Sen. Dick Durbin announces retirement after decades in Congress

(WASHINGTON) — When three service members sued the Trump administration in March over its transgender military ban, they hoped to continue to serve their country while their cases moved forward in federal court.

However, after the Supreme Court ruled last week that the Trump administration can enforce the ban amid the pending lawsuits, Cmdr. Emilly Shilling, Maj. Erica Vandal and 2nd Lt. Nicholas Talbott told ABC News they feel that the rug has been pulled from under them.

Decorated Navy pilot Shilling described the ruling as “heartbreaking.”

Talbott, a platoon leader in the U.S. Army Reserve from Ohio, sued the Trump administration in 2017 over the president’s first transgender military ban.

“It’s so enraging that we have to keep going through this,” he said.

In March, federal judges granted preliminary injunctions in both Talbott vs. Trump and Shilling vs. Trump, preventing the Department of Defense from initiating separation proceedings against any transgender service member while the lawsuits are pending.

In granting an injunction in Talbott, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said that the ban continues an unfortunate history of the military excluding marginalized people from the “privilege of serving,” and in granting an injunction in Shilling, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle said he is unable to condone a “unsupported, dramatic and facially unfair exclusionary policy.”

Vandal, another plaintiff in the Talbott case who has served in the Army for 14 years, told ABC News that the Supreme Court’s May 6 decision was “a blow.”

With their cases pending in court, Shilling, Vandal and Talbott are now facing what they say is a gut-wrenching decision: voluntarily separate from the military or get kicked out.

‘Irreparable harm’

According to a memo issued by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week following the Supreme Court ruling, approximately 1,000 Service members who have self-identified as being diagnosed with gender dysphoria will begin the voluntary separation process.

Transgender service members have until June 6 to self-identify and begin the voluntary separation process, while transgender service members serving in the reserve forces have until July 7 to voluntarily separate, the memo said.

A new memo issued by the office of the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness on Thursday laid out some guidance related to those who don’t self-identify.

According to the memo, after June 6 military commanders will be told to identify people in their units who have a diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria or exhibit symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria. That will initiate a referral to an annual health check-up that begins what could be a lengthy process for each person that could lead to their removal from the military.

Shilling is the president of Sparta Pride, an organization advocating for 2,400 transgender people in the military and those who hope to join. She said that although the legal cases are “very much alive,” enforcing the ban in the meantime is causing “irreparable harm” to people’s careers.”

A ruling is still pending on the Talbott injunction in a D.C. appeals court, but the 6-3 Supreme Court decision lifting the Shilling injunction impacts all plaintiffs and transgender service members.

The Supreme Court did not explain its decision, but said that the order would expire if the justices take up the case on the merits and issue a ruling striking it down. Shilling, an officer who is eligible for retirement at 20 years of service in September, said that she is seeking legal counsel and is still “contemplating” her decision.

The Pentagon estimates more than 4,200 active-duty, National Guard and Reserve service members have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which is the military’s metric for tracking the number of transgender troops. Advocacy groups have put the actual number of trans service members much higher, at around 15,000.

There are 2.1 million active-duty, National Guard and Reserve service members.

Vandal, who is married with two children and based on Fort Drum in upstate New York, said that the “uncertainty” during this time has been a “burden” for her family.

“I’m the sole breadwinner,” she said, adding that the “the Army touches on every aspect” of her family’s life — from housing and healthcare, to their social structures.

‘Who I authentically am’

The Trump administration’s ban on transgender service members was announced in a Jan. 27 executive order, where President Donald Trump directed the Defense Department to revise the policy allowing transgender troops to openly serve.

“Expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order said.

The order further argued that receiving gender-affirming medical care is one of the conditions that is physically and mentally “incompatible with active duty.”

Hegseth, who celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision and made controversial remarks about transgender troops last week, echoed this sentiment in a Feb. 7 memo, saying that “efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our Force and make us vulnerable.”

Vandal and Shilling said that the administration’s words are antithetical to their coming out journeys.

“If anything, I feel like I’m more honest with presenting who I authentically am, as opposed to hiding this entire aspect of me, and I think that ultimately, it’s made me a better leader,” Vandal said.

Vandal has served since 2011 and Shilling since 2005. During the bulk of their tenures, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), a U.S. military policy in place from 1993 to 2011 allowed LGBTQ+ individuals to serve in the military as long as they didn’t disclose their sexual orientation.

The policy was repealed in 2011 but transgender service members were still banned from openly serving in the military until 2016, when then-President Barack Obama allowed them to serve openly for the first time.

The brief chapter of open service under Obama came to a close when Trump took office in 2017 and issued his first ban on transgender military members, which was reversed by Biden in 2021 and then brought back by Trump in 2025.

“[Those policies] kept me from truly embracing who I was and coming out to the world at large,” Vandal said.

Shilling told ABC News that fear of losing her job and her family kept her from coming out for years. But in 2019, under Trump’s first ban, she realized that she could no longer put on a “facade.”

“You get to this point where you’re just kind of on this burning bridge, and it’s either you cross it or there’s just kind of nothing left,” she said.

Shilling said that while coming out “cost me everything,” it eventually allowed her to become “a better leader” in the military and start a “wonderful” new chapter with her family.

‘Not the end of the war’

Amid the shifting policies, Talbott said that it took nine years for him to be able to enlist in the reserves. In 2017, he took on the Trump administration for the first time by becoming a named plaintiff in Stockman vs. Trump, a federal lawsuit challenging the first Trump ban. He was 23 at the time and trying to openly enlist.

“One door would close and I’d have to find another door that was unlocked and see if it was a path that I could pursue,” he said.

Talbot, who had dreamed of joining the military since he was a child, said that challenging the Trump administration in 2017 was a “heavy decision,” but he was encouraged to speak out by his late grandmother Rhoda Dineen.

While Stockman vs. Trump was still pending in federal court, Biden issued an executive order in 2021 revoking the Trump ban, making it possible for transgender service members to openly serve and paving the way for Talbott to enlist.

When Trump issued his second ban in January, Talbott said that suing was an “easy” decision.

As he faces his second legal challenge and another chapter in limbo, Talbot said that he is holding on to “hope.”

“This is just a battle. This is not the end of the war,” he said.

Even though Talbott’s grandmother died in 2020, he says her encouragement continues to inspire him.

“I like to think she’d be proud of me,” he told ABC News. “I’m certain she would be incredibly supportive of what I’m doing.”

ABC News’ Luis Martinez, Devin Dwyer and Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Since Donald Trump took office 100 days ago, the president and his administration have faced an average of more than two lawsuits per day, challenging nearly every element of his agenda.

The breakneck pace of the president’s policies has been matched in nearly equal force by a flood of litigation — at least 220 lawsuits in courts across the country — challenging more than two dozen executive orders, the firing of twenty high-ranking government officials, and dozens of other executive actions.

While the Trump administration has had some victories in the courts, federal judges have blocked key parts of Trump’s agenda ranging from parts of his immigration policy and military guidelines to his effort to roll back diversity and equity initiatives.

“The administration has basically gone on a shock-and-awe bombing campaign,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University. “There is a huge amount of what they are currently doing that they probably could have achieved lawfully, but they have crashed through any of the existing legal guardrails in an attempt to do everything, everywhere, all at once.”

The suits have come at a steady clip — 20 in January, approximately 70 in both February and March, and about 50 so far in April — as the Trump administration has rolled out its new policies.

Approximately 60 of those cases have focused on the president’s immigration policy, with courts so far blocking the president’s attempts to remove birthright citizenship, withhold funding from sanctuary cities, remove noncitizens to countries other than their place of origin with little-to-no due process, and strip thousands of their temporary protected status. Some of those policies have earned the president rebukes from judges questioning the rationale for his unilateral immigration policy.

“It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, said of Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. “There are moments in the world’s history when people look back and ask, ‘Where were the lawyers, where were the judges?’ In these moments, the rule of law becomes especially vulnerable. I refuse to let that beacon go dark today.”

Courts have also blocked the Trump administration from effectively banning transgender people from military service, limiting gender-affirming care, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, attempting to freeze trillions in funding to states and nonprofits, and moving to block billions in foreign aid.

But in many cases federal courts have not stopped the president outright — tentatively allowing the mass firing of thousands of government employees, greenlighting a historic federal buyout, and, for now, allowing the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development. The Department of Education and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau are also undergoing massive staffing reductions as judges actively consider the legality of the Trump administration’s cuts.

The president’s supporters have decried the litigation as a “judicial coup,” while those opposing his policies have praised judges for serving as a check against the administration. But the seemingly constant conflict between the Trump administration and the judiciary could risk permanent damage to the separation of powers at the heart of the Constitution, some judges have warned.

“Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around,” wrote federal Judge Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee who rebuked the Trump administration inaction after being ordered to return a man from a Salvadoran prison.

Acting in ‘bad faith’

In the first hundred days since Trump took office, lawyers challenging his actions in court alleged that his administration violated court orders at least six times, according to court records reviewed by ABC News.

While no judge has held members of the Trump administration in contempt of court, two federal judges have sharply rebuked the government for acting in “bad faith” during ongoing lawsuits. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg — who heard arguments over the deportation of two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act — an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process — ultimately determined the Trump administration likely violated his order by failing to return the migrants to the United States.

An appeals court temporarily blocked Judge Boasberg from beginning the process of contempt proceedings, but his most recent ruling invoked the words of former Chief Justice John Marshall to describe the stakes of the Trump administration’s actions.

“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it. To permit such officials to freely ‘annul the judgments of the courts of the United States’ would not just ‘destroy the rights acquired under those judgments’; it would make ‘a solemn mockery’ of ‘the Constitution itself,'” Boasberg wrote.

Lawyers representing the Trump administration have argued that Judge Boasberg’s order fell outside his jurisdiction because the flights in question had left U.S. airspace, and have insisted that a federal judge should not dictate U.S. foreign policy.

The Trump administration has also faced legal challenges for its refusal to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native living in Maryland, to the United States after he was mistakenly deported to his home country despite an order barring his deportation there due to fear of persecution.

The administration has so far declined to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States despite the Supreme Court ordering his release, though administration officials have complied with a lower court’s order to provide regular updates about him.

The administration has rebutted orders to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States despite the Supreme Court ordering them to facilitate his release.

Judge Wilkinson, in the meantime, has condemned the Trump administration’s attempt to send alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” he wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

In an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, 65% of respondents said Trump’s administration is trying to avoid complying with federal court orders, and 62% said they don’t think his administration respects the rule of law.

‘It was a sham’

With the Trump administration just 100 days in, most lawsuits have not made their way through the appeals process to the Supreme Court — but the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to block some court orders on an emergency basis.

Those appeals have led to some losses for the Trump administration — among them a 5-4 Supreme Court decision ordering the Trump administration to unfreeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid funds for work that aid groups have already completed on the government’s behalf.

On the flip side, the Supreme Court — citing largely technical reasons — handed the Trump administration a series of temporary wins, including vacating an order blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. In that case, the justices opted to throw out the case because the case was filed in the wrong court, declining to weigh in on the merits of the issue.

The Supreme Court also handed the Trump administration a temporary win by blocking a lower court’s ruling that barred the Trump administration from firing thousands of probationary government employees without cause. The district judge who blocked the firings slammed the Trump administration for using a “sham” and “gimmick” to fire thousands of federal workers.

“I just want to say it is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup said. “That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to try to avoid statutory requirements.”

But the Supreme Court vacated his order because the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit — a group of unions and interest groups — lacked the legal standing to bring the lawsuit.

Over the next month, the Supreme Court is set to hold oral arguments for the first time in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, which confers American citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil regardless of their parents’ immigration or citizenship status.

The Trump administration also asked the Supreme Court to take up a legal challenge to the Pentagon’s transgender service ban after three judges blocked it from taking effect.

‘A shocking abuse of power’

Despite President Trump’s vow to restore free speech and end censorship, his administration has faced multiple lawsuits challenging his actions on the grounds they violate the First Amendment.

Four law firms have sued the Trump administration after they were targeted for their past work, with each firm arguing the Trump administration unlawfully retaliated against them and violated their First Amendment rights. Judges have temporarily blocked the Trump administration from targeting Susman Godfrey LLP, Jenner & Block LLP, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, and Perkins Coie LLP.

“The framers of our Constitution would see this as a shocking abuse of power,” U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan said regarding the order targeting Susman Godfrey LLP.

At least nine law firms have already acquiesced to the Trump administration’s demands, agreeing to donate a total of $940 million in legal services to promote causes supported by the president.

After the Trump administration attempted to freeze more than $2 billion dollars in federal funding to Harvard University, the country’s oldest school cited the First Amendment in their lawsuit challenging the funding freeze, arguing the “threat of additional funding cuts will chill Harvard’s exercise of its First Amendment rights.” More than two in three Americans support Harvard in their ongoing dispute with the Trump administration, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll.

“Harvard will be unable to make decisions regarding its faculty hiring, academic programs, student admissions, and other core academic matters without fear that those decisions will run afoul of government censors’ views on acceptable levels of ideological or viewpoint diversity on campus,” Harvard’s lawyers argued.

At least nine current or recent students have challenged the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke their visas or green cards, with several alleging they were targeted for their outspoken support of Palestinians. The Trump administration’s policy of revoking student visas marks the government’s most aggressive approach in more than two decades and the first time students have been targeted over their speech, according to immigration attorney Renata Castro.

“The government is looking at speech — the exercise of free speech — and using that to dig into perceived immigration violations so that they can revoke student visas,” Castro said.

The Trump administration also invoked a rarely used law — 8 U.S.C. § 237 (a)(4)(C)(i) — to justify removing noncitizens such as Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was a prominent figure during student protests at Columbia, because he and others allegedly harm U.S. foreign policy.

According to an analysis of past immigration cases conducted by political scientists Graeme Blair and David Hausman, the United States had only used that provision as a basis to remove a noncitizen two times in the last 25 years.

“The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent,” Khalil wrote in a public letter last month from an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. “At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.”

Earlier this month, an immigration judge ruled that Khalil can be deported on the grounds that he threatens U.S. foreign policy. While he remained in ICE detention and prepared an appeal, Khalil’s wife gave birth to their child last week.

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(WASHINGTON) — A group of business groups and conservative lawyers are preparing a legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, arguing he does not have the legal authority to impose them.

Sources familiar with the effort say they are preparing to file the challenge in the coming weeks, possibly as soon as this Friday.

One prominent legal figure close to Trump told ABC News there is “a very good chance” the U.S. Supreme Court would find Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional.

The issue is this: Congress, not the president, has the power to impose taxes and regulate trade. In imposing these tariffs, President Trump cited the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which gives the the president power to regulate international commerce in the event of a national emergency.

But the IEEPA — which specifically cites the power to impose sanctions and seize foreign assets — does not mention tariffs. And, even if one argues the right to impose tariffs is implied, it’s not clear what “national emergency” could justify the imposition of global tariffs.

“There is a strong argument that the tariffs imposed under the IEEPA are not legal or constitutional,” a prominent conservative lawyer close to President Trump told ABC News. “Under that particular statute, tariffs are not listed amongst the various actions a president can take in response to the declaration of a nation emergency.”

The lawyer adds: “And when you combine that with the fact that Article 1, Section 8 [of the Constitution] clearly gives Congress the power to impose duties — tariffs — I think those two things in combination raise a very, very serious legal question.”

Another conservative lawyer familiar with the expected legal challenge to Trump’s tariffs predicted the Supreme Court would rule 9-0 against the administration if it reaches the high court.

A lawsuit has already been filed against the 20% sanctions Trump imposed on China earlier this year. The White House cited the IEEPA in imposing those tariffs as well, and the president said they were in response to China’s failure to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States.

The suit was filed in a federal court in Florida last week by The New Civil Liberties Alliance, a conservative legal, on behalf of a Florida-based paper company called Simplified.

Trump’s tariffs are the first time a president has attempted to impose global tariffs by citing the IEEPA. The steel and aluminum tariffs Trump imposed on China during his first term where narrower and done under a different congressional authorization. But that act doesn’t specifically give the president the authority to impose tariffs — and it’s not clear what the emergency is that would justify his actions under the law.

Tariffs have never previously been imposed under the emergency power Trump is using here. The tariffs he imposed in his first term (and President Joe Biden’s tariffs, too) were imposed citing different congressional authorizations.

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