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Trump calls for the impeachment of a judge, as lawsuits pile up

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Trump calls for the impeachment of a judge, as lawsuits pile up

The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to be the final arbiter of many of the challenges to the Trump administration’s actions.

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President Trump on Tuesday called for the impeachment of the judge who ordered a temporary halt to the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Without naming James Boasberg, the chief judge of the district court of Washington, D.C., Trump said, “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” He also called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.”

Boasberg on Saturday halted Trump’s deportation order for two weeks after the president, in a highly controversial move, used the 1798 Enemy Aliens Act, a law not used since World War II, to deport the alleged gang members.

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Reacting to the president’s social media post, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a written statement of his own: “For more than two centuries it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreements concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Boasberg is known as a highly respected judge and former prosecutor who was previously appointed by Roberts to serve on the super-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews federal government applications to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance, particularly in the United States. He has long ties with conservatives and liberals alike, having shared a house with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at Yale Law School.

The Trump-inspired furor is only the latest in many contretemps between the administration and federal district court judges who are presiding over lawsuits seeking to block the Trump administration’s actions.

As of Tuesday, 127 such lawsuits have been filed against the administration since Trump took office, according to a database maintained at New York University. The cases challenge an enormous range of subjects — from the president’s national security powers to the firing of tens of thousands of federal employees at the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, and agencies created by Congress that are supposed to be independent.

Here is an abbreviated summary of the pending Trump legal cases.

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National security cases

The “national security” cases involve the area where the president has the most power.

Most prominently, last Friday Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport several hundred alleged Tren de Aragua gang members from Venezuela — as well as alleged members of the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13 — by claiming they were part of an illegal invasion. The statute, however, has only been invoked during three periods in American history: The War of 1812, World War I and World War II.

Judge Boasberg on Saturday ordered the administration not to proceed with the deportations for two weeks, but the administration did it anyway. This prompted Boasberg to order the planes that were in the air to turn back, which the administration did not do. The standoff could lead to what many legal experts predict will be a constitutional crisis, a hypothetical (or seemingly, now reality) in which the Trump administration refuses to abide by court orders issued by federal judges.

The Trump administration, however, may be on shaky ground in this case because, according to legal scholars, the Alien Enemies Act was meant to and is written to deal with wartime emergencies only. In addition, even people who should be deported are guaranteed due process under the Constitution, and it is not clear that all the people being deported have had a final hearing. The president has likely picked this battle because it’s provocative, and immigration is an issue that he ran — and won — on.

Trump also ordered the detention and deportation of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil for his role in the school’s student-led protests last spring. Khalil is a lawful permanent resident in the United States who is of Palestinian descent. Days after Khalil was taken into custody, immigration officials sent Rasha Alawieh, a doctor who was legally working in the U.S., back to Lebanon, citing her alleged support for Hezbollah.

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The administration has also made an effort, so far unsuccessful, to ban automatic citizenship for some people born in the United States. This is a right pretty explicitly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution for all people born or naturalized in the U.S.

Elon Musk + cases

These cases are what former ambassador Norman Eisen, who is shepherding a lot of the lawsuits, calls “core rule of law” cases.

Many cases involving Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, allege that Musk, who was hired by the president as a special government employee, may not take actions that Congress has not authorized, such as halting funding to federal agencies. Other cases cast doubt on DOGE’s ability to access to sensitive federal records, which it has been doing in agencies like the IRS and the Social Security Administration.

Also in this category are cases challenging efforts by the Trump administration to undo established labor agreements.

Other challenges seek to prevent the administration from gutting agencies and Cabinet departments by summarily firing tens of thousands of federal employees.

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Trump’s attacks on the ‘deep state’

Related, but somewhat different are cases concerning Trump’s attacks on the control of federal agencies. For instance, the president is trying to fire a member of the National Labor Relations board who has three years left on her five-year term. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1935 said the president could only fire agency commissioners for cause, meaning misconduct of some kind. The court’s current conservative supermajority, however, has been eating away at the outer edges of that precedent, so the Trump administration has a decent chance of prevailing when and if these cases get to the Supreme Court.

First Amendment challenges

These are cases that concern the administration’s efforts to make life much more difficult for lawyers who bring cases against the administration, and news organizations that cover them.

The Trump administration revoked the security clearance for the law firm Perkins Coie, known for representing Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats. Without security clearances, the firm would be unable to represent its clients as effectively, which could hurt its business.

Trump signed a similar executive order limiting federal contractors’ and the government’s ability to retain Paul Weiss, a major New York law firm, citing the firm’s connection to one of its former lawyers who was involved in leading an investigation into Trump.

Similarly, Trump revoked security clearances for lawyers at Covington & Burling, which represented former special counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal government’s investigation into Trump after the 2020 election. In the same memorandum, Trump ordered the termination of existing contracts between Covington and the federal government.

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has targeted 20 major law firms, including Perkins Coie, in an investigation into their DEI practices, though this investigation has not yet been challenged in court.

The Associated Press was also barred from accessing the Oval Office or Air Force One for failing to change its style guide to comply with a Trump executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. After releasing a statement raising alarm bells that “the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism,” the AP sued the administration to regain access.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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