Once Essayli and Co. have determined that someone has committed a felony by re-entering the country, the whole game changes:

As soon as the task force ID's an alien booked into a local jail who has a previous deportation, they seek a federal criminal warrant on them for felony re-entry, signed off on by a federal judge.

Unlike an administrative ICE warrant or ICE detainer request, these criminal judicial warrants for 8 USC 1326 CANNOT be ignored by sanctuary jurisdictions, and California's sanctuary state law cannot shield aliens from these criminal warrants. Instead of releasing the alien inmates and ignoring ICE detainers, jails must hand the aliens over to the Feds, regardless of sanctuary policy.

A castle doctrine is a self-defense law that states that a person’s home (sometimes also a place of work or vehicle) is a place that grants one protection and immunity from prosecution in certain circumstances to use force or deadly force to defend oneself against an intruder. There is no duty to retreat from the situation in one’s home (or workplace or vehicle if applicable) before using force, but there may be a duty to retreat in a public place.

The United States has two different self-defense laws. The “Stand Your Ground” Law states that there is no duty to retreat from the situation before using deadly force and is not limited to one’s home, place of work, or vehicle. The “Duty to Retreat” Law states that one cannot harm another in self-defense when it is possible to retreat from a threatening situation to a place of safety. In all duty-to-retreat states, the duty to retreat does not apply when the defender is in their own home. States may have both a Castle Doctrine and a Stand Your Ground variation, such as Iowa.

Weber ultimately underwent the procedure. She said she wanted readers to know that the state’s pro-life law was “so dangerous for women.” But in reality, assuming her account is accurate — if it’s true that doctors refused to perform a lifesaving medical procedure because of the state’s pro-life law — the entire ordeal doesn’t prove anything other than that some doctors are incompetent and don’t know how to navigate relatively simple state laws.

The facts are these: the South Carolina “heartbeat bill” explicitly spells out that a doctor can perform an abortion if he determines “that a medical emergency exists or is performed to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.” For good measure, the law directly states that both “intrauterine fetal demise” and “miscarriage” constitute a medical emergency that can justify an abortion.

This is the substance of the law. There are no gimmicks or hidden rules. By her own account there was absolutely no reason that Elisabeth Weber should not have received a D&C. The problem was not with state law, but with the doctors who were either too ignorant or too risk-averse (or both) to do proper medicine.

This is and always has been untrue; Every pro-life law in the United States, without exception, contains provisions that allow for emergency medical intervention to save a mother’s life. //

Doctors are forbidden from killing an unborn child in an act of abortion, but they are more than able to perform related procedures that can save a mother’s life (all the more so in tragic cases like Weber’s, where the baby has died, or even in Thurman’s case, where the babies were killed).

We should never fall for this type of misdirection. Abortion advocates who claim that such laws forbid doctors from saving the lives of women should point to the specific part of the law they claim makes this so.

In Thursday’s hearing, Thomas asked Sauer — who represented the Trump administration — about the history of nationwide injunctions and when courts first started issuing such orders. The solicitor general answered by citing Thomas’ concurring opinion in Trump v. Hawaii, a 2018 case that resulted in SCOTUS reversing “a lower court’s decision to uphold a nationwide injunction on Trump’s travel ban,” according to The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson.

In his concurrence in that case, Thomas noted how nationwide injunctions by lower courts “did not emerge until a century and a half after the founding.” He further observed that these injunctions “appear to be inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts.”

“These injunctions are beginning to take a toll on the federal court system — preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the Executive Branch,” Thomas wrote.

In his response to Thomas, Sauer highlighted several examples of universal injunctions that he said began emerging in the early 1960s.

“So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?” asked Thomas, to which Sauer replied, “That’s exactly correct.”

Sauer added, “In fact, those [injunctions] are very limited and very rare even in the 1960s. It really exploded in 2007 in our cert petition in Summers v. Earth Island Institute, we pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims.”

"Democrats are learning … that Democrats can not only be the party of resistance."

"Like we resisted so hard between 2017 and 2024," Smith said. "We impeached the guy [Trump]. Like, we prosecuted him. Convicted him of 34 felony counts. And guess what, he still got elected. I don't know how much harder we can resist right now." //

Scott Jennings @ScottJenningsKY
·
I can't believe it. They finally admitted it on live TV:

The prosecution of President Trump was an organized effort by the Democratic Party "resistance."

Lawfare is real. The justice system was weaponized against President Trump.

5:39 PM · May 15, 2025 //

"Just to be clear, everyone that now touts the 34 felonies, take it from Lis, this was not a real case," Jennings said. "This was a plot to upend the presidential campaign. Which backfired." //

cupera1 Mildred's Oldest Son
13 hours ago
The Trump Soviet Union show trial in NY City is a Rube Goldberg legal construction that should not have worked. The original alleged crime is a simple misdemeanor under a New York law against falsifying business records. This law passed the Statute of Limitations over five years ago. The NY DA’s office looked at this case at that time and passed on it. Then Trump announced his candidacy to run for president and everything changed.

To defibrillate the case against Trump they claimed that misdemeanor, Penal Law Section 175.05, was connected to an alleged election violation felony. This secondary statues the prosecutors cite, state and federal election crimes, cannot and were not proven. The state law had also passed its statute of limitation years ago. Federal law can’t be tried in a state court. The FEC looked at this case and laughed at it.

The only way this trial against Trump could have worked was using “lawfare" for Democrats: Selecting a jury of anti-Trump partisans. Using known liars and perjurers to support the charges. Keeping Brady evidence from the jury, don’t want anyone to get a conscience. And a DNC judge with his thumb on the scales that made multiple reversible errors during the trial and violating Trumps 6th Amendment rights. We learned that Trump was going to be found guilty BEFORE the jury came back. Democrats applied the same legal philosophy of Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, head of the NKVD under Stalin "Show me the man and I will find the crime."

Nevertheless, they believe our order applies to tens of thousands of individuals.

So, you get the sense that the appellate court was a tad exasperated with the plaintiffs' more expansive reading as to who was entitled to exemption from the EO. Nevertheless, Whitehead's subsequent order read as indignant and snippy, particularly toward the administration (but even a bit toward the appellate court). He characterized their interpretation of the 9th Circuit's prior order as "'interpretive jiggerypokery' of the highest order." He concluded that [emphasis added]: //

As anticipated, the administration quickly sought further clarification from the 9th Circuit (and, "in light of the increasingly contentious collateral proceedings over compliance in the district court," a complete stay of the district court's injunction).

On Friday, the 9th Circuit obliged and, in a very succinct order, again clarified that plaintiffs (and by inference, Whitehead) were again reading the scope of the exemption too broadly [emphasis added]:

Our order should be interpreted narrowly, on a case-by-case basis, to apply to individuals with a strong reliance interest arising prior to January 20, 2025, comparable to Plaintiff Pacito. //

Cynical Optimist
7 hours ago
“Jiggerpokery?” A judge actually used that word in an official document?

Susie Moore Cynical Optimist
7 hours ago
Yup. Now - he was actually quoting Antonin Scalia (from his dissent in King v. Burwell). 😂

The order by U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich came amid a lawsuit by Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, an immigrant-rights aid group, against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

"At its core, this case presents a narrow legal issue: Does the Memorandum of Understanding between the IRS and DHS violate the Internal Revenue Code? It does not," Friedrich wrote in his order.

(Note: Friedrich, a Trump appointee, is a woman, so that would be her order.) //

Under the tax code, those records are kept confidential and may not be shared outside the IRS, unless a particular statutory exception applies. 26 U.S.C. § 6103(a). As relevant here, one such exception, § 6103(i)(2), allows the head of any federal agency to request tax return information to aid in investigating or preparing for a judicial or administrative proceeding to enforce designated criminal statutes. Id. § 6103(i)(2). //

Also on Monday, Friedrich denied the motion of American Oversight (a group involved in several suits against the Trump administration) to intervene in the case. In doing so, she noted that she was unsealing most of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the IRS and DHS, along with the parties' briefs, thus obviating American Oversight's contention that intervention was warranted to access the documents at issue:

The MOU is a central focus of this litigation, and the information contained in the redacted MOU has been widely discussed, including on the record in open court at the April 16, 2025 preliminary injunction motion hearing. Although the government objects to its full disclosure, it has not asserted a compelling interest or high risk of prejudice with disclosure of the MOU and briefs. The public need for access is high given that the MOU's content is essential to the claims raised by the plaintiffs and the Court's reasoning in its forthcoming opinion on the 28 Motion for a Preliminary Injunction. The Court will not order, however, that the IRS "points of contact" on page 13 of the MOU be unsealed. With respect to those lower level government employees, the Court concludes that their personal privacy interests outweigh any public need to access their names and contact information.

In case you missed it, the below EO is a big deal. Trump is forcing the federal government to spell out everything that is a crime under federal law. The other thing the EO does is to force the government to add a "mens rea" element to most of these "crimes"; i.e., you have to be aware of the fact that you are committing a crime in order for it to be a crime.

Thus, if you decide to build a pond on your property and the EPA has some obscure regulation saying that is a crime, you would need to be aware of the criminal nature of the act before you did it in order to be guilty of anything.

This is great.

The whole EO is linked in my post below, but I wanted to call attention to one tangential aspect of it. The EO says:

"It privileges large corporations, which can afford to hire expensive legal teams to navigate complex regulatory schemes and fence out new market entrants, over average Americans.”

This is really important and is a theme I keep coming back to. Regulatory schemes like Dodd-Frank and the CFPB are created ostensibly to help the “little guy,” when in reality they create byzantine layers upon layers of compliance requirements that only mega-corporations can afford to navigate. Those sorts of laws are anti-competitive and hurt most of all the “little guy” they purport to help.

When you hear the likes of Bernie Sanders and Big Chief Lizzie Warren railing against the “oligarchy,” realize that they regulatory schemes they propose serve the oligarchy MOST OF ALL. In fact, Bernie and Lizzie and AOC are the oligarchs, not us.

Presidential Actions
FIGHTING OVERCRIMINALIZATION IN FEDERAL REGULATIONS
Executive Orders
May 9, 2025
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose. The United States is drastically overregulated. The Code of Federal Regulations contains over 48,000 sections, stretching over 175,000 pages — far more than any citizen can possibly read, let alone fully understand. Worse, many carry potential criminal penalties for violations. The situation has become so dire that no one -– likely including those charged with enforcing our criminal laws at the Department of Justice — knows how many separate criminal offenses are contained in the Code of Federal Regulations, with at least one source estimating hundreds of thousands of such crimes. Many of these regulatory crimes are “strict liability” offenses, meaning that citizens need not have a guilty mental state to be convicted of a crime.

This status quo is absurd and unjust. It allows the executive branch to write the law, in addition to executing it. That situation can lend itself to abuse and weaponization by providing Government officials tools to target unwitting individuals. It privileges large corporations, which can afford to hire expensive legal teams to navigate complex regulatory schemes and fence out new market entrants, over average Americans.

The purpose of this order is to ease the regulatory burden on everyday Americans and ensure no American is transformed into a criminal for violating a regulation they have no reason to know exists.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States that:

(a) Criminal enforcement of criminal regulatory offenses is disfavored.

(b) Prosecution of criminal regulatory offenses is most appropriate for persons who know or can be presumed to know what is prohibited or required by the regulation and willingly choose not to comply, thereby causing or risking substantial public harm. Prosecutions of criminal regulatory offenses should focus on matters where a putative defendant is alleged to have known his conduct was unlawful.

(c) Strict liability offenses are “generally disfavored.” United States v. United States Gypsum, Co., 438 U.S. 422, 438 (1978). Where enforcement is appropriate, agencies should consider civil rather than criminal enforcement of strict liability regulatory offenses or, if appropriate and consistent with due process and the right to jury trial, see Jarkesy v. Securities and Exchange Commission, 603 U.S. 109 (2024), administrative enforcement.

(d) Agencies promulgating regulations potentially subject to criminal enforcement should explicitly describe the conduct subject to criminal enforcement, the authorizing statutes, and the mens rea standard applicable to those offenses.

Sec. 3. Definitions. For purposes of this order:

(a) “Agency” has the meaning given to “Executive agency” in section 105 of title 5, United States Code;

(b) “Criminal regulatory offense” means a Federal regulation that is enforceable by a criminal penalty; and

(c) “Mens rea” means the state of mind that by law must be proven to convict a particular defendant of a particular crime.

Sec. 4. Report on Criminal Regulatory Offenses. (a) Within 365 days of the date of this order, the head of each agency, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall provide to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a report containing:

(i) a list of all criminal regulatory offenses enforceable by the agency or the Department of Justice; and

(ii) for each criminal regulatory offense identified in subsection (a)(i) of this section, the range of potential criminal penalties for a violation and the applicable mens rea standard for the criminal regulatory offense.

(b) At the same time the head of each agency provides to the Director of OMB the report required by subsection (a) of this section, the agency head shall publicly post the report on its agency webpage.

The district court dismissed the case, ruling that the APA claims were barred by sovereign immunity because the Library of Congress is part of “the Congress” and therefore not an “agency” within the meaning of the APA’s judicial review provision.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the district court's decision. The court held that irrespective of whether the Library is an “agency,” Congress has specified that copyright regulations under Title 17 of the U.S. Code are subject to the APA. The court concluded that DMCA rules are subject to the APA just like other copyright rules, and therefore, the APA provides the necessary waiver of sovereign immunity for this suit. The court remanded the case back to the district court to assess the APA claims.

Judge Illston’s ruling exemplifies a growing trend where district judges are using temporary restraining orders and nationwide injunctions as tools to block executive actions they disagree with. This is judicial activism, plain and simple. It’s one thing to hear a case and rule on it within the confines of a specific district. It’s another to issue a nationwide injunction that overrides the president’s authority across the entire country. //

The judiciary’s role is to interpret the law, not to decide what presidential directives are appropriate. If Congress disagrees with Trump’s restructuring plan, it has the power to pass legislation to counter it. But a single district judge should not have that power. //

The president’s authority to direct the federal workforce and implement agency restructuring must be upheld — otherwise, we’re looking at a future where unelected judges, not elected leaders, are the ones calling the shots.

The Constitution is clear: The president is the head of the executive branch. //

Outerlimitsfan
2 hours ago edited
We are witnessing the tyranny of the Judicial branch that Jefferson was concerned about.

The media is correct that a Constitutional Crisis is on the brink of occurring. The blame lies with the Judicial branch and in particular Roberts who refuses to stop the overreach by district courts.

So many leftist activist judges are angry that Trump got elected again and the lawfare failed to throw him in prison. //

Mrs. deWinter
2 hours ago
If previous Presidents and their administrations can add endless agencies and personnel and grow the government bigger and bigger without any complaint or judicial oversight, then another duly elected President can un-grow it! Period. HE'S the elected Executive. He's the one who makes those decisions about personnel and departments. And obviously, Trump was elected to do just that since the debt is out of control and the government has grown to mammoth proportions where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing any longer, and the waste, fraud, and corruption are on steroids.

In 1949, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who had served as co-counsel at Nuremberg, wrote the following as it pertained to a free speech case he was involved in.

“[t]his Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means . . . that all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrine logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

I could expand on what this means, but I think Thomas Jefferson does a better job than I ever could when he wrote to John Colvin in 1810:

Whether circumstances do not sometimes occur which make it a duty in officers of high trust to assume authorities beyond the law, is easy of solution in principle, but sometimes embarrassing in practice. A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen: but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property & all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.

This is basically the "don't cut your nose off to spite your face" argument. If following the letter of the law is going to send the country over the cliff, apply some common sense and don't follow the letter. Lincoln said as much in 1861 when he suspended habeas corpus by executive order, telling Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney that he had empowered Gen. Winfield Scott to arrest, and detain, without resort to ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to public safety because it served the public interest.

And later during a special session of Congress, he said, "In nearly one-third of the States had subverted the whole of the laws ... Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" It's kind of a unique and odd argument that the left puts out there today. It wants strict adherence to constitutional law, and at the same time, it wants to violate current immigration law (which was, by the way, legally and constitutionally affirmed). And the fact that we have to grapple with this at all is due to the Democratic Party's practice of busting the law as they soar high above it like a drone. It might make them look like children stealing out of the cookie jar when one of their judges gets caught sneaking illegal aliens out the back door, and it's enjoyable to watch them beclown themselves, but all of this is really quite dangerous. //

One final thing I ran across while studying this matter was a couple of obscure passages in the SCOTUS ruling for the Shaughnessy v. United States case noted above.

a) The alien's right to enter the United States depends on the congressional will, and the courts cannot substitute their judgment for the legislative mandate....In the exercise of these powers, Congress expressly authorized the President to impose additional restrictions on aliens entering or leaving the United States during periods of international tension and strife. That authorization, originally enacted in the Passport Act of 1918, continues in effect during the present emergency. Under it, the Attorney General, acting for the President, may shut out aliens whose "entry would be prejudicial to the interest of the United States."

b) Courts have long recognized the power to expel or exclude aliens as a fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government's political departments largely immune from judicial control.

The sense of entitlement here is just disgusting. First of all, it's absolutely clear that the U.S. Supreme Court has already held that a charitable organization, including specifically a university, can lose its tax-exempt status if they are violating fundamental policy

The reality here is that elite universities are undermining confidence in the entire sector. Jewish students are being harassed and assaulted, and elite university administrators have done nothing to stop it, including at Harvard. Financial incentives seem to be the only lever that we can pull to stop the racist and anti-Semitic conduct on their campuses.

Goldfeder was referencing a 1983 case in which the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the IRS had authority to deny tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University, Goldsboro Christian School, and other private and religious schools with racially discriminatory educational policies. //

Levin continued:

You have Jewish kids on campus who are being violently threatened, who are being harmed, in some cases running for their safety. That is very serious. If we had black kids on campus running for their safety, locking themselves in libraries, locking themselves in dorm rooms ... you'd be hearing very different stories than you hear from this guy with a smirk on his face. //

ChesterTheGoat
9 hours ago
The holding in the 1983 Bob Jones case is not limited to just interracial dating. It is not that narrow. The SCOTUS held that an IRS 501c3 org "must serve a public purpose and not be contrary to established public policy" and that racially discriminatory conduct was against public policy. To the extent that public universities are found to be following racially discriminatory policies, it is perfectly within SCOTUS precedent to revoke their 501c3 status.

This ruling effectively reins in district courts that have been sidestepping proper jurisdictional channels in cases challenging Trump administration actions. The decision serves as a clear reminder that courts themselves must operate within their prescribed legal boundaries. //

According to Margot Cleveland, senior legal correspondent for The Federalist, the D.C. Circuit’s ruling hinges on a critical point: jurisdiction, which has sweeping implications. As Cleveland explains, many of the legal challenges being hurled at the Trump administration involve employment decisions—precisely the kind of disputes Congress has explicitly said federal district courts have no authority to adjudicate.

The court’s decision also strikes at the heart of a broader legal strategy being used by leftist groups to stymie Trump’s reforms—namely, the claim that the administration is engaging in “wholesale dismantling” of agencies. But as the ruling makes clear, the Administrative Procedure Act was never designed to handle such broad-based political grievances, and Congress never waived sovereign immunity to allow them.

In another key point, the court found that the lower court also overstepped its bounds by trying to restore federal grants—something Congress assigned to the Court of Federal Claims, not the district courts. All told, the decision is a sharp rebuke to the legal overreach being used to obstruct the Trump administration’s agenda. //

The Dark Lord LBPA
20 hours ago
Even worse. This is such a powerful decision it will be appealed to the full DC Circuit for an “en banc” hearing.

Radical Leftists hold a 7 - 4 majority among active judges on the DC Circuit. So, we will lose decisively on appeal.

However, this was such a good opinion it could provide the framework for a sweeping successful decision from SCOTUS. If, …

If Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh decide not to support the judicial coup attempt. //

Hominem Humilem Sum The Dark Lord
18 hours ago
Alas, diminishing the power of the judiciary may not be something Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh are inclined to do: they may prefer to leave the power in the hands of the judiciary and claim the ultimate authority for themselves. Admittedly, that would be a dangerous game to play, since the Article III crew have no indigenous enforcement capability (and would have to rely on the Executive and Legislative Branches to "take their word for it"). //

Mrminwnc Hominem Humilem Sum
18 hours ago
This sounds glib, but respect for the judiciary branch is essentially a courtesy extended by the other two, in particular the executive branch. If the others simply get tired of judges overreaching they can just ignore them.

Margot Cleveland @ProfMJCleveland
·
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland
12/ In sum, this opinion is a HUGE win for Trump because it establishes 3 key principles that apply to many of the other cases being brought against Trump Administration: a) no jurisdiction over firings; b) no jurisdiction over grant terminations;
13/ c) you can't get around Congress limiting district court jurisdiction by creative pleading of claims under other theories; d) with no bond harm to government will outweigh other harm; e) public has interest in Article III obey Article I.
2:14 PM · May 3, 2025 //

The Left only destroys
2 hours ago
require a bond for the injunction
To me, this is the most important part of the ruling. My understanding is that the bond posted must cover the expenses that the defendant (in this case, the Federal Government) incurs if later the injunction is overturned. Given the scope of those activities, the cost of the bonds would be huge. If this really happens (and I'm betting President Trump will move mountains to make sure it is), it will finally prevent every little candy-@$$ed technicolor-haired leftist from filing for injunctive relief six seconds after an Executive Order is issued.

Think about that for a moment. A federal judge presiding over an ACLU lawsuit has ordered the Attorney General of the State of Florida to cease enforcement of the Florida law that is the source of the suit. The AG, citing his opinion that the judge has no jurisdiction, is defying the order, refusing to order Florida law enforcement to stand down.

And here's the interesting bit: It seems that if the Florida AG is to be brought in to face contempt charges, the person likely to be tasked with bringing him in would be U.S. Marshal Greg Leljedal of the Northern District of Florida. Now, look at this:
...
They seem to be on remarkably good terms.

Child Protective Services (CPS) investigations are supposed to be about safeguarding children from harm. In every state, the standard CPS protocol for an investigation is, among other things, to conduct a home visit and to interview each child by themselves. However, these tactics can themselves inflict significant trauma upon the very children they aim to protect.¹ These harms are increasingly recognized by legal analysts,² child welfare caseworkers and supervisors, tribal workers and supervisors, police officers and detectives, foster parents, birthparents, teachers and school counselors, medical examiners, mental health providers, juvenile court staff, child welfare trainers, and foster youth.³

While in situations of real abuse the cost of the harm created should be offset by the benefit of the harm prevented, this is not at all the case when the investigation is based on false or overblown allegations. In such situations, the effect of the standard CPS investigation means that the child, not to mention their family, ends up more harmed, not less.

Investigations cause immediate shock, confusion, and fear.

The very nature of a CPS investigation, especially in the home, can surprise, shock, and traumatize children.⁴ Investigations are unexpected and can be quite sudden.⁵ According to research from Portland State University's Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services, children frequently report feelings of “surprise, shock, and chaos” during investigations.⁶ Many develop a sense of “powerlessness, helplessness,” and even “guilt or failure.”⁷ This is increased when the investigations commence in the middle of the night.⁸

Many parents recount their children crying and sobbing after interviews, demonstrating the immediate emotional impact of these investigations.⁹ Children do not understand what is going on or what is going to happen.¹⁰ This leads to fear that their parents will be arrested¹¹ or even that the children will be taken away.¹²

Children are afraid of being intruded upon by strangers. //

The standard CPS investigatory approach causes significant harm to the children involved. When investigations stem from false or overblown allegations, this harm is completely unjustifiable and adverse to the aim of protecting children.

Instead, CPS workers who seek to protect children should not rush to enter a home or conduct child interviews without first weighing the harms to determine whether interviews are really necessary. Very often, there are other methods available of determining children are safe without employing these more harmful tactics. When trauma to children can be avoided, it should be.

If you want to talk about due process, what about the state's attorney and the victims in the courtroom waiting for the case to be heard, who were left high and dry because of what Dugan did? They didn't find out until later that the case had been adjourned after the state's attorney wondered why the case hadn't been called.

Now, Chief Judge Carl Ashley is blowing up the notion that you can't arrest someone in the public hallway where the agents were waiting, and that the warrant the federal agents had was sufficient.

Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley said federal agents have leeway to operate in the hallways of the Milwaukee County Courthouse, even if they only have what's known as an administrative warrant.

Asked to comment on the April 25 arrest of Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, Ashley said a formal policy for access to the courthouse is still being drafted but the county faces "limitations on what we can do."

"The reality is, for my colleagues, we don't have control in the public hallways," Ashley said.

He said that an administrative warrant, despite lacking a judge's signature, can be used to make arrests in a public hallway.

Dieter Schultz
4 hours ago edited

Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley said federal agents have leeway to operate in the hallways of the Milwaukee County Courthouse, even if they only have what's known as an administrative warrant.

I recently read a comment on another site that noted a Catch 22 situation with these 'administrative warrants'.

But what I want to make note of is that the "sanctuary" entities always say they will not accept anything but a "judicial warrant". However, there is no mechanism under the law to issue a "judicial warrant" for violations of 8 USC 1182 or 8 USC 1227 (which all administrative violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act fall under).

They know this, that is why the make a requirement for something that does not exist.

I did a little checking and that seems about right.

The constant repeating of the term 'due process' plays to the public's discomfort with thinking deeply on subjects like the law and what it means to this country.

It's a cute trick if INS can only issue 'administrative' warrants and the left keeps insisting on 'judicial' warrants and the left knows that few people will call them on it and, if someone does call them on it, all the left has to do is ignore the event and wait a few hours until the people move on and forget the previous reveal.

This family, targeted solely over what should have been a civil dispute over grazing rights over 25 acres of government land, was prosecuted, credibly threatened with jail sentences, so extreme that they were told to find alternatives to raise their young children. Charles and Maude live on a 5th-generation family farm in Pennington County, South Dakota, close to Mount Rushmore. There, they farm 400 acres. They raise about 250 head of cattle, and about 40 sows. //

The Biden administration criminally charged the Maude family for theft of government property. And for too long, for years now, they have endured a torturous legal process and suffered as victims of the Biden regime's reckless lawfare. Just imagine, a government that would be willing to de facto orphan American children over a mere dispute over 25 acres of land. The men of Lexington and Concord knew what (this) sort of government was like, and they knew what to do about it. The Maude family too, faced with destruction at the hand of the state, made their appeal to heaven, and providence answered. Thanks to the leadership and the unequivocal, bold leadership of President Trump and his directive to put Americans first, we now have the pleasure to announce that the criminal prosecution of the Maudes is now over. They will not be driven from their home. They will not be jailed. They will not be fined. And their children will grow up with a mother and a father who they love and who love them. //

This dispute - and there was, legitimately, some confusion over the status of the 25 acres and the exact boundaries between that acreage and the Maude family land - should never have come to this in the first place. In a sane world, this would have been resolved by having one or two Department of Agriculture officials come out, sit down with the Maudes, make sure everybody understood and agreed to a solution to the dispute, and arrive at a mutually agreed-upon survey of the property boundaries.

Instead, the Biden administration threatened the Maudes with jail time. The Biden administration threatened to break up the Maude family, to effectively orphan the Maude children. And all of this is over a dispute over 25 acres of grazing land. This is the same administration, mind you, that allowed millions of unscreened, unvetted, illegal immigrants to flood into the United States. //

DarthCY
an hour ago
You should go deeper into the story. The Government was even more heavy handed than you present. They were cooperating and were waiting for a survey to come back to discuss when they raided their house, arrested them and tried them separately. They also barred them from communicating with each other on their defense. This is pure evil. //

anon-259e
an hour ago
Every Federal employee involved with this abomination needs to be fired and the Maude family must be reimbursed for all legal expenses + an extra 100% as damages.

According to the government, Dugan directed federal agents away from the hallway outside of her courtroom to see the chief judge, then hustled illegal alien defendant Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, whose case she was supposed to hear, out another door. The affidavit also noted that, on top of all that, the case against Flores-Ruiz wasn't called. When the state's attorney asked, the attorney found out the case had been adjourned even though the state's attorney and the victims were there for it.

So much for that "due process" that the victims had come for, and that Democrats are now screaming about. Reminder: the illegal alien was facing multiple charges of domestic violence, and he had already been deported once, so he was a re-entry. //

So if you don't know the details, why are you commenting? How can it be "obvious" intimidation when you don't even know the facts of the case? You say you don't want to comment, yet you are commenting. This tells you all you need to know about why media today is in trouble.

Then Brooks made it worse.

And to me, if she- - let’s say she did escort this guy out the door. If federal enforcement agencies come to your courtroom and you help a guy escape, that is two things. One, it strikes me as maybe something illegal, but it also strikes me as something heroic.

And in times of trouble, then people are sometimes called to do civil disobedience. And in my view, when people do civil disobedience they have to pay the price. That’s part of the heroism of it, frankly. And so you can both think that she shouldn’t have legally done this, and that, morally, protecting somebody against, maybe not even in this case, but in other cases, frankly, a predatory enforcement agency... //

Unbelievable. Forget about the enforcement of the law or any of the victims. We've now moved from "no one is above the law" to "sometimes civil disobedience is necessary," and breaking the law is "heroic." He wants to be able to offer an opinion, without getting held to any of the bad details in this particular case, so what is what he says worth? Absolutely nothing. //

Dieter Schultz RedDog_FLA
8 minutes ago

Civil Disobedience by a Judge responsible for the rule of law?
Label me puzzled. Brooks has really left leaned his views.

When you consider the way that progressives reason, namely, that they start with the conclusion that they want to draw and then work backwards to find a line of rationalization that gets them there... when you consider that... well, it's hard to be surprised by what emanates from the mind of a progressive.

It seems to me that Judge Dugan and Brooks both approach the world, including the legal world, from that paradigm... well... it's not all that surprising to hear their views on civil disobedience.

That worldview and reasoning runs counter to the way axiomatic systems like the law, and math, works but nobody ever said they were rational.