Judge temporarily restores funding for legal aid for migrant children
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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from cutting funding to the program that provides legal representation to tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children.
In her ruling Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez Olguin said the groups that sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over the cuts “have suffered near-immediate financial impacts, and they have thus made a sufficient showing of concrete and imminent economic injury.”
“The irreparable harm resulting from Defendants’ actions weighs in favor of temporary injunctive relief,” Judge Olguin said.
Judge Olguin said that the government’s termination of funding for direct legal representation directly interferes with the groups’ mission, “impeding their ability to provide the direct legal representation of unaccompanied children in immigration proceedings.”
“The Court additionally finds that the continued funding of legal representation for unaccompanied children promotes efficiency and fairness within the immigration system,” the judge said.
Last week, groups that have collectively received over $200 million in federal grants were told that the program’s contract was partially terminated, ending the funding for legal representation and for the recruitment of attorneys to represent migrant children in immigration proceedings.
Currently, 26,000 migrant children receive legal representation through the funding.
Michael Lukens, the executive director for the Amica Center, which represents migrant children in the Washington, D.C., area, called the ruling “a win” for advocates who work with unaccompanied children every day.
“While we recognize that this is the first step in this fight, we are grateful to see the courts are recognizing the immense damage that the government’s decision in canceling this funding means to children and our organizations,” said Lukens. “There should be no political divide over protecting children.”
(MAITLAND, Fla.) — Marcus Jordan, the son of basketball legend Michael Jordan, was arrested on drug and resisting arrest charges in Florida after he got his vehicle stuck on train tracks, according to an arrest affidavit.
The 34-year-old Orlando resident was arrested shortly before 2 a.m. Tuesday in Maitland after an officer saw a blue Lamborghini SUV that appeared to be stopped on railroad tracks, according to the affidavit. The officer notified SunRail, the commuter rail system, to alert that there was a vehicle on the tracks and approached the SUV, the affidavit said.
The officer reported that he smelled alcohol coming from the vehicle and the driver had slurred speech and “red bloodshot and glassy eyes,” according to the affidavit.
Police learned the vehicle had allegedly just fled from a traffic stop initiated by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, according to the affidavit.
Marcus Jordan reportedly told the officer that he made a wrong turn and needed help getting his vehicle off the tracks, according to the affidavit. There was a passenger in the vehicle, according to the affidavit.
He allegedly told police he had “some drinks” that night but “repeated he was not over the legal limit,” according to the affidavit.
The officer arrested Marcus Jordan for driving under the influence after conducting field sobriety exercises, according to the affidavit.
A “clear plastic baggie with a white powdery substance” was found inside the front right pocket of his pants that ultimately tested positive for cocaine, according to the affidavit.
Marcus Jordan allegedly refused to cooperate when asked to get into the patrol vehicle, according to the affidavit.
He refused to provide breath samples at the Orange County DUI Center, according to the affidavit.
Marcus Jordan was issued a citation for driving under the influence and charged with possession of cocaine and resisting an officer without violence, according to the affidavit. He was booked into the Orange County jail without incident.
He did not answer reporters’ questions upon his release later Tuesday. Online court records do not list any attorney information for him.
Marcus Jordan is one of Michael Jordan’s five children.
He is a former college basketball player, having played for the University of Central Florida. The affidavit noted his current occupation as self-employed.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice, now under new leadership following Donald Trump’s inauguration, has moved to drop its appeal of the classified documents case that once accused Trump of mishandling some of the country’s most sensitive secrets.
Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Hayden O’Bryne on Wednesday moved to dismiss the appeal against Trump’s former co-defendants in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Trump pleaded not guilty in 2023 to 40 criminal counts — including violations of nine separate federal laws — for allegedly holding on to classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021 and thwarting investigators’ efforts to retrieve the documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Along with longtime aide Walt Nauta and staffer Carlos De Oliveira, Trump pleaded not guilty in a superseding indictment to allegedly attempting to delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage.
In July, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — who Trump appointed to the bench — dismissed the indictments, deeming that special counsel Jack Smith had been unconstitutionally appointed.
While Smith appealed Cannon’s decision, he was forced to drop the appeal against Trump after Trump won the November election, due to a longstanding policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. However, Smith continued to pursue the appeal against Nauta and De Oliveira prior his resignation earlier this month.
The DOJ’s motion to drop the appeal signals an end to its prosecution of Nauta and De Oliveira.
Cannon on Tuesday cited the DOJ’s ongoing appeal against Nauta and De Oliveira in her decision to block the release of Smith’s final report on the case to select members of Congress.
(WASHINGTON) — Three weeks into Donald Trump’s breakneck effort to remake the federal government, the rapid pace of lawsuits pushing back against his orders — and a number of legal setbacks for the Trump administration — have challenged the Department of Justice, seemingly overwhelming the government lawyers tasked with defending the president in court.
In a court filing Monday night, Justice Department lawyers acknowledged making two significant errors last week during a court hearing about the dismantling of the foreign aid agency USAID. While DOJ attorneys last week claimed that 500 employees at USAID had been put on leave and that only future contracts had been put on pause, more than 2,100 employees had actually been placed on leave while both future and existing contracts were frozen, according to the filing.
“Defendants sincerely regret these inadvertent misstatements based on information provided to counsel immediately prior to the hearing and have made every effort to provide reliable information in the declaration supporting their opposition to a preliminary injunction,” DOJ lawyers wrote to the judge overseeing the case.
During the USAID hearing last week, Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, expressed frustration that the government had not provided him sufficient information.
“I need to know what the government’s official position is right now. What is happening?” Nichols said. “Is the government paying people or not?”
The Trump administration has faced a torrent of lawsuits over the last two weeks, with judges over the last two days blocking them from enforcing a federal buyout program, cutting funding for health research, and removing public health data from government websites.
After a New York judge blocked Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records on Saturday, both DOGE head Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance began to publicly float the idea of defying the court orders.
Justice Department representatives did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
During a hearing in the Treasury Department case, the DOJ claimed that Marko Elez — a SpaceX employee-turned-DOGE cost-cutter who briefly resigned last week after the Wall Street Journal reported on racist social media posts — was a “special government employee” within the Department of the Treasury.
In a filing Monday, the DOJ corrected themselves to note that Elez was actually a full-fledged Treasury Department employee — a “Special Advisor for Information Technology and Modernization” according to the filing — who is subject to additional ethics requirements.
During a hearing last week on whether the DOJ should be blocked from disseminating a list of federal agents and employees who worked on cases involving the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, a DOJ attorney was unable to say with confidence whether the government might eventually release the list, frustrating the judge overseeing the case.
“You represent the government,” U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb said sternly. “The White House wants this information. Does the government have present intent to publicly release names of FBI agents that worked on Jan. 6 cases?”
“People who have the list don’t have present intent,” replied the attorney, Jeremy Simon, who then had to ask for a series of short recesses as he was pressed to provide answers on the government’s stance.
At one point Simon needed to excuse himself into the hallway to speak by phone with his superiors.
The legal challenges began immediately after Trump ignited his barrage of Day-1 executive orders. During a hearing on the administration’s short-lived federal funding freeze, a DOJ attorney appeared unable to provide a clear answer about the extent of the White House’s new policy.
“It seems like the federal government currently doesn’t actually know the full scope of the programs that are going to be subject to the pause. Is that correct?” U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan asked the attorney.
“I can only speak for myself, which is just based on the limited time frame here, that I do not have a comprehensive list,” replied DOJ lawyer Daniel Schwei. “It just depends.”
And during the first court hearing about Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, the position of defending Trump’s order put Brett Shumate, the acting assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division, in a federal judge’s firing line.
“In your opinion, is this executive order constitutional?” U.S. District Judge John Coughenour asked Shumate during the hearing.
“Yes, we think it is,” Shumate said, drawing the judge’s rebuke.
“I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar can state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It boggles my mind,” Coughenour said. “Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?”
A constitutional law expert told ABC News that DOJ attorneys have been rebuked by judges of all stripes.
“They are doing this regardless of geography and regardless of who appointed them,” said Loyola Marymount University law professor Justin Levitt. “So you’ve seen pushback from Reagan appointees, you’ve seen pushback from Bush appointees, you’ve seen pushback from Obama appointees and Trump appointees and Biden appointees, and that’s going to continue.”
Levitt said the results have generally not been in the Trump administration’s favor.
“As far as I can tell, they’re winless in the courts,” he said.
