The Trump administration has faced various legal setbacks in its efforts to implement sweeping deportations and immigration policies, with some of the judges issuing orders accusing officials of racism and unfavorable comparisons in dramatic opinions.
Judge Trina Thompson, a Biden appointee on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, offered the latest lengthy opinion, aimed at the morals of Trump administration officials trying to end temporary immigration programs for foreign nationals.
Challenges to revoking TPS bring racism allegations by judges
In a 37-page opinion Thursday blocking the administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua, she accused officials of “racial animus” based on their statements about criminal migrants.
“By stereotyping the TPS program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, [Homeland] Secretary [Kristi] Noem’s statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population,” Thompson wrote in her opinion.
Thompson wrote in her rejection that she “shares” the “concern” of those suing the Trump administration regarding the president’s ability to end TPS at his discretion. The Biden-appointed judge added that her court “does not forget that this country has bartered with human lives” and included a lengthy footnote discussing the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
“The emancipation of slaves saw the same pattern, but in reverse. Many whites were uncomfortable with the idea of free non-white people in their communities, even if they had lived in the United States for generations,” Thompson wrote in her opinion. “Plaintiffs’ allegations echo these same traditions.”
Thompson also alleges that ending TPS for the three countries and requiring those who had the temporary status to return to their home country is the equivalent of freed slaves being removed from the U.S. and sent to Africa.
Earlier this year, Judge Edward Chen, an Obama appointee on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, blocked the Trump administration from ending TPS for Venezuela and accused the Trump administration of similar claims of racial animus in his 78-page opinion.
“Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes,” Chen wrote in his March order.
The Trump administration’s official reasons for ending the Temporary Protected Status for the countries have been that the reasons outlined for initially granting TPS are no longer applicable, and conditions have improved.
Other decisions bring emotional responses
While many dramatic opinions from federal judges blocking the Trump administration’s policies have come in TPS lawsuits, judges have also made fiery accusations in other issues. A ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday made another unfavorable comparison about the Trump administration’s policies.
Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, compared the president’s policies blocking the administration from rapidly deporting people who had previously been paroled into the country to the countries that illegal immigrants have fled in her order.
“This case’s underlying question, then, asks whether parolees who escaped oppression will have the chance to plead their case within a system of rules,” Cobb wrote. “Or, alternatively, will they be summarily removed from a country that, as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers without explanation or charges … may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?”
Among the various rulings against the Trump administration in district courts, a case regarding the administration’s cancellation of diversity, equity, and inclusion grants at the National Institutes of Health brought another dramatic racial discrimination claim.
“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” U.S. District Judge William Young said in his ruling in June. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.”
While the Trump administration has faced dramatic and blistering opinions at lower district courts, it has racked up several wins on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket on various issues, including terminating TPS.
The Supreme Court’s order allowing the administration to proceed with various policies, including immigration policies, has typically been accompanied by fiery dissents from the liberal minority on the high court.
Brown University has become the third Ivy League school to settle with the Trump administration over accusations the school has fostered antisemitism. Under the terms, the university in Rhode Island will make $50 million in payments to state workforce development programs over a decade, the New York Times reports. Brown agreed to follow Trump’s policies on “merit-based” admissions policies and to not provide gender-reassignment surgery or treatments to minors. To ensure it is adhering to federal law, Brown will turn over data to the government on its admissions and diversity efforts, per the Washington Post.
In turn, the government promised to restore $50 million in research grants that it had chosen not to pay and pledged not to use the deal “to dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech.” An independent monitor will not be appointed to oversee implementation. Brown had not sued after the administration announced in April that it would block $510 million in funding but has said it has borrowed money to replace the federal grants. Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania also reached settlements. White House officials are negotiating with other universities and have said they want the Columbia deal to be a blueprint for making them pay millions.
The Trump administration celebrated the Brown deal. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that it will be part of the “lasting legacy of the Trump administration, one that will benefit students and American society for generations to come.” A couple of educators found parts of the deal acceptable. “This feels like mostly things that Brown had to do anyway, and had already said it was going to do,” said an environmental studies professor. The president of the American Council on Education was pleased that the money isn’t going to the federal government. “We really look forward to engaging with this administration on matters of policy,” Ted Mitchell said. “But this isn’t policy. This is simple extortion and deal-making, which has no place in a democracy.”
https://www.newser.com/story/372756/a-3rd-ivy-league-school-makes-a-deal-with-trump.html
Columbia University has been dealing with “widespread outages” since 7 a.m. Tuesday, which has prevented students from accessing any online platforms.
The Columbia Spectator reports that several screens were taken over and displayed images deemed “unrelated to University activities.” At least one dorm television screen showed a picture of President Donald Trump.
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Police had no information as of 4:15 p.m. to update the community on the situation.
An investigation is still ongoing, though a University spokesperson told the Spectator that it was able to debunk posts circulating online from a group claiming responsibility for the cyberattack. It is not clear what post or group they were referring to at press time.
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/breaking-cyberattack-hits-major-university-1214335
Pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was released from detention Friday evening, ending more than three months of custody in a test of the executive branch’s power to unilaterally act against legal U.S. residents.
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Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin lashed out at “rogue” U.S. District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz, saying he had no authority to order Khalil’s release.
“This is yet another example of how out of control members of the judicial branch are undermining national security,” McLaughlin said. “Their conduct not only denies the result of the 2024 election, it also does great harm to our constitutional system by undermining public confidence in the courts.”
Government attorney Dhruman Sampat had argued that Congress has given the executive branch sweeping powers to determine who could be removed from the county.
The courts should not have the authority to interfere, Sampat said.
Donald Trump has removed Dr Martin Luther King’s bust from the oval office as the president continues to host a right wing “activist” who labelled the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake”.
The tribute to the iconic “I have a dream” speech maker that sat front and centre during Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s presidencies has been re-shuffled to Trump’s private dining room, according to Black Press USA. It comes after the controversy over the unseen MLK files.
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/donald-trump-martin-luther-king-1212605
“You just [expletive] shot the reporter!”
Australian journalist Lauren Tomasi was in the middle of a live cross, covering the protests against the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy in Los Angeles, California. As Tomasi spoke to the camera, microphone in hand, an LAPD officer in the background appeared to target her directly, hitting her in the leg with a rubber bullet.
Earlier, reports emerged that British photojournalist Nick Stern was undergoing emergency surgery after also being hit by the same “non-lethal” ammunition.
The situation in Los Angeles is extremely volatile. After nonviolent protests against raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began in the suburb of Paramount, US President Donald Trump issued a memo describing them as “a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States”. He then deployed the National Guard.
‘Can’t you just shoot them?’
As much of the coverage has noted, this is not the first time the National Guard has been deployed to quell protests in the US.
In 1970, members of the National Guard shot and killed four students protesting the war in Vietnam at Kent State University. In 1992, the National Guard was deployed during protests in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four police officers (three of whom were white) in the killing of a Black man, Rodney King.
Trump has long speculated about violently deploying the National Guard and even the military against his own people.
During his first administration, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, former Secretary of Defence Mark Esper alleged that Trump asked him, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Trump has also long sought to other those opposed to his radical agenda to reshape the United States and its role in the world. He’s classified them as “un-American” and, therefore, deserving of contempt and, when he deems it necessary, violent oppression.
During last year’s election campaign, he promised to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”. Even the Washington Post characterised this description of Trump’s “political enemies” as “echoing Hitler, Mussolini”.
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The Trump administration’s mass deportation program is deliberately cruel and provocative. It was always only a matter of time before protests broke out.
In a democracy, nonviolent protest by hundreds or perhaps a few thousand people in a city of ten million is not a crisis. But it has always suited Trump and the movement that supports him to manufacture crises.
As part of a sweeping reorganization of the State Department, the Trump administration is creating an Office of Remigration. Remigration is an immigration policy embraced by extremists that calls for the removal of all migrants—including “non-assimilated” citizens—with the goal of creating white ethnostates in Western countries.
The details of the plan are contained in a 136-page notification document sent by the State Department to six Congressional commitees—including the House Foreign Affairs and Appropriations Committees and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—for approval by July 1, according to a copy reviewed by WIRED.
“The Office of Remigration will serve as the [Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]’s hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking,” the document reads. “It will provide a policy platform for interagency coordination with DHS and other agencies on removals/repatriations, and “for intra-agency policy work to advance the President’s immigration agenda.”
The notification says that the Office of Remigration “will also actively facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status,” which is a key aim of remigration ideology.
On [Martin Sellner’s] site, he lays out a three-phase plan to implement remigration. The first phase, dubbed the “Immediate Stabilization of Asylum Chaos,” has striking similarities to Trump’s current immigration policies.
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The second phase of Sellner’s plan, following the initial removal of undocumented immigrants, includes the removal of “migrants who entered the country legally and have a residence/work permit, or temporary visa, but are an economical, criminal or cultural burden.”
The final phase targets citizens who are seen as “non assimilated,”and it involves passing laws to “target parallel societies with economic and cultural pressure” and entice citizens to migrate abroad with the use of loans, payments, and other assistance. The plan, Sellner claims, will allow “the wounds of multiculturalism to heal.”
This is like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, all laid out in writing and scarcely anybody is paying attention.
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-office-remigration-state-department-europe-far-right
The daughter of the supreme leader, Xi Mingze, was enrolled at Harvard University in 2010.
Chinese students studying abroad who return to their country are known as “haigui,” which literally means “returning home from overseas.” Although the same word has a homophone that is often referred to in a joking tone: “Sea turtles.” Many of these “sea turtles” are children of high-ranking officials of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who have been sending their offspring to study at the best universities in the West, especially in the United States.
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On Wednesday, Rubio directly targeted China. “The United States will begin revoking visas for Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” the secretary stated in a post.
https://www.mundoamerica.com/news/2025/05/30/68395a32e4d4d86d068b4570.html
So what’s the next step? Will the supreme court and lower courts hold the administration in contempt and enforce the contempt citations?
Trump and his Republican stooges in Congress apparently anticipated this. Hidden inside their Big Ugly Bill is a provision intended to block the courts from using contempt to enforce its orders. It reads:
“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued …”
Translated: no federal court may enforce a contempt citation.
The measure would make most existing injunctions – in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases and others – unenforceable.
Its only purpose is to weaken the power of the federal courts.
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But the provision inside the bill that neuters the federal courts is even worse. It would remove the last remaining constraint on Trump, and thereby effectively end American democracy.
