Fence around Eugene federal building must be removed within 48 hours, judge rules

Judge blocks use of federal database to check citizenship, saying it could wrongly purge voters

The decision is a major legal setback for President Donald Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House during an executive order signing about quantum computing, Monday, June 22, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

By Associated Press

PUBLISHED: June 22, 2026 at 1:45 PM PDT | UPDATED: June 22, 2026 at 2:02 PM PDT


By ALI SWENSON and FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s election integrity strategy is unlawful and can no longer be used.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in an order explaining the decision. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

Federal jury finds Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan guilty on one count

 

 P.S.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dugan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in legal studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a master's degree in American studies from Boston College.[1] She graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1987 and taught law courses at Marquette University and the Seattle University School of Law.[7]


Dugan spent much of her career working with legal aid organizations to provide assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation,[9] and served as the executive director of Catholic Charities of Southeastern Wisconsin from 2006 to 2009.[10]


Dugan was suspended by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April 2025 after being charged with the federal offenses related to allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant evade arrest.


On April 18, 2025, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued an arrest warrant for Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico accused of misdemeanor battery, who was set to appear in court on April 18, 2025, before Dugan on charges of battery and domestic abuse.[15]

Wikipedia

Former NM judge, wife arrested in Las Cruces

New Mexico judge resigns after Tren de Aragua gang member arrested at hi...

Judge temporarily blocks deportation of Georgetown University researcher

John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

A musket from the 18th century, when the Second Amendment was written, and an assault rifle of today.

CreditTop, MPI, via Getty Images, bottom, Joe Raedle/Getty Images .


By John Paul Stevens

March 27, 2018


Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.

That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.

For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.”

During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

In 2008, the Supreme Court overturned Chief Justice Burger’s and others’ long-settled understanding of the Second Amendment’s limited reach by ruling, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that there was an individual right to bear arms. I was among the four dissenters.

Judge Halts Obama Administration's Transgender-Student Rules Nationwide

By Evie Blad on August 22, 2016 10:32 AM







A Texas federal judge issued a nationwide order late Sunday, temporarily halting application of the Obama administration's guidance on transgender students while a 13-state legal challenge on the issue, led by Texas, is decided.

The case is one of a number of legal challenges related to the May guidance, in which the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice said that, under Title IX, public schools must allow transgender students to use single-sex restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity, even if it differs from their sex at birth. A related case, brought by a transgender Virginia student, may be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor sided with Texas and 12 other state plaintiffs in his order for a temporary injunction, which bars the federal agencies from enforcing the guidance and from from initiating civil rights investigations in schools based on their interpretation that Title IX's discrimination protections apply to gender identity until he makes final judgment on the case.

The case centers largely on whether the federal agencies followed the proper process for rule making. The state plaintiffs argued that, under the Administrative Procedures Act, the departments were required to provide opportunity for notice and comment before setting a rule. But the federal agencies argued that they were merely interpreting an existing regulation. Previously, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia took the Obama Administration's side, citing precedent and arguing that it was proper to defer to the federal interpretation of the law.

But the Texas court found "that the plain meaning of the term sex as used in [a regulation relating to sex-segregated school restrooms] when it was enacted by DOE following passage of Title IX meant the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth" and not the gender students identify with.

O'Connor ruled that a temporary injunction was appropriate in the multi-state case, one of two that are currently before federal courts.

"The Court concludes Plaintiffs have established that the failure to grant an injunction will place them in the position of either maintaining their current policies in the face of the federal government's view that they are violating the law, or changing them to comply with the Guidelines and cede their authority over this issue," O'Connor wrote.

A spokesperson for the Education Department directed questions on the ruling to the Department of Justice.

"The department is disappointed in the court's decision, and we are reviewing our options," a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and organizations advocating for transgender students also responded to the decision Monday.

Source

Hearing will chart course of ethics case against suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore

August 6th, 2016

by Associated Press

In this Feb. 17, 2015, file photo, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore poses in front the the American flag in Montgomery, Ala.

Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press.


MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A hearing set for Monday will determine the course of the judicial ethics case against suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who could be removed from office for an order he issued about same-sex marriage.

The Alabama Court of the Judiciary is scheduled to consider a request by judicial investigators to convict Moore of violating canons of conduct without a trial. That could result in Moore's immediate removal from office.

Moore opposes the request and instead wants the case thrown out, so lawyers will present arguments during a hearing in the very chamber where Moore presided as chief justice. The court has said Moore's trial will begin Sept. 28 if the case continues.

Moore, a Republican, is suspended because the Judicial Inquiry Commission filed charges accusing him of violating judicial ethics with an order to state probate judges about same-sex marriage.

Supporters and opponents of the suspended judge plan noontime rallies outside the Supreme Court building before the hearing.

Moore is a conservative Christian who opposes gay unions, but he denies any wrongdoing in office. Moore contends investigators overstepped their powers by citing him for issuing the administrative order, which came after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized gay marriage nationwide.

Separately, a federal judge last week refused Moore's lawsuit to overturn his suspension. Moore sued the Judicial Inquiry Commission claiming the suspension violated his rights, but U.S. District Judge Harold Albritton ruled that he could not interfere in the state proceeding.

The ethics complaint against Moore resulted from a document he sent to probate judges statewide in January saying an Alabama Supreme Court prohibition against same-sex marriage remained in effect despite a federal judge's order to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision about six months earlier.

Moore argues he was only trying to clear up confusion about the probate judges, many of whom are not lawyers, and he has denied ordering them to violate the high court order.

Moore is again fighting to keep his job 13 years after the Court of the Judiciary removed him as chief justice for his refusal to follow a federal court order mandating the removal of a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state judicial building. Voters re-elected Moore in 2012.

Source

Wall of Separation

Scandalous Sentence: Judge Orders Catholic Man To Attend Protestant Church Instead Of Sending Him To Jail


Jun 1, 2016 by Simon Brown in Wall of Separation

Strotman may be happy with his sentence, but that doesn’t mean it is right. While judges can have great leeway in sentencing for some matters, they cannot ignore secular law in favor of religious justice.

An Ohio judge who likes “creative sentencing” has ordered a Catholic man to attend Protestant church services rather than sending him to jail.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge William Mallory has a reputation for handing out unusual sentences – and this week he chose one for Jake Strotman that may be unconstitutional.

Strotman, 23, got into trouble back in January after attending a Cincinnati Cyclones hockey game. The Enquirersaid Strotman had been drinking during the event and afterward he and some friends were approached by a group of Baptist preachers who didn’t approve of Strotman’s group.

“They were telling me I was going to hell,” Strotman told the newspaper. “I was asking them: ‘Why do you think you can condemn people?’ I didn’t understand why they thought they could judge me.”

From there, things escalated and eventually a fight broke out after more words were exchanged. In the minor melee, one of the preachers was cut by his own glasses and Strotman ended up being charged with low-level assault.

Facing 90 days in jail, Strotman was desperate to avoid prison time. He told Mallory as much.

Mallory said he was open to an alternative.

“I’m trying to get to something reasonable here,” Mallory said at the sentencing. “And I’ll be honest with you guys, sometimes in certain places people don’t want to be preached to. You agree with that right?”

Then the constitutional trouble began.

“I admire the fact that you want to spread the word of God because I’m a religious man, too,” Mallory continued. “Also the thing about religion, I think it is kind of personal and for me I don’t try to impose my religious views on other people except for sometimes in this room.”

Mallory, as a government official, certainly should not be imposing his religious beliefs on anyone. Least of all people like Strotman who are vulnerable. Yet that is exactly what happened.

Anxious to avoid that 90-day sentence, Strotman said: “Your honor, if I may, I would be more than happy to serve a church of your choosing.”

It seems that got the judge’s attention. Strotman, a Catholic, was sentenced to attend 12 Sunday services at Star Baptist Church, which is the house of worship to which the preachers involved in the fight belong. He also paid almost $3,000 in fines and legal fees.

“Three months, that’s not that bad,” Strotman said afterward. “I think it’s a nice example of hearing people out instead of getting angry and jumping to conclusions.”

The self-employed window, siding and doors salesman added: “I’m going to listen with both my ears and keep my mouth shut. Then, maybe I’ll try to sell them some windows.”

Strotman may be happy with his sentence, but that doesn’t mean it is right. While judges can have great leeway in sentencing for some matters, they cannot ignore secular law in favor of religious justice.

Regardless of his stated satisfaction, Strotman’s rights were violated here. Mallory may like creative sentencing from time to time, but if his idea of creative includes forcing religion on vulnerable people accused of crimes, then he is overstepping his bounds as a judge. He needs to enforce secular law with secular punishment because that is what the Constitution requires.

Source

.