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fromAbove the Law
2 days agoMorning Docket: 03.30.26 - Above the Law
AI associates should not be blamed for failures, raising questions about their necessity.
The Department of Justice has gutted a program that helps low-income and indigent immigrants receive competent and affordable legal representation, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking to join a federal lawsuit accusing the Los Angeles school district of discriminating against white students. At issue is a long-running effort to help disadvantaged students of color in Los Angeles by providing somewhat smaller classes to the vast majority of schools - leaving out campuses with larger numbers of white students. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in January by the 1776 Project Foundation, targets a decades-old effort to combat the harms of segregation
The unexpected gravitas occurred in one of the thousands of habeas cases currently swamping trial courts. The Department of Homeland Security recently discovered that 8 USC § 1225(b)(1)(B)(iii)(IV) requires mandatory detention of asylum seekers, including those who were released in the country decades ago and given work permits. Hundreds of judges across the country - but not the Fifth Circuit! - have scoffed at this discovery and ordered DHS to either grant immigrants a bond hearing or release them.
U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen wrote in a brief Thursday filing that "newly discovered evidence" was found to be "materially inconsistent" with the government's allegations against Alfredo Aljorna, 26, and Julio Sosa-Celis, 24, about the Jan. 14 shooting in north Minneapolis. The case was dismissed Friday by a district court judge. Rosen filed a motion for the case to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning that the government will not be able to press the same charges against the men again.
The controversial hard-right strategist, an ally of Trump, was convicted in 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress after refusing to appear for a deposition before the House committee that investigated the 2021 attack on the Capitol and declining to produce documents requested by the committee. Federal prosecutors previously said that Bannon believed he was above the law by refusing to comply with the subpoena.
Mizelle said the group plans to investigate reports about lying to Congress, some of the things that happened with John Bolton, a couple other administration officials, things related to Arctic Frost and things related to other oversight documents where it appears that prior administrations weren't particularly truthful with the American people or members of Congress. I do wonder how much of this is tied directly to the president's publicly calling out Attorney General [Pam] Bondi admonishing her,
Ed Martin, the controversial lawyer whose nomination to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia was withdrawn by President Donald Trump after it became clear he would be voted down by the Republican-led Senate, has been demoted at the Department of Justice and is expected to leave in short order. According to The Washington Post, Martin, who also serves as the department's pardon attorney,
It's been a rough year for the DOJ. Having kicked off the Trump administration by reorienting the venerable institution as Trump's personal law firm, morale cratered and attrition began taking a toll. Whether it's asking dedicated public servants to drop corruption cases as part of a corrupt political bargain or sign off on baseless prosecutions of Trump's enemies, AUSAs across the country keep deciding enough is enough.
Driving the news: The DOJ alleged last summer that Boasberg raised concerns at a Judicial Conference session that the Trump administration would "disregard rulings" and trigger a "constitutional crisis." In his Dec. 19 order, Judge Jeffrey Sutton noted the department provided no evidence of Boasberg's comment, which was reported by conservative outlet The Federalist. Even if Boasberg made the statement, Sutton contended, it wouldn't constitute a conduct violation. The DOJ did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.
Owing to the fevered narratives proliferating across right-wing media, many have come to believe that the nation faces a scourge of "illegal" voting and wide-scale fraud. But this misdirection, shrill as it is with racist dog-whistles, is itself a fraud perpetrated against democratic rights. The right-wing battle for voter suppression, long waged primarily at the state level, is now being perpetrated by the federal government and the Department of Justice (DOJ) itself.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the release of 3.5 million additional files in compliance with the Epstein Transparency Act. The Trump administration has been under fire for missing the Dec. 19, 2025, deadline to release all of the files pertaining to the Jeffrey Epstein case, who died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019. Today we are producing more than 3 million pages, including more than 2000 videos and 180,000 images in total, Blanche said.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice sued California, along with 22 other states and Washington, D.C., for access to their full, unredacted voter files. That includes driver's license, social security numbers and other sensitive data. DOJ officials said they needed the data to assess whether states were properly maintaining their voter rolls and ensuring "only American citizens are voting, only one time," as Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a social media post in December.
A push by the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the widow of Renee Nicole Good after her tragic killing at the hands of a federal immigration officer has sparked a mass resignation of federal prosecutors in Minnesota, reports say. According to reports, at least a dozen federal prosecutors across Washington and Minnesota have indicated their plans to resign.