Federal judge issues 2nd preliminary injunction against Trump birthright citizenship order
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
(SEATTLE, Wash.) — A federal judge in Seattle has issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship — one day after a judge in Maryland also issued a temporary block on the order.
“It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” Judge John Coughenour said.
“The constitution is not something with which the government may play policy games,” Coughenour added. “The preliminary injunction is granted on a nationwide basis.”
During the hearing, which lasted less than 20 minutes, an attorney representing the state attorneys general argued the preliminary injunction is necessary to protect the plaintiffs in the case.
“When we ratified the 14th Amendment, we rendered a collective judgment and a promise that would guide our nation into the future,” the attorney for the state attorneys general said. “It was a promise that citizenship at birth is beyond the power of the government to take away or destroy. The president and the executive branch cannot alone undo that judgment or that promise.”
Drew Ensign, an attorney for the Department of Justice, called the interpretation of the citizenship clause by the plaintiff “demonstrably and unequivocally incorrect” and argued the citizenship clause applies only “to those in the allegiance and under the protection of the country.” The DOJ has argued that a child born in the United States to a mother without legal status cannot receive citizenship unless his or her father is a citizen or green card holder.
When giving his ruling, Coughenour called birthright citizenship “a fundamental constitutional right.”
“There are moments in the world’s history when people look back and ask, ‘Where were the lawyers, where were the judges?'” Coughenour said. “In these moments, the rule of law becomes especially vulnerable. I refuse to let that beacon go dark today.”
(WASHINGTON) — With Hamas saying it will release more hostages this weekend, President Donald Trump has yet to weigh in, as he did last week ahead of the planned Saturday hostage release threatening “all hell is going to break out” if all hostages weren’t freed by his deadline.
Last week, Trump demanded that if Hamas didn’t release “all of the hostages” by noon last Saturday, Feb. 15, Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas might end, although he wasn’t clear whether he was suggesting the U.S. or Israel would act in response.
His deadline came and went, and Hamas released the three hostages that were scheduled to be released on Feb. 15, including one American, according to the original ceasefire agreement, in exchange for 369 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Experts told ABC News that Trump’s comments made little or no difference in Saturday’s outcome.
“Trump’s threat wasn’t much of an ultimatum, since Hamas was not about to release all of the hostages on Saturday under any scenario,” said Guy Ziv, associate professor at American University’s School of International Service.
On the heels of this exchange, Hamas released the bodies of four Israeli hostages early Thursday morning, though the Israel Defense Forces later said one of bodies does not belong to a hostage.
What was the context
“As far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock, I think it’s an appropriate time. I would say, cancel it and all bets are off, and let hell break out,” Trump said last week. “I’m speaking for myself. Israel can override it. But from myself, Saturday at 12 o’clock, and if they’re not, they’re not here, all hell is going to break out.”
The president’s threats came after Hamas unexpectedly announced last week that it was delaying the next hostage release, accusing Israel of violating the terms of the ceasefire agreement.
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that violated the ceasefire deal. He later demanded all nine living Israeli hostages, who were supposed to be released during Phase 1 of the ceasefire deal, be released in the next few days, an Israeli official told ABC News last week.
When asked last week about Trump’s deadline and what he meant with his threat, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff did not go into detail but told “CBS Mornings,” “I would take President Trump at his word. He generally means what he says … so, I don’t think it’s a tactic.”
These exchanges also came a week after the announcement of Trump’s Gaza plan, in which the president expressed his desire to “take over” the Gaza Strip, relocate Palestinians, and redevelop the land. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres had responded to this plan, saying “it is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing.”
The deadline passes
Following the release of the hostages last Saturday, Trump turned to his social media platform to say it was up to Israel on how to move forward.
“Israel will now have to decide what they will do about the 12:00 O’CLOCK, TODAY, DEADLINE imposed on the release of ALL HOSTAGES,” he wrote on Saturday. “The United States will back the decision they make!”
Early Sunday morning, after a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Netanyahu emphasized his “cooperation and coordination” with Trump.
“We have a common strategy,” he said, “including when the gates of hell will be open, as they surely will, if all our hostages are not released until the last one of them.”
On Sunday, Trump told reporters, “I told Bibi, you do whatever you want because, you know my statement was they got to come back. Now, the reason I made that statement was because they said they weren’t gonna deliver — they were not going to deliver the people that they said they were going to deliver, that they agreed to deliver.”
“When I made the statement, they delivered everybody, plus an American,” Trump touted, appearing to take credit. In reality, the three hostages released Saturday were part of the ongoing ceasefire deal, including the release of American Sagui Dekel Chen on Feb. 15.
National security adviser Mike Waltz repeated the president’s sentiment during a press briefing Thursday.
“And when President Trump sent a very clear message across the Middle East, but particularly to Hamas, that there would be all hell to pay, we suddenly saw a breakthrough,” Waltz said.
But Trump’s claims should not be considered the final word, says one expert.
“World leaders have learned to heavily discount the words of Donald Trump,” Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told ABC News. Katulis noted additional examples of the president’s past comments that he says are filled with “hot air,” including Trump’s assertion that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in one day.
Threatening ‘hell’ for months
In fact, Trump has been threatening Hamas with “hell” for months.
In early December, Trump wrote on his social media platform that “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East” if hostages were not released prior to his Inauguration day, and that “those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”
“If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” Trump repeated in January when asked about the status of the hostage deal.
“All hell will break out,” he continued. “I don’t have to say any more, but that’s what it is.”
Trump’s language has been echoed by aides and supporters.
Appearing on Fox News in December, Trump senior adviser Jason Miller warned, “I would take him literally at his word. They will have hell to pay.”
Though he declined to go into specifics, Miller was confident that the president was “very serious on this one.”
One day before Trump’s inauguration, House Speaker Mike Johnson said “there will be hell to pay for Hamas if they violate these terms.”
Experts remain skeptical of Trump’s threats, despite their repetition throughout the past few months.
“The real hell that’s broken loose is the hell of confusion that comes from Trump’s erratic public statements here. It serves really no purpose,” Katulis said, arguing that “the real threat doesn’t come from Trump’s mouth, it comes from the weapons and bombs that Israel has.”
“Some have likened Trump’s coercive diplomacy to what [President Richard] Nixon called his ‘Madman Theory,'” Ziv said. “Trump wants other leaders to believe that he’s willing to do anything, that nothing can restrain him from achieving his objectives.”
(WASHINGTON) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services was narrowly confirmed by the Senate on Thursday.
The final vote was 52 to 48.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, who overcame polio at a young age, was the sole Republican to oppose Kennedy and vote no. Democrats were unanimous in their opposition to Kennedy.
In a statement outlining his decision, McConnell cited his childhood experience with the disease and said he will “not condone the re-litigation of proven cures.”
“Mr. Kennedy failed to prove he is the best possible person to lead America’s largest health agency,” McConnell said. “As he takes office, I sincerely hope Mr. Kennedy will choose not to sow further doubt and division but to restore trust in our public health institutions.”
Kennedy’s confirmation comes after months of controversy and debate, largely focused on his past comments casting doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
An environmental lawyer with no experience working in health administration or medicine, Kennedy will now oversee a sprawling network of agencies that provide health coverage to millions of Americans, regulate the food industry and respond to global health threats.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, during an appearance on Fox News, said Kennedy is expected to be sworn in later Thursday at the White House. Leavitt also said Trump is expected to sign an executive order establishing a “Make America Healthy Again” commission.
President Donald Trump embraced Kennedy on the campaign trail after the scion of America’s most famous Democratic dynasty dropped his own independent bid for president and endorsed Trump.
Shortly after the election, Trump tapped Kennedy to lead HHS and promised to let him “go wild” on health.
During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy was grilled on his past claims about vaccinations, including his unfounded claims linking them to autism.
In a shift from previous statements, Kennedy voiced support for polio and measles immunizations. He told lawmakers he was not “anti-vaccine” but rather “pro-safety.” Though, he still refused to say that vaccines were not linked to autism or that COVID-19 vaccines saved lives.
But the comments appeared enough for some skeptical Republican senators to come to his side. Trump and Vice President JD Vance also called senators to rally support for Kennedy.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a longtime physician and vaccine advocate who openly struggled with Kennedy’s nomination, voted to report his nomination out of committee and to the Senate floor.
Cassidy said he received several commitments from Kennedy, including meetings several times a month and advance notice to Congress if HHS plans to seek any changes to vaccine programs.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, considered another swing vote, earlier this week announced she’d vote for Kennedy after raising concerns about the Trump administration’s directive for the National Institutes of Health to cut support for health research at universities. (The policy has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge).
“He said he would re-examine them and seemed to understand,” Collins said of Kennedy.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had made a final plea to his colleagues shortly before the vote to oppose Kennedy.
“A vote to confirm Mr. Kennedy is a vote to make America sicker,” Schumer said.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Wednesday will consider the fate of more than 20,000 government employees fired by the Trump administration.
Twenty Democratic attorneys general sued to block the firings last week. Now, U.S. District Judge James Bredar will consider issuing a temporary restraining order that would block future firings and reinstate the probationary employees.
“These large-scale, indiscriminate firings are not only subjecting the Plaintiff States and communities across the country to chaos. They are also against the law,” they argued in their complaint, which named 41 agencies and agency heads as defendants.
The attorneys general have argued that the Trump administration violated federal law with the firings by failing to give a required 60-day notice for a reduction in force, opting to pursue the terminations “suddenly and without any advance notice.”
Lawyers with the Department of Justice have argued that the states lack standing because they “cannot interject themselves into the employment relationship between the United States and government workers,” and that to grant the TRO would “circumvent” the administrative process for challenging the firings.
Two other federal judges have declined to immediately block the firings and reinstate the employees.
“The third time is not the charm. Like the unions and the organizational plaintiffs, the States are strangers to the employment relationships at issue and cannot disrupt the exclusive remedial scheme that Congress put in place to adjudicate these disputes,” lawyers with the DOJ argued.
The Pentagon’s new policy to separate transgender U.S. service members from the military will face its first legal test on Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes considers issuing an order blocking the policy from taking effect.
The plaintiffs have argued that the DOD’s policy — which was finalized in late February and bans most transgender service members from serving with some exceptions — violates the Fifth Amendment’s right to equal protection and causes irreparable harm by denigrating transgender soldiers, disrupting unit cohesion and weakening the military.
“This case is a test of the core democratic principle that makes our country worth defending—that every person is of equal dignity and worth and is entitled to equal protection of the laws,” the plaintiffs argued.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice have defended the policy by arguing the court should not intervene in military decision making, describing gender dysphoria as a condition that causes “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of human functioning.”
“DoD has been particularly cautious about service by individuals with mental health conditions, given the unique mental and emotional stresses of military service,” government lawyers argued.
During a hearing last month, Judge Reyes — a Biden appointee who was the first LGBT judge on the DC District Court — signaled deep skepticism with the government’s claim that transgender service members lessen the military’s lethality or readiness, though she declined to intervene until the DOD finalized their policy.
When the policy was formalized last month, she quickly ordered the government to clarify key tenets of their policy, including identifying what “mental health constraint” other than gender dysphoria that conflicts with the military’s standards of “honesty, humility, and integrity.”
She also raised doubts about the government’s claims about the exceptions to the policy, flagging on the court’s docket a recent DOD social media post that “transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.”
The hearing comes amid an increasingly hostile relationship between Judge Reyes and the Department of Justice.
After Judge Reyes excoriated a DOJ lawyer last month during a hearing in the case, the Department of Justice filed a complaint with an appeals judge about what they alleged was Reyes’ “hostile and egregious misconduct.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff Chad Mizelle alleged that Reyes demonstrated a political bias, compromised the dignity of the proceedings and inappropriately questioned a DOJ attorney about his religious beliefs.
“At minimum, this matter warrants further investigation to determine whether these incidents represent a pattern of misconduct that requires more significant remedial measures,” Mizelle wrote.
