Army veteran and House lawmaker eyes Senate bid after Trump’s Tillis takedown

FIRST ON FOX: A first-term House Republican and military veteran is eyeing a bid for Sen. Thom Tillis’ North Carolina Senate seat after the GOP lawmaker announced he would not run for re-election, a source close to the congressman told Fox News Digital.

Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., a former Army Special Forces Officer who was deployed to Afghanistan, was elected to represent North Carolina’s 10th congressional district in November 2024.

It comes after President Donald Trump pledged to find a primary challenger for Tillis over the senator’s decision to vote “no” on a key procedural hurdle to advance the commander-in-chief’s “big, beautiful bill.”

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Harrigan was elected to replace former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C.

He’s among the first to express interest in Tillis’ seat in what could shape up into a crowded Republican primary race ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Rep. Tim Moore, R-N.C., another first-term House Republican, is also considering a bid for Tillis’ Senate seat, a source familiar with his plans told Fox News Digital.

Moore is the former speaker of the North Carolina state House of Representatives.

Tillis revealed he would not run for re-election in a bombshell statement on Sunday afternoon, criticizing the current political environment.

“Too many elected officials are motivated by pure raw politics who really don’t give a damn about the people they promised to represent on the campaign trail. After they get elected, they don’t bother to do the hard work to research the policies they seek to implement and understand the consequences those policies could have on that young adult living in a trailer park, struggling to make ends meet,” Tillis said.

“As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term. That is true since the choice is between spending another six years navigating the political theatre and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with the love of my life Susan, our two children, three beautiful grandchildren, and the rest of our extended family back home.”

The statement came on the second continuous day that senators are wrestling with the “one big, beautiful bill,” a vast piece of legislation advancing Trump’s agenda on tax, immigration, energy, defense, and the national debt.

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Tillis said he had objections to the bill’s spending cuts targeting Medicaid, arguing they would be damaging to rural communities and hospitals in North Carolina.

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The senate voted 51-49 to begin debate on the legislation late on Saturday. Tillis and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., were the only two Republicans to vote “no.”

Trump posted on Saturday, “Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the primary against ‘Senator Thom’ Tillis. I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

NYC candidate Mamdani refuses to denounce controversial phrase in NBC interview

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was repeatedly pressed by NBC News host Kristen Welker on Sunday about why he doesn’t want to condemn the phrase, “globalize the intifada,” insisting that he didn’t want to “police language.”

“I want to ask you about an issue that has divided New Yorkers in recent weeks. You were recently asked about the term ‘globalize the intifada,’ if it makes you uncomfortable. In that moment, you did not condemn the phrase. Now, just so folks understand, it is a phrase that many people hear as a call to violence against Jews,” Welker said. “So I want to give you the opportunity to respond here and now, do you condemn that phrase, ‘globalize the intifada?'”

Mandami, a Democratic socialist, defeated former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral primary last week. 

“That’s not language that I use. The language that I use, the language that I will continue to use to lead this city, is that which speaks clearly to my intent, which is an intent grounded in a belief in universal human rights,” Mamdani responded. “And ultimately, that’s what is the foundation of so much of my politics, the belief that freedom and justice and safety are things that, to have meaning, have to be applied to all people and that includes Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

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Welker asked Mamdani once again if he condemned the phrase.

Mamdani said he had spoken to several Jewish New Yorkers regarding their concerns about antisemitism and added, “I don’t believe that the role of the mayor is to police speech.”

“Ultimately, what I think I need to show is the ability to not only talk about something but to tackle it and to make clear there is no room for antisemitism in the city. We have to root out that bigotry and, ultimately, we do that through the actions, and that is the mayor I will be, one that protects Jewish New Yorkers and lives up to that commitment through the work that I do,” he continued. 

Welker asked again why he wouldn’t just “condemn” the phrase, citing those who care about the language and feel concerned over the phrase. 

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“My concern is, to start to walk down the line of language and making clear what language I believe is permissible or impermissible, takes me into a place similar to that of the president, who is looking to do those very kinds of things, putting people in jail for writing an op-ed, putting them in jail for protesting. Ultimately, it is not language that I use. It is language I understand there are concerns about, and what I will do is showcase my vision for the city through my words and my actions,” Mamdani said. 

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., called on Mamdani to denounce the phrase on Thursday during a heated exchange with WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer.

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During an interview with Stephen Colbert ahead of the primary, Mamdani was also pressed on antisemitism in New York.

“Does the State of Israel have the right to exist?” Colbert asked the 33-year-old Democratic socialist.

“Yes,” Mamdani responded. “Like all nations, I believe it has the right to exist and a responsibility also to uphold international law.”

Trump team launches offensive on leaked Pentagon’s Iran strike report

A leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report is casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s claim that recent U.S. airstrikes “completely and totally obliterated” three Iranian nuclear facilities, instead concluding the mission only set back Iran’s program by several months.

The report, published by CNN and The New York Times, comes just days after Trump approved the strikes amid escalating tensions between Israel and Iran. In a national address immediately following the operation, Trump declared the sites “completely and totally obliterated.” 

While members of the Trump administration have waged a new war to discredit the initial report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, multiple experts told Fox News Digital that there is too little information available right now to accurately determine how much damage the strikes did. 

Piecing together a thorough intelligence assessment is complex and time-consuming, they said. 

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Dan Shapiro, who previously served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Middle East and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he didn’t put a lot of stock in both overly pessimistic or overly optimistic assessments that emerged quickly, and said that the initial assessment from DIA was likely only based on satellite imagery. 

“That’s one piece of the puzzle of how you would really make this assessment,” Shapiro, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Digital. “You’d really want to have to test all the other streams of intelligence, from signals intelligence, human intelligence, other forms of monitoring the site, potentially visits by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, potentially visits by other people. So that’s going to take days to weeks to get a real assessment.” 

“But I think it’s likely that if the munitions performed as expected, that significant damage was done, and would set back the program significantly,” Shapiro said. 

Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday that initial battle damage assessments suggested “all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” but he acknowledged that a final assessment would “take some time.” 

Still, media reports based on the DIA report painted a different picture, and CNN’s reporting on the initial report said that Iran’s stash of enriched uranium was not destroyed in the strikes, citing seven people who had been briefed on the report. The findings were based on a battle damage assessment from U.S. Central Command, according to CNN. 

Other members of the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have subsequently pushed back on the DIA report’s conclusions, claiming that the report was labeled “low confidence.” 

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The term is commonly used when labeling initial assessments, and means that conclusions are based on limited data, according to experts. 

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, who previously served as the director for transnational threats at the National Security Council for former President Bill Clinton, said the low confidence description is commonly used in early assessments. 

“Low confidence means the analyst is not sure of the accuracy of their assessment,” said Montgomery, now a senior fellow at the Washington think tank the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “This is frequent when with a Quick Look 24-hour assessment like this one.”

Montgomery’s colleague, Craig Singleton, also a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that the low confidence label is used in cases with thin evidence and serves as a warning to policy-makers to seek additional information. 

“Most importantly, low confidence assessments are usually issued when key facts have yet to be verified, which certainly applies in this case,” Singleton said.

Rob Greenway, former deputy assistant to the president on Trump’s National Security Council, told Fox News Digital that it will take one or two months to get a more thorough assessment with higher confidence. 

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Greenway also said that the strikes were designed to create damage underground, which will complicate the assessment of damage, because it is not immediately available and will require multiple sources of intelligence, such as signals or human intelligence, to draw conclusions. 

Israel had also previously conducted strikes targeting the sites, adding to the web of analysis that must be evaluated, Greenway said. 

“Each of these are one piece of a much larger puzzle, and you’re trying to gauge the ultimate effect of the entirety of the puzzle, not just one particular strike,” said Greenway, now the director of the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation. “All of that means it’s going to take time in order to do it.” 

Even so, Greenway said that the amount of ordnance dropped on the sites – including more than 14 30,000-lb. bombs – means that the targeted facilities have been so heavily compromised they are no longer serviceable. 

“We were putting twice the amount of ordnance required to achieve the desired effect, just to make sure that we didn’t have to go back,” Greenway said. 

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“There’s virtually no mathematical probability in which either facility can be used again by Iran for the intended purpose, if at all, which again means that everything now is within Israel’s capability to strike if that’s required,” Greenway said. 

And Michael Allen, a former National Security Council senior director in the George W. Bush administration, said that even though a final judgment from the intelligence community won’t be ready soon, the intelligence portrait will become “richer” in the coming days. 

“Stuff is pouring in, and we’re out there collecting it, and they’re trying to hustle it to the White House as soon as possible,” Allen, now the managing director of advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies, told Fox News Digital. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that very few people had access to this report, and those who leaked it to the media will be held accountable as the FBI investigates who shared the document with the press. 

“That person was irresponsible with it,” Leavitt told reporters Thursday. “And we need to get to the bottom of it. And we need to strengthen that process to protect our national security and protect the American public.”

Indiana player sounds alarm on locker room ‘islands’ as Fever face mounting pressure

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham made a passionate statement about the state of the team as it deals with Caitlin Clark’s injuries and tries to keep the season from spiraling.

Cunningham spoke to reporters about being the team that everyone in the league has circled on their calendars before their win over the Dallas Wings on Friday. 

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It was the second night of a back-to-back as they came off of a loss to the Los Angeles Sparks.

“I think so far this season, we’ve had a lot of distractions. Some injuries. Don’t know who’s playing. Just a lot of distractions. But I think that’s really good for us,” she said, via the Indy Star. “Let’s go through the adversity early. Let’s learn from it. Good news is we’re not going to peak too early, so I mean, that’s a positive. It’s not an excuse. Everyone’s playing a back-to-back. Everyone has this kind of rough schedule. For us, we get another opportunity tomorrow, and we’ve got to capitalize on it. Dallas is a team that’s hungry for a win.

“We’ve talked about this, we’re circled on everybody’s schedule. No one likes us, right? So, everyone in our locker room? That’s the only type of people that we have that we can lean on. We’ve got to be better in that area. We have got to stay disciplined, we have to stay focused, we need to get consistent and we’ve got to lean on each other. I think that we’ve kind of wavered a little bit on that. We have our own islands.”

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Cunningham added that the tough schedule was “just an excuse” and that she had to do a better job for her teammates.

She then had five points and four assists on Friday as the Fever defeated the Wings, 94-86.

The WNBA schedule has become a tension point with some players.

New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart spoke about the problems of a 44-game schedule earlier this month.

“We want to play the games, especially if that’s what is wanted for TV and having these sellout arenas,” she said. “I think the hardest part is no matter what, when I was playing 36 games or 32 games, it was in the same amount of time as 44 games.

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“I know on both ends between April and October there’s things happening. But I think that’s one of the biggest talking points in the next CBA is like, alright, how can we make it so teams aren’t playing four (games) in six (days) three times in a season and continuing to have the rest and recovery so we are at our best. It’s tough, it’s a tough thing.”

State with star-studded roots poised to become ‘top three film destination’

The home state of Hollywood A-listers like Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson and Michael B. Jordan, New Jersey is staying true to its star-studded roots, becoming one of the nation’s most sought-after film destinations in recent years.

Adam Sandler, Timothée Chalamet, Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix have all embraced the Garden State as a film hub, since Gov. Phil Murphy signed the Film and Digital Media Tax Credit in 2018. In 2023, 547 projects were filmed in New Jersey, generating $592 million, compared with $67 million in 2017, according to Variety.

Tim Sullivan, CEO of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, who assumed the role in 2018, told FOX Business that the emerging impact of the state’s film industry goes far beyond A-list actors and box office buzz.

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“Film and TV started in New Jersey, way back in the day under Thomas Edison, in Fort Lee, New Jersey. We were Hollywood before there was a Hollywood,” said Sullivan. “We’re bringing ourselves back to the top of the pack with major investments, because we see a huge economic opportunity here. It’s fun to have celebrities running around making movies, but it’s really impactful to small businesses, construction workers and vendors who support the industry,” Sullivan said. 

Netflix recently broke ground in May on its $1 billion project that is expected to transform the Fort Monmouth army installation into a nearly 500,000-foot production studio. Lionsgate also announced their forthcoming 300,000-square-foot production facility in Newark in 2022, along with a 1.6-million-square-foot film and television space in Bayonne.

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For Sullivan, the commitment to long-term production made by Netflix, Lionsgate and 1888 Studios – named after the year Thomas Edison patented the motion film camera – means “a ton of jobs for New Jersey residents.”

“Carpentry, electricians, set design, costume design, hair and makeup, catering, craft services, security, lighting, all kinds of jobs  that are supported by the film industry,” he added.

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Sullivan suggested that New Jersey will be a “top three film destination” once the production studios are up-and-running. While Lionsgate and Netflix have expected completion dates in 2027 and 2028 respectively, 1888 Studios anticipates full operation by 2026.

New Jersey’s recent work to incentivize the film industry comes amid the Trump administration’s efforts to keep film production in America. President Donald Trump announced in early May a plan to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-produced movies.

Bartenders ‘annoyed’ by Gen Z’s drinking habit that’s costing bars money

In bars across America, fewer young bargoers – those born in the late 1990s or early 2000s – are opening tabs, instead choosing to close out and pay after every drink, The New York Times recently reported.

Does the trend bother bartenders? Fox News Digital asked a few for their thoughts.

“Is it annoying to close out the tab after every single drink for bartenders? And the answer is yes. Unequivocally, that is annoying,” said Derek Brown, a bartender and founder of Drink Company, a hospitality consulting agency in Washington, D.C. 

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“You have so many things to do as a bartender throughout your shift, and closing out the tab, if you have to do it throughout the evening when somebody’s ordering two, three drinks — it takes time, and it’s frustrating and annoying.”

Today’s younger generation isn’t the first to annoy bartenders, Brown clarified.

“Every generation has its quirk,” he said.

Still, while it may not seem like a big deal to customers, closing out after every drink is a nuisance to those on the other side of the bar, especially when things are busy, Brown said. 

“When somebody comes in and says, ‘I’ll take a cocktail,’ great, and then somebody comes behind and says, ‘I’ll close it out,’ you have to turn around, you have to go to the [point-of-sale machine], and you have to turn around and go back to making drinks,” Brown said.

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“All of this while being congenial, keeping a smile, making sure people are taken care of — it can be just a really, really annoying habit between all the other things you have to do. But it is part of the job.”

Some younger people claim that paying as they go is a better way to manage their drinking money.

“Once you’ve had two drinks, then the third one comes a lot faster and easier.” 

“This is the positive side of this, right?” Brown said. “If you’re closing out every time, it’s true. You’re going to be able to monitor how much alcohol you’re drinking throughout the evening.”

Brown said “fiscal responsibility” is important from the consumer perspective.

“Once you’ve had two drinks, then the third one comes a lot faster and easier,” he said.

Others have expressed concerns about leaving their credit cards behind or in the hands of the bartender.

One way bars solved this problem was with a new system in which a customer’s card is swiped once and then immediately returned.

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“In that case, it’s not that difficult,” Brown said. “You keep your card. You put it in your pocket. That’s what we learned.”

Still, nothing stops a person from paying drink by drink.

“Somebody can just keep asking to open and close it [all] evening,” Brown said. “We just have to smile and do our best.”

Another reason for the decline in bar tabs could be that fewer young adults, in general, are drinking.

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A 2023 Gallup poll found that 62% of adults under age 35 say they drink, a 10% decrease over the previous 20 years.

“It depends on what kind of night I’m trying to have.”

Katie Fites, a former bartender in Tallahassee and recent graduate of Florida State University, said she doesn’t have a blanket rule when deciding whether she’s going to open a bar tab.

“It depends on what kind of night I’m trying to have,” she told Fox News Digital. 

“If I know that my friends and I are going to be staying in one spot for the night, I will leave a tab open. But if I think that we’re going to be bouncing around and there’s a possibility I’ll forget I’ve left my tab open and leave, I will not leave my tab open.”

Fites worked at a popular college bar that didn’t allow tabs — so most people paid in cash. 

Those who did pay with a card, however, were subject to a $10 minimum.

Card payments can not only slow down bartenders on a busy night, they can also be costly to a bar owner’s bottom line. 

Credit card fees, which range from, on average, 2% to 4% of the transaction, are assessed with every swipe, according to Doug Kantor with the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC).

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These swipe fees totaled a record $187.2 billion in 2024, an increase of 70% since the pandemic, per the MPC.

That means less money for the bars.

Utah senator caves after pressure, withdraws federal land provision from GOP bill

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee preemptively withdrew a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Saturday evening that would have allowed for the sale of federal lands for development after widespread outrage among his conservative colleagues.

“Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to members of the community, local leaders, and stakeholders across the country. While there has been a tremendous amount of misinformation – and in some cases, outright lies – about my bill, many people brought forward sincere concerns,” Lee said in a message posted to his X account on Saturday evening. 

Lee, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he pulled the provision after he failed to secure “safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families,” and not to China or corporations. The Senate parliamentarian ruled on Monday that the provision’s original language did not comply with strict rules related to what could be included in reconciliation legislation, with Lee’s office resubmitting the provision with new language before pulling it altogether on Saturday evening. 

Lee said he maintains his long-held position that the U.S. government owns too much land that is often mismanaged and leaves Americans, most notably in Western states, with higher tax burdens. 

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“I continue to believe the federal government owns far too much land – land it is mismanaging and in many cases ruining for the next generation,” Lee wrote in his post. “Under Democratic presidents, massive swaths of the West are being locked away from the people who live there, with no meaningful recourse.”

Lee had included a mandate for sales of millions of acres of federal lands in a draft provision of the tax cut package earlier this month. He preemptively pulled the provision on Saturday ahead of a procedural vote, as a handful of Republican lawmakers in both chambers publicly denounced the provision and said they would vote against the bill if it was included. 

“We’ve got the votes to strike it,” Montana Sen. Steve Daines said Thursday of Lee’s provision. “We’re ready.”

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“I agree with my colleagues that the federal government has mismanaged federal lands for decades. But I don’t agree with their solution. The solution is not to sell public lands. The solution is better management. Let’s send legislation to POTUS desk to improve management and access. I remain a no on the senate reconciliation bill,” Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke posted to X last week ahead of Lee pulling the provision. Zinke served as President Donald Trump‘s secretary of the Department of the Interior during his first administration. 

“The people of Idaho have been clear – we do NOT support the sale of our public lands to the highest bidder. I am proud to help lead the effort to remove this provision from the One Big Beautiful Bill,” Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch posted to X after Lee said he would pull the provision. 

MIKE JOHNSON, DONALD TRUMP GET ‘BIG, ‘BEAUTIFUL’ WIN AS BUDGET PASSES HOUSE

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Lawmakers are on a tight 4th of July deadline to get the legislation, which will advance Trump’s agenda on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt, to the president’s desk. Senate Republicans successfully carried the legislation over a procedural hurdle late on Saturday after hours of negotiations. 

The five liberal courts that tied Trump’s hands before SCOTUS clipped their power

Nearly all the universal injunctions blocking President Donald Trump‘s agenda were issued by just five of the nation’s 94 federal district courts, a statistic that the administration said lays bare the Left’s strategy of lawfare.

Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke at a news conference Friday just after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that district judges, the lowest-level jurists in the federal system, cannot impose nationwide injunctions. Bondi noted that out of 40 nationwide injunctions issued since Trump retook the White House, 35 came out of five districts perceived as liberal.

“Active liberal… judges have used these injunctions to block virtually all of President Trump’s policies,” Bondi said. “No longer. No longer.”

Nationwide injunctions are court orders that prevent the federal government from implementing a policy or law. They have a cascading effect impacting the entire country, not just the parties involved in the court case, and have been used against the Trump administration at a vastly higher rate than previous administrations. 

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Trump’s first administration faced 64 injunctions out of the total 127 nationwide injunctions issued since 1963, Fox News Digital previously reported. There were 32 injunctions issued against the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations collectively since 2001, meaning the first Trump administration was on the receiving end of double the amount of nationwide injunctions than his two predecessors and successor combined, according to an April 2024 edition of the Harvard Law Review. 

Bondi pointed to the five district courts – Maryland, Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, California and Washington state – calling it “crazy” that such an overwhelming number of nationwide injunctions originated in those jurisdictions. Conservatives have accused the Left of bringing their cases in liberal judicial districts stocked with Democratic-appointed judges.

Fox News Digital looked at the five district courts and how judges in them have issued sweeping injunctions that have hampered Trump’s federal policies. 

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U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland

The Supreme Court agreed this year to take up three consolidated cases involving nationwide injunctions handed down by federal district judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state related to Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. 

The U.S. District Court for Maryland was one of the courts nationwide that issued an injunction against Trump’s January executive order to end the practice of granting birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. Maryland U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued the injunction in February following a lawsuit brought by five pregnant illegal immigrant women in the state, which was followed by other district judges in Washington state and Massachusetts ordering injunctions of their own. 

The Maryland district court also issued a separate preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s executive orders ending federal support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in February. 

The court recently came under fire from the Trump administration when the Department of Justice filed lawsuits against each of the 15 federal judges on the Maryland federal bench earlier this month for automatically issuing injunctions for certain immigration cases. The injunctions have prevented the Department of Homeland Security from deporting or changing the legal status of the immigrant in question for two business days.

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“President Trump’s executive authority has been undermined since the first hours of his presidency by an endless barrage of injunctions designed to halt his agenda,” Bondi said in a press release of the state’s automatic injunction practices.  “The American people elected President Trump to carry out his policy agenda: this pattern of judicial overreach undermines the democratic process and cannot be allowed to stand.”

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California

Judges on the bench for the Northern District of California have issued at least six significant injunctions hampering policies put forth by the Trump administration this year. The Northern California district court includes counties such as San Francisco, Sonoma and Santa Clara. 

Back in March, Judge William Alsup, for example, granted a preliminary injunction ordering federal agencies to reinstate probationary employees fired under the Trump administration’s efforts to slim down the size of the federal government. Judge Susan Illston granted a temporary pause in May to the Trump administration’s federal reductions in force initiatives, and Judge William Orrick granted a separate injunction in April that prevented the Trump administration from withholding federal funds from areas deemed sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. 

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Federal judges on the Northern California bench also issued injunctions to block the enforcement of Trump administration polices related to organizations that promote DEI and LGBTQ programs and to prevent the administration from terminating the legal visa status of international students. 

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has issued at least six signigicant injunctions against the Trump administration this year, including Judge James Boasberg’s March injunction preventing the Trump administration from deporting violent illegal immigrant gang members under the Alien Enemies Act – which received widespread backlash among conservatives.  

“People are shocked by what is going on with the Court System. I was elected for many reasons, but a principal one was LAW AND ORDER, a big part of which is QUICKLY removing a vast Criminal Network of individuals, who came into our Country through the Crooked Joe Biden Open Borders Policy! These are dangerous and violent people, who kill, maim and, in many other ways, harm the people of our Country,” Trump posted to Truth Social in March following Boasberg extending his restraining order against the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal immigrants with alleged ties to gangs, such as Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TdA).

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Federal Judge Loren AliKhan issued a preliminary injunction in January barring the Trump administration’s freeze on federal grant disbursements through various federal agencies; Judge Paul Friedman blocked the Trump administration from targeting foreign service workers’ collective bargaining rights in May; and Judge Ana Reyes granted a nationwide injunction in March barring the Pentagon from enforcing Trump’s executive order banning transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military. 

Judges on the court have also issued injunctions targeting the Trump administration’s plans to dismantle the federally-funded state media network Voice of America, and another that blocked the Bureau of Prisons from implementing a Trump executive order restricting transgender healthcare and accommodations for federal inmates. 

U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts

The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts has issued at least four significant injunctions against the Trump administration this year, including the nationwide preliminary injunction barring Trump’s executive order ending the practice of granting birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. 

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Other injunctions issued this year include Judge Julia Kobick this month blocked Trump’s presidential action requiring passports to reflect a person’s biological sex and not their gender identity, and another that involved the Trump administration’s efforts to end a Biden-era parole program for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Afghanistan, Latin America and Ukraine.

U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington

Ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling limiting the scope of nationwide injunctions, judges on the District Court for the Western District of Washington issued a handful of injunctions targeting Trump policies, including joining courts in Maryland and Massachusetts earlier this year blocking Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. 

Judge Jamal Whitehead issued a preliminary injunction in February halting Trump’s January executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Assistance Program. While another federal judge on the bench in March granted a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s executive order barring transgender individuals from serving in the military.

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington includes counties such as King – home to Seattle – Snohomish and Clark. The two courts for the Western District of Washington and the Northern District of California are both in the 9th Circuit. 

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Trump celebrated the Supreme Court’s ruling restricting the scope of federal judges’ powers to grant nationwide injunctions as “a monumental victory for the Constitution.”

“The Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law in striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions… I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we’ve seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers. It was a grave threat to democracy,” Trump said on Friday. 

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SCOTUS’ ruling followed the Trump administration filing an emergency appeal with the highest court in March, when the then-acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, sounded the alarm that nationwide injunctions had hit “epidemic proportions” under the second Trump administration. She noted that the federal government faced 14 universal injunctions in the first three years of the Biden administration, compared to 15 leveled against the Trump admin in one month alone. 

Universal injunctions were also a sticking point for officials in the first Trump administration, who railed against the flow of injunctions ordered against the 45th president’s policies and laws, including the former chiefs of the Department of Justice. 

“Courts issued an average of only 1.5 nationwide injunctions per year against the Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and 2.5 per year against the Obama administration,” former Assistant Attorney General Beth Williams said in February 2019.  

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“In President Trump’s first year in office, however, judges issued a whopping 20 nationwide injunctions – an eight-fold increase. This matches the entire eight-year total of such injunctions issued against President Obama during his two terms. We are now at 30, matching the total number of injunctions issued against the first 42 presidents combined.”

MSNBC host erupts over Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship

MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend unloaded on the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Donald Trump‘s birthright citizenship executive order, calling it “insane” during a discussion on Friday. 

“I just don’t, I can’t believe that we are asking the question, ‘is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution constitutional?’ That is what, it is crazy. And I am sorry, but people need to call, ‘this is crazy.’ They are asking us… They’re asking us not to believe our own eyes and our own ears. They’re asking us to go against everything that we know to be true. This is insane,” Sanders Townsend said.

The Supreme Court delivered a major victory in Trump’s effort to block lower courts from issuing universal injunctions that had upended many of his administration’s executive orders and actions on Friday. The Justices ruled 6-3 to allow the lower courts to issue injunctions only in limited instances, though the ruling leaves open the question of how the ruling will apply to the birthright citizenship order at the heart of the case.

UPENDING US BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP WOULD HAVE DRASTIC NEGATIVE IMPACT, DEFENDERS WARN

The Supreme Court agreed this year to take up a trio of consolidated cases involving so-called universal injunctions handed down by federal district judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state.

Judges in those districts had blocked Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship from taking force nationwide — which the Trump administration argued in their appeal to the Supreme Court was overly broad.

“The applications do not raise – and thus we do not address – the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, writing for the majority. “The issue before us is one of remedy: whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.”

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MSNBC host Michael Steele responded, “this is the landscape we find ourselves on now.”

“I mean, the reality is that they have been very effective. Trump and his minions inside the government have been very effective at setting the stairsteps to the various narratives that they want to get accomplished,” he said. 

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Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern also criticized the ruling, and insisted that no one could explain how Trump’s order would work in practice.

“When a child is born in America, the doctor doesn’t demand the papers of their parents to ensure that they’re a citizen or a green card holder. All they need is a birth certificate showing that they were born here. You, me, most people we know, we are citizens because of our birth. And once the government takes that away, once it introduces this wild, chaotic new system where it depends on your parents, and you get punished if your parents didn’t have the right papers, then everyone’s citizenship is thrown into disarray, and advocates need to present that very clearly to the Supreme Court because, frankly, this conservative majority is very selective in its empathy,” Stern argued.