It is an extraordinary step to take. James Percival, the General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, has started posting the names of Federal Judges who, in his view, most frequently oppose DHS deportation efforts. See Fox News story here. If any of us normal private attorneys tried to do that, we would
The Merit Systems Protection Board has existed for decades. It has long served as a place where Federal workers can find some measure of fairness. The MSPB addresses the question of whether a Federal employee has been fired for a fair reason. The MSPB is not particularly pro-employee. But, it serves a vital purpose for
I have mentioend here a few times how remrkable it is that Donald Trump, as President and as John Q. Citizen, keeps finding lawyers willing to roll the dice with their law licenses. John Eastman is the latest version of the same story. In 2020, John Eastman, then a law school professor, was one of
The Trump administration has enjoyed itself firing boatloads of Federal employees. The most common recourse for civil service employees who were fired for no just reason is the Merit Systems Protection Board. The MSPB essentially enforces the Civil Service Reform Act. A civil servant can only be fired for a just reason. But, since so
I previously wrote about the tech company known as Anthropic here. This case concerns Department of Defense slapping a label on the company that it was a supply chain risk. Historically, that label has only been applied to companies in adversarial foreign countries.
The Federal Judge in San Fransisco agreed with the company and
I previously wrote about Pres. Trump’s clearly unlawful attacks on big law firms here and here. Since then, all four big law firms which challenged that very strange Executive Order won motions to dismiss at the district court level. That means even without a formal hearing, the judges agreed that Pres. Trump’s silly EO
West Virginia US District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin has criticized ICE tactics before. But, now he has found their tactics to violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. ICE arrested an immigrant from El Salvador while they were wearing masks, driving unmarked vehicles, and without a warrant of any sort. The immigrant, Anderson Jesus
The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 amended the prior law, which was passed in 1883. The current law is found at 5 U.S.C. §1101, et seq. The first Civil Service Act of 1883 changed what had been a political spoils system to a much more professional, stable work force. Prior to 1883, the
In Oral arguments on Nov, 5, 2025, the issue was the power of the Trump administration to set tariffs on many products, from many countries for an unsopeofied amunt of time. Congress has delegated some tariff powers to the Executive branch over the decades. But, Pres. Trump claims a statute, known as the International Emergency
In a recent survey, only 12 out of 65 Federal Judges agreed that the U.S. Supreme Court makes appropriate use of the emergency docket. The emergency docket refers to the process by which a litigant can bypass the courts of appeals and go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court. There have been far more emergency