(Photo by Drew Angerer | Getty Images)

Wisconsin voters on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment to enshrine the state’s already existing voter ID law into the state Constitution. 

The amendment was approved by 25 points. The Associated Press called the election less than 40 minutes after the polls closed. 

The Republican-authored referendum does not change the law that was already on the books in the state which requires that voters show an approved ID to register to vote and receive a ballot. Republican legislators said the amendment was necessary to protect the statute from being overturned by the state Supreme Court. In recent years, Republicans in the Legislature have increasingly turned to the constitutional amendment process to shape state law without needing the signature of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. 

Democrats had accused Republicans of including the referendum on the ballot in this election as an effort to boost conservative turnout in the state Supreme Court election. 

Wisconsin’s voter ID law has been on the books for more than a decade. During debate over the law, Republican lawmakers discussed its potential to help the party win elections by suppressing the vote of minority and college-aged people who tend to vote for Democrats. 

Democrats and voting rights groups said the law amounted to a “poll tax.” A 2017 study found that the law kept 17,000 people from the polls in the 2016 election. 

Since its passage, a number of court decisions have adjusted the law, leading the state to ease restrictions and costs for obtaining a photo ID — particularly for people who can’t afford a high cost or don’t have proper documents such as a birth certificate. 

Republicans in Wisconsin and across the country have increasingly focused on photo ID requirements for voting since conspiracy theories about election administration emerged following President Donald Trump’s false claims that he was robbed of victory because of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential campaign.

While the law doesn’t change, the approved language of the amendment gives the Legislature the authority to determine what types of ID qualify as valid for voting purposes. Currently, approved IDs include Wisconsin driver’s licenses and state IDs, U.S. passports, military IDs and certain student IDs.

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Dane County Judge Susan Crawford thanks supporters after winning the race Tuesday for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Dane County Judge Susan Crawford was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday, solidifying liberal control of the body until 2028 and marking a sharp rebuke by the state’s voters of the policies of President Donald Trump and the financial might of his most prominent adviser, Elon Musk. 

Crawford rode massive turnout in Dane and Milwaukee counties and outperformed Kamala Harris’ effort last year in a number of other parts of the state to defeat her opponent, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel by about 11 points.

The former chief legal counsel for Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle who represented liberal groups such as Planned Parenthood and the Madison teacher’s union as a private practice attorney said during the campaign that she would look out for the rights of all Wisconsinites on the Supreme Court while repeatedly criticizing Schimel for his eagerness to show his support for Trump, his record as attorney general and the outside assistance his campaign got from Musk. 

Crawford’s victory marks the third straight Supreme Court election for Wisconsin’s liberals and maintains the 4-3 liberal majority that has been in place since Justice Janet Protasiewicz was elected in 2023. Crawford will replace retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. 

Since gaining control of the Court, the new liberal majority has ruled that the state’s previous legislative maps were unconstitutional, ending the partisan gerrymander that had locked in Republican control of the Legislature for more than a decade, and accepted cases that will decide the rights of Wisconsinites to have an abortion. The Court is also likely to consider a challenge to Wisconsin’s 2011 law stripping most union rights from public employees within the next year or two. 

“I’m here tonight because I’ve spent my life fighting to do what’s right,” Crawford said after the race was called for her. “That’s why I got into this race, to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of all.”

Schimel said he got into the race because he was opposed to the “partisanship” of the liberal controlled Court but his effort to nationalize the race and show his support for Trump proved unsuccessful against a backlash to the second Trump term and voters’ distrust of Musk, who offered cash incentives for people who got out the vote for Schimel. 

Tuesday’s election was the first statewide race in the country since Trump won the presidency last fall. Trump narrowly won Wisconsin and in counties across the state, Schimel failed to match the president’s vote total. In La Crosse County, Crawford performed 11 points better than Harris did last year and Schimel didn’t even match Trump’s vote share in his home of Waukesha County. 

Schimel ran nearly even with former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly, who lost to Protasiewicz in the 2023 race. Wisconsin’s conservatives have now lost the past three Supreme Court elections by double digits.

The 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race set the record for the most expensive judicial campaign in U.S. history, topping the $100 million mark. While Crawford received support from liberal billionaires including George Soros and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Musk dwarfed all other contributors, dumping more than $20 million into the race.

Musk’s money helped blanket the state’s airwaves with attack ads against Crawford’s record as a judge, often criticizing sentences she gave to people convicted of sexual violence. A Musk-associated PAC also hired people to knock on thousands of doors in an effort to turn out Trump’s base of Wisconsin voters, who have often sat out non-presidential elections. America PAC, a political action committee associated with Musk, paid door knockers $25 an hour, offered voters cash if they filled out a petition against “activist judges” and gave two people $1 million checks at a rally on Sunday. 

“But I’ve got to tell you, as a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world  for justice in Wisconsin,” Crawford said. “And we won.”

In a concession speech delivered shortly before 9:30 p.m., Schimel told supporters they “didn’t leave anything on the field,” and when a few began to complain said “no, we’ve gotta accept this.”

“The numbers aren’t going to turn around. Too bad. We’re not going to pull this off,” he said. “So thank you guys. From the bottom of my heart. God bless you. God bless the state of Wisconsin. God bless America. You will rise again. We’ll get up to fight another day, it just wasn’t our day.”

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin, harnessing voters’ alarm at the actions Musk has been leading from his federal DOGE office to cut government programs and fire thousands of public employees, held People v. Musk town halls across the state where residents said they were worried about the effect those cuts would have on services they rely on like Medicaid, Social Security, veteran’s benefits and education funding. 

Gov. Tony Evers said that Wisconsin “felt the weight of America” in this election, which proved Wisconsinites “will not be bought.”

“This election was about the resilience of the Wisconsin and American values that define and unite us,” Evers said. “This election was about doing what’s best for our kids, protecting constitutional checks and balances, reaffirming our faith in the courts and the judiciary, and defending against attacks on the basic rights, freedoms, and institutions we hold dear. But above all, this election was as much about who Wisconsinites believe we can be as it was about the country we believe we must be.”

Democrats and Crawford accused Musk of trying to buy a seat on the state Supreme Court, partially to influence a lawsuit his company, Tesla, has filed challenging a Wisconsin law that prohibits car manufacturers from selling directly to consumers. Musk said he was focused on the race because the Court could decide the constitutionality of the state’s congressional maps, which currently favor Republicans and help the party hold a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

At the victory party, Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler compared the effort against Musk and Trump to Gov. Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette’s fight against the oligarchs of the early 20th century, adding that Republicans’ association with Musk will be an “anchor.”

“I think what Susan Crawford did by making clear that Elon Musk was the real opponent in this race, what voters did by responding to Elon Musk, it made clear that Elon Musk is politically toxic, and he is a massive anchor that will drag Republicans from the bottom of the ocean,” he said. “And that’s a message that I hope Republicans in Washington hear as fast as possible. Not only will they lose, but they will deserve to lose resoundingly and they will be swept out of power in a wave of outrage across the nation.”

On the campaign trail, Crawford sought to tie Schimel to Musk — she called her opponent “Elon Schimel” at the only debate between the two candidates — while portraying herself as the less partisan candidate. Throughout the nominally non-partisan race, both candidates lobbed accusations of extreme political views at the other. 

With Crawford’s victory and the retention of the Court’s liberal majority, the body is expected to rule on cases that ask if Wisconsin’s Constitution grants women the right to access an abortion, the legality of the Republican-authored law that restricts the collective bargaining rights of most public employees, how Wisconsin’s industries should be regulated for pollution and the legality of the state’s congressional maps. 

Heather Williams, a spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement that Democrats were offering a better vision for the country than the one promised by Schimel, Trump and Musk. 

“Despite Republicans’ best efforts to buy this seat, Wisconsin voters showed up for their values and future,” Williams said. “While Trump dismantles programs that taxpayers have earned, support, and are counting on, voters across the country are turning to state Democrats who are delivering on promises to lower costs and expand opportunities.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune speaks to reporters following a weekly Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 19, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans hope to approve a budget resolution this week that would clear the way for Congress to enact an extension of expiring tax law as well as sweeping cuts to federal spending later this year.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday the chamber will likely vote on the House-passed budget resolution later this week, after completing the vote-a-rama, where lawmakers vote on dozens of amendments, typically into the early morning hours.

“Republicans continue to have very productive conversations on how to achieve our agenda and working with President Trump on making sure that we are rebuilding our military, unleashing American energy dominance, making sure there isn’t a four-and-a-half trillion tax increase on the American people at the end of this year and obviously securing our border,” Thune said.

The House and Senate must vote to adopt the same budget resolution with matching instructions before they can use the complicated reconciliation process to move legislation through Congress on their own. The process allows the majority party to avoid the Senate filibuster that requires 60 votes for most legislation.

One ‘big, beautiful bill’

GOP lawmakers in the two chambers have been at odds for months over whether to move their core legislative goals in two bills or one package.

The Senate approved a budget resolution in mid-February that would have addressed the issue in two bills, before the House voted later that month to move forward with a different budget resolution.

The final, adopted budget resolution would set up Republicans to hold floor votes on one “big, beautiful bill,” as President Donald Trump has described it, later this year, if GOP leaders can keep nearly all of their members on board with the final product.

Republicans hold unified control of Congress and the White House, but voters didn’t give the party especially wide margins.

The GOP holds 218 seats in the 435-member House amid absences, though it could pick up two more members following special elections in Florida on Tuesday. Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate.

Any changes to tax law, energy policy or spending cuts will need support from nearly every GOP lawmaker in Congress, including centrists, who barely won election in swing districts, and far-right members, who are more likely to lose to a primary challenger claiming they’re not conservative enough.

The House-passed resolution includes reconciliation instructions that would allow Congress later this year to extend the 2017 tax cuts and a range of other GOP policy priorities that could not survive the 60-vote threshold.

Democratic amendments

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday that Democrats plan to put up amendments during budget debate that will showcase how the eventual bill could impact Americans.

“We have had many good discussions, including today. And you are going to find us focused relentlessly on what … Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the Republican Senate and House are doing to the American people,” Schumer said. “They’re taking away benefits that they desperately need.”

The Senate adopted just two amendments during its last vote-a-rama in February, one from Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and one from Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee.

Democrats put forward numerous amendments but were unable to get any adopted. 

It’s no secret that Tesla has become something of a cultural lightning rod, whether for its tech, its CEO, or the political baggage that now seems welded to its aluminum panels. And in the current climate, even scratching a Tesla could apparently land you in serious legal territory, at least in Washington, D.C., where the politics are as tangled as the city’s traffic circles.

Read: Trump Vows To Buy A Tesla After ‘Radical Left Lunatics’ Boycott Brand

Elon Musk and Tesla have grown so closely associated with the Trump-era political ecosystem that some officials in the nation’s capital are reportedly considering whether vandalism against the brand could be prosecuted as a hate crime. D.C. has long been a Democratic stronghold, but Mayor Muriel Bowser appears to be making moves in response to mounting pressure from the Trump administration, particularly after Trump’s recent threat to assert control over the District.

Last week, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police issued a press release announcing they are searching for two suspects who allegedly defaced Tesla vehicles in the district. According to the authorities, they “wrote political hate speech on to the victims’ Tesla vehicles then fled the scene.” The exterior cameras of the cars caught clear images of both suspects, although they were wearing sunglasses.

Vandalism, But Make It Political

Unlike some incidents elsewhere in the country, the Teslas weren’t torched, overturned, or otherwise wrecked. The damage was cosmetic, limited to what amounts to political graffiti. What’s perhaps the strangest thing about the whole situation is that much of the “hate speech” graffiti on the cars wasn’t even that dramatic.

According to Politico, which reviewed police reports, several sarcastic messages were left on the Teslas. These included statements like “Let’s do away with the administrative state! Buy a tesla!” while another said, “Go Doge I support Musk killing the dept of education.”

Another read, “I like what Musk is doing,” while one stated, “I Love Musk and hate the Fed Gov.t.” Possibly the most provocative was: “Ask me about my support of Nazis.” It’s a grab bag of chaotic energy, part satire, part performance art, part political Rorschach test.

Washington D.C. is one of just a few jurisdictions that describe “political affiliation,” with race, sex, and religion as categories of bias, meaning locals cannot discriminate against someone for being a Democrat or Republican. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t shun someone for their opinion.

“I would have a hard time seeing how anti-Elon Musk graffiti would constitute political affiliation discrimination,” Arizona State University law professor Michael Selmi said. “The real issue is there’s very little case law interpreting political affiliation in D.C. or in the few other jurisdictions that include it.”

Anyone who scrawls a swastika on a Tesla has obviously committed a hate crime https://t.co/EJFkYxDHrV

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 3, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Top Democrats in Congress are asking the Government Accountability Office to open an investigation into whether the Trump administration violated federal law by freezing funding for several programs.

Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, ranking members on the House and Senate Budget committees, wrote in a two-page letter sent Monday to the government watchdog organization that certain actions appear to have violated the Impoundment Control Act.

“Unilaterally impounding funds is illegal, and Donald Trump and Russ Vought are trying to gut the federal government piece by piece,” Merkley wrote in a statement accompanying the letter. “GAO must get to the bottom of this and reiterate to the administration that Congress has the power of the purse, not Trump and Vought.”

The Senate voted along party lines earlier this year to confirm Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget, which has wide-reaching authority over decisions within the executive branch

A Government Accountability Office spokesperson told States Newsroom the agency is working through its process to determine whether it will launch an investigation based on the letter.

GAO, the spokesperson said, also has ongoing work related to the ICA.

OMB authority

Boyle wrote in a statement that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to determine when and where the federal government spends money.

“The administration’s withholding of critical investments harms American communities that rely on these funds for jobs, economic stability, and essential infrastructure,” Boyle wrote. “Robust congressional oversight, alongside litigation, is vital to protecting the interests of the American people.”

The Impoundment Control Act, enacted in the 1970s, bars presidents from not spending the money that Congress has appropriated. Vought has said repeatedly he believes the law is unconstitutional and that presidents have this authority.

Several lawsuits have been filed over the Trump administration opting not to spend federal money, some of which have blocked the actions from taking effect while the cases proceed through the federal courts. 

The Boyle-Merkley letter alleges the Trump administration has run afoul of the law on several occasions, including on his first day in office when he ordered a pause on foreign development assistance as well as funding in the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

The two ask GAO to also look into the Trump administration’s decision to halt military aid to Ukraine for about a week in March, writing they are “concerned this pause may have been an illegal impoundment with negative foreign policy and national security implications.”

“The Constitution grants the President no unilateral authority to withhold funds from obligation,” Boyle and Merkley wrote in the letter. “Instead, Congress has vested the President with strictly circumscribed authority to impound or withhold budget authority only in limited circumstances as expressly provided in the Impoundment Control Act.

“The executive branch may withhold amounts from obligation only if the President transmits a special message to Congress that includes the amount of budget authority proposed for withholding and the reason for the proposal (2 U.S.C. §§ 683–684).”

What can GAO do?

During the first Trump administration, the GAO found the Office of Management and Budget violated the Impoundment Control Act  when it halted assistance to Ukraine.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” GAO wrote in the report. “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”

The GAO writes on its website that the ICA “authorizes the head of GAO, known as the Comptroller General, to file a lawsuit if the President illegally impounds funds.”

Comptroller General Gene Dodaro testified before Congress earlier this year that he plans to do just that if the independent agency finds violations of the ICA.

“We’re going to make these decisions as fast as possible,” Dodaro said, according to a news report. “I fully intend to carry out our responsibilities under the Impoundment Control Act expeditiously and thoroughly . . . I’ll do it as quickly as I can, but we need to be careful and thorough, because the next step for us is to go to court ourselves. If we say there’s been impoundment and money isn’t released in a certain period of time, we have to go to court.”

Samriddhi Patankar, a 19-year-old undergrad at George Washington University and the daughter of two researchers, attended a rally in support of federal workers outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 19, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

BALTIMORE — A federal judge in Maryland said Wednesday he will briefly extend his temporary order requiring the Trump administration to reinstate federal jobs for 24,000 fired probationary employees while he considers whether to make it last until the case is decided.

U.S. District Judge James Bredar in the District of Maryland told the plaintiffs and government he will need more details by 10 a.m. Eastern Thursday before he can decide whether the case merits a preliminary injunction to stop all firings and require reinstatements. Such an action would likely last until a final judgment in the case is reached.

The temporary restraining order affecting the fired federal workers expires Thursday night, but Bredar told the parties he expects to extend it briefly while he considers new information.

President Donald Trump and White House adviser Elon Musk began directing agencies in early February to fire tens of thousands of federal workers who were in the first year or two of their positions, or had been recently promoted.

Wednesday’s hearing in Baltimore centered on a lawsuit filed March 6 by Democratic attorneys general in 19 states and the District of Columbia, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

The attorneys general argued the mass firings led by Trump and Musk harmed states because the federal government did not provide the legally required advance notice that gives states time to prepare “rapid response activities” ahead of an influx of unemployed residents. 

The states have asked Bredar to issue a preliminary injunction to prohibit the government from conducting any further reductions in force, also referred to as RIFs.

‘Great reluctance’ to grant preliminary injunction

But Bredar had tough questions Wednesday for lawyers representing the states and U.S. Department of Justice.

Bredar asked Virginia Williamson, counsel for the state of Maryland, why he should issue a nationwide preliminary injunction when the “majority of states have not joined this lawsuit.”

“That’s the issue that has to be faced,” he said.

Bredar expressed a preference for a more narrow injunction and ordered Williamson to submit more information within 24 hours that proves the need for a broader request.

“This court has great reluctance to issue a national injunction. You’re going to have to show me it’s essential to remedy harms (for your clients),” he said.

Eric Hamilton, representing the federal government, testified that the states lack standing, and that their argument is “unusual” in that their grievance is lack of warning about the firings — but they seek a remedy of giving employees their jobs back.

Bredar replied that the problem wouldn’t exist if the workers were returned to their status quo of being employed.

“If there’s no fire, there’s no need for the fire department to respond,” he told Hamilton.

Hamilton also argued that burdens placed on the government for having to rehire thousands of employees “are so much greater” than any financial injuries the firings caused for the states.

Bredar snapped back that the firings were “sudden and dramatic.”

“It’s not appropriate to flip that around. If you were worried about that, you shouldn’t have done it in the first place. I’m not buying that one,” the judge said.

When Bredar asked Hamilton why rehiring employees is precluded as a remedy, Hamilton argued there’s “not much precedent” for federal courts to issue orders to agencies about personnel decisions.

Second judge to order rehiring

Bredar issued a temporary restraining order March 13 immediately reinstating employment for just over 24,000 federal probationary workers across dozens of federal departments and agencies.

Agencies affected by the order included Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration and the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to court filings.

Bredar was the second federal judge on that date to order the Trump administration to rehire fired federal workers.

The government has appealed both rulings to their respective circuit courts.

In a status report due to Bredar on March 17, representatives for the federal agencies detailed the “substantial burdens” of rehiring the employees. At the time of the report, the agency heads placed almost 19,000 out of the 24,418 fired on paid administrative leave rather than placing them back on active duty status.

The required court filings marked the first time the government had provided a comprehensive list of the federal workforce downsizing that spanned February into March.

The agency representatives submitted updated status reports to Bredar Tuesday, reaffirming that many of the employees remain on paid administrative leave.

‘No secret of their contempt’ for civil service

In their original complaint, the attorneys general argued that Trump and administration officials “have made no secret of their contempt for the roughly 2 million committed professionals who form the federal civil service. Nor have they disguised their plans to terminate vast numbers of civil servants, starting with tens of thousands of probationary employees.”

The firings have subjected communities across the U.S. “to chaos” and will cost the states money in lost tax revenue and social services for unemployed residents, they wrote. 

“These costs arise in the administration of programs aimed at providing connections to social services, like health care and food assistance,” they argued.

The government responded that the 19 states and District of Columbia have no standing in the case and ultimately can’t prove irreparable harm. They also maintained that the executive branch has the right to fire probationary employees.

“The action has no hope of success, because third parties cannot interject themselves into the employment relationship between the United States and government workers, which is governed by a comprehensive statutory scheme that provides an exclusive remedial avenue to challenge adverse personnel actions,” the government argued.

Bredar was appointed to the U.S. District Court bench by former President Barack Obama in 2010 and confirmed by voice vote in the Senate.

Before beginning his legal career in Colorado, Bredar worked as a National Park Service ranger, according to his biography published by the U.S. courts. Bredar worked as a prosecutor in Moffat County, Colorado, then as an assistant U.S. attorney and assistant federal public defender in Denver.

In 1992, he was appointed federal public defender for the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. He was appointed a U.S. magistrate judge in 1998.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard arguments at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse on March 24, 2025, over a challenge of a lower court’s restraining order barring the administration from deporting Venezuelan immigrants under a wartime law. (U.S. General Services Administration photo)

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice late Monday invoked the “state secrets privilege” to block a federal judge from obtaining information about deportation flights carried out under a wartime law.

District of Columbia District Judge James E. Boasberg has been trying to determine if the Trump administration violated a restraining order he had placed in connection with the deportations of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The Trump administration said Monday further details could not be provided about the flights to El Salvador, where the alleged gang members were sent to a mega-prison.

The filing, signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, uses the state secrets privilege to refuse answering questions posed in a March 18 order from Boasberg, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The privilege is a common-law doctrine that protects sensitive national security information from being released.

“The Court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it,” according to the DOJ filing. “Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address.”

In his March 18 order, Boasberg wanted details about what times the flights took off from the United States, when they left U.S. airspace, when they landed in their designated countries, when the immigrants being deported were subject to the Alien Enemies Act and the number of people on the flights who were subject to the Alien Enemies Act.

The DOJ filing cites national security issues and says that “confirming the exact time the flights departed, or their particular locations at some other time, would facilitate efforts to track those flights and future flights.”

“In turn, disclosing any information that assists in the tracking of the flights would both endanger the government personnel operating those flights and aid efforts by our adversaries to draw inferences about diplomatic negotiations and coordination relating to operations by the Executive Branch to remove terrorists and other criminal aliens from the country,” according to the filing. “Simply put, the Court has no cause to compel disclosure of information that would undermine or impede future counterterrorism operations by the United States.”

Appeals court action

The filing followed the Trump administration’s request for an emergency hearing before a District of Columbia federal appeals court.

A panel of three federal appellate judges seemed split Monday while hearing the Trump administration’s challenge of the lower court’s restraining order on the use of the wartime law to deport, without due process, the Venezuelan nationals. 

Judge Justin R. Walker, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Donald Trump, appeared to align with the Department of Justice’s arguments, while Judge Patricia A. Millett, whom Democratic President Barack Obama appointed, raised serious questions about due process.

The position of Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, a President George H.W. Bush nominee who is the third member of the panel, spoke less than the others and revealed little about her position.

The panel will rule on the government’s challenge of the temporary restraining order placed by Boasberg, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Justice Department argued the order undercut the president’s wartime authority and that the suit by civil rights groups should have been brought to a different court.

Groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union argued Boasberg’s order correctly defended due process protections.

The D.C. Circuit hearing followed back-and-forth hearings before Boasberg, who has vowed to determine whether the Trump administration violated his March 15 oral order to turn around deportation planes.

After Boasberg issued his order, three deportation planes still landed in El Salvador, with mostly Venezuelan men taken to a notorious mega-prison.

Shortly before Monday’s hearing, Boasberg rejected the latest Trump administration attempt to vacate his restraining order that barred use of the proclamation without due process.

In Monday’s order, Boasberg said anyone who is removed from the U.S. under the act is “entitled to individualized hearings.”

“Because the named Plaintiffs dispute that they are members of Tren de Aragua, they may not be deported until a court has been able to decide the merits of their challenge,” he wrote. “Nor may any members of the provisionally certified class be removed until they have been given the opportunity to challenge their designations as well.”

Due process

Millett grilled Department of Justice attorney Drew Ensign on the Trump administration’s view on what due process should be granted to those subject to the proclamation, which states that any Venezuelan national 14 and older with suspected ties to the Tren de Aragua gang may be deported.

Ensign said the Trump administration doesn’t agree that those subject to the proclamation the president signed March 14 should be notified they are being removed under the Alien Enemies Act.

“We agree that if you bring habeas (corpus) that you can raise such challenges,” he said.

A habeas corpus claim asserts someone is unjustly imprisoned and can be used to challenge immigration detention.

Millett said the deportees had no opportunity to raise such a claim.

“Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act,” Millett said, referring to German nationals who were able to have a hearing before a board to challenge their removal when the wartime law was invoked during World War II.

The act had previously been invoked only three times in U.S. history, all during wartime.

Millett questioned how the Venezuelans on the first two deportation planes could have challenged their deportations.

“Those people on those planes on that Saturday had no opportunity to file habeas or any type of action to challenge the removal under the (Alien Enemies Act),” she said.

Lee Gelernt, American Civil Liberties Union lead attorney, said that Venezuelans who were removed were “designated (Tren de Aragua) without any advance notice, rushed to planes” and given papers that “specifically says you are not entitled to review.” He said ACLU is preparing to enter that evidence into the court record.

Jurisdiction

Walker questioned the venue where the lawsuit was filed. He asked why the challenge wasn’t brought in a Texas district court, because the original five men who brought the suit were detained there.

Gelernt said a challenge could have been brought in Texas, but that it was not clear where all the detainees subject to the proclamation were being held.

“We certainly weren’t looking just to get our five individuals from being sent to a Salvadorian prison,” Gelernt said. “This would have had to be a class. If the government is suggesting that we could have gone in there for every individual, absolutely not. We did not know who had been designated. This has all been done in secret.”

Walker also questioned how a temporary restraining order could order planes that had already left the U.S. to return.

“I’m wondering if you can point me to a district court (temporary restraining order) or injunction that survived appeal that stopped an ongoing, partially overseas national security operation in the way that this… did (to) order planes to take foreigners from international waters to the United States,” Walker asked Gelernt.

Gelernt said that the issue before the appeals court was not about the order to return deportation planes.

“The government cannot take the position that it’s an interference, by this court, on national security grounds, to give people (due) process,” he said.

New court filings revealed several immigrants on the March 15 flights were returned to the U.S. from El Salvador. They include a Nicaraguan national and eight Venezuelan women who were returned because the mega-prison is for men only.

DOJ argues notice not needed

Ensign argued that the order blocking the implementation of the Alien Enemies Act wrongly constrained the president’s wartime authority.

Millett said that the issue wasn’t about the president’s authority to use the Alien Enemies Act, but how the administration used it.

“The question is whether the implementation of this proclamation without any process to determine whether people qualify under it,” she said.

She asked Ensign if the appeals court lifting the stay would lead to a situation where “people are lined up and put on planes without notice or time to file for habeas, even though the government agrees that … they have a right to have the decision made about whether they even qualify under the proclamation?”

Ensign reserved that option for the government.

“If the (temporary restraining order) is dissolved, the government believes there would not be a limitation and that the statute does not require such notice,” he said.  

People bag sand in preparation for possible flooding as Tropical Storm Helene, which later became Hurricane Helene, headed toward the state's Gulf Coast on Sept. 25, 2024, in Tallahassee, Florida.  (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

A bipartisan pair of Florida U.S. House members introduced a bill Monday to remove the Federal Emergency Management Agency from the Department of Homeland Security and elevate it to an independent Cabinet-level agency.

Democrat Jared Moskowitz and Republican Byron Donalds filed the bill Monday, with Moskowitz saying divorcing FEMA from the bureaucracy at DHS would lead to better outcomes for disaster preparedness and response.

The agency’s mission requires haste, but its workers are too often bogged down in unrelated DHS work, Moskowitz said.

“By removing FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and restoring its status as an independent, Cabinet-level agency, my bipartisan bill will help cut red tape, improve government efficiency, and save lives,” he said in a Monday statement. “It will also help refocus FEMA on its original mission: as an agency tasked with responding before, during, and after disaster events.”

In a statement issued by Moskowitz’s office, Donalds added DHS had become “overly bureaucratic” and “overly political.”

“When disaster strikes, quick and effective action must be the standard––not the exception,” Donalds said. “It is imperative that FEMA is removed from the bureaucratic labyrinth of DHS and instead is designated to report directly to the President of the United States.”

Law creating agency

FEMA, which coordinates federal disaster relief efforts, was moved to DHS at that department’s 2003 inception after President Jimmy Carter signed the law creating FEMA in 1979.

President Bill Clinton made FEMA a Cabinet-level agency, but President George W. Bush did not renew that status.

Moskowitz, a former state emergency management director under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been a consistent advocate for funding FEMA while also calling for reforms to the agency.

FEMA is a frequent object of criticism from lawmakers of both parties and has often been targeted for overhaul.

Moskowitz, who led a similar bill last year, has argued making the agency independent of contentious issues like immigration, which DHS is primarily responsible for, would free it to better focus on its core mission.

“For an agency that needs to be fast, it can’t function in an agency of 22 others,” Moskowitz said at a March 4 hearing. “They shouldn’t be involved in immigration, but why are they? Because Homeland is using FEMA to run every grant of every agency … within Homeland. Half of FEMA’s personnel now are running grants.”

He has pitched the issue as nonpartisan, saying at the hearing that both red and blue states are subject to natural disasters and need aid from the federal government.

The endorsement of Donalds, a loyal backer of President Donald Trump and the Trump-endorsed candidate to succeed DeSantis as governor in the 2026 election, appears designed to win support from across the House’s vast ideological spectrum.

At odds with DOGE?

Trump, though, may be more inclined to undercut the agency than to promote it.

Since retaking office in January, Trump and influential adviser Elon Musk have aggressively sought to reduce the federal bureaucracy, slashing staff, eliminating directives and – in the case of the Education Department – moving to close an entire department.

The government-wide staff cuts have hit FEMA, which fired 200 workers last month.

Moskowitz became the first Democrat to join the Congressional Department of Government Efficiency Caucus in December, aligning himself with Musk’s mission to make government more efficient. In his announcement, he cited DHS’s hosting of FEMA as an example of an overextended bureaucracy.

For education, Trump said shuttering the federal department would allow states to be more active in policymaking.

Last week, he made a similar move involving FEMA, signing an executive order to enhance the state and local government roles in disaster preparedness.

The order calls for an administration official to recommend “revisions, recissions, and replacements necessary to reformulate the process and metrics for Federal responsibility.”

A section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall near El Paso, Texas, on June 6, 2024. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Among the flurry of executive orders President Donald Trump signed on the first day he returned to the White House are five that lay out the use of military forces within the U.S. borders and extend other executive powers to speed up the president’s immigration crackdown. 

The administration has engendered huge controversy in recent days by employing the orders and a presidential proclamation to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants. Administration officials described the Venezuelans as gang members, put them on flights and sent them to a huge prison in El Salvador.

The wartime Alien Enemies Act, used only three times before, allows the president to detain and deport anyone 14 and older who is a national from a country the United States deems an enemy.

Together, the interlocking executive orders and proclamation could provide the resources and legal footing needed for the Trump administration’s plans to deploy the military to deport and detain millions of people who are living in the United States without permanent legal status.

National security and military experts interviewed by States Newsroom raised concerns about this domestic deployment of armed forces that could result in violations of civil liberties, as well as the detainment and deportation of immigrants without due process. 

Additionally, the broad actions by the executive branch would test the courts on what guardrails, if any, could be placed on the president. Trump earlier this week  in a social media post called for the impeachment of the judge who questioned his use of the Alien Enemies Act in the case of the Venezuelans, bringing a stunning rebuke by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Besides the Alien Enemies Act, a second archaic law Trump is gearing up to invoke is the Insurrection Act of 1807. It gives the president the power to call on the military during an emergency to curb civilian unrest or enforce federal law in a crisis.

The Insurrection Act is also a statutory exception in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which generally bars the use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.

Trump vowed to use both the Insurrection Act and the Alien Enemies Act while he campaigned for a second term.

“Invoking the Insurrection Act for immigration enforcement … would be unprecedented,” said Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “It would be an abuse, both because it’s not necessary, under the circumstances, and also because this is not what the Insurrection Act is for.”

Nonetheless, one Trump executive order directs the heads of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense to issue a report by April 20 to the president with recommendations on whether or not to use the Insurrection Act to aid in mass deportations.

Orders woven together into an agenda

Trump’s five executive orders signed on Inauguration Day are:

• Securing our Borders;

• Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border;

• Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States;

• Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists;

• Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion.

The administration eyes its next moves while apprehensions at the southern border have plummeted to their lowest level in 25 years, with 8,347 encounters for February, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

The last time the Border Patrol averaged roughly 8,000 apprehensions per month in a fiscal year was in 1968, according to historical data obtained by the Texas Tribune.

In the executive order titled Securing our Borders, the Trump administration lays out its objectives for that U.S.-Mexico border, such as building barriers and barring migrants from entering the U.S. To carry that out, the president signed another executive order that declared a national emergency.

Chris Mirasola, a professor and national security expert at the University of Houston Law Center, said for roughly 20 years, there has been a military presence at the southern border assisting the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with immigration enforcement.

“What made the Trump executive orders interesting was the kind of escalation trajectory that they kind of mapped out for us,” Mirasola said, noting the likely use of the Insurrection Act and Alien Enemies Act.

Since Inauguration Day, that executive order has allowed Trump to send nearly 9,200 troops to the southern border.

Emory University School of Law professor Mark Nevitt, a national security expert who also served in the Navy, notes the executive order declaring a national emergency is limited to the geographic location of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“He’s not tasking (Homeland Security Secretary Kristi) Noem to come up with a nationwide immigration enforcement. Having said that, of course, he can change (his mind), he’s the president,” he said.

Sending military to the southern border stretches back to former President George W. Bush in 2006. Over a two-year period, more than 30,000 Army and Air National Guard personnel were sent to the southern border to assist with numerous migrants from Central America.

Northern Command

Continued coordination between Defense and Homeland Security is laid out in another of the executive orders, the one on “clarifying the military’s role,” that reorganizes the U.S. Northern Command to focus on border security.

Northern Command, established after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to coordinate military and homeland security support with civilian authorities, under the Trump executive order has a new mission “to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities.”

The legal underpinnings for Northern Command to carry this out, Mirasola said, are provisions in the Insurrection Act, which he adds is likely to face its own legal challenge.

“I kind of see this, perhaps surprisingly, long ramp up being a way for them to establish a factual record that they could use in litigation,” he said of the executive order that requests a report from DHS and DOD by April 20. 

Trump does not need a report or recommendation to invoke the Insurrection Act. It is an existing presidential authority granting him access to use all federal military forces, more than 1 million members. But his executive orders would undergird his expected use of the act.

“I think it’s no surprise that he’s thinking about using the military for immigration enforcement,” Nevitt said of the president.

The request for a report by April 20, Nevitt said, could be “a way to set up the politics of declaring the Insurrection Act.”

Historically the Insurrection Act, which has only been invoked 30 times, is typically focused on an area of great civil unrest that has overwhelmed law enforcement, Nevitt said.

The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked was 1992, during the Los Angeles riots, after four white police officers were acquitted in the brutal beating of Black motorist Rodney King. 

Federal troops were deployed with local law enforcement to a domestic violence situation. Because of the difference in training between the two, it resulted in soldiers opening fire onto a Los Angeles residence. No one was injured, but more than 200 bullets were fired.

“Soldiers are not trained to do law enforcement,” Nunn, with the Brennan Center, said.

He added that this kind of use could also lead to violations of civil liberties, even though the use of the Insurrection Act does not suspend constitutional rights and he argues is not limitless.

“When the military is operating under the Insurrection Act, they are assisting civilian authorities, not taking their place,” Nunn said.

‘The magic word’

Two of the executive orders — one designating cartels as terrorist organizations and another on protection of the states — could lead to the rapid detention and deportation of immigrants by using the Alien Enemies Act.

“In one of those early executive orders is a magic word that you should be sensitive to,” said Stephen Dycus, a professor in national security law at the Vermont Law School. “And the magic word is ‘invasion.’”

The Trump administration designated the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as a terrorist organization in its use in mid-March of the Alien Enemies Act. 

A federal judge has already blocked the use of the law. However, civil rights groups charge that the Trump administration continued to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants, and a federal judge is demanding clear answers from the administration about the deportation flights.

The Trump administration has defended the deportation flights and Trump has cited his duty to protect Americans from an “invasion.”

“The big question, obviously, is, what constitutes an invasion?” Dycus asked. “In the first Trump administration, the influx of immigrants from the southwest were characterized that way. So I think that’s part of the groundwork that’s being laid.” 

Ilya Somin, an expert in constitutional law and professor at George Mason University, disagrees with the Trump administration’s argument declaring the Tren de Aragua gang as an “invasion” in order to form the legal basis for using the Alien Enemies Act.

The use of the act can circumvent judicial proceedings, based on an immigrant’s country of origin. It’s been invoked in the War of 1812, World War I and World War II and most recently led to the Japanese internment camps.

“The attempt to declare them to be terrorist organizations could be part of an effort to sort of get courts to defer and to accept the invasion framing, and possibly also to accept the use of the Alien Enemies Act,” Somin said.

Targeting Venezuela

In speeches, rallies and social media posts, Trump has often accused Venezuela of sending criminals and gang members to the U.S., despite during his first administration granting deportation protections for Venezuelans, citing the political and economic instability of the Maduro regime.

The Trump administration has pressured the Venezuela government to begin accepting deportation flights of its nationals. Noem has already moved to end temporary protected status for one group of 350,000 Venezuelans, subjecting them to fast-track deportations. Noem cited gang activity as one of her factors in not extending protections.

Somin said that for the Alien Enemies Act to be used, an “invasion” needs to be undertaken by a foreign government.

“Even if the cartels are terrorist organizations, which I deny, they are not foreign governments,” he said.

Katherine Yon Ebright, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, said that using the act to go after suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang could ensnare many Venezuelan immigrants, regardless of legal status. 

“You’re getting the ability, really, to target any Venezuelan, age 14 (and up), who’s not a U.S. citizen,” she said of the Alien Enemies Act. “And you don’t have to explain yourself, you don’t have to prove anything.”

Guantanamo

Using a memo rather than an executive order, although related, the Trump administration has already ramped up use of the military in immigration duties, using military aircraft to return migrants to their home countries or to send immigrants to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The base was used to house suspected terrorists in the 9/11 attacks. 

“I think it’s actually a bellwether for understanding how far this escalation trajectory the administration plans to go, because the detention that’s happening at Guantanamo Bay is a big concern,” Mirasola said.

The use of the naval base comes as the Trump administration has tried to increase detention bed space capacity, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is only funded to hold roughly 41,500 beds across the country.

Trump has instructed his administration to hold up to 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo. There are currently no immigrants detained at the base, though its use has not been ruled out.

But the actions of signing executive orders or memos or proclamations can only go so far, experts say.

“Implementing his commitment to use the military to round up immigrants is not going to be easy,” Dycus, of Vermont Law, said. “Logistically, it’s going to really take a lot of effort and a lot of personnel to do it.”

A Texas National Guardsman observes as Border Patrol agents pat down migrants who have surrendered themselves for processing, May 10, 2023. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux for Source NM)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is gearing up to militarize a stretch of the southern border, according to a Washington Post report Thursday, raising concerns from experts that the move would put U.S. military members in direct contact with migrants, a possible violation of federal law.

The White House is mulling the creation of a military satellite installation across the 60-foot-deep strip of federal land known as the Roosevelt Reservation, according to the report.

The move would create a military buffer zone stretching across the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, California and New Mexico, and mean any migrant crossing into the United States would be trespassing on a military base, allowing active-duty troops to hold them until border patrol agents arrive.

Nearly 10,000 military personnel have already been deployed to the southern border, but creating the military buffer zone would be an escalation of the Trump administration’s ramp-up of the use of the U.S. military in its plans for mass deportation of immigrants without permanent legal status, which experts say would be illegal.

“The use of active-duty military for what clearly amounts to law enforcement on the border is absolutely, plainly illegal,” Stephen Dycus, a professor in national security law at the Vermont Law School, said during a Thursday interview. “It’s a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.”

The 1878 law generally prohibits the military from being used in domestic law enforcement.

Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office of Latin America, a research and advocacy group that aims to advance human rights in North and South America, said the escalation of military presence at the border is new.

He added that the military being used to operate deportation flights has “involved an uncomfortable amount of contact between soldiers and migrants.”

“Most of the military that have been sent (to the border) over the years have been a couple thousand National Guard members at a time — a pretty low-level mission,” Isacson said. “So that chance of contact between the soldiers and civilians on U.S. soil (was) very, very, very, very slim. That’s all changing now.”

A Pentagon spokesperson told States Newsroom in an email Thursday that the department has “nothing to announce at this time” regarding the establishment of a base along stretches of the border.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The scenario could spark further legal challenges against the Trump administration, which is already in hot water for potentially defying a federal judge’s order to halt deportation flights of Venezuelans under the wartime Alien Enemies Act.

Transformation of military role

While sending activity duty to the southern border has occurred for more than 20 years in intelligence and logistics roles, military members do not engage in immigration enforcement.

During a visit to the border Feb. 3, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters “guys and gals of my generation have spent decades in foreign countries guarding other people’s borders. It’s about time we secure our own border.”

“All options are on the table,” Hegseth said.

Joseph Nunn, liberty and national security counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, said during a Thursday interview he would expect the Trump administration to face lawsuits for essentially using the military for civilian law enforcement.

“This is a transparent ruse to try to evade the Posse Comitatus Act by taking advantage of something called the military purpose doctrine,” Nunn said.

Under that doctrine, Nunn said, the military can maintain order or take action to further other military purposes, even if the action does have incidental benefits to civilian law enforcement. For example, if a drunken driver attempts to drive onto a base, military police can detain them before handing them over to civilian law enforcement.

But Nunn said specifically installing a base along the border as a way for the military to detain migrants as trespassers has not been tried before.

“It’s an abuse of the doctrine and one that the courts should reject because in that circumstance the military installation will have been created and the soldiers will have been stationed there for the purpose of assisting with a civilian law enforcement operation,” Nunn said. “That is immigration enforcement.”

Migrant encounters down

Transferring federal land to the Department of Defense, which because it’s fewer than 5,000 acres doesn’t need congressional approval, comes at a time when border encounters are relatively low.

Apprehensions at the southern border have plummeted to their lowest level in 25 years, with 8,347 encounters reported in February, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

The trend started in February of last year due to Mexico increasing immigration enforcement and policies under the Biden administration that limited asylum claims between ports of entry, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank.

“As with any change in administration, and this was true of the first Trump administration, because of the general rhetoric around immigration, we did see kind of an initial decrease, so it’s not altogether surprising to see that decrease,” Putzel-Kavanaugh, who studies migration trends along the border, said.

“There’s kind of a general wait-and-see period of people trying to figure out what makes the most sense in terms of their own needs and in their journey,” she added.

The sections along the southern border that the Trump administration is eyeing – U.S. Border Patrol sectors based in San Diego; Tucson, Arizona; and El Paso, Texas – are “consistently the busiest,” she said.

Putzel-Kavanaugh added that it’s typical for migration patterns between sectors to change.

“I think it’s certainly plausible to assume that, if they have this militarization campaign across sort of the western side of the border, it’s likely that flows will then start going east,” she said.

Reaction from New Mexico lawmakers

Democrats slammed the idea, questioning why defense funding should be used at the border as global conflict increases.

U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat, expressed skepticism about relying on defense resources to solve migration issues.

“Securing our border and protecting the safety of New Mexicans is a top priority, which is why I supported the bipartisan border security agreement — an effort that was ultimately killed by then-candidate Donald Trump,” Luján said in a statement.

“Diverting military resources for this purpose would weaken our military readiness. There is broad bipartisan consensus that we need comprehensive immigration reform and stronger border security, but not at the expense of existing defense missions.”

Rep. Gabe Vasquez, also a New Mexico Democrat, said in a statement the reported plan is “yet another reckless and wasteful proposal that does nothing to fix our broken immigration system.”

“In a time of global uncertainty, our military resources are best used to combat serious international threats abroad,” Vasquez said.

The offices for the Republican-led Senate and House committees on the Armed Forces did not respond to requests for comment.

Source New Mexico editor Julia Goldberg contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump spoke Thursday, March 20, 2025, to a crypto industry conference. (Photo illustration by Namthip Muanthongthae / Getty Images)

President Donald Trump signaled his continued support for cryptocurrency, saying at an industry conference Thursday morning he wanted to see the United States lead the world in digital asset technology.

In a brief recorded video broadcast to the Digital Assets Summit in New York, Trump, who launched his own meme coin in January that held an overall market value of $2.3 billion Thursday, noted some steps his administration has taken to encourage crypto. He positioned himself as a leading advocate for the technology but was vague about future policy proposals.

“It’s an honor to speak with you about how the United States is going to dominate crypto and the next generation of financial technologies,” he said. “And it’s not going to be easy, but we’re way ahead.”

Trump noted he held the first ever White House digital assets summit this month, appointed a White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar and created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile.

The reserves would allow the government to retain the value of digital currencies, he said, adding that was impossible under his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Reversing policy

Trump said his administration would seek to loosen regulations, in a reversal from Biden policy.

“We’re ending the last administration’s regulatory war on crypto and bitcoin,” he said. “Frankly, it was a disgrace. But as of Jan. 20, 2025, all of that is over.”

He also said he’d asked Congress to create “simple, commonsense rules for stable coins and market structure.”

Despite looser regulations, the framework would lead to “greater privacy, safety, security and wealth for American consumers and businesses alike,” he said, calling the decentralized finance system “one of the most exciting technological revolutions in modern history.”

Trump’s ties to industry

The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency allows anyone to launch a currency, which has led to a series of so-called meme coins fronted by celebrities or tied to internet trends that form a particularly volatile segment of the crypto market.

Trump has a vested interest in the success of the crypto market, with a reported 80% stake in his own token.

Trump’s coin peaked at a value of $14.5 billion the day before his inauguration but has since lost nearly 85% of its value. The financial news service Reuters reported last month that firms generated nearly $100 million in trading fees associated with the Trump coin, even as its market value plummeted.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey of Maryland speaks at a rally in support of federal workers outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has begun the process of reinstating tens of thousands of fired federal workers, though most are just being placed on administrative leave as the government cites the “burdens” of rehiring, court filings reviewed by States Newsroom show.

The documents also show, agency by agency, the wide swath of firings that swept across the federal government in February and early March.

A federal judge in Maryland last week ruled the recent terminations of probationary employees were illegal and ordered the administration to reinstate the workers across 18 federal agencies by 1 p.m. Eastern Monday. Nineteen Democratic attorneys general and the District of Columbia sued the administration over the firings.

The mass firings began in early February as part of President Donald Trump’s U.S. DOGE Service cost-cutting agenda. Elon Musk, a White House adviser and top donor to Trump’s reelection, is the face of the temporary DOGE project, though the administration maintains he has no decision-making power.

According to the court filings late Monday, the agencies have returned almost 19,000 employees to administrative leave out of the 24,418 fired. The filings provided the most comprehensive list to date of the federal workforce downsizing that spanned February into March.

Judge James Bredar of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland ordered the agencies on Tuesday to provide a progress update by early next week. Bredar was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2010 and confirmed by a Senate voice vote.

The lawsuit was filed March 6 by Democratic attorneys general in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Workers on leave, some ‘until further notice’

Some agencies, like the departments of Commerce and Transportation, indicated that employees would only be on paid administrative leave temporarily until paperwork and other procedures were finished.

Others, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, have given employees paid administrative leave status “until further notice.”

The government argued that reinstating the terminated employees to full duty status “would impose substantial burdens” on the agencies and cause “turmoil for the terminated employees”

“[T]hey would have to be onboarded again, including going through any applicable training, filling out human resources paperwork, obtaining new security badges, reinstituting applicable security clearance actions, receiving government furnished equipment, and other requisite administrative actions,” according to the filings from several department representatives.

But “nonetheless,” the agency representatives said they began complying with Bredar’s order even as the cancellation of terminations was a “very time and labor intensive process,” wrote Mark D. Green, deputy assistant secretary for human capital, learning and safety at the Department of the Interior.

“The tremendous uncertainty associated with this confusion and these administrative burdens impede supervisors from appropriately managing their workforce. Work schedules and assignments are effectively being tied to hearing and briefing schedules set by the courts. It will be extremely difficult to assign new work to reinstated individuals in light of the uncertainty over their future status,” Green continued in his legal declaration required by Judge Bredar.

The agency representatives also wrote “employees could be subjected to multiple changes in their employment status in a matter of weeks” if an appellate ruling reverses the lower court order.

The Trump administration appealed the district court ruling Friday to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

California judge issues warning

The March 13 temporary restraining order out of Maryland was the second on that date mandating agencies rehire terminated workers. A federal judge in California separately ordered the government to reinstate thousands of employees at six federal agencies.

District Judge William Alsup in the Northern District of California warned in a court filing late Monday that the agencies must comply by fully returning employees to their jobs.

“The Court has read news reports that, in at least one agency, probationary employees are being rehired but then placed on administrative leave en masse. This is not allowed by the preliminary injunction, for it would not restore the services the preliminary injunction intends to restore,” Alsup wrote, requesting a status report Tuesday. Alsup was appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1999 and confirmed by a Senate voice vote.

The Trump administration quickly appealed the California ruling last week to the U.S. Appeals Court for the 9th Circuit.

A three-judge panel for the 9th Circuit Monday ruled 2-1 to deny the Trump administration’s emergency request to block the workers’ reinstatement.

Employees new on the job

Probationary employees were targeted by the Office of Personnel Management on the first day of Trump’s second presidency, according to court documents.

The employees, who are within one or two years of being hired or beginning a new position, have “extremely limited protections against termination,” agency representatives wrote.

The Office of Personnel and Management sent emails Jan. 20 to department heads stating that “agencies should identify all employees on probationary periods” and “should promptly determine whether those employees should be retained at the agency,” according to the court filing.

Agency by agency list

Department and agency representatives detailed the following termination numbers in the Monday filings (not all agencies provided total numbers of probationary employees):

• Health and Human Services: 3,248 of its 8,466 probationary workers were placed on administrative leave between Feb. 15 and March 13 (and remain on extended leave); 88 were subsequently fired and placed back on leave as of Monday.

• Environmental Protection Agency: 419 probationary employees were terminated between Feb. 14 and Feb. 21. “Most” were returned to paid administrative leave Monday. Some who were in “unpaid leave status” were returned to that status.

• Energy: 555 were terminated “on or around” Feb. 13 and Feb 14. All 555 were returned Monday to retroactive administrative leave status “that will continue until their badging and IT access are restored, at which time they will be converted to an Active Duty status.”

• Commerce: 791 of the agency’s roughly 9,000 probationary employees were terminated up until March 3. Twenty-seven were reinstated soon after, and 764 were placed back on paid administrative leave Monday. The agency plans to move them to full duty status within a week, according to the filing.

• Homeland Security: 313 employees were terminated through March 14. With a few exceptions of employees who resigned or declined to return, DHS placed 310 back on paid administrative leave.

• Transportation: 788 employees were terminated between Feb. 14 and Feb. 24. DOT informed 775 that they’ve been placed on paid administrative leave until Wednesday. “The Department of Transportation will coordinate the specifics of their return, including the restoration of their government equipment and Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card,” according to the filing.

• Education: Without providing specific dates, the department terminated 65 of its 108 probationary employees before Judge Bredar’s March 13 order. All have now been placed on paid administrative leave.

• Housing and Urban Development: The agency terminated 312 of its 549 probationary employees on Feb. 14. About 299 are being brought back “temporarily” on administrative leave.

• Interior: As of Monday night, Interior had reinstated roughly 1,540 of the 1,710 workers fired on Feb. 14.

• Labor: 170 were terminated but reinstated before March 7.

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: 117 employees were terminated between Feb. 11 and Feb. 13. All were notified Sunday that they “will be immediately placed on administrative leave status while the CFPB continues to act to comply with the TRO and/or employees are to be assigned work by management/supervisors,” according to the filing.

• Small Business Administration: 304 of the SBA’s 700 probationary employees were terminated between Feb. 11 and Feb. 25. The agency was unable to notify seven employees about reinstatement. Roughly 164 were returned to non-pay intermittent status, while the rest were returned to paid administrative leave.

• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation: 156 of its 261 probationary employees were terminated between Feb. 18 and 19; 151 were placed on paid administrative leave as of Monday.

• USAID: 270 of the agency’s 295 probationary employees were fired March 7. All have been reinstated to paid administrative leave.

• General Services Administration: 366 of its 812 probationary employees were terminated between Feb. 13 and March 7. While two declined reinstatement, 364 were placed Monday on paid administrative leave.

• Treasury: 7,605 of Treasury’s 16,663 probationary employees were fired between Feb. 19 and March 7. All have been reinstated to paid administrative leave status.

• Agriculture: 5,714 probationary employees were terminated between Feb. 13 and 17. The department is “working diligently” to restore employees to active duty status, according to the filing. The employees have been returned to paid or unpaid leave as of March 12.

• Veterans Affairs: 1,683 of the VA’s roughly 46,000 probationary employees were terminated between Feb. 13 to 24. All were placed on paid administrative leave.

USAID ruling

In a separate case against Trump and DOGE’s workforce-slashing agenda, a federal judge in Maryland on Tuesday ruled Musk likely violated the Constitution when orchestrating the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

Judge Theodore David Chuang for the U.S. District Court in the District of Maryland demanded Musk and any personnel working for DOGE refrain from any further action related to dismantling USAID.

Chuang also ordered Musk and DOGE to reinstate computer and email access for all current USAID employees and contractors within seven days. Additionally, he ordered Musk and DOGE to strike an agreement within 14 days that would reopen the former USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Musk’s DOGE personnel forced their way into the humanitarian agency’s headquarters in early February ahead of the mass firings.

The shuttering of U.S. humanitarian missions around the world sparked protests in the nation’s capital.

Chuang, an Obama appointee, was approved by the Senate in 2014 in a 53-42 vote.

The White House slammed the court order Tuesday, alleging that “rogue judges are subverting the will of the American people in their attempts to stop President Trump from carrying out his agenda.”

“If these Judges want to force their partisan ideologies across the government, they should run for office themselves. The Trump Administration will appeal this miscarriage of justice and fight back against all activist judges intruding on the separation of powers,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly in an emailed statement.

Earlier Tuesday, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement following Trump’s morning social media attack on federal judges, calling for their impeachment.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan attend U.S. President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts on Tuesday rejected calls to impeach federal judges who issue rulings that block Trump administration policies, a rare public statement from the nation’s highest sitting judge.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

The comments, provided to States Newsroom by a spokesperson for the court, came just hours after President Donald Trump vented his frustration with a federal judge on social media.

“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do,” Trump wrote. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

The post appeared to be directed at U.S. Judge James Emanuel Boasberg in the District of Columbia, who over the weekend blocked the Trump administration from deporting certain immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The American Civil Liberties Union is arguing the Trump administration violated the judge’s order by not bringing back flights traveling to Honduras and El Salvador on Saturday.

Boasberg on Monday called on attorneys from the Justice Department to provide detailed information on the deportation flights over the weekend.

The U.S. House of Representatives must vote to impeach federal officials. Trump was impeached twice by the House during his first term in office.

The Senate then holds a trial, after which at least two-thirds of the lawmakers in that chamber must vote to remove the federal official from office. The upper chamber didn’t take that step during Trump’s first term and he was acquitted twice.

“The House has initiated impeachment proceedings more than 60 times; roughly a third of all proceedings have led to full impeachments,” according to a post by the Office of the Historian. “Just eight individuals—all federal judges—have been convicted and removed from office by the Senate.”

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report. 

President Joe Biden gives a pen to Bette Marafino, president of the Connecticut chapter of the Alliance for Retired Americans, after he signed the Social Security Fairness Act during an event in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 5, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump claimed in a social media post late Sunday night that former President Joe Biden’s eleventh hour pardons for numerous officials are no longer valid — a power not granted to Trump in the Constitution.

Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social that Biden’s sweeping preemptive pardons are “are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.”

Without citing any evidence, Trump also alleged Biden “did not know anything about” the pardons.

Just hours before leaving office, Biden pardoned lawmakers who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as former high-ranking health official Dr. Anthony Fauci, who steered the United States through the COVID-19 pandemic, and retired Gen. Mark Milley, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Biden also pardoned several members of his own family just before his term expired. The White House released Biden’s statements regarding his Jan. 20 pardons.

Autopen used before

The Autopen is a device that replicates signatures and was used by former President Barack Obama in 2011 to sign an extension of the Patriot Act.

Experts say the debate over the use of the Autopen was settled in a 2005 opinion from the White House Office of Legal Counsel that stated a president may direct a subordinate to affix his or her signature to a bill using the mechanism.

David Super, who focuses on constitutional and administrative law at Georgetown University, said Trump’s Autopen argument is “absurd.”

“But even if it wasn’t, the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon,” Super said.

“So if President Biden wanted to simply verbally tell someone they’re pardoned, he could do that. It wouldn’t have to be in writing at all. Administratively, of course, we want things in writing. It makes things a lot simpler, but there’s no constitutional requirement,” he said.

The right-wing Heritage Foundation posted a graphic on the social media platform X on March 10 and 11, claiming the foundation’s “Project Oversight” uncovered the exact same signature on a number of Biden’s pardons.

Fox News also claimed on March 9 that Biden’s exact same signature was found by Heritage on numerous documents from 2022 and 2024 that were published in the Federal Register.

The National Archives said in a statement that all signatures on official documents published in the Federal Register come from “one graphic file,” according to Snopes.

Press secretary defends ‘raising the point’

Kermit Roosevelt, constitutional law expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Autopen argument is a “red herring.” Trump’s other suggestion, that  Biden didn’t know about the pardons, would essentially make them invalid.

“If the president doesn’t know that something was done, then it’s not a valid official act,” Roosevelt said. “But I highly doubt that that happened. I know of no reason to think that that did happen.”

“I mean, it is sort of characteristic of Trump to make insinuations and raise questions without any evidence, and then the White House says he’s just asking questions,” Roosevelt said. “I don’t think that’s a great way to govern.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Trump was “raising the point that did the president even know about these pardons? Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?”

“I think it’s a question that everybody in this room should be looking into,” Leavitt said, citing the New York Post as a source.

The White House did not immediately respond to a question about the Trump administration’s use of the Autopen.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report. 

Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland speaks at a rally in support of federal workers outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. (Photo y Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Monday denied the Trump administration’s emergency effort to block the reinstatement of federal employees at six government agencies.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the government’s request to stay a Northern California district court’s March 13 ruling ordering the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs to reinstate thousands of probationary positions.

The newly hired or promoted employees were fired as part of an agenda to slash federal jobs carried out by President Donald Trump and billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk.

“Given that the district court found that the employees were wrongfully terminated and ordered an immediate return to the status quo ante, an administrative stay of the district court’s order would not preserve the status quo. It would do just the opposite — it would disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head,” according to the 9th Circuit order.

Judge Barry G. Silverman, a late 1990s President Bill Clinton appointee, and Judge Ana de Alba, appointed by President Joe Biden in 2023, issued the order, while Judge Bridget S. Bade, a 2019 Trump appointee, delivered a partial dissent.

The government’s response to the emergency motion is due by Tuesday. Further briefs are due throughout April and May. An appeals hearing has not yet been scheduled.

District judge ruling on firings

The Trump administration appealed the lower court’s decision just hours after Judge William Alsup’s extension of his emergency order directing the agencies to reinstate the positions.

Alsup also set Thursday as a deadline for a list of all terminated employees and an explanation of what federal agencies have done to comply with his order.

The White House decried the decision, saying ​”a single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch,” according to a statement Thursday from press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Unions representing masses of federal employees sued Trump’s Office of Personnel Management and its acting director Charles Ezell in February over the agency’s unilateral directive across the agencies to fire tens of thousands of workers.

The affected agencies within the six departments included the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among several others.

On the same day as the decision out of California, a federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order mandating 20 federal agencies reinstate fired employees by Monday.

Chainsaw at CPAC

Musk, a senior White House adviser and top donor to Trump’s reelection, is the face of Trump’s workforce downsizing and has not shied away from sharing his plans on his social media platform, X.

He even wielded a chainsaw on stage in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C., and yelled to the audience “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.” The chainsaw was gifted to him by Argentina’s strongman President Javier Milei.

The White House has claimed in a court filing in a separate case that Musk has no decision-making power.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order March 14, 2025, imposing dramatic cuts on seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services. (Catherine McQueen/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s move late Friday to dismantle the agency that serves as the primary federal funding source for libraries and museums nationwide prompted questions over the weekend about how the agency can continue to carry out its core work.

After Trump signed an executive order Friday that called for severe reductions in seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services that provided $266.7 million in grants and other awards last year, groups representing museums and libraries across the country called on Trump to reconsider the move and asked Congress to intervene on their behalf.

“By eliminating the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, the Trump administration’s executive order is cutting off at the knees the most beloved and trusted of American institutions and the staff and services they offer,” the American Library Association, the oldest and largest library association in the country, said in a statement over the weekend.

The Friday order, titled “continuing the reduction of the federal bureaucracy,”  called for eliminating “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” listed agencies’ functions that aren’t statutorily mandated. It also called for reducing the “performance” of agencies’ mandated functions and “associated personnel” to the legal minimum.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services, which Congress established in 1996, has a mission to “advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.”

The states that received the highest total awards from the agency in 2024 were California at $26.4 million, New York at nearly $20 million, Texas at $15.7 million, Florida at $11.4 million and Illinois at $11.3 million, according to data from the agency.

The order to downsize the agency is part of Trump and billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service’s initiative to slash federal government spending and go after what they deem unnecessary.

“The American people elected President Trump to drain the swamp and end ineffective government programs that empower government without achieving measurable results,” a White House fact sheet accompanying the order read.

The other agencies affected are the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and the Minority Business Development Agency.

Library, museum organizations react

The American Library Association said the order would decimate services such as early literacy development and reading programs, high-speed internet access, employment assistance, homework and research resources and accessible reading materials.

The organization called on Trump to reconsider his “short-sighted” decision and encouraged lawmakers to “visit the libraries that serve their constituents and urge the White House to spare the modest federal funding for America’s libraries.”

EveryLibrary, an organization dedicated to building support for libraries, said in a Saturday statement the group is “extremely concerned” the wording in Trump’s executive order “could result in cuts to the core functions” of the agency.

The organization said the agency’s “statutory obligations to state libraries include federal funding through the Grants to States program, the National Leadership Grant program, and all current contracts, grants, and awards” and that “this core work cannot be disrupted or dismantled by DOGE.”

In a statement shared with States Newsroom on Monday, the American Alliance of Museums, which includes 35,000 museums and museum professionals, said Trump’s effort “threatens the critical roles museums and museum workers play in American society, and puts jobs, education, conservation, and vital community programs at risk.” 

“Museums are vital community anchors, serving all Americans including youth, seniors, people with disabilities, and veterans,” the statement read. “Museums are not only centers for education and inspiration but also economic engines — creating jobs, driving tourism, and strengthening local economies.”

Neither the Institute of Museum and Library Services nor the White House responded to a request for comment Monday. 

U.S. Capitol at sunset on March 8, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate cleared a stopgap spending bill Friday that will fund the government through the end of September, sending the legislation to President Donald Trump.

The White House said on Saturday afternoon that Trump had signed the measure, avoiding a partial government shutdown. 

Trump’s signature, a day after the 54-46 Senate vote, will keep the federal government mostly running on autopilot under spending levels and policy similar to what Congress approved about a year ago when lawmakers passed the full-year appropriations bills for the last fiscal year. But the stopgap bill does slightly boost defense spending while reducing domestic funding authority.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote against passage. Maine independent Sen. Angus King and New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen voted to approve the bill, the only ones backing it besides Republicans. 

Senate approval followed days of debate among Democrats over whether to support moving forward with the GOP-authored bill or see a shutdown begin that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said would allow Trump to take even more power over the government.

Debate on the House-passed stopgap spending bill was more complex than usual. A majority of Senate Democrats believe the continuing resolution shortchanges important federal programs and doesn’t do enough to reinforce Congress’ constitutional authority over spending in light of Trump’s efforts to remake the size and scope of the federal government.

Many of those actions are on hold as dozens of lawsuits move through the federal court system. But Democrats who opposed the bill felt that lawmakers must make their voices heard as well.

Other Democrats argued a partial government shutdown would give Trump more leeway to make funding decisions and further harm federal workers.

Republicans largely supported the stopgap spending bill. However, many lamented that the House and Senate didn’t do more to reach agreement on the dozen full-year government funding bills.

‘Inherently a failure

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the stopgap spending bill wasn’t her first choice for funding the government, but that it was the only option on the table to prevent a funding lapse.

“Government shutdowns are inherently a failure to govern effectively and have negative consequences all across government,” Collins said. “They inevitably require certain government employees — such as Border Patrol agents, members of our military and Coast Guard, TSA screeners and air traffic controllers — to report to work with no certainty at all on when they will receive their next paycheck.”

Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations panel, rebuked House Republican leaders for drafting the stopgap spending bill on their own and then expecting Democratic votes.

“Let me be clear, in my time in Congress, never, ever has one party written partisan full-year appropriations bills for all of government and expected the other party to go along without any input,” Murray said.

The stopgap spending bill, she said, cuts overall spending on domestic programs, a choice Democrats never would have agreed to had GOP leaders tried to negotiate with them.

“We are talking about a nearly 50% cut to life-saving medical research into conditions affecting our service members,” Murray said. “It is a giant shortfall in funding for NIH. It is a massive cut in funding for Army Corps projects and $15 billion less for our domestic priorities.”

“This bill will force Social Security to cut staff and close offices and make it harder for our seniors to get the benefits they spent their careers paying into the system to earn,” Murray added. “It creates a devastating shortfall that risks tens of thousands of Americans losing their housing. So this bill causes real pain for communities across the country.”

Murray also criticized House Republicans for releasing their stopgap spending bill just days before the deadline and then leaving for a recess right after voting to send the measure to the Senate. The move prevented the Senate from amending the CR in any way if Congress wanted to avoid a shutdown.

The Senate voted to reject amendments from Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Paul before approving the bill.

Schumer’s decision

Schumer said he voted to limit debate to avoid giving Trump, Elon Musk and U.S. DOGE Service the authority to determine which federal employees would have been exempt from the effects of a shutdown and which would have essentially been furloughed. Under federal law, both categories of federal workers receive back pay once the shutdown ends.

“In a shutdown, Donald Trump and DOGE will have the power to determine what is considered essential and what is not — and their views on what is not essential would be mean and vicious and would decimate vital services and cause unimaginable harm to the American people,” Schumer said.

The Democrats who voted to advance the stopgap spending bill, Schumer said, wanted to keep attention on Trump’s actions as president and not divert focus to the wide-reaching repercussions of shutting down the government.

“A shutdown will be a costly distraction from this all important fight,” Schumer said.

The stopgap spending bill, he noted, doesn’t change the Constitution or the laws that say Congress controls spending and that the president must implement those laws.

“The CR does not change the underlying law, making the Trump administration’s impoundments and mass firings illegal,” Schumer said. “Nothing in the CR changes the Impoundment Control Act, the foundation of Congress’ appropriations authority. And the authorization laws that require USAID and other agencies to exist and to operate the programs Congress has assigned to them. Nothing changes Title 5, governing the civil service, the Administrative Procedures Act and so on.”

Senate rules require at least 60 lawmakers vote to cut off debate on a bill. The GOP holds 53 seats at the moment and needed Democratic buy-in to proceed with regular bills. That procedural vote was 62-38.

Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Gary Peters of Michigan, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, King, Schumer and Shaheen voted to limit debate.

Delays on spending bills

Congress was supposed to draft, debate and approve the dozen annual appropriations bills by the start of this fiscal year on Oct. 1, nearly six months ago.

The bills fund the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans’ Affairs.

They also provide funding for Congress, the Supreme Court and numerous smaller agencies, like NASA and the National Science Foundation.

The House Appropriations Committee approved all 12 of its bills on party-line votes and the House was able to pass five of those across the floor last summer without broad Democratic support.

The Senate panel approved 11 of the bills in July and August with broadly bipartisan votes, but none of the measures came up on the floor for debate.

The House and Senate have regularly negotiated final versions of the spending bills, even if they didn’t receive floor approval, and could have begun that conference process in September, or even during their August recess.

But congressional leaders opted to focus their attention on the November elections and used a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running through mid-December, an expected and rather predictable move.

After Republicans won unified control of government, Congress used a second continuing resolution to keep the government funded through March 14. GOP leaders and Trump wanted to hold over negotiations on the full-year bills until they were in office.

The leaders of the Appropriations committees spent the last couple months trying to get bipartisan, bicameral agreement on the total spending level for the current fiscal year. But that ended this weekend when House Republicans released a stopgap spending bill to fund the government through September.

The House voted 217-213 on Tuesday to send the continuing resolution to the Senate. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie was the only GOP lawmaker to vote against it and Maine Rep. Jared Golden was the only Democratic member to support the bill in that chamber.

‘Congratulations to Chuck Schumer’

Trump had said he would sign the stopgap spending bill, according to a Statement of Administration Policy issued Tuesday.

“H.R. 1968 includes a focused set of critical funding anomalies to ensure the Administration can carry out important programs and fulfill its obligations, including veterans’ healthcare and benefits, pay raises for junior enlisted servicemembers, operations of our air traffic control system, along with nutrition and housing programs,” the SAP states. 

“The bill also provides the Department of Defense with the resources and flexibility necessary to align funding to current priorities in consultation with the Congress and responds to emerging threats by allowing for ‘new starts,’ including other key provisions.”

Trump took to social media ahead of the procedural vote to thank Schumer for announcing he’d vote to limit debate.

“Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing — Took ‘guts’ and courage! The big Tax Cuts, L.A. fire fix, Debt Ceiling Bill, and so much more, is coming. We should all work together on that very dangerous situation,” Trump wrote. “A non pass would be a Country destroyer, approval will lead us to new heights. Again, really good and smart move by Senator Schumer. This could lead to something big for the USA, a whole new direction and beginning! DJT”

President Donald Trump speaks at the Justice Department March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — In a rare appearance by a president at the U.S. Justice Department, Donald Trump delivered a meandering speech Friday promising a “proud new chapter in the chronicles of American justice” and drumming on his campaign trail refrains of the department’s “weaponization” against him and his supporters.

Less than a year ago, the president was a defendant in two Justice Department cases and made history after becoming a convicted felon in New York state. Trump told the crowd of department officials, law enforcement officers and lawmakers his administration is “restoring fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”

“It’s going to be legendary,” Trump said.

The president also insinuated he may keep the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C., after a drawn-out battle over whether it would move to Maryland or Virginia.

Calling out law enforcement officers in the room, Trump said “with me in the White House, you once again have a president who will always have your back.”

Republican senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana were among the crowd, even though the Senate had not yet voted to extend government funding that was set to expire in less than eight hours.

Trump’s hour-long speech in part addressed crossings at the southwest border and deaths from illicit fentanyl. At one point he invited to the stage a mother who lost her son in 2022 to a pill laced with a deadly amount of fentanyl.

But the president’s remarks often meandered into topics unrelated to the Justice Department’s mission, including several minutes about his reelection endorsement from Indiana basketball legend Bobby Knight.

Classified documents case

At numerous points during the speech, Trump lambasted the DOJ’s investigations into his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Florida estate and his attempted conspiracy to overturn former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

He said department officials “broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”

The government, following the election, dropped its appeal of Trump’s classified documents case, citing a longstanding DOJ policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents.

Florida federal District Judge Aileen Cannon had tossed the case on the grounds that the Justice Department had unlawfully appointed and compensated special counsel Jack Smith.

“The case against me was bullshit, and she correctly dismissed it,” Trump said.

Smith also dropped the 2020 election subversion case against Trump, which probed his alleged role in inciting the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump granted clemency to the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants just hours into his second presidency, undoing the largest-ever investigation executed by the Justice Department.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has since overseen the firings and demotions of FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors who undertook Jan. 6 investigations and the two cases against Trump.

During his Friday remarks Trump thanked his former personal lawyers. Todd Blanche, who defended Trump in the Justice Department cases, is now No. 2 at the agency.

‘We have to keep on showing up’

At a press conference afterward outside the department, Democratic Maryland U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, alongside a police officer who was at the Capitol on Jan 6 and former DOJ officials, struggled to talk over a heckling protester. The event was livestreamed on C-SPAN.

Raskin, who sat on the House select committee to investigate the Capitol attack, described Trump’s speech as a “tirade” and praised Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn for “defending democracy.”

“He pardoned everybody and let them know that it’s OK. Now listen, I don’t know what accountability looks like, I don’t know what this fight is going to continue to look like, but we have to keep on showing up,” Dunn said.

One of Biden’s last acts was issuing broad preemptive pardons to members of the Jan. 6 committee as well as Dunn and three other officers who testified before the panel.

Over 140 police officers were injured in the riot.

Brendan Ballou, a former DOJ prosecutor who investigated the Jan. 6 attack, said while the administration is “perfectly happy to talk about the pardons, it is less willing to talk about some of the things that are happening in this building right now.”

He alleged DOJ officials are dismantling or weakening other divisions, including antitrust and anticorruption.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond for comment.

The last time a president made a public appearance at the department was former President Barack Obama in 2014.

The Trump administration Thursday called on the U.S. Supreme Court to take action on three cases from lower courts dealing with the president's executive order ending the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.  (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Thursday called on the U.S. Supreme Court to limit the scope of three nationwide injunctions from lower courts against the president’s executive order ending the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. 

It’s the first time the administration has asked the high court to intervene in cases challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order that aims to redefine birthright citizenship, under which children born in the United States are legal citizens.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris is asking the Supreme Court to scale back the nationwide injunctions to apply to only the individual plaintiffs in the cases brought before federal courts in Maryland and Washington, or 18 people.

The Trump administration is asking for a full stay of a third suit filed by Democratic attorneys general in Massachusetts.

Harris argued “universal injunctions compromise the Executive Branch’s ability to carry out its functions….”

“These cases — which involve challenges to the President’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order concerning birthright citizenship — raise important constitutional questions with major ramifications for securing the border,” she wrote in her emergency request. “At a minimum, this Court should stay all three preliminary injunctions to the extent they prohibit executive agencies from developing and issuing guidance explaining how they would implement the Citizenship Order in the event that it takes effect.”

Appeals underway

The Trump administration has appealed to the 4th Circuit of Appeals the case from Maryland, brought by two nonprofits — Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and CASA — that represent five women who are currently pregnant and do not have legal status. Other individual plaintiffs belong to the two organizations.

The Department of Justice has also appealed to the 1st Circuit the case out of Massachusetts brought by Democratic attorneys general.

The third case is in Washington state and the Trump administration has appealed to the 9th Circuit. It was filed by attorneys general from Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington state and includes two individual plaintiffs.

The executive order that brought a flurry of legal challenges says that the federal government will not recognize or issue citizenship documentation to any child born after Feb. 19 to parents who are in the country without proper authorization, or if the parent is in the United States on a temporary visa and the other parent is a noncitizen or green card holder.

14th Amendment

The Supreme Court in 1898 upheld the 14th Amendment, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, extending birthright citizenship.

In that case, Ark was born in San Francisco, California, to parents who were citizens of the Republic of China, but had legal authority to be in the country. Ark’s citizenship was not recognized when he left the United States and he was denied reentry due to the Chinese Exclusion Act— a racist law designed to restrict and limit nearly all immigration of Chinese nationals.

The high court ruled that children born in the United States to parents who were not citizens automatically become citizens at birth.

Attorneys on behalf of the Trump administration have argued that the case was misinterpreted.

The Trump administration contends that the phrase in the 14th Amendment means that birthright citizenship only applies to children born to parents who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. That would mean, under their view, people in the U.S. without legal status or temporary legal status are “subject to the jurisdiction” of their country of origin. 

Demonstrators outside the U.S. Senate buildings on Capitol Hill protest billionaire Elon Musk's dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development on Feb. 5, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to immediately reinstate thousands of jobs for probationary federal workers fired as part of billionaire Elon Musk’s campaign to slash the federal workforce.

Judge William Alsup ruled Thursday morning that tens of thousands of workers must be rehired across numerous federal agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs, extending his previous temporary emergency order issued Feb. 28.

Alsup, appointed in 1999 by former President Bill Clinton to the Northern District of California, ruled in favor of numerous plaintiffs that brought the suit against the Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management.

Alsup’s order also prohibits OPM from advising any federal agency on which employees to fire. Additionally, Alsup is requiring the agencies to provide documentation of compliance to the court, according to the plaintiffs who were present in the courtroom.

The Trump administration appealed the decision just hours later.

Unions bring suit

The plaintiffs, which include the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO and other unions representing thousands of federal workers, sued in February over OPM’s “illegal program” terminating employees who are within the first year of their positions or recently promoted to new ones.

Everett Kelley, AFGE’s national president, said in statement Thursday that the union is “pleased with Judge Alsup’s order to immediately reinstate tens of thousands of probationary federal employees who were illegally fired from their jobs by an administration hellbent on crippling federal agencies and their work on behalf of the American public.”

“We are grateful for these employees and the critical work they do, and AFGE will keep fighting until all federal employees who were unjustly and illegally fired are given their jobs back,” Everett said.

The AFGE was among more than a dozen organizations who sued the government. The plaintiffs were represented by the legal advocacy group State Democracy Defenders Fund and the San Francisco-based law firm Altshuler Berzon LLP. Washington state also joined the case and was represented by state Attorney General Nick Brown.

Trump administration ‘will immediately fight’

The White House said prior to filing the appeal that “a single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch.”

“The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch – singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President’s agenda. If a federal district court judge would like executive powers, they can try and run for President themselves. The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

The unions argued in a Feb. 19 complaint that Congress “controls and authorizes” federal employment and spending, and that lawmakers have empowered federal agencies, not OPM, to manage their own employees.

OPM, which administers employee benefits and essentially serves as the government’s human resources arm, “lacks the constitutional, statutory, or regulatory authority to order federal agencies to terminate employees in this fashion that Congress has authorized those agencies to hire and manage,” according to the complaint.

“[A]nd OPM certainly has no authority to require agencies to perpetrate a massive fraud on the federal workforce by lying about federal workers’ ‘performance,’ to detriment of those workers, their families, and all those in the public and private sectors who rely upon those workers for important services,” the complaint continues.

Musk role

Musk, a Trump special adviser, has publicly and repeatedly touted the terminations as a means to cut federal spending.

Mass firings began in early to mid-February and continued as recently as Tuesday when the Department of Education announced it would cut about 50% of its workforce.

The terminations sparked numerous lawsuits and public outcry.

Musk, who the White House claims has no decision-making authority, has posted on his social media platform X about emails sent to federal workers offering buyouts and demanding they justify their jobs.

Musk has also published dozens of posts attacking federal judges who’ve ruled against his workforce downsizing as “evil” and “corrupt.”