BREAKING: The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled 2-1 that ICE cannot detain people under the Trump administration's massive new detention policy for more than 90 days without affording them a bond hearing. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28...

BREAKING: Supreme Court denies stay of daily penalties imposed on journalist Catherine Herridge for refusing to testify in a civil lawsuit brought by a woman who claims she was smeared as a Chinese agent via a leak to the media.

👀👀 DOJ inadvertently delivered Volume II of Jack Smith's report to the lawyers representing a defendant accused of improperly accessing/sending the report to herself. They notified Judge Cannon of the breach today. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

JUST IN: A federal appeals court has upheld a district judge's order blocking the firing of CIA officials terminated without cause during implementation of Trump admin's anti-DEI initiative. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

NEW: A fourth federal appeals court has rejected ICE's massive expansion of mandatory detention for immigrants that have resided in U.S. for years. It seems increasingly certain that the Supreme Court will take up the issue next term. www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

NEW: Donald Trump is on a Supreme Court losing streak when it comes to the issues he obsesses about most: tariffs, birthright citizenship, and election laws. The Trump administration has a winning record. But Trump himself is a different story. www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

BREAKING: Supreme Court rejects Trump effort to limit birthright citizenship. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

NEW: Donald Trump’s effort to single-handedly impose his preferred election system on the nation — one forged in the fire of his 2020 grievances — has slammed into endless and likely insurmountable legal obstacles. w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

JUST IN: DOJ has lost for the 10th straight time in an effort to obtain states' voter rolls. This defeat is courtesty of Judge Joseph LaPlante, a George W. Bush appointee in New Hampshire. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

BREAKING: SCOTUS blesses Mississippi law accepting ballots received up to 5 days after Election Day. Nothing in federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day. 5-4 decision. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

NEW: John Yoo, the veteran national security attorney who rose to prominence during George W. Bush’s administration, is advising Joe DiGenova and the so-called ‘grand conspiracy’ prosecution. w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

NEW: The Trump administration is asking SCOTUS to bless its massive expansion of ICE detention for people who have resided in the U.S. for years without incident. District judges have overwhelmingly rejected ICE's approach, but appeals courts are split. www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

The lawyer for Dominic Pezzola, the man who did this to the Capitol on Jan. 6, while senators were evacuating, compares the widely documented attack to a 1960s sit-in at Woolworth's. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28...

JUST IN: A federal judge in California has issued a nationwide block on ICE's policy of conducting arrests at immigration courthouses. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

JUST IN: The D.C. Circuit has agreed to consider reviving Judge Boasberg's contempt proceedings against the administration for defying his orders in the Alien Enemies Act case. The full bench will have oral arguments in September, storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

JUST IN: DHS and DOJ cannot cateogrically shut out the public from immigration court proceedings in most instances, a New York-based judge ruled Monday. They also can't prevent observers from quietly communicating about legal/religious support, she says. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

BREAKING: A federal judge has blocked the Trump admin from implementing a new system she says is "actively" and "haphazardy" purging "non-citizens" from voter rolls using inaccurate data. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

BREAKING: Judge Patrick Schiltz has quashed several DOJ grand jury subpoenas aimed Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, saying they were part of a retaliatory effort over their refusal to aid Trumpa dmin immigration enforcement efforts. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

BREAKING: A judge has cleared the way for DOJ to give a redacted version of Joe Biden's conversations with his ghostwriter to the Heritage Foundation. She says the redactions to private info are substantial and the rest if of high public interest. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

NEW: Federal judges are increasingly rejecting immigration court bond hearings legally deficient exercises geared at continuing detention rather than providing a fair hearing. It's the latest front in courts' confrontation with ICE's detention policies. www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

NEW: We don't know enough about DOJ's Newsom-adjacent probe to assess its merits. But the Trump admin's pursuit of the president's adversaries — in cases that have quickly fallen apart — has erased DOJ's historical benefit of the doubt w @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

NEW: The Supreme Court will consider whether there are constitutional limits to mandatory detention — without bond — for some ICE detainees with criminal records. www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

BREAKING: Trump admin asks for a 12 hour delay in removing Trump's name from Kennedy Center, saying work got delayed due to thunderstorms. Crowd (including Rep. Beatty) has been outside the center most of the evening.

NEW: The Trump administration said it had moved so far, so fast on the White House ballroom that it was to late for the courts to intervene. w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

NEW: Todd Blanche has mastered the audience of one — in part by keeping him out of prison. The audience of 100 is a tougher sell. w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social @eorden www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

Sen. Cassidy says the anti-weaponization fund "presents an immediate and dire threat to our constitutional order" in part because it "is designed to compensate ... insurrectionists." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

NEW: The death of the “anti-weaponization” fund raised a host of new questions — like whether DOJ would find another way to pay Jan. 6 defendants, whether Trump could revive his IRS lawsuit and whether Congress is satisfied. w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

NEW: A federal judge ruled that a group could not be blocked from protesting on t he National Mall over its decision to fly an "86-47" flag, saying the evidence did not support calling it a coded call to violence against President Trump. w @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

Judge Mehta doesn’t want to quietly dismiss the seditious conspiracy conviction of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. He’s asking the Trump administration to justify its decision to try to erase the case.

JUST IN: Judge Williams is pressing Trump's lawyers to answer for allegations that they committed a fraud on the court and filed the president's lawsuit against the IRS as a "collusive" effort to create the $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

BREAKING: Judge Cooper has barred the Trump administration from shuttering the Kennedy Center. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

JUST IN: A judge has ordered the release from ICE detention of a man who became the caretaker of his 1-year-old granddaughter (S.Z.H.) last year after the girl's father shot and killed her mother and himself — and shot, but didn't kill, his daughter too. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

NEW: A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from continuing to establish or operate its "anti-weaponization" fund, which has led to a bipartisan furor over potential payouts to Jan. 6 defendants. w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social @hassankanu.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

JUST IN: Judge Nichols has rejected Democrats request for a preliminary injunction to block Trump's executive order on mail-in voting and citizenship lists. He says it's not ripe yet because no concrete action has occurred to implement it. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

NEW: We’ve updated our tracker of federal court rulings in ICE detention cases. Of the 13,000-plus decisions, 11,500 of them have gone against the administration — with lopsided results from judges across the ideological spectrum. w/ @jtblaeser.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

NEW: Another dive into our database of now more than 12,000 rulings on ICE’s mass detention push: a look at the judges who have fueled the overwhelming rebuke. w/ brilliant data journalist and colleague @jtblaeser.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

NEW: Mexico once declined to accept deportees over 60. ICE must contact a Taliban consulate in Qatar to arrange deportations. Vietnam still resists the return of war-era refugees. ICE’s deportation push is a window into quirks of U.S. foreign relations. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

NEW: We've spent 10 months tracking the outcomes in tens of thousands of lawsuits brought by ICE detainees amid an unprecedented detention push. It's not a cose call: judges have ruled more than 10,000 times against ICE, a 9-1 ratio. See the database: www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

JUST IN: The 11th Circuit has declined to rehear Trump's mega-lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, James Comey et al, which netted Trump a defeat and a $1 million sanction for him and Alina Habba. SCOTUS would be next and last stop.

NEW: The 6th Circuit becomes the third federal appeals court to reject ICE’s mass detention push that targets people who have lived in the U.S. for years without criminal records. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

NEW: Joe Biden plans to mount a legal challenge to DOJ’s effort to release 70 hours audio tapes of his conversations with ghostwriter Julian Zwonitzer to Congress and/or the Heritage Foundation. w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

JUST IN: Cole Allen wants the top brass of DOJ to recuse themselves from his case, noting they have openly described themselves as victims and witnesses of his alleged crimes -- and have personal relationships with the primary alleged vctim: Donald Trump storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

BREAKING: Federal trade court strikes down Trump’s backup tariff plan, imposed after the Supreme Court invalidated his broad-based tariffs. Going to need some economists to chew on this one. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

NEW: DOJ can retain the 2020 election ballots it seized from Fulton County a federal judge ruled tonight, finding the seizure — while flawed — fell short of the “callous disregard” required to order the records returned. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

JUST IN: DOJ appears to be abandoning whatever remained of a review of material seized from Rep. Andy Ogles' phone. The case froze soon after Trump took office and initial prosecutors on the case withdrew. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Correction: Deleted this post. One of the judges in the majority withheld support for the mandatory detention part of the ruling, creating a 1-1-1 split on that issue. Circuits remain split 2-1 with rulings pending in virtually every numbered circuit.

NEW: DOJ today disavowed a DHS attack on a Biden-appointed judge, apologizing for withholding information about the dangerousness of a man she ordered released last week. The judge said the “inflammatory” attack puts her at risk. w @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

NEW: A magistrate judge said today that he was alarmed by Cole Allen's harsh treatment by the DC jail and said it appeared far harsher than what Jan. 6 defendants — also accused of politically motivated violence that threatened officials — once faced. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

NEW: Cole Allen, charged with attempting to assassinate Trump at the WHCD, declined to challenge his pretrial detention — for now — and will remain in the DC jail. His next hearing is on May 11, though timing could change if/when grand jury indicts. www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

HAPPENING NOW: The detention hearing for Cole Allen, who is charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump at the WHCD, is underway at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. before Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya