A federal judge temporarily blocked parts of President Trump’s executive order demanding that proof of citizenship be added to some federal voting forms Thursday.
In her lengthy ruling, U.S. district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly dismissed the administration’s argument that the power of the presidency entitles him to tinker with voting requirements.
“The President has no constitutional power over election regulation that would support this unilateral exercise of authority,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “The Constitution vests that power in the States and Congress alone.”
She blocked the two sections of the order numerous voting groups had challenged: one requiring that the Election Assistance Commission, an independent executive branch agency, add the proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, and one requiring the various agencies that dispense public assistance to assess each individual’s citizenship before giving them voting forms.
A coterie of national Democratic organizations also challenged other parts of the order that Kollar-Kotelly did not enjoin, including the order that the EAC cut off federal funds for states that accept ballots sent before but delivered after Election Day, and the mandate that the attorney general enforce the executive order.
On the former, she wrote that states were the more natural plaintiffs in that claim (many of which have challenged the order in a parallel, separate case). On the latter, she questioned the feasibility of the attorney general taking action under the Election Day statutes, and reasoned that she could comply with the order and the law with lower-level enforcement, like sending states letters urging compliance.
In Kollar-Kotelly’s order, she bolstered the independence of the EAC, writing that “the President lacks the authority to direct the outcome of the rulemaking process that Congress has assigned to the EAC.”
She also dinged the administration for making misrepresentations to court. In a revelation shortly before a hearing earlier this month, the voting group plaintiffs produced proof that the head of the EAC was already reaching out to state election officials for guidance about how to put the citizenship requirement into effect — despite claiming to the Court that implementation of the order had not yet begun.
The order is part of a bundle of actions Trump and Republicans in Congress have taken that, if successful, could suppress voting in the 2026 elections. House Republicans have also passed voter restrictions in the SAVE Act (Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has vowed that the bill, which would need Democratic votes to overcome a filibuster, will not pass in the upper chamber). And Trump has signed a different executive order targeting the Federal Election Commission, which is also being litigated.
This morning, the White House announced that trade talks with China continue, albeit at a staff level. This came after a flurry of reports that Trump is planning to unilaterally ramp back the embargo-level tariffs he imposed on China earlier this month, advance notice that cheered Wall Street. Then Chinese officials said that the White House is wrong. There actually are no talks. And Trump must take the first step, unilaterally undoing the tariffs he had already imposed.
He appears set to do just that.
This comes just three days after the CEOs of Walmart, Target and Home Depot met with Trump at the White House and reportedly told him that his tariffs would result in empty shelves and product shortages in as little as two weeks.
All of this is, to put it mildly, a humiliating climb down for the President. He upended the global economy and seems to have massively damaged the perception of American assets as a safe haven during times of economic uncertainty. The goal was to go toe-to-toe with China and see China blink. But it’s the U.S. that’s blinking. And that’s after the earlier reciprocal tariffs blink that already happened.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss Pete Hegseth and Signal-gate part two, the Supreme Court’s extraordinary Alien Enemies Act order and the passing of Pope Francis.
Apparently the Trump administration is finally doing enough to facilitate the release of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to satisfy his lawyers – at least for now. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland on Wednesday night ordered the case paused for a week at the agreement of the parties. Her order came after dueling filings earlier in the day, with the government asking for the pause and Abrego Garcia’s lawyers initially opposing it. Both filings were under seal so it’s not clear precisely what was initially in dispute, what has been agreed to, or what the government revealed that convinced the judge the delay was not just more gamesmanship from the Trump DOJ.
As Morning Memo described in some detail yesterday, the Trump administration’s request for a pause would be a plausible move in a normal world where it was acting in good faith to secure Abrego Garcia’s release and didn’t want the details of its efforts to become public yet in court filings. But the Trump administration has consistently acted in bad faith throughout these proceedings, and a request for delay was consistent with its numerous other efforts to stonewall in the case.
We’re left to speculate about what exactly is happening, but it’s fair to say that neither the trial judge nor Abrego Garcia’s attorneys would have been likely to accede to a delay without concrete and verifiable representations and assurances from the Trump administration.
To this point, the administration has played fast and loose in the case. Despite court orders to the contrary, it has gone so far as to take the position in court that if Abrego Garcia somehow got himself released from detention in El Salvador and showed up at the U.S. border or at a U.S. embassy, he would be taken into custody and either removed to a third country or returned to El Salvador.
In parallel with defying court orders, including from the Supreme Court, the administration has launched a full-scale propaganda campaign against Abrego Garcia that has included the participation of the President, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and top White House officials. In one episode, the Department of Homeland Security – apparently seeking to impugn Abrego Garcia – posted on social media an application for a domestic violence restraining order that his wife had once sought. The court filing included their home address, forcing his wife to move to safe house.
For the time being, the constitutional clash that was playing out in this case is in abeyance. But the administration is still playing fast and loose elsewhere, as the next item shows …
Trump Administration Does The Ol’ Switcheroo!
In a case out of Massachusetts that has flown mostly below the radar, the Trump administration revealed last night that it sidestepped a court order barring removals of migrants to third countries without notice and an opportunity for review – by purporting to transfer custody of detainees from DHS to DOD and letting the Pentagon transport them to El Salvador. The government is taking the extremely dubious legal position that because DOD wasn’t party to the case it was not subject to the court order. Ryan Goodman has the details on this latest defiance of court orders.
In Related News …
Citing the Abrego Garcia case, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher of Maryland has ordered the return of a Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador on one of the notorious March 15 flights in violation of a 2024 settlement agreement.
Marisa Kabas: Rwanda, which agreed to receive U.S. deportations of third-country nationals, has apparently received its first detainee, an Iraqi national.
Judd Legum: U.S. citizen wrongly detained by Border Patrol says government account is false
Federal Judges Poised To Rule On Trump’s Law Firm EOs
The Trump administration was forced to defend two of President Trump’s executive orders targeting major law firms in back-to-back hearings Wednesday in front of federal judges in D.C. It did not go well for the White House.
The Perkins Coie case was a particular “bloodbath” for the White House. In batting around a hapless DOJ attorney, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell seemed convinced that the executive order targeting the firm was unconstitutional, though she hasn’t ruled yet.
In the WilmerHale case, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said he would rule in the coming weeks.
As part of an apparent Trump-driven investigation under the guise of fighting anti-semitism, the EEOC sent a text to Barnard College employees asking if they are Jewish.
Ed Martin Watch
Stat News: The New England Journal of Medicine is the second scientific journal known to have received one of acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s threatening missives.
TPM’s Khaya Himmelman: Trump’s DOJ Is Taking Cues From MAGA Influencers And Conspiracy Theorists
ProPublica: The Untold Story of How Ed Martin Ghostwrote Online Attacks Against a Judge — and Still Became a Top Trump Prosecutor
‘Bloodbath’ In DOJ’s Civil Rights Division
New reporting from Reuters, NBC News, and others in recent days show how far off the rails the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has already gone under Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights.
Will SCOTUS Spare The Fed From The Ravages Of Trump?
Todd Phillips: “There is simply no principled way for the Supreme Court to retain the Fed’s removal protections while overturning Humphrey’s Executor.“
Drip, Drip, Drip
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the installation of Signal on a desktop computer in his Pentagon office, the WaPo reports.
The Corruption: $TRUMP Edition
President Trump is offering top buyers of his memecoin a private dinner with him at his Virginia club and a tour of the White House.
The Courage To Be Decent
Radley Balko: “The Trump administration wants to make us too afraid to look out for one another. Don’t let them.”
Illinois’ Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has asked officials in his state to take steps to implement a boycott against El Salvador in response to President Nayib Bukele’s cooperation with the Trump administration in denying a Maryland resident, deported and detained in one of his infamously hellish detention camps, his due process rights.
I wanted to point your attention to this recent article from the Times on the battle between Trump and Harvard University. It captures the Times’ feature quality. It contains good factual detail, but it radiates what I can only describe as a Chernobyl-level condescension and contempt, not so much for anything “liberal” but anything not conservative, or not in line with what it terms the “rightward shift of the country” — anything that can be construed as a posture of opposition to Donald Trump. The Harvard board is portrayed as reflexively and out-of-touchedly liberal, repeatedly shocked in a weak-kneed sort of way and yet also, paradoxically, headstrong in its inability to resist outmoded Trump I-era “resistance” thinking. In a few words, weak, out-of-touch and contemptible.
President Trump’s nominee for D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, and Donald Trump’s Department of Justice more broadly, are taking cues from right-wing influencers — allowing some of the loudest media figures on the right to influence significant decisions, including who gets fired from the DOJ and who and what gets investigated.
The big news of the day in the case of the mistakenly deported and wrongfully imprisoned Kilmar Abrego Garcia was U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis lambasting the Trump administration — and DOJ lawyers — for their ongoing and willful defiance of her orders in bad faith.
I covered Xinis’ scathing intervention in the discovery process extensively here, so I won’t rehash it in full except to reiterate one point: While we may have envisioned the constitutional clash between President Trump and the judicial branch as a dramatic sumo match played out on the steps of the Supreme Court, it’s actually been taking place day by day over the past month in Xinis’ court with repeated unprecedented defiance, non-responsiveness, and disrespectful stonewalling from the Trump DOJ.
It is against that backdrop that the Trump DOJ has in the past 24 hours submitted two new filings in the case under seal.
The first sealed filing was Tuesday’s daily status report in the case. Xinis had previously ordered the Justice Department to file daily reports in response to the Trump administration’s refusing to answer basic questions from her about what it had done and planned to do to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release. Until yesterday, all of the daily status reports have been filed publicly. One recent status report, for example, conveyed that Abergo Garcia reported he was no longer being held at CECOT but had been transferred to the “Centro Industrial” detention facility in Santa Ana. Yesterday’s report wasn’t just filed under seal but ex parte, too, meaning Abrego Garcia’s attorneys didn’t get to see it either.
Then this morning, the Trump DOJ filed a motion under seal seeking to delay the case for a week. Specifically, it asked Xinis to pause two of her orders: the one requiring daily status reports and the one that scheduled two weeks of expedited discovery.
Because the Trump DOJ has filed under seal, it’s not clear what is up. But there may be a clue in the government’s very limited answers to some of the discovery questions posed by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys. The administration’s response to five different questions included this same phrasing:
Before the Fourth Circuit’s decision of April 17 clarifying its understanding of “facilitate,” the United States took the position that the only steps needed to facilitate the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia involved removing domestic barriers. After the Fourth Circuit’s clarification, the State Department has engaged in appropriate diplomatic discussions with El Salvador regarding Abrego Garcia. However, disclosing the details of any diplomatic discussions regarding Mr. Abrego Garcia at this time could negatively impact any outcome.
That answer suggests the 4th Circuit’s memorable opinion last week, authored by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, changed the government’s calculation in the case. The implication is that since then, the Trump administration has begun taking affirmative diplomatic steps to secure Abrego Garcia’s release. That is merely an implication, and there’s little evidence on the record to support it.
Still, in a normal world, it would not be implausible for the government to want to be able to conduct diplomacy discreetly and seek to pause court proceedings that might expose or hamper those diplomatic efforts, especially if they are aligned with what the plaintiff in the case is seeking.
The problem is that it is hard to credit the administration with any good faith in this case, as Judge Xinis has repeatedly pointed out. So if the government is in fact asking for some time to engage in diplomacy or take other concrete steps to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release — and again we don’t know what it is asking for exactly — it would be hard to distinguish a belated good faith effort from yet another bad faith effort to delay, obfuscate, and stonewall.
More as things unfold.
Judges Block Alien Enemies Act Deportations
Colorado: In a new order, U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney blocked the removal of any Alien Enemies Act detainees from Colorado and imposed specific notice requirements on the government before it can proceed with deportations under the act. Sweeney ordered that the notice of intent to remove under the AEA must be (1) given 21-days in advance; (2) include notice of the right to seek judicial review and consult an attorney; and (3) be in a language the recipient understands.
New York: U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein extended his order requiring notice and hearing before AEA deportations can proceed. “This is not the Inquisition, it’s not medieval times,” he said. “This is the United States of America.”
What About The Other Detainees At CECOT?
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: Inside The Fight To Return The Other Men Trump Sent To CECOT
Benjamin Wittes: By what legal authority can the United States send Venezuelans to El Salvador for indefinite detention?
NYT: A Venezuelan Immigrant Held in U.S. Custody ‘Simply Disappeared’
60 Minutes Executive Producer Resigns
Bill Owens, executive producer of 60 Minutes, announced his resignation, saying he no longer had the editorial independence needed to do the job. Owens’ resignation comes as CBS News is under increasing pressure from its parent company Paramount to settle a bogus lawsuit by Donald Trump over how 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign.
Three Eric Adams Prosecutors Resign
In a stirring resignation letter, three assistant U.S. attorneys in the Southern District of New York who handled the prosecution of NYC Mayor Eric Adams stepped down rather than admit to bogus claims of wrongdoing leveled by Trump DOJ officials.
All three prosecutors had been put on leave by Trump DOJ officials in the course of corruptly abandoning the Adams prosecution soon after taking office. In their letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, they alleged that he was requiring them to “express regret and admit some wrongdoing” as a condition of being allowed to return to work. “We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” they wrote in the letter.
Judge Questions DOJ’s Interest In Tina Peters
A federal judge in Colorado grilled the Trump Justice Department on why it was taking the highly unusual step of calling into question the state criminal conviction of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is currently serving a nine-year sentence for meddling with voting equipment as part of the Big Lie obsession.
The Destruction: Science Edition
Politico: RFK Jr. eyes reversing CDC’s Covid-19 vaccine recommendation for children
CBS News: RFK Jr.’s autism study to amass medical records of many Americans
NYT: National Science Foundation Terminates Hundreds of Active Research Awards
The Purges: Reinstatement Edition
VOA: U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of D.C. issued a preliminary injunction allowing Voice of America workers put on leave by the Trump administration to return to work.
EPA: More than 450 staffers working on environmental justice and DEI issues are being fired or reassigned.
State: A reorganization plan will eliminate 15% of the State Department’s domestic staff, which amounts to more than 2,000 jobs, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced.
DOGE Watch
WaPo: Justice Dept. agrees to let DOGE access sensitive immigration case data
NYT: Top DOGE officials moved from the Social Security Administration to the Justice Department as part of a widening White House effort to use personal data to target undocumented immigrants.
WaPo: Interior secretary gives DOGE aide sweeping powers to remake department
Roberts Court Shows Its Anti-LGBTQ Colors
In oral arguments Tuesday, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court openly sided with public school parents seeking to opt their children out of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum. “[I]n an alarming sign for LGBTQ people, it was clear that at least three of the justices believe that describing queer people accurately — acknowledging their equal existence — amounts to taking sides or trying to ‘influence’ children,” longtime legal reporter Chris Geidner observed.
Federal Appeals Court Grants Stay To Riggs
A divided three-judge panel on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the North Carolina Election Board from taking any action in the state Supreme Court race while the trial judge considers the case. In siding with incumbent Justice Allison Riggs (D), the panel overruled the lower court judge who had allowed the Election Board to continue its work while legal wrangling continued, which ran the risk of changing the known outcome of the race before a decision on whether overturning Riggs’ victory was legally proper.
Sarah Palin Loses Defamation Case Against NYT
NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 21: Sarah Palin is seen arriving to the U.S. District Court in downtown Manhattan on April 21, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by BG048/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
A jury deliberated a little more than two hours before rendering its verdict that a 2017 NYT editorial did not defame former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R).
Andrea Lucas, the Trump-appointed acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, announced on social media Tuesday that she has hired as her chief of staff Shannon Royce, a long-time Christian conservative activist who led a lawsuit against the agency in the recent past over its defense of trans employees who faced discrimination at work. Royce, a veteran of the first Trump administration and the Family Research Council, has also vocally opposed abortion and same-sex marriage.
When the Trump administration sent more than 200 Venezuelans to an El Salvador detention camp last month, nearly half of them were subject to standard immigration law.
