Court. They allege Trump usurped taxing power, which belongs to Congress as outlined in Article I of the Constitution.
Schwartz’s fellow plaintiffs included a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.
Among the state officials who also joined the suit were state attorneys general from Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon.
Two Illinois-based toy makers that primarily manufacture products in Asia filed a separate challenge.
The Trump administration argues tariffs are a necessary tool to achieve economic and national security goals. Officials claim the president’s power to impose duties under IEEPA is spelled out in the statute’s language authorizing the president to “regulate” importation and exportation during times of an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”
“One of the most natural applications of that is the power to tariff,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer — the former Missouri solicitor general — said in response to questioning by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
“So when Congress confers the power to regulate imports, it is, naturally, conferring the power to tariff,” Sauer continued.
Chief Justice Roberts asked Sauer to clarify the “major power” he claimed was granted in the statute.
“The exercise of the power is to impose tariffs, right? And the statute doesn’t use the word tariffs?” Roberts said.
“But it uses the words ‘regulate importations,’ and historically, a core, central application of that, a big piece of that, has always been to tariff,” Sauer answered, speaking at a quick and excited pace.
Justice Elena Kagan asked Sauer why a president would ever use any of the other specific and constraint-bound tariff powers delegated by Congress if IEEPA “gives the president the opportunity to blow past those limits.”
“Because if you look at Title 19 (of the U.S. Code), which is loaded with tariffs and duties of various kinds, all of them have real constraints on them. They are, you know, you can’t go over X percent, or it can’t last more than one year. And of course, the way you interpret this statute, it has none of those constraints,” Kagan said.
Sauer responded that IEEPA “has its own constraints.”
“The president has to make a formal declaration of a national emergency, which subjects him to particularly intensive oversight by Congress, repeated natural lapsing, repeated review reports and so forth,” he said.
Kagan swiftly interjected: “I mean, you yourself think that the declaration of emergency is unreviewable, and even if it’s not unreviewable, it is, of course, the kind of determination that this Court would grant considerable deference to the president on, so that doesn’t seem like much of a constraint.”
“And in fact, you know, we’ve had cases recently which deal with the president’s emergency powers, and it turns out we’re in emergencies, about everything all the time, about like half the world,” Kagan said, to laughter in the courtroom.
Trump has petitioned the high court numerous times in 2025, putting cases regarding mass layoffs and immigration on the justices’ unofficial shadow docket, which bypasses a full argument process.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked why of the nearly 70 emergencies declared under IEEPA in past decades, none of them have invoked tariffs as a solution.
“Why do you think Presidents, Clinton, Bush, Obama, have not used IEEPA to impose tariffs? Because there have been trade disputes, certainly President Bush, steel imports and the like. Why do you think IEEPA has not been used?” Kavanaugh asked.
Sauer answered: “When you go through them one at a time, which we had our team do, it’s really hard to find one when you look at that emergency, you say, ‘Oh, tariffs is the natural tool you would use to address that emergency.’”
There are also “political reasons,” Sauer added. “I think that it’s no question that President Trump is by far the most comfortable with the tariffs as a tool, both economic and foreign policy, than many of others.”
Trump began imposing tariffs under IEEPA through a series of executive orders and proclamations in February and March on products from China, Canada and Mexico, declaring these countries responsible for illegal fentanyl smuggling into the United States.
The president escalated the emergency tariffs over the following months on goods from around the globe, declaring trade imbalances a national emergency. In addition to a baseline 10% global tariff, Trump specifically targeted countries that export more goods to the U.S. than they import from U.S. suppliers.
As recently as late August, Trump imposed an extra 25% tariff on goods imported from India, bringing the total tariffs on Indian products to 50%, because of the country’s usage of Russian oil.
In early August, Trump slapped a 40% tax on all Brazilian goods after he disagreed with the country’s prosecution of its former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup to remain in power in 2022.
Speaking to reporters following the arguments, Bessent said he thought the case “went very well.”
“I think the solicitor general has made a very powerful case,” he said.
When asked whether the administration was crafting plans for what to do if the Supreme Court invalidates Trump’s emergency tariffs, he replied, “We’re not going to discuss that now.”
A Republican bill that would ban absentee ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin spurred debate among GOP lawmakers Tuesday about whether the proposal is based in reality.
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French wine on display in a District of Columbia shop on March 13, 2025. The Supreme Court will hear a case on Nov. 5, 2025 challenging President Donald Trump's tariffs and one of the plaintiffs is a wine importer. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear one of the first major cases of President Donald Trump’s second term Wednesday, when the administration defends the president’s emergency tariffs that American small business owners say are upending their livelihoods.
The question at the heart of the case is whether Trump can authorize sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA — the first time a president has used the statute to impose taxes on imports.
The suit, which challenges the bounds of Trump’s presidential power, is the first of the administration’s appeals to the high court to be fully argued on its merits. The justices have so far addressed Trump’s numerous appeals on other issues on what is known as the shadow docket, a fast track to make a decision without full arguments.
The president initially said he would attend the arguments in person but has since changed course and will go to a business forum in Miami Wednesday.
The high court convenes at 10 a.m. Eastern and live audio of the arguments is posted on the court’s website.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he plans to attend the arguments, “hopefully in the front row (to) have a ringside seat,” he told Fox News’ Jesse Watters Monday
The tariff case is “one for the ages,” said Michael McConnell, professor and faculty director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and member of the legal team representing the small businesses challenging Trump’s tariffs.
“The president has important powers that come directly from the Constitution, but he has no power to impose taxes on American citizens without the authorization of Congress, and tariffs are taxes on American importers,” said McConnell, who sat on the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit from 2002 to 2009.
“IEEPA simply does not apply here,” he told reporters during an Oct. 28 virtual press conference. “It is a statute about imposing various forms of sanctions, economic sanctions, on countries with whom we are in conflict. It has nothing to do with imposing taxes on Americans for engaging in perfectly lawful trade with friendly nations.”
Victor Schwartz, founder and president of VOS Selections, a family-owned wine and spirits importer in business for four decades, said Trump’s tariff policy is an “existential threat.”
Schwartz is the lead plaintiff in one of two consolidated cases brought by small business owners and Democratic state attorneys general to challenge the duties that can range from 10% to 50%, depending on the product’s origin.
“These tariffs threaten the very existence of small businesses like mine, making it difficult to survive, let alone grow,” Schwartz told reporters during the Oct. 28 virtual press call.
“Let me be clear, Americans are paying these tariffs, not foreign entities, and the tariffs are a terrible and unsustainable weight. We have to pay tariffs immediately at the port of entry, and we don’t see revenue from those products for at least five or six months,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz said he and his daughter, with whom he runs the business, can no longer import wines from South Africa, as tariffs on products from that country are set at 30%.
Other businesses that joined Schwartz on the lawsuit include a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.
Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among states, led by Democratic state attorneys general, that also sued.
The U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with the plaintiffs in finding Trump’s IEEPA tariffs unconstitutional.
The justices will also hear from two Illinois-based toy companies who, in a separate case, challenged Trump’s emergency tariffs. Learning Resources Inc. and hand2mind manufacture most of their educational toys in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and India. Imports from those countries are taxed anywhere from 15% to above 50%, and in the case of China have been unpredictable.
Trump told reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One that the case is “one of the most important decisions in the history of our country.”
In an interview with the CBS show “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday night, Trump said the economy “will go to hell” if the high court invalidates his emergency tariffs.
“Because of tariffs, our country is wealthy again,” the president told CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell, arguing his use of tariffs as a negotiation tool will yield billions of dollars in investment in the United States from other countries. Many of the framework trade deals Trump has announced, including with the European Union, South Korea and Japan, are not yet finalized.
The government has so far collected $195 billion this year in customs duties at the end of September, according to a U.S. Treasury monthly statement.
In a September filing asking the Supreme Court to expedite the case, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote the U.S. would face “catastrophic” financial consequences, up to $1 trillion, if the emergency tariffs were overturned.
In the same filing, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer argued the import taxes are Trump’s “most significant economic and foreign-policy initiative … which President Trump has determined are necessary to rectify America’s country-killing trade deficits and to stem the flood of fentanyl across our borders.”
The administration is facing pushback on those arguments.
Scott Lincicome, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said a ruling against the tariffs “would not lead to financial ruin, as the administration has said.”
“The government also claims that ‘With tariffs, we are a rich nation. Without tariffs, we are a poor nation,’ — except studies of the fiscal trajectory of the United States with both the IEEPA tariffs, and without, show that we are drowning in debt either way,” Lincicome told reporters at the late October press briefing.
Cato filed a brief in the case arguing against the tariffs.
The case has attracted nearly two dozen friend-of-the-court briefs urging the justices to deem Trump’s IEEPA tariffs illegal, including one signed by hundreds of Democrats in Congress and one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
The lawmakers argued IEEPA “contains none of the hallmarks of legislation delegating tariff power to the executive, such as limitations tied to specific products or countries, caps on the amount of tariff increases, procedural safeguards, public input, collaboration with Congress, or time limitations.”
In the days leading up to the oral arguments, four Republican senators broke ranks to join Democrats in passing joint resolutions ending Trump’s emergency declarations triggering tariffs.
One of the bills, passed Oct. 28, targeted Trump’s emergency declaration that led to 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, including that nation’s major export: coffee. The symbolic bills are not expected to be taken up in the GOP-led House, but mark a shift from when Senate Republicans blocked a similar measure in April.
In its Supreme Court filing, Cato argued the administration’s reading of IEEPA “not only stretches the text beyond recognition but also undermines the Framers’ designs for the separation of powers. Accepting the government’s theory would mean that Congress, through ambiguous text and silence, can transfer sweeping legislative power to the President — a result this Court has cautioned against.”
In an amicus brief supporting Trump’s trade strategy, the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank heavily involved in Trump’s second presidential campaign, defended the tariffs as a “pillar of the America-first policies of the current administration” and argued the president has unilateral power to impose the taxes under a Depression-era law.
Trump began imposing tariffs under IEEPA through a series of executive orders and proclamations in February and March on products from China, Canada and Mexico, declaring these countries responsible for illegal fentanyl smuggling into the U.S.
The president escalated the emergency tariffs over the following months on goods from around the globe, declaring trade imbalances a national emergency. In addition to a baseline 10% global tariff, Trump specifically targeted countries that export more goods to the U.S. than they import from U.S. suppliers.
As recently as late August, Trump imposed an extra 25% tariff on goods imported from India, bringing the total tariffs on Indian products to 50%, because of the country’s usage of Russian oil.
In early August, Trump slapped a 40% tax on all Brazilian goods after he disagreed with the country’s prosecution of its former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup to remain in power in 2022.
Months after a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling found that a Wisconsin-based religious charity should be exempt from certain taxes, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul is challenging religious tax exemptions entirely.
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As Democrats across the country devise ways to match Republican redistricting efforts, a long-standing battle over congressional maps has been quietly progressing in one of the nation’s most competitive swing states.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is taking up two gerrymandering lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional maps after years of back-and-forth litigation on the issue. Over the summer, it appeared redistricting efforts would go nowhere before the midterms; the state’s high court in June rejected similar lawsuits.
But liberal groups have found new ways to challenge the maps that the state Supreme Court appears open to considering. This time, plaintiffs are requesting the court appoint a three-judge panel to hear their partisan gerrymandering case, and a new group has stepped into the fray with a lawsuit that argues a novel anticompetitive gerrymandering claim.
The jury is still out on whether those rulings will come in time for 2026.
“Could they be? Yes. Will they be? That’s hard to say,” said Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice.
Some developments in the cases in October indicate that the gerrymandering fight in Wisconsin is far from over.
The justices have allowed Wisconsin’s six Republican congressmen to join the cases as defendants. The congressmen are now looking to force two of the court’s liberal justices, Janet Protasiewicz and Susan Crawford, to recuse themselves from the cases. Both justices were endorsed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin; Protasiewicz criticized the maps on the campaign trail, and Crawford’s donors billed her as a justice who could help Democrats flip seats.
Some are unsure why the Republican congressmen are entering the fight now, months after the liberal groups filed the new cases.
“They took their time to even seek intervention, and now they’re seeking recusal, and now they’re trying to hold up the appointment process. I’m sure their goal is to try to throw sand in the gears of this litigation,” said Abha Khanna, a plaintiff attorney in Bothfeld v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the partisan gerrymandering case requesting that the courts appoint a three-judge panel to review the maps.
The offices and campaigns of the six Republican congressmen did not respond to requests for comment.
Khanna said her team filed the lawsuit with enough time to potentially redraw the maps, despite the congressmen’s recent actions.
“There certainly is time to affect the 2026 elections,” she said.
This lawsuit lays out a more familiar partisan gerrymandering argument, in which lawyers say Wisconsin’s congressional maps discriminate against Democratic voters. Six of the state’s eight House seats are filled by Republicans, even though statewide elections have been close partisan races. Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin — a Republican and Democrat, respectively — won their most recent statewide elections by a percentage point or less, while Gov. Tony Evers kept his office by more than 3 percentage points in 2022 (Evers will not be seeking reelection in 2026).
The plaintiffs believe they ultimately have a strong case because the state’s high court ruled in 2023 that the “least change” principle — which dictated the 2021 maps to be drawn “consistent with existing boundaries” of the 2011 maps — should no longer be used as primary criteria in redistricting. The state legislative maps were changed. But the federal district maps were not.
In effect, the maps that were proposed by Evers in 2021 continued on the legacy of Republican gerrymandering, Khanna said. The lawsuit, filed in July, requests the appointment of a three-judge panel to hear the case, after the state Supreme Court in June rejected the plaintiffs’ petition.
“It’s a judicially created metric that violates the principles of the (Wisconsin) constitution,” Khanna said. “This can be decided without any fact-finding at all. The court can decide it as a matter of law, and then we can proceed quickly to a remedial map.”
Not everyone involved is so optimistic that this will be resolved quickly. Jeff Mandell, a plaintiff attorney in the redistricting lawsuit alleging that the maps are illegally too favorable to incumbents — a new argument that hasn’t been tested in the state — said it is “exceedingly unlikely” that new maps could be drawn in time for the midterm elections. Primary candidates must file their nomination papers to the elections commission by June 1, 2026. The final district lines must be in place by spring for candidates to circulate their papers among the right voters.
“If we don’t have maps by the end of March or so, it’s very, very difficult to run the election next November,” Mandell said.
Even if the Wisconsin Supreme Court rules that the current maps are unconstitutional, the most likely scenario would punt the task of redrawing to partisan officeholders, he added — a process that could hinder easy consensus and potentially draw out the timeline for months.
Mandell’s lawsuit is arguably facing a bigger hurdle as it attempts to make the case that the districts are drawn in a way that makes it extremely difficult for challengers to have a real chance.
The exception is Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, where Rep. Derrick Van Orden has won by fewer-than-four-point margins and is currently facing three challengers, including the well-funded Democrat Rebecca Cooke, who lost to him in 2024.
The median margin of victory in Wisconsin’s remaining congressional districts is about 29 percentage points, according to a NOTUS review.
“Thirty points is not something you can overcome by having a really good candidate, it’s not something you can overcome by having a great campaign plan and executing it flawlessly, it’s not something you can overcome when there’s a swing election,” Mandell said.
The next months will prove whether the incumbent argument is convincing to Wisconsin’s justices, who have heard their share of redistricting cases.
This story was produced andoriginally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
Wisconsin’s redistricting fight isn’t over, but will new maps be drawn in time for 2026 election? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
A Wisconsin judge on Friday put on hold his order that requires elections officials to verify the citizenship of all 3.6 million registered voters in the battleground state before the next statewide election in February.
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President Donald Trump attends inauguration ceremonies in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump sought to remove his status as the only felon to be elected president by appealing his conviction on 34 New York state charges just before midnight Tuesday, arguing, in part, that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling giving the president broad immunity invalidated the conviction.
In a 96-page appeal nearly 18 months after his state court conviction that he falsified business records by disguising hush money payments over an alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels as legitimate legal payments, Trump’s attorneys recited a list of complaints over his prosecution.
Among those complaints were that New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, targeted the then-former president, and that the presiding Democratic judge created at least the appearance of partiality, the appeal said.
“This is the most politically charged prosecution in our Nation’s history,” the lengthy brief began. “After years of fruitless investigation into decade-old, baseless allegations — and under immense political pressure to criminally charge President Donald J. Trump for something — New York’s district attorney manufactured felony charges against a once-former and now-sitting President of the United States.”
Bragg’s office declined to comment on the appeal Tuesday.
The case centered on payments Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, made to Daniels in the run up to the 2016 election. Trump wanted to keep her from telling the tabloid National Enquirer about a tryst she said she had with the married Trump years earlier.
After Trump won the White House, his private business reimbursed Cohen for the payment to Daniels, according to the 2023 indictment.
Federal prosecutors had explored whether the payment to Daniels could have violated campaign finance laws. Cohen paid Daniels to keep her from publicizing her account during Trump’s 2016 race against Hillary Clinton.
They ultimately declined to bring charges.
Trump’s appeal this week said New York prosecutors impermissibly depended on campaign finance violations to charge him with felony business record falsification.
To be charged as a felony, the business records must be falsified in service of another crime, but Trump argued Monday those allegations could not have been charged because federal law preempts state law.
The New York law also requires prosecutors to show the defendant had “intent to defraud” to win a conviction for falsifying business records. Bragg and his team did not do that at trial, Trump’s attorneys said.
Trump’s attorneys also said the trial court admitted evidence that should have been protected by presidential immunity, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that established broad protections for sitting presidents.
The Supreme Court opinion said the president was not only protected from criminal charges based on official actions, but that any official action could not be used as evidence to prove an allegation that centered on an unofficial act.
The prosecution did include some official acts Trump took while in office, his lawyers said.
Prosecutors examined Hope Hicks, a former Trump White House communications director, Trump’s statements on social media, communications with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions — which Trump denies took place — and the president’s general work habits while in office.
Those examples should all be considered official actions that are immune from being used in a criminal case, Trump’s attorneys wrote.
Trump’s attorneys also argued Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the trial, should have recused himself.
Merchan donated a total of $25 to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and to a political action committee called “Stop Republicans.”
The nominal contributions violated a “clear bar on sitting judges making political contributions,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.
His daughter also worked for a political organization that opposed Trump in 2020, the brief noted.
Trump had asked Merchan to recuse himself during the trial phase, but the judge declined. Trump’s attorneys said Monday that was a “clear ground for reversal” of the conviction.
“In the face of all these undisputed and damaging facts, Justice Merchan’s refusal to recuse created, at the very least, ‘the appearance of bias,’” they wrote.
Whatever problems arose from Trump’s prosecution in New York, it had the political effect of elevating his stagnant comeback campaign.
At the nadir of his popularity following his 2020 election loss and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, several credible challengers entered the Republican presidential field for the 2024 cycle and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis led in some early polls.
But four criminal prosecutions, of which the New York hush money case was the first, had the effect of galvanizing Republicans and other voters who believed the former president was the victim of a political prosecution, and he easily won the GOP nomination.
The prosecutions played out amid the 2024 campaign, and a New York jury convicted Trump of 34 felony counts on May 30, making him the first former president to be convicted of a felony.
He won that November’s election and became the first felon to be elected president.
He successfully delayed sentencing until after the 2024 election. Merchan imposed a sentence of unconditional discharge on Jan. 10, 2025, allowing Trump to avoid prison time.
President Donald Trump holds up a chart while speaking during an event announcing broad global tariffs in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — More than 200 Democratic lawmakers and one Republican are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global emergency tariffs.
The 207 members of the U.S. House and Senate argued in an amicus brief late Friday that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, does not authorize the president to unilaterally impose tariffs. The lawmakers urged the justices to agree with a lower court finding that Trump’s wide reaching import taxes triggered under IEEPA violate the Constitution, which grants duty powers to Congress.
“IEEPA contains none of the hallmarks of legislation delegating tariff power to the executive, such as limitations tied to specific products or countries, caps on the amount of tariff increases, procedural safeguards, public input, collaboration with Congress, or time limitations,” the lawmakers wrote.
“In the five decades since IEEPA’s enactment, no President from either party, until now, has ever invoked IEEPA to impose tariffs.”
Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., ranking members of the Senate committees on Foreign Relations and Finance, led the signatures of 36 members of the upper chamber. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, was the single GOP co-signer on the brief. A majority of House Democrats, 171 in total, also joined.
The lawmakers filed the friend-of-the-court brief ahead of oral arguments scheduled before the Supreme Court next week on the question of whether Trump’s emergency tariffs are legal.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in late August upheld a lower court ruling striking down the administration’s IEEPA tariffs.
The Senate is expected to vote on three bills this week that aim to terminate Trump’s import taxes on products from Canada, Brazil and any other country subject to emergency duties.
Trump began imposing tariffs under IEEPA in February and March on China, Canada and Mexico, declaring these countries responsible for illegal fentanyl smuggling into the U.S.
The president escalated the emergency tariffs over the following months on goods from around the globe, declaring trade deficits a national emergency. A trade deficit means the U.S. imports more goods from a country than that nation purchases from U.S. suppliers.
Domestic businesses and purchasers now pay the U.S. government anywhere from 10% to 50% in tariffs on most imported products. The government had collected $195 billion this year in customs duties at the end of September, according to a U.S. Treasury monthly statement.
Several private businesses and a dozen states sued Trump over the use of the emergency statute to trigger the steep import taxes.
Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among states, led by Democratic state attorneys general, that brought the suit.
Businesses that sued the Trump administration include the lead plaintiff, V.O.S. Selections, a New York-based company that imports wine and spirits from 16 countries, according to its website.
Other plaintiffs include a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company, and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.
The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled Trump’s tariffs under IEEPA illegal in late May.
Crawford's decisions leaves the court with a 3-3 split between liberals and conservatives.
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Days after a man was charged with stalking her, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Jill Karofsky told a forum in Madison that political violence is “on the rise.”
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Michael Gableman | Up Front screen shot
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Susan Crawford issued an order Thursday recusing herself from former Justice Michael Gableman’s disciplinary case with the state Office of Lawyer Regulation.
Gableman faces a suspension of his law license for his conduct during his widely derided review of the 2020 presidential election. The Supreme Court is responsible for delivering the length of his suspension and determining any monetary penalties he’s responsible for paying.
Crawford’s recusal comes after Gableman had filed a motion requesting that she not participate in the case because of comments she made about him on the campaign trail earlier this year. However, Crawford isn’t recusing at Gableman’s request.
Instead, Crawford wrote, she is stepping aside from weighing in on the case because part of the allegations against Gableman are his actions during an open records lawsuit against him in the circuit court of Dane County Judge Frank Remington. Crawford, formerly a judge in that circuit, said that because of her proximity to Remington’s court, she learned facts about that case that are not considered part of the official record in the disciplinary matter.
“I believe it is likely I was exposed to information and impressions related to Attorney Gableman’s conduct and demeanor in the circuit court that fall outside of the record before this court,” she wrote. “Because I may have been exposed to factual allegations beyond those Attorney Gableman has chosen not to contest, I may have ‘personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding.’”
Because she recused herself for another reason, Crawford dismissed Gableman’s request as moot.
Gableman had also requested the recusal of Justice Rebecca Dallet, arguing that comments she made about his judicial record when she announced her campaign for the Court in 2017 meant she couldn’t impartially assess his case. In an order, Dallet denied the request, writing that her comments about him in 2017 have nothing to do with how she assesses actions he took in 2021.
“Although Gableman tries to characterize my comments as reflecting a view of ‘Gableman’s moral turpitude,’ and his ‘professional judgment and character,’ no objective reasonable observer would understand them as such,” she wrote. “Simply put, I expressed my disagreement with Gableman’s actions as a candidate and justice between 2008 and 2018. That disagreement is irrelevant to whether he engaged in attorney misconduct in 2021 and 2022, and whether I can impartially adjudicate claims that he did so now.”
With Crawford recusing, the Court is divided 3-3 between liberals and conservatives — though conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn has previously sided with the Court’s liberals in cases relating to the 2020 presidential election.
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Michael Gableman in Dane County Circuit Court on Thursday, June 23 | Screenshot via Wisconsin Eye
Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman could be forced to pay $48,192 to cover the costs of the state Office of Lawyer Regulation’s investigation into him for his conduct during his widely derided review of the 2020 presidential election.
That review of the election, which did not turn up any proof of wrongdoing, has resulted in 10 counts of misconduct being filed against the former judge. Late last month, he agreed to have his law license suspended for three years because of the charges.
Last week the OLR filed a statement arguing that the case against Gableman should follow Supreme Court precedent, which would mean the costs incurred by the OLR investigator and independent referee overseeing the case should be paid by the lawyer under investigation. The referee issued a recommendation stating that there was no reason the case shouldn’t follow the existing precedent.
Both the responsibility for paying the bill and the ultimate punishment will be decided by the state Supreme Court.
Also last week, Gableman filed a motion in his case last week seeking the recusal of liberal justices Susan Crawford and Rebecca Dallet.
Gableman’s filing notes that Crawford called him a “disgraced election conspiracy theorist” and accused him of leading a “sham” investigation of the 2020 election during her campaign earlier this year.
His filing notes comments Dallet made in 2017 after she had announced her campaign for the Court but before Gableman had decided not to run for another term. Dallet accused Gableman of not recusing himself from cases in which he had a conflict of interest, called his 2008 campaign “one of the most unethical” in state history and said he was a “rubber stamp for his political allies.”
Gableman argues that these comments create the appearance of bias and that the justices shouldn’t weigh in on his punishment. If they were to recuse, the Court’s conservatives would hold a 3-2 majority — though Justice Brian Hagedorn sided with the Court’s liberals in the 2020 election cases it decided.
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Voting carrels set up at Madison's Hawthorne Library on Election Day 2022. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Department of Justice on Monday filed an appeal of a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge’s decision to require that state election officials conduct an intensive search for registered voters who aren’t citizens.
Judge Michael Maxwell’s Oct. 6 ruling required that the Wisconsin Elections Commission cross reference its voter registration list against the state Department of Transportation’s records to determine people’s citizenship status when they applied for a driver’s license or state ID. He also ordered that WEC and local election clerks stop accepting new voter registrations without obtaining proof of citizenship — though that portion of the ruling was put on hold pending the appeal.
Under current law, people registering to vote must affirm they are U.S. citizens but are not required to provide proof. However, lying about citizenship status while registering to vote is a crime.
Fears of non-citizen voting have frequently been raised by Republicans in recent years who, since 2020, have expressed skepticism of election administration. The initial Waukesha County lawsuit was brought by a pair of right-wing election conspiracy theorists.
While claims of non-citizen voting revolve around the threat that the issue could swing an election result and occasionally cases are found and prosecuted, there is no evidence that non-citizens vote in substantial enough numbers to influence election results in Wisconsin or anywhere across the country.
In the appeal, filed in the Madison-based District IV, the DOJ argued that the ruling “reshapes Wisconsin election law” while leaving many details vague and potentially violating other laws.
“The circuit court’s decision and order drastically alters voter registration and elections in Wisconsin, violates state law, and threatens voting rights,” the appeal states.
Lead by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, the filing states that Maxwell’s requirement to match data with Department of Transportation records would be based on data that’s up to eight years old, which could result in the disenfranchisement of people who were legal residents when they applied for their driver’s license but have since become citizens with the right to vote.
The appeal also argues that Maxwell’s ruling orders local election officials to change their practices even though they weren’t a party to the lawsuit and does not outline what “proof of citizenship” election officials should use to register people to vote.
“The court issued this sweeping relief despite no evidence of injury to Respondents: they speculated about the risk of vote dilution by illegal voters, but provided no evidence that a noncitizen had voted or registered to vote in Wisconsin,” the appeal states.
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A new Republican bill that would exempt certain life-saving medical procedures from falling under the definition of “abortion” is drawing criticism from medical professionals despite being described by its authors as an attempt to protect reproductive health care.
Under the bill, introduced on Friday, medical procedures “designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman and not designed or intended to kill the unborn child” would not fall under Wisconsin’s abortion definition. They would also not be subject to state laws prohibiting funding for “abortion-related activities” and Wisconsin’s ban on abortion past 20 weeks.
The bill, authored by Rep. Joy Goeben, R-Hobart, and Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, specifically exempts early inductions or cesarean sections performed in cases of ectopic, anembryonic or molar pregnancies from being considered abortion so long as the physician conducting them makes “reasonable medical efforts” to save both parent and unborn child from harm.
Moreover, the bill would change the definition of “unborn child” in Wisconsin statute from “a human being from the time of conception until it is born alive” to “a human being from the time of fertilization until birth.”
OBGYN Carley Zeal, a representative for the Wisconsin Medical Society and fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health, said “unborn child” is not a medically recognized term because doctors don’t confer personhood to a fertilized egg or fetus. Legal expert Howard Schweber told Wisconsin Watch he doesn’t expect changing the definition of “unborn child” to begin at fertilization will have a meaningful impact.
Abortion as a political issue hits deep in the heart of Wisconsin, where Marquette Law School polls since 2020 show 64% of all voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Democrats have campaigned in support of eliminating restrictions on abortion, while Republicans, who in 2015 passed the state’s current ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy, have sought to increase restrictions on, penalize or ban abortion completely.
The bill follows multiple successive changes to Wisconsin’s abortion law since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling and returned the issue of abortion to individual states — leaving Wisconsin scrambling to put together a consistent abortion policy.
The new GOP bill also seems to nod toward several high-profile national incidents of patients dying from being denied reproductive care in states with restrictive abortion bans, even when the bans include exceptions for abortion care if a patient’s life is in danger.
One National Institutes of Health study found that after Texas’s abortion ban was passed, maternal morbidity during the gestational period doubled from the time before the law despite it having a medical emergency clause.
Goeben and Quinn stated in a memorandum that their bill seeks to “counter misinformation spread by bad actors” about doctors not performing needed medical care for fear of being criminalized under abortion statutes. Goeben told Wisconsin Watch she consulted with physicians about the bill and believes it will reassure them of their ability to provide this care.
“A doctor may at all times, no matter where the state is at on the abortion issue, feel very confident in providing the health care that women need in these very challenging situations that women face,” Goeben said.
Both Zeal and Sheboygan OBGYN Leslie Abitz, a member of both the state medical society, the Committee to Protect Healthcare and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said they oppose the bill.
They argue it is an attempt by the Wisconsin Legislature to use “emotionally charged, ideologically driven, non-medical terms” to “interfere with the patient-physician relationship” in medical care.
“The stated goal of the bill — to distinguish between medical procedures from abortion — is misleading because it suggests that abortion care is not an essential part of comprehensive health care,” Abitz said.
“A woman is putting her health and her life at risk every time she chooses to carry a pregnancy, and so she shouldn’t be mandated to put her life at risk.”
Schweber views the bill differently. While a clause in Wisconsin’s 20-week abortion ban statutes already exempts abortions performed for the “life or health of the mother,” he believes Goeben and Quinn’s bill could make hospitals and insurance companies more comfortable with authorizing lifesaving reproductive health care procedures.
“Insurance companies and hospitals or doctors, in order to err on the side of safety, will tell the doctors not to perform a procedure that is medically needed and, in fact, properly legal,” Schweber said. “(This) law is trying to prevent a chilling effect on legal medical procedures.”
Though the bill is not yet formally introduced, the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit composed of physicians, nurses and public health practitioners specializing in abortion and contraception science, opposes it.
“The narrative that exceptions to an abortion ban — or redefining what abortion care is — can mitigate the harm of restrictive policies is based in ideology, not evidence,” Executive Director Amanda Dennis said in a statement.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has not yet taken a position on the bill, but told Wisconsin Watch that state medical emergency clauses “do not offer adequate protection for the myriad (of) pregnancy complications people experience, resulting in substantial harm to patients” in the case of an abortion ban.
Prominent Democratic lawmakers, such as gubernatorial candidate Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, have criticized the proposed bill as part of a series of moves by anti-abortion politicians to distance themselves from the “deadly” consequences of abortion bans.
“The way that you protect people from legal jeopardy is by not criminalizing health care,” Roys said. “Goeben’s bill just shows how deadly and dangerous criminalizing abortion bans are. It’s an acknowledgement of the truth, which is that abortion bans kill women.”
Goeben said she is surprised by the opposition because her bill on its own does not introduce any additional penalties to abortion.
“These are the issues that the other side of the aisle has talked about, saying, ‘oh, the poor women that can’t get health care!’” Goeben said. “So I thought honestly that this would be supported by everybody, if we are really concerned about the health care of women.”
She said she would also be open to discussing amendments to the bill, which would include exemptions for abortions performed because of other medical complications such as preeclampsia or maternal sepsis.
Anti-abortion organizations Wisconsin Right to Life, Pro-Life Wisconsin, Wisconsin Catholic Conference and Wisconsin Family Action have endorsed the proposal.
A similar bill by Quinn prior to the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidating Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban in July died in the Senate last year. Even if the new bill is to pass through the Legislature, Gov. Tony Evers plans to veto it, spokesperson Britt Cudaback told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Looming gubernatorial, attorney general and legislative races in 2026 could decide the future of abortion laws and enforcement in the state. New legislative maps and a national midterm environment that historically has favored the party out of power in the White House gives Democrats their best chance to win control of the Legislature since 2010.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the GOP frontrunner for governor, previously supported a bill planning to ban abortion after six weeks, though he has rolled back that position in recent media appearances and deleted all mention of abortion from his website.
Schweber said Wisconsin’s newly liberal majority Supreme Court will decide the future of abortion in the state. The justices must answer the cases being brought to them on whether the state constitution guarantees a right to an abortion.
“Just because the U.S. Constitution does not secure a right to abortion does not mean that Wisconsin or Ohio or Texas constitutionally doesn’t have that right,” he said. “Each state supreme court now has to decide this profound question.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to remove an incorrect description of the Society of Family Planning and to include additional background for Zeal and Abitz.
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Medical experts criticize Republican bill that would exclude life-saving medical procedures from ‘abortion’ definition is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., home of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on July 14, 2025. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom)
This report has been updated.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary are set to run out of funding in the next few days, a new development in the ongoing government shutdown that will likely reverberate throughout much of the country.
The Supreme Court, which is in the middle of its fall term and slated to hear oral arguments for the next several months, will run out of funding Saturday, according to a statement from public information officer Patricia McCabe.
“At that point, if new appropriated funds do not become available, the Court will make changes in its operations to comply with the Anti Deficiency Act,” McCabe wrote. “The Supreme Court will continue to conduct essential work such as hearing oral arguments, issuing orders and opinions, processing case filings, and providing police and building support needed for those operations.”
The building, she added, will be closed to the public but remain open for official business.
A spokesperson for the Supreme Court told States Newsroom in late September that it planned to “rely on permanent funds not subject to annual approval, as it has in the past, to maintain operations through the duration of short-term lapses of annual appropriations.”
U.S. federal courts will run out of funding “to sustain full, paid operations” Monday due to the ongoing government shutdown, though they “will maintain limited operations necessary to perform the Judiciary’s constitutional functions,” according to an announcement released Friday.
“Federal judges will continue to serve, in accordance with the Constitution, but court staff may only perform certain excepted activities permitted under the Anti-Deficiency Act,” the U.S. Courts statement said.
The shutdown began on Oct. 1 after Congress was unable to find a bipartisan path forward on a stopgap spending bill. The U.S. Courts said at the time they would be able to use “court fee balances and other funds not dependent on a new appropriation” to keep up and running through Friday.
The new announcement from the courts said that several activities are excepted and can legally continue during the funding lapse. Those include anything necessary “for the safety of human life and protection of property, and activities otherwise authorized by federal law.
“Excepted work will be performed without pay during the funding lapse. Staff members not performing excepted work will be placed on furlough.”
The statement said that each individual court throughout the federal system will make its own decision about how active cases will proceed during the shutdown.
“Anyone with Judiciary business should direct questions to the appropriate clerk of court’s office, probation and pretrial supervision office, or federal defender organization, or consult their websites,” the announcement read.
People summoned for federal jury duty will still need to report as instructed, since that program “is funded by money not affected by the appropriations lapse and will continue to operate.”
The online case management and electronic filing system, known as PACER, will keep operating despite the shutdown’s impact on the courts.
Brandon Parnell, 39, and Latoya Gaines, 40, both of Birmingham, Alabama, traveled to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday drew protests from activists and lawmakers who warned the case threatens to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and strip minority populations of the chance to elect candidates to Congress.
The Congressional Black Caucus convened a press conference on Capitol Hill just hours after the justices heard the case brought by the state of Louisiana and a group of voters who argue Section 2 of the landmark 1965 law violates the Constitution by discriminating against white voters. The section prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate based on race.
Protesters rally at the U.S. Capitol and in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025, as justices heard a case from Louisiana challenging the Voting Rights Act. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, a Louisiana Democrat and member of the caucus, cautioned his state could lose two majority Black congressional districts if the court strikes down the section in question.
“Critics claim that the VRA is no longer needed, but history and data tells quite a different story,” Carter said.
“Though Black people make up one-third of the population (in the state), only five (Black) Louisianians have served in the U.S. House out of 171. That’s not equal representation. That’s a travesty. Without protections like Section 2, Black communities will lose power. Their concerns are sidelined, and our democracy is weakened.”
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat of Alabama, said she sat through the more than two hours of oral arguments in the Supreme Court Wednesday morning into afternoon.
“What was clear in the questioning of the majority on the court is that they have something in mind,” Sewell said, adding that she believes the conservative majority wants to “claw back Section 2, if not to eliminate it totally.”
Two years ago, the justices affirmed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, finding that an Alabama congressional district map likely violated it.
“This case is more than just about congressional maps. It’s about who we are as a nation and what we want our democracy to be. Now, I may be the first Black congresswoman from Alabama, but I damn sure won’t be the last,” Sewell said.
Earlier Wednesday, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court before and during oral arguments.
Nearly two dozen advocacy groups organized the rally, dubbed “Fight for Fair Maps.” Speakers included leaders from the NAACP, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, The Urban League and the National Council of Negro Women.
Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, invoked in her speech the names of past civil and voting rights leaders, like Ida B. Wells and Amelia Boynton Robinson.
“These black women were on the front line of the battle to secure voting rights. They understood that it was a necessary foundation for everything else, for our freedom, for our safety, for our economic security,” Graves said.
Those fighting against Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “want to make the right to vote nothing but words on a paper. They want to take away anything that feels real about our ability to have these rights,” Graves said.
Many in the crowd held signs featuring the face of the late civil rights leader and Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis next to the words “Protect Our Vote.”
Latoya Gaines, 40, of Birmingham, Alabama, said she traveled to Washington, D.C., “to stand in solidarity with my people.”
“We believe in fair math,” said Gaines, as she demonstrated with the group Black Voters Matter and held a sign bearing the message “We Fight Back.”
Brandon Parnell, who also traveled from Birmingham and represented Black Voters Matter, stood alongside Gaines as they held signs toward the traffic driving by the Supreme Court.
“I’m here to fight for my voting rights because I’m a voter,” said the 39-year-old, as he waved an American flag and clasped an ACLU-sponsored sign reading “Protect People, Not Power.”
Jan Kleinman, 65, of Baltimore, Maryland, attended with fellow League of Women Voters members.
“I grew up in a League of Women Voters household,” Kleinman said. “The vote is really powerful and shouldn’t be diluted.”
“I truly believe in fair redistricting, like districts that accurately represent a majority of their citizens. Obviously not everyone is going to always be happy with who gets elected, but the closer we can get to making more people happy, the better our democracy,” Kleinman said.
A sign on the entrance to the U.S. National Arboretum is seen as it is closed due to the federal government shut down on Oct. 1, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
This report has been updated.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday, blocking the Trump administration from moving forward with the thousands of layoffs it initiated after the government shutdown began Oct. 1, as well as any others that officials might want to carry out.
The hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California took place at the same time White House budget director Russ Vought appeared on the conservative Charlie Kirk podcast to preview his next steps.
Vought warned the initial Reductions in Force, the technical term for a layoff notice, were just “a snapshot” and that as many as 10,000 federal workers would lose their jobs if the shutdown drags on.
“We’re going to keep those RIFs rolling throughout this shutdown because we think it’s important to stay on offense for the American taxpayer and the American people,” Vought said. “We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding, but the bureaucracy.”
Judge Susan Illston said during the hearing that she granted the temporary restraining order because Trump administration officials had “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore and that they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like.”
Illston said laws and regulations still apply during a shutdown and that, by all appearances, the Trump administration’s actions in the case are politically motivated.
“Things are being done before they’re thought through — very much ready, fire, aim,” Illston said.
The ruling will put the approximately 4,000 layoffs noticed during the shutdown on hold as the court case proceeds.
Elizabeth Hedges, a Justice Department attorney arguing the case on behalf of the Trump administration, said several times during the brief hearing she wasn’t prepared to speak about the merits of the case — a position that confounded the judge, who gave Hedges several chances to reverse course.
“We may be able to address the merits at the next stage,” Hedges said, after telling Illston she would need to check with others before making any statements about why the administration believes its actions are legal.
Danielle Leonard, an attorney representing the labor unions that brought the lawsuit, urged the judge to grant a temporary restraining order for all the departments and agencies that make up the executive branch, not just those that have announced RIFs.
Leonard said she believes Trump administration officials have decided how many additional federal employees to lay off during the shutdown, but have opted not to share that information with the court.
“The decision has been made, it’s just a question of implementation and timing,” Leonard said, around the same time Vought was giving his podcast interview.
Illston, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton, said at the end of the hearing she expected the attorneys to find a day in the coming weeks when they can attend a hearing on the next stage, which would be a preliminary injunction.
On the other side of the country, Republicans and Democrats continued to spar on Capitol Hill over the reasons for the shutdown, as the Senate failed for a ninth time to advance a short-term government spending bill.
The 51-44 vote was nearly identical to the others that have taken place since mid-September, and neither side appeared inclined to make concessions or even try to negotiate.
Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, both Democrats, and Maine independent Sen. Angus King voted with Republicans to advance the bill. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul voted no.
Democrats maintain there must be a bipartisan deal to extend the enhanced tax credits that are set to expire at the end of this year for people who get their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.
GOP leaders said they are willing to begin negotiations on that issue, but only after Democrats vote to advance the stopgap bill that would fund government through Nov. 21.
The House voted mostly along party lines to approve the legislation in mid-September, but it has remained stalled in the Senate ever since, unable to garner the 60 votes needed to advance toward final passage. Republicans control the chamber with 53 seats.
Congress needs to approve the stopgap bill since it, once again, failed to approve all 12 of the full-year government funding bills by the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year.
The only other way to end the funding lapse would be for both chambers to reach a broadly bipartisan consensus on all of those appropriations bills.
The layoffs initiated by the Trump administration during the shutdown were detailed further on Tuesday in court filings from the labor unions’ attorneys as well as Trump administration officials.
Stephen Billy, senior adviser at the Office of Management and Budget, wrote the number of layoff notices had changed since Friday when he outlined the Reductions in Force to the court.
The numbers have fluctuated significantly for some departments, but not for all.
Federal workers at those departments have 60 days between when the notice was sent and when they will no longer have jobs, though a different standard is in place at the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Energy officials, the document says, “issued a general RIF notice informing 179 employees that they may receive a specific notice in the future if it is determined they will be part of any RIF. If so, that notice would provide the relevant notice period.”
But a spokesperson for the Energy Department emailed States Newsroom on Tuesday evening to confirm officials had issued RIF notices to workers in the Offices of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Clean Energy Demonstrations, State and Community Energy Programs and Minority Economic Impact.
“All these offices played a major role in the Biden administration’s war on American Energy,” the spokesperson wrote. “They oversaw billions of dollars in wasteful spending and massive regulatory overreach, resulting in more expensive and less reliable energy. These offices are being realigned to reflect the Trump administration’s commitment to advancing affordable, reliable, and secure energy for the American people and a more responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
Further confusing the situation at the Energy Department, a footnote in the court document filed by Billy said that particular agency isn’t actually experiencing a lapse in funding.
The Billy court document said EPA officials sent 28 employees “intent to RIF” notices and will send formal RIF notices “to any affected employees at least 60 days prior to the effective date.”
A separate document, filed by Thomas J. Nagy Jr., deputy assistant secretary for Human Resources at HHS, said “data discrepancies and processing errors” led to 1,760 employees receiving layoff notices instead of the intended 982.
“Employees have been working since October 10, 2025, to rescind the notices that had been issued in error,” Nagy wrote.
Yolanda Jacobs, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, wrote in a brief to the court that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “issued RIF notices to approximately 1,300 employees, eliminating entire offices at the agency. Then, within 24 hours, the CDC rescinded approximately 700 of those RIF notices.”
Jacobs wrote the 600 CDC workers who received RIFs will officially lose their jobs on Dec. 8, even though they have already lost access to work email and computers.
“Many Union members have told me that they are experiencing serious mental health problems and have found it very difficult to get their work done, given all of the turmoil that they have experienced this year,” Jacobs wrote, referencing previous RIF notices and reinstatements. “Members have told me that they worry on a day-to-day basis about whether they will have a job the next day. They said that they have felt like the Trump Administration has been using them as bargaining chips this year.”
Jacobs wrote that the Trump administration has decided to lay off many human resources workers, which had blocked other workers who received RIFs from being able to get information about how to roll over their health insurance coverage.
During past RIFs, she wrote, workers had “access to the employment records, including paystubs and performance records, that they need for processing their separations,” but cannot since they are locked out of computer systems.
Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents nearly 3,000 Education Department workers, wrote in a separate filing the layoffs will impact numerous programs, including civil rights, communications and outreach, elementary and secondary education, post secondary education, and special education and rehabilitative services.
“Receiving RIF notices has caused many employees enormous stress. A father of two young boys contacted me—he just moved into a new home and relies on his job to support his family,” Gittleman wrote. “He told me (he) doesn’t know what he will do next.”
Workers on maternity or disability leave also received layoff notices, “forcing them to job-hunt and face financial insecurity while managing newborns or health conditions,” she wrote.
Following past RIF notices, the department provided “career transitioning and counseling, benefits and retirement training, and access to other human resources and employee assistance programs.” But Gittleman wrote that isn’t happening this time.
Ashaki Robinson, regional vice president for AFGE Council 222, which represents nearly 5,000 HUD workers, said the layoff notices for that department will impact employees in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Texas and Washington, D.C., who manage a variety of programs.
“They are devastated that the RIF is happening and are very concerned about losing their incomes, health insurance coverage for themselves and dependents, and other employment benefits in 60 days, when they will be separated from employment,” Robinson wrote.
The hundreds of HUD workers who have received RIF notices, she wrote, were “targeted for termination not because of anything they did themselves, but because of decisions made by elected officials that may have been driven by politics.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday heard oral arguments in a case that could have ramifications for tribal sovereignty when it comes to land development.
The post Menominee County property owners argue land can’t be transferred to tribal trust appeared first on WPR.
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