Trump News

Donald Trump's decision to place one of his former personal lawyers on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals with a lifetime appointment is backfiring as judges postpone their own retirements to stop the president picking their replacements.

In May, Notre Dame Law Professor Derek T. Muller pointed to a slowing of bench retirements since Trump was re-elected, noting the "exceedingly slow pace of retirements in the second Trump administration, disproportionately low."

Over the weekend, former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou wrote in The Atlantic that the president might have been better served if he didn't bully GOP lawmakers to ignore the wealth of whistleblower complaints and accusations against Bove during his brief tenure at the Department of Justice under fellow Trump appointee Attorney General Pam Bondi.

According to Ballou, the spectacle of Bove being elevated to a key appeals court seat despite credible accusations about his ethics did not go unnoticed among other judges.

"By appointing Bove—whose only apparent loyalty is to his own ambition, not to any particular legal philosophy—the GOP might have limited its own ability to appoint judges in the future," he wrote. "This is because the president typically gets to appoint new judges only when old ones die, retire, or move into the quasi-retirement position of 'senior status.'

" And some judges, even conservative ones who would otherwise be happy to let a Republican president pick their replacement, are likely to delay their retirement rather than hand Trump the opportunity to make more Bove-style appointments."

Adding, "Bove is not the kind of lawyer that a traditionally conservative judge would want to be replaced by," he continued, "For judges who care about the rule of law, even very conservative ones, Bove’s conduct offers a reason to reconsider retirement. Senate Republicans should keep that in mind the next time Trump nominates someone like him to the federal bench."

You can read more here.

Landowners living along the Texas/Mexico border are once again facing having property confiscated from them as Donald Trump's administration ramps up efforts to build his long-promised wall.

And they are not happy about it.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, with Homeland Security flush with cash from the recently signed budget bill, property owners who sighed with relief when Trump lost in 2020 are once again having to deal with efforts to use eminent domain laws against them.

In the case of Raquel Oliva, whose family has been in Starr County since since 1798, "the government filed proceedings in February to take over a strip of the family’s land for construction of a wall. While the government is seeking ownership over fewer than 3 acres, it would block off some 100 acres where the family farms, hunts and operates a gas well, said Oliva and her cousin, Lazaro Rodriguez."

The Journal's Elizabeth Findel is reporting, "The government this year has filed dozens of eminent domain lawsuits against Texas landowners, continuing a process that began in the first Trump administration. The cases are complicated, often involving small patches of land with poorly documented titles and generations of owners," adding, "Lawyers and landowners recognize that the government has broad authority to take land for national security purposes and resisting it is rarely, if ever, successful.'

Alejo Clarke Jr. has found himself once again in a bind after his property was returned to him when Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020, and now he is having to hire a lawyer to fight confiscation again with little hope of success.

With the report noting, "The government is offering just $3,000 for the acre it plans to take, leaving the rest of the 9-acre tract south of the wall. He’s also angry about the billions allocated, which he said would be better spent helping the region manage a water crisis that is crippling farms," Clarke conceded, “I’m not gonna beat Trump—you know it and I know it. But if someone is going to kick your butt, are you just going to lie down?”

Longtime local Oliva agreed, adding, "No one has a problem stopping illegal immigration or drugs, but we live on the border—it’s always been like this. Now it feels like an invasion of the government on us.”

You can read more here.