Judge Trashes DOJ Lawyers’ Attempts to Lie About Military Trans Ban

A federal judge tore into Justice Department lawyers Friday as they struggled to defend Donald Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military. 

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said that she would not be “gaslit” by the lawyers’ attempts to convince her that the policy did not constitute a transgender ban, according to Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney.

“You’re saying one thing in public. You’re saying a different thing in court,” Reyes said, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s post on social media that referred to the policy as a ban. 

Earlier this week, Reyes had ruled that the Pentagon could not enforce the policy and had mischaracterized research and ignored evidence to support its conclusion to disallow transgender service members. Last week, Reyes stopped a hearing cold in its tracks so that the lawyers could actually read the studies mentioned, after she found that “virtually every” study cited in the ban contradicted support for Hegseth’s policy.

The judge noted in her ruling that the defense agreed that transgender people “can have the warrior ethos, physical and mental health, selflessness, honor, integrity, and discipline to ensure military excellence,” and that the government’s claims about their suitability for service were “pure conjecture.”

She delayed the order from going into effect until March 21, to give the Trump administration enough time to pursue an emergency appeal. 

In a new filing Friday, the Department of Justice asked Reyes to dissolve her preliminary injunction. Lawyers argued against her interpretation of Hegseth’s policy disqualifying service members who “have a current diagnosis or history of, or Exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.” The lawyers claimed this rule did not “discriminate against trans-identifying persons as a class.”

Reyes hit back at the lawyers during Friday’s hearing, pushing them to explain how Hegseth’s policy was addressing an actual problem in the U.S. military and not simply creating a “pretext” for discriminating against transgender people, according to Cheney.  

The judge noted there were already policies in place that required military officials to identify people with debilitating medical conditions—which would include those with gender dysphoria that rendered them unable to serve.

“Everything in the record is that it’s a pretext. There is nothing in the record that this was a deliberative process,” Reyes said. 

Will U.S. marching bands be replacing “God Bless America” with “God Save the King”?

Donald Trump had a bizarrely warm reaction to news that Britain’s King Charles would extend a “secret offer” for the United States to join the British Commonwealth, something that the Founding Fathers fought and died to exit nearly 250 years ago.

“I Love King Charles. Sounds good to me!” Trump posted on Truth Social Friday, recirculating the story.

It was not clear if Trump was serious or making an odd joke, but several U.K. outlets have reported that the unprecedented offer of “associate membership” is very much real. The Commonwealth is a volunteer association of 56 nations. The majority of them share history as former British colonies, including Canada, India, and Australia.

Charles is the head of the Commonwealth, as well as king of 15 of its member states. Five other members have different monarchs ruling over them, and 36 other members are republics.

The Daily Mail reported that the first extension of the hand-written offer was delivered to Trump by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a visit to the White House last month.

A member of the Royal Commonwealth Society spoke with the Mail on the condition of anonymity about the matter, claiming that America’s potential entry into the Commonwealth was being discussed “at the highest levels.” They believed it would be “a wonderful move that would symbolize Britain’s close relationship with the U.S.”

“Donald Trump loves Britain and has great respect for the Royal Family, so we believe he would see the benefits of this. Associate membership could, hopefully, be followed by full membership, making the Commonwealth even more important as a global organization,” the person added.

As strange as the offer is, it could be an attempt by Charles to quell Trump’s hostility toward long-standing Western alliances as Europe braces for potential war with Russia.

Trump has continually agitated and aggravated America’s allies, positioning the nation as more of a global bully than a policeman, forcing some of America’s friends to reconsider the value of its military protection. Some of those injuries include Trump’s shocking hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during critical peace negotiations, his nonsensical trade war, his threats to annex Greenland, his whiplash decisions to suspend and un-suspend military resources and intelligence with Kyiv, his venom toward NATO, and his insistence on making Canada the nation’s fifty-first state.

The Trump administration is moving to deport another international student for speaking out against the U.S.-funded genocide in Palestine.

One day after Cornell Ph.D. student Momodou Taal, who has dual U.K. and Gambian citizenship, reported unidentified law enforcement agents outside his home, the Justice Department emailed him and his lawyers asking the graduate student to come to ICE headquarters for his detainment.

Taal was suspended for participating in anti-Zionist protests on campus last year. On Sunday, he sued the Trump administration on the grounds that two executive orders used to detain innocent student-activists like Mahmoud Khalil violate the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.

Days later, Taal said unidentified agents were outside of his house trying to intimidate him into turning himself in.

“This morning, shortly after a federal judge scheduled a hearing in my lawsuit demanding the courts strike down Trump’s executive orders attacking free speech, law enforcement from an unidentified agency came to my home in Ithaca, New York. I believe they planned to detain me,” Taal wrote on X. “Trump is attempting to detain me to prevent me from having my day in court.… This is part of a continued pattern in the Trump administration’s flagrant disregard for the judiciary.”

Taal’s lawyers then submitted a motion to stop the government from “attempting to detain, remove, or otherwise enforce the two executive orders against Mr. Taal.”

The Justice Department’s email to Taal on Thursday seems to be a way to get around his motion for a temporary restraining order.

“My guess is that someone in ICE told DOJ they were going to do this and DOJ said ‘hey if you grab this guy at his house with no warning while he has a pending TRO, that is going to piss off the judge, so let’s let him surrender instead,’” American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X.

The Trump administration is still working to detain Taal.

“I will not be intimidated,” Taal said in a statement Thursday. “Am I worried at times? Of course. Am I stressed beyond anything I’ve experienced before? Most definitely. But I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent.”

The Trump administration is so worried about judicial scrutiny over its deportation flights to El Salvador that officials are thinking about misusing the “state secrets privilege.”

Notus reports that Todd Blanche, the number two person at the Justice Department and Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, revealed as much in a court filing Friday. Specifically, he said that he had “direct involvement in ongoing Cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege.”

The fact that invoking the privilege is under consideration in the White House suggests that what actually happened is damning for the administration, and a negative ruling could seriously blunt Trump’s immigration powers. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is trying to find out exactly when the flights from the United States to the Central American country took off and whether officials were aware of a court order blocking the deportations at the time.

Since Boasberg’s court order on Saturday, he has been vilified by Trump, Elon Musk, and several other right-wing personalities, all of whom have made threats against him and called for his impeachment. New reports have also revealed that many of the immigrants rounded up and placed on the flight were not violent criminals or gang members, as administration officials claim. Many deportees simply had distinctive tattoos.

In addition to attacks on Boasberg’s credibility, the administration has also made the bizarre argument that the judge’s oral order carries less weight than a written one, and begun attempts to get the judge removed from the case by an appellate court. The threats to Boasberg even prompted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a rare statement of condemnation.

Trump has pulled out the rarely cited Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify the flights, which were only possible thanks to Secretary of State Marco Rubio cutting a deal with the country’s autocratic president, Nayib Bukele, to send them to facilities accused of engaging in torture. If the administration tries the state secrets privilege next, it will only deepen the ongoing constitutional crisis.

A Big Law associate has issued a scathing resignation letter after a different firm—Paul, Weiss—chose to bend to Donald Trump’s blatant bullying. 

Rachel Cohen, an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, circulated her strongly worded “conditional notice” of resignation to her colleagues Thursday evening.

“Please consider this email my two week notice revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to our current moment,” Cohen wrote in the email, which had the subject line “With gratitude and urgency.” 

Cohen’s resignation came just hours after the Trump administration rescinded an executive order revoking the security clearances of lawyers at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, in response to the firm pledging it would provide $40 million in free legal services on cases “that represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society.”

Trump’s executive order had targeted Paul, Weiss over the work of one former employee, Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor who previously oversaw the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s investigation into Trump’s alleged financial crimes. As part of bowing to Trump’s threat, the firm acknowledged that Pomerantz had committed wrongdoing. 

The firm also agreed to stop making decisions about hiring and promotions based on considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Cohen’s email included a list of conditions her firm should execute “at a minimum” to respond to Paul, Weiss’s decision to fold under pressure from the administration. 

Cohen urged her firm to sign an amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump accused Perkins Coie of “dishonest and dangerous activity” in an executive order last week, suspending the firm’s security clearances and barring federal employees from engaging with firm members. A judge temporarily blocked parts of Trump’s order, saying that it likely violated the firm’s First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights. 

Cohen called on Skadden Arps to commit to “broad future representation” and publicly commit to continue the firm’s affinity groups and other diversity initiatives.  

She also wrote that the firm should refuse requests for information on employees “clearly targeted at intimidating nonwhite employees,” and publicly refuse to fire employees at the behest of the Trump administration.

“This is not what I saw for my career or for my evening, but Paul Weiss’ decision to cave to the Trump administration on DEI, representation and staffing has forced my hand. We do not have time. It is now or it is never, and if it is never, I will not continue to work here,” Cohen wrote. 

Last week, Cohen organized an open letter criticizing the Trump administration for trying to “bully corporate law firms out of engaging in any representation that challenges the administration’s aims,” garnering more than 300 anonymous signatures from Big Law associates. 

Cohen told Politico that she hoped to see a “critical mass” of major firms publish statements expressing their willingness to represent “all sides of the coin,” even if one side went against Trump. 

“It is imperative for rule of law in this country that lawyers not be associated with the interests that they represent or not have those imputed to them,” Cohen told Politico. “Because if we don’t have that and we have a vindictive government at the federal level targeting attorneys for providing representation, then we don’t have checks and balances. We don’t have the judiciary or the court system in the way that it’s intended to function.”

In caving to Trump’s threats, Paul, Weiss established a price Big Law firms will have to pay to keep their security clearances: $40 million … and their integrity. Its decision to bow down to the administration marks other firms that take up cases challenging the administration as vulnerable to Trump’s lawless, punitive actions. It also invites the question, if major firms like Paul, Weiss won’t stand up to Trump’s punitive and targeted executive orders, who will? 

More bad news for Elon Musk and Tesla: Nearly every single Cybertruck is being recalled because the large panel near the front of the truck’s body falls off while in motion.

The recall covers 46,000 Cybertrucks on the road, or every car made from November 13, 2023, when the Cybertruck was first released, to February 27.

The panel, known as a cant rail assembly, is attached to the truck with an adhesive that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration describes as susceptible to “environmental embrittlement.”

“If the cant rail stainless steel panel separates from the vehicle while in drive, it could create a road hazard for following motorists and increase their risk of injury or a collision,” Tesla wrote, while also claiming it is “not aware of any collisions, fatalities or injuries that are or may be related to the condition.” Musk’s company says the defect only impacts 1 percent of Cybertrucks.

This comes as Tesla stocks are collapsing, losing half their value in the wake of Musk’s DOGE purges and his Seig heil-ing. There was also an attack in Las Vegas earlier this week that resulted in multiple empty Teslas blowing up. “It’s just fully terrorism at this point,” Musk wrote on X. “This level of violence is insane and deeply wrong. Tesla just makes electric cars and has done nothing to deserve these evil attacks,” he continued, infantilizing his massive company.

This is the eighth Cybertruck recall since the car’s release.

Donald Trump announced a new investment in military aircraft production Friday, revealing that he had contracted Boeing to develop “the world’s first sixth-generation” fighter jet, named the F-47. And he managed to threaten America’s allies in the process.

“It’s something the likes of which nobody has seen before, in terms of all of the attributes of a fighter jet, there’s never been anything even close to it, in terms of speed to maneuverability to payload,” Trump said during the Oval Office press briefing.

The pseudo-advertisement for the forthcoming fleet followed a tumultuous week for America’s military industrial complex, in which U.S. arms-makers were shut out of the European Union’s $800 billion defense spending plan. It also came after Canada and Portugal revealed they were similarly wobbling on whether to replace their aging air forces with American-made products.

By all means, the reveal of the F-47 needed to go well for America’s stressed defense industry—but Trump couldn’t stop himself from throwing water on the pitch.

“Our allies are calling constantly, they want to buy them all,” Trump continued, before claiming that America’s allies would get “toned-down versions.”

“We like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?” the president said.

Foreign sales are crucial to the American arms industry, but Trump’s repeated aggression against America’s strongest alliances has made world leaders waver on whether the continued investment is worth it.

The sales pitch from American arms manufacturers simply isn’t as persuasive as it was under previous administrations. For decades, purchasing American fighter jets and weapons came with an added bonus of U.S. protection. But as global leaders have witnessed Trump defy long-standing military treatises and aggress U.S. allies, that promise no longer feels like a guarantee.

Trump’s shocking hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during critical peace negotiations, his nonsensical trade war, his threats to annex Greenland, his whiplash decisions to suspend and un-suspend military resources and intelligence with Kyiv, his venom toward NATO, and his insistence on making Canada the nation’s fifty-first state have all called the reliability of American protection into question.

The FBI’s New York field office normally handles counterintelligence, counterterrorism, public corruption, international drug trafficking, and financial crime investigations. Right now, though, it has been ordered to prioritize redacting sensitive information in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Vanity Fair reports, citing multiple sources, that nearly a thousand agents, who normally work on national security issues in the bureau’s largest field office, are working night and day combing the documents instead of on their regular jobs.

“It’s literally all hands on deck,” one unnamed source told the magazine. “I even saw an agent walking in with a pillow.” One former agent called the situation “ludicrous.”

Trump said on the campaign trail last year that he’d consider releasing Epstein’s client list, which purportedly includes the names of rich and powerful people who participated in the disgraced financier’s sexual crimes. The administration’s release of “phase one” of the files on February 27, containing previously published information, enraged Trump’s supporters who were expecting the juicy stuff incriminating Democrats and liberals. Trump himself, however, showed up seven times in the released material.

Later, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel complaining that she was told that the Justice Department had received all of the Epstein documents, only to find that the FBI’s New York office still had thousands of unreleased pages. Presumably, that’s what the agents in that office are currently working their way through and painstakingly redacting.

Bondi claimed earlier this month on Fox News that she was rushing to get a “truckload” of Epstein documents released to the public, which one longtime FBI agent told Vanity Fair didn’t make sense.

“There’s no master file in the New York office. That doesn’t exist,” the former agent said. ”There’s not some crusty agent with his feet on bankers’ boxes.”

What sensitive information could the FBI be redacting from the Epstein files? Bondi claims that any new redactions would only be to “protect grand jury information and confidential witnesses” as well as national security information. But Trump’s mention might be slowing things down, particularly if his relationship with Epstein was deeper than he has claimed. The Justice Department and FBI are now run by his loyalists, who very likely could be putting his interests ahead of the public’s.

Even the deep-red Wyoming constituents who booted out Liz Cheney are upset with the wanton way in which DOGE has gone about “eliminating fraud.”

“I’m a retired military officer.… At 18, I rose my hand to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic,” a woman said at Representative Harriet Hagemen’s town hall on Thursday. “I am still a Republican. I am—bless his heart—a Simpson Republican that believes in working together across the aisle,” she continued, referring to the recently deceased longtime Senate whip Alan Simpson from Wyoming.

“My question: Having looked at … DOGE … you are a lawyer, where is this fraud? What company, what organization, what personnel are we going after?”

“I’ll just start reading some of it, I’ll just start reading it right now if you’d like me to,” Hageman responded. “I’ll just focus on USAID spending right here.”

“I didn’t say spending, I said actual fraud!”

“This is what it is, this is the spending associated with the fraud. This is the fraud, spending is the fraud.… This is fraudulent spending,” Hageman retorted as the crowd yelled at her in disagreement.

The “fraud” that Hageman is referring to is money that was legally allocated by Congress for a variety of different programs like international aid and research grants. This is the language the Trump administration has adopted to make their federal purge seem like a positive thing. “Fraud” has been attributed to everything from contraceptives to Habitat for Humanity.

Elon Musk is paying Wisconsin residents $100 each to sign a petition denouncing “activist” judges, collecting troves of voter data in the final days before a crucial state Supreme Court election.

Donald Trump and the billionaire bureaucrat leading the Department of Government Efficiency have spent the last week railing against one federal judge who dared to question the administration’s deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, who were transported to a prison in El Salvador without due process and in defiance of a federal court order.

Now Musk is attempting to artificially shift public opinion by circulating a petition against “activist” judges and offering compensation in return.

“By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role—interpreting, not legislating,” the petition said, according to Axios.

Musk’s petition comes little over a week before Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, in which Musk has already put a whopping $20 million behind conservative candidate Brad Schimel.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is set to weigh questions on hot-button issues, including the use of voter drop boxes in elections, abortion access, and redrawing congressional maps. A Republican majority on the court could influence the outcome in any of these cases, which would have national repercussions.

While Musk won’t know how respondents to the petition answer, after they receive their $100 credit, Musk will walk away with their information and be able to contact them again in the future. Like, in the days before the election on April 1.

“No District Court Judge, or any Judge, can assume the duties of the President of the United States. Only Crime and Chaos would result. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday.

“Unlawful Nationwide Injunctions by Radical Left Judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country! These people are Lunatics, who do not care, even a little bit, about the repercussions from their very dangerous and incorrect Decisions and Rulings,” he wrote in another post Thursday. He urged judges to stop placing injunctions on his potentially unlawful actions.