update - Fed judge authorizes lawsuit against Musk unauthorized use of power

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'Unlawful many times over': Judge issues 'big win for Harvard' in Trump lawsuit

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from revoking Harvard University's ability to enroll foreign students, calling the order a "blatant violation" of the U.S. Constitution.

Harvard filed a complaint Friday morning in Boston federal court, and U.S. District judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order hours later freezing the policy.


"Revoking Harvard’s certification is unlawful many times over," the judge wrote in her order. "It is a pillar of our constitutional system that the government cannot 'invok[e] legal sanctions and other means of coercion' to police private speech, especially when the government’s treatment is animated by viewpoint discrimination. The government’s effort to punish the University for its refusal to surrender its academic independence and for its perceived viewpoint is a patent violation of the First Amendment."

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EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson dismissed Harvard's lawsuit as "frivolous."

"If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn't be in this situation to begin with," Jackson said. "Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits."


CNN's Elie Honig said the temporary restraining order was a significant win for the university.

"It is a big win for Harvard, temporary but very significant," Honig said. "What this says is the court is blocking the Trump administration from blocking Harvard from bringing in international students. In other words, as of this moment, it's back to the status quo. Harvard may continue to bring in international students."

 

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Judge throws Trump lawyers' own words back in their faces in angry slap down

A federal judge angrily rejected the Trump administration's request to reverse his order to give due process to migrants deported to South Sudan.

In a scathing 17-page order, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy threw the administration's lawyers' words back into their faces to show they had argued in bad faith that meaningful immigration proceedings could be conducted overseas, and found the administration had violated his preliminary injunction.


"Since that hearing, merely five days ago, Defendants have changed their tune," Murphy wrote. "It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than Defendants anticipated."

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The Trump administration flew immigrants to war-ravaged South Sudan earlier this month despite a court order requiring ICE to give people being deported to a country that's not their own a chance to argue their concerns in court. Trump administration lawyers claimed that could be done after arrival in the countries.

Murphy made clear the deportees should be given adequate notice and opportunity to raise fears of persecution or torture before they were taken to third countries, and he said the administration had raised red herrings to avoid complying with his order.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

"However, the Court never said that Defendants had to convert their foreign military base into an immigration facility; it only left that as an option, again, at Defendants’ request," Murphy wrote. "The other option, of course, has always been to simply return to the status quo of roughly one week ago, or else choose any other location to complete the required process."

Only one of the eight deportees, who are currently being held in Djibouti, is a South Sudanese national. Another was expected to be returned to Myanmar.

"Defendants have mischaracterized this Court’s order, while at the same time manufacturing the very chaos they decry," Murphy wrote. "By racing to get six class members onto a plane to unstable South Sudan, clearly in breach of the law and this Court’s order, Defendants gave this Court no choice but to find that they were in violation of the Preliminary Injunction."

 

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New York won a temporary victory against president Donald Trump in a fight over Manhattan’s congestion pricing program.

The Trump administration has threatened to withhold funding and federal approval for the state's transportation projects as leverage to end New York City's tolls for driving in high-traffic zones.





But U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman granted a request Tuesday by the state's Metropolitan Transportation Authority to block the government's moves, reported Bloomberg.

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"Liman’s ruling means the program — designed to reduce gridlock and pollution and raise money to modernize the city’s transit system — will almost certainly continue as the legal battle proceeds," the outlet reported. "It helps reduce uncertainty over how the nation’s largest public transportation system will pay to modernize a more than 100-year-old network."

The judge found the MTA had demonstrated that its claims would likely succeed, and he said it would suffer “irreparable harm” without a temporary restraining order because the government's attempt to revoke approval for the program had already hurt the value of MTA Bonds.



The MTA sued transportation secretary Sean Duffy when he announced Feb. 19 that he was reversing approval granted under president Joe Biden.

Trump claims the pricing plan will hurt the local economy and Duffy denounced it as “a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners," but Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul insists the program is needed and pointed to data to show that it's working as intended.

The tolls raised $159 million in the program's first three months and is on target to raise $500 million this year after expenses, according to MTA officials, and data shows that traffic declined on average by 11 percent daily between January and April.

Support for the tolls grew to 39 percent in mid-May, up from 29 percent in December.

Judge hands New York victory in court battle against Trump

 

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Trump has been dropped from a lawsuit accusing his administration of illegally wielding power to slash government agencies and purge the federal workforce.

But a federal judge won’t let Elon Musk escape the case.

Musk — tapped by the president to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — is facing a lawsuit from a group of 14 states arguing that the world’s wealthiest person lacks any legal authority to carry out mass firings, terminate grants and access sensitive government information and taxpayer data.


Attorneys for the Trump administration claimed Musk is only serving a temporary advisory role as a “special government employee” serving under the president.

But District Judge Tanya Chutkan shot down the White House’s attempt to “minimize” his role as “a mere advisor without any formal authority.”

Musk instead “occupies a continuing position” and “exercises significant authority,” all without “proper appointment” by Congress, Chutkan wrote.

The states suing the administration plausibly allege that Musk “makes decisions about ‘federal expenditures, contracts, government property, and the very existence of federal agencies,’” she added.

DOGE caused “financial harm” to states by slashing federal funding while gaining “unauthorized access” to “private and proprietary information,” according to the lawsuit.

“The Constitution does not permit the Executive to commandeer the entire appointments power by unilaterally creating a federal agency pursuant to Executive Order and insulating its principal officer from the Constitution as an ‘advisor’ in name only,” Chutkan wrote.



Musk and Trump have characterized DOGE — operating as the U.S. Doge Service, formerly the U.S. Digital Service — as “tech support” to end “waste, fraud and abuse.”

His DOGE agents, or federal workers doing work on its behalf, are deployed across all federal agencies

Musk’s position as a “special government employee” is limited to 130 days within the year, which would mean the tech billionaire could no longer be working at the White House by the end of this month.

But White House officials told The Independent that those working hours don’t fall neatly within the calendar. Musk is expected to remain a fixture within the administration, though he announced he plans to limit his time in Washington, D.C. — and how much money he spends on political campaigns — to focus on his company Tesla, which saw profits drop by 71 percent within the first three months of the year.



The lawsuit is among several accusing the Trump administration of unconstitutionally running roughshod through federal agencies.

That breakneck effort to keep up with DOGE’s actions in court has been met with what appears to be attempts from administration officials to obfuscate the true nature of Musk’s role — or scramble to name someone else in charge.



While he vows to escape Washington to return to Tesla, Musk remains a defendant in several lawsuits accusing the Trump administration of unconstitutionally wielding power to slash federal spending and fire workers (Getty Images)
After weeks of secrecy in court and refusals from the White House to answer who, exactly, was running DOGE, reporters were sent a message on February 25 from an unnamed White House spokesperson naming Amy Gleason as the DOGE administrator.

Administration officials have insisted that Musk is not the administrator for DOGE. Trump, however, has said the exact opposite.


Musk has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” according to a sworn statement from a senior White House official on February 18. The next day, Trump himself said he “signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency, and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.”

In a statement, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, who brought the case against DOGE, called Judge Chutkan’s decision “an important milestone for preserving America’s system of checks and balances.”

“We are proud to move this case forward and help bring Elon Musk’s reign of terror to an end,” he added.

The Independent has always had a global perspective. Built on a firm foundation of superb international reporting and analysis, The Independent now enjoys a reach that was inconceivable when it was launched as an upstart player in the British news industry. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, and across the world, pluralism, reason, a progressive and humanitarian agenda, and internationalism – Independent values – are under threat. Yet we, The Independent, continue to grow.

Judge spares Trump from massive DOGE lawsuit — leaving Elon Musk holding the bag for ‘unauthorized role’

 

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge refused Wednesday to temporarily block the Trump administration from removing and replacing the director of the U.S. Copyright Office.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled from the bench that the office director, Shira Perlmutter, hasn't met her legal burden to show how removing her from the position would cause her to suffer irreparable harm.



Kelly's refusal to issue a temporary restraining order isn't the final word in the lawsuit that Perlmutter filed last week. If Perlmutter decides to seek a preliminary injunction, the judge is giving her attorneys and government lawyers until Thursday afternoon to present him with a proposed schedule for arguing and deciding the matter.

Perlmutter's attorneys say she is a renowned copyright expert who also has served as Register of Copyrights since the Librarian of Congress appointed her to the job in October 2020.

“As Register, Ms. Perlmutter is a critical advisor to Congress on matters of important legislative interest and administers the Nation’s copyright system,” her lawyers wrote.

Earlier this month, Trump appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to replace Carla Hayden as Librarian of Congress. The White House fired Hayden on May 8 amid criticism from conservatives that she was advancing a “woke” agenda.



“The Library of Congress is not an autonomous organization free from political supervision,” government lawyers wrote.

The administration said Blanche replaced Perlmutter with Paul Perkins, an associate deputy attorney general and veteran Justice Department attorney.

Perlmutter's lawyers argued that the president doesn't have the authority to unilaterally remove the Register of Copyrights or appoint an acting Librarian of Congress.

“Defendants’ actions are blatantly unlawful, and they threaten severe and irreparable harm to Ms. Perlmutter and her ability to fulfill the duties entrusted to her under the law,” they wrote.

Government lawyers argued that blocking Perlmutter's removal would amount to a "severe intrusion” into the president’s authority to exercise executive power.

Kelly said it is “striking” that nobody from Congress is involved in the lawsuit. He said the absence of Congress from the case “has to impact my assessment” of Perlmutter's request for a temporary restraining order.

But the judge also emphasized that the case has been pending for fewer than three business days and has produced “a very limited record” for him to consider so far.

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Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press

Judge refuses to temporarily block the Trump administration from removing Copyright Office director