DEVELOPING: Superseding indictment returned in Don Lemon Minnesota church protest case. Local press says more defendants added and arrested. Awaiting more details. Doc: www.documentcloud.org/documents/27... Report: www.kare11.com/article/news...

NEW: We obtained 911 audio from the Texas detention center housing hundreds of immigrant kids and their parents. Since mid-September, EMS crews have been dispatched to Dilley at least 11 times to treat children in medical distress. Burning fevers. Low oxygen. Seizures. A broken leg. My report:

Today’s Litigation Tracker updates: -9th Circuit lifts block: Trump can limit federal workers’ union rights -Judge allows White House ballroom construction to continue for now -IRS admits sharing confidential taxpayer info with ICE www.justsecurity.org/107087/track...

A federal judge in Minnesota has scheduled a contempt hearing for next week for federal officials for not complying with the judge's orders to return property to unlawfully detained immigrants, including cash, jewelry and docs. More than two dozen petitioners who filed habeas petitions are listed.

JUST IN: Judge Leon declines to halt construction on Trump’s East Wing ballroom, but all but encourages the National Trust for Historic Preservation to refile a cleaner case that he says he will take up “expeditiously.”

BREAKING: Trans inmate's lawyers claim "egregious retaliation" in violation of court order. Trans woman involved in a lawsuit challenging anti-trans policies says federal prison official told her on Feb. 22: “I don’t give a fuck what that judge says, I do what I want.”

An enraging, enraging case.

It does feel as though in comparable cases, sometimes the public characterization (thinking USAID into the “wood chipper,” other funding freezes, protestor deportations) ends up being a lot more offensive to judges than just the contextless policy on paper might otherwise

SCOOP: A White House staffer appears to be operating the anonymous pro-Trump X account JohnnyMAGA with nearly 300,000 followers. More here: www.wired.com/story/a-whit...

NEW: Remember when the government rounded up dozens of unaccompanied children in the middle of the night and tried to summarily deport them? A Trump-appointed judge entered an injunction barring their removal. But lawyers for the children say the government is trying to circumvent that order.

Judge Cannon has just denied @knightcolumbia.org & @weareoversight.bsky.social motions to intervene and permanently barred DOJ from disclosing Jack Smith's report. She says (again) that Smith was appointed unconstitutionally, and that the report is the fruit of the unconstitutional appointment.

This is an extremely important piece by @jacklgoldsmith.bsky.social about the evisceration of legal norms and processes (and workforce) within DOD. Similar things happening at DOJ, the IC, etc., but the effects at DOD are as calamitous as anywhere. www.execfunctions.org/p/the-decayi...

With ICE conducting warrantless arrests and shuttling detainees around the country too chaotically for DOJ to keep up, judges are increasingly looking to the penalty box. Minnesota may have been the tipping point, but judges in CA, NY and TX aren’t far behind. w/ @schwartzesque.bsky.social

I missed this real banger of an opinion yesterday from judge sunshine sykes (the best-named judge), vacating the BIA ruling on mandatory immigration detention

Trump 2.0 has been a boon for foreign lobbying: Since November 2024, there have been more than 380 new registrations, according to an analysis by The Free Press That’s more than all recent presidential terms at this point, except Clinton 1. www.thefp.com/p/foreign-lo...

“In the span of just six weeks between December and January, six people died while detained by ICE in Texas — three of them at Camp East Montana.”

Making matters worse, the Trump admin is REFUSING to adjudicate green card applications for refugees who come from one of the 39 countries Trump banned. So under this policy, a refugee who applies for a green card exactly on time, doing nothing wrong, can (and DHS says must) be jailed by ICE.

1. DHS surges 3,000 officers to Minneapolis without doing anywhere near enough prep first. 2. Hundreds of habeas cases overwhelm local courts. 3. Dozens of DOJ lawyers quit in disgust/anger. 4. The DOJ brings in JAGs to cover. 5. A JAG was just held in contempt and fined $500/day for ICE's failures.

NEW: Carlos García, a Venezuelan politician opposed to Maduro, fled Venezuela in 2017 to escape charges from the Maduro regime. He rebuilt a life in Ohio, delivering Amazon packages until he was detained by ICE. His family fears for his safety in Venezuela. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/w...

JUST IN: Citing "onslaught of unlawful and irregular practices" and prolific media interviews by DOJ, lawyers for Don Lemon & Georgia Fort demand release of grand jury transcripts in church protest case. Presumption of regularity is gone, they say. Doc: www.documentcloud.org/documents/27...

Trump states he identified a theory to impose voter ID rules on the 2026 election based on “the depths of legal arguments not yet articulated or vetted on the subject.” Notes of the also unvetted Green Bay Sweep “theories” from 2020 courtesy of Navarro Bannon et al.

I was part of a round table on how NYT is covering the Epstein files, with new tech and old-school reporting. Our work is far from over:

Just in: Judge Tim Kelly, a Trump nominee, blocks the transfer of 20 former death row inmates to ADX Florence, finding they never had a meaningful chance of challenging the move after Trump insisted on it and directed BOP to place them in the most punitive conditions available.

BREAKING: The supporting affidavit for the warrant to search Fulton County election records has been unsealed. Read it via @lawfaremedia.org: www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Habeas cases filed by immigrants claiming their detention is illegal have taken off to levels we have never seen before. Just look at that chart. www.propublica.org/article/habe...

Federal judge: "The presumption of regularity that has previously extended to [the United States Government] that it could be taken at its word—with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes—no longer holds." This is in a case where the Trump admin sued Oregon.

Among (lots of) other things, this is going to flood the federal courts of appeals with cases in which the BIA might previously have cleaned up the IJ's messes. When something like this happened in 2004, the circuit courts ... did not respond favorably to the government's positions in those cases.

New, from me: Trump finalized his Schedule F policy, allowing him to remove job protections from career civil servants. The new rule is dishonest and unmoored from reality in its effort to formalize the politicization of the federal government 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trumps-sch...

A way to think about this is as a denial of service attack. If you render the courts unable to function because you overwhelmed them, you remove them as a barrier against your overreach.

Mike Johnson on Trump calling for Rs to "nationalize" elections: "We had 3 Republicans who were ahead on election day in last cycle & every time a new tranche of ballots came in they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost. It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove it? No"

The fact President Trump spent half a billion in taxpayer dollars deploying the National Guard last year while working families and seniors struggle to afford groceries and healthcare coverage costs skyrocket tells you about his priorities—and lowering costs isn't one of 'em.

In Under 500 Words, a Judge Weaponized Wit to Free the Child Detained by ICE Via A.O. Scott: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Jeannine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, on Monday threatened jail time for anyone who enters Washington with a gun. Her remarks prompted swift pushback from the Republican Party’s pro-Second Amendment wing.

After Border Patrol shot two people in Portland, DHS claimed they were "vicious gang members" tied to a past shooting. But records I obtained reveal a US prosecutor has since directly contradicted DHS, saying, "We're not suggesting he is a gang member." My dive into how DHS' claims have collapsed:

Trump calls on Republicans to "take over the voting" in 15 states, presumably those run by Democrats, an escalation in his effort to assert control over American elections. @reidepstein.bsky.social @nytnickc.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...

Judge Jia Cobb slammed the brakes on the Trump administration’s second effort to impose a 7-day waiting period for visits to ICE facilities.

Judge Young in Boston strikes again, ruling that Energy Department report was prepared in violation of Federal Advisory Committee Act. (Mandatory #FACA story tweet) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/c...

The FBI was able to access Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's Signal messages because she used Signal on her work laptop. The laptop accepted Touch ID for authentication, meaning the agents were allowed to require her to unlock it. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

This incident alone would have triggered hearings and probably a senior-level resignation in another administration.

From the Court Order:

"MPR News has learned that the police chief in the small southern Minnesota city of St. Peter intervened Thursday afternoon to prevent federal immigration agents from arresting a local resident" who had been observing federal agents. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Scoop: Federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...

My first remarks since being arrested last night.

BIG news from @bloomberg.com, which confirms that ICE has gone ahead and *purchased* multiple commercial warehouses with the aim of converting them into mass detention camps. This is likely to be the big detention story of 2026 — literal warehousing of people. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Whatever role the ouroboros feedback loop between Fox News and Trump’s actual decisions had in the changes over the last 48 hours, the tone on Fox is palpably different tonight than over the weekend, which was just restating Noem and Miller statements. Coinciding with the editorials.

SCOOP: Trump aide Stephen Miller behind misleading claim that slain Minn. protester wanted to "massacre" agents

BREAKING: The petitioner ("T.R." or Juan Tobay Robles) whose non-release prompted Chief Judge Schilitz to threaten ICE director Todd Lyons with contempt has now been RELEASED, according to what the civil chief of the US Atty's office has told his atty and his atty has relayed to me.

Trinidadian Families File Wrongful Death Lawsuit Over Boat Strike by U.S. Military The case tests the Trump administration’s argument that its extrajudicial killings of people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea have been lawful. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/u...

We profiled refugees who: Arrived in the country legally. Applied for green cards. Were arrested by ICE and detained. One refugee who was arrested found out they got their green card after being released. This is an unprecedented operation. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/u...

👀 Judge Schlitz, the chief federal judge in Minnesota, has ordered the head of ICE, Todd Lyons, to appeal personally in court Friday and threatened him with contempt for the agency’s repeated violation of court orders. “The court’s patience is at an end.” storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...