>>22825328
Can't get no more simplified than what I just done to it.
Federalist: Five of 15 US Judges in D.C. Foreign-Born
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/federalist-us-judges-district-of-columbia/2025/03/26/id/1204454/
Wednesday, 26 March 2025 03:06 PM EDT
One-third of the 15 judges in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where many of the cases are being heard over President Donald Trump's actions, were born outside the United States, according to a new report.
The five judges who were born outside the U.S. were appointed by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, The Federalist reported on Wednesday. The District still has 10 older judges who sometimes hear cases. Their nominations date back as far as President Ronald Reagan's tenure in the 1980s, and all were born in the United States.
According to the Constitution, there are no specific requirements that must be met, including being a natural-born citizen, to be named as a judge.
The Constitution also does not list qualifications, such as prior service as a judge or possessing a law degree, to be named to judicial positions other than on the Supreme Court, according to Judicature, of Duke University.
The foreign-born judges in the D.C. District are:
Judge Tanya Chutkan, born in Kingston, Jamaica. She came to the U.S. in 1979 and attended George Washington University and obtained her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, but did not serve as a judge before her appointment by Obama. In addition to overseeing the legal challenge to the Department of Government Efficiency's work to slash government spending, she has presided over cases involving Trump, including overseeing his criminal trial in connection with the 2020 presidential election.
Judge Amit P. Mehta, appointed by Obama, was born in Patan, India. He was appointed in 2014 and has a law degree from the University of Virginia but had no previous experience as a judge. He came to the United States as an infant with his parents. He is to oversee four Jan. 6 civil cases against Trump.
Judge Ana Cecilia Reyes, nominated in 2021, was born in Uruguay and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She was not a judge before Biden nominated her. She holds a law degree from Harvard University and is the first openly LGBTQ Hispanic woman to be appointed to the court. She presided over an objection to an executive order from Trump that declared "gender dysphoria" as inconsistent with standards for troop readiness, blocking the order through a preliminary injunction.
Judge Amir Hatem Mahdy Ali, another Biden appointee, is the first Muslim and Arab American to serve on the D.C. District Court. He was born and raised in Canada to Egyptian parents and became a U.S. citizen in 2019. He holds a law degree from Harvard but was not a judge before his appointment in 2024. He volunteered for Biden's 2020 transition team and worked in support of his campaign. He has written about Trump's 2017 executive order restricting travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries, stating that “prejudice and intolerance" were “the very hallmark of [Trump’s] campaign against Muslims." In more recent actions, Ali restored $2 billion in spending to foreign nonprofit contractors by the U.S. Agency for International Development that had been on pause for 90 days.
Judge Sparkle Sooknanan was Biden's final appointee and was sworn in on Jan. 2, 2025, just before Biden left office. She was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1983 and graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 2010. Sooknanan worked as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and as the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice under the Biden administration. She also had not previously been a judge. Last week, Sooknanan ordered Democrat Susan Grundmann to be reinstated to the Federal Labor Relations Authority, keeping a Democratic majority on the board.
Ex-Squad Members Say Dems Wanted $10T Build Back Better Bill
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/squad-jamaal-bowman-cori-bush/2025/03/26/id/1204448/
Wednesday, 26 March 2025 02:44 PM EDT
Former Democrat Reps. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, who had been members of the progressive "Squad" while in Congress, say that Democrats were originally looking to pass a $10 trillion version of former President Joe Biden's Build Back Better legislation.
"We were at $10 [trillion] and then it went down to $6 [trillion] and down to $3 [trillion] and down to $1.7 [trillion], I believe," Bush said March 14 on the "Bowman and Bush" podcast.
The former federal lawmakers were reminiscing about the behind-the-scenes effort to push Biden's ill-fated Build Back Better Act across the congressional finish line. The bill had called for hundreds of billions of dollars in spending on "social infrastructure" programs, including climate change initiatives, universal childcare, affordable housing, and an expansion of the child tax credit.
"We wanted to make sure that the climate investment was there because many of the groups were saying this isn't enough on climate … so I was getting attacked for not asking for more," Bush said.
Bush and Bowman each lost their Democrat primaries to moderate challengers last year.
During their podcast episode, the ex-Congress members said they "held the line for months" in not voting to advance Biden's infrastructure bill so that it could be passed with the Build Back Better Act. But the one-time representatives said that federal investment in Build Back Better kept dropping and their efforts to pair the bill with the infrastructure measure ultimately failed.
According to their narrative of events, the Democrat-controlled House voted to pass the infrastructure bill separately in November 2021 and no vote was scheduled for Build Back Better.
Bush recalled a lengthy meeting of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in which Biden called to muster support for passing the infrastructure bill despite progressive demands not being met for a vote on Build Back Better.
"Mr. President, I'm a no," Bush said she told Biden. "I'm not going to vote for the infrastructure bill, if we don't have Build Back Better being voted on at the same time."
Despite Biden pleading with her to "trust your president," Bush said she told him "no."
The Build Back Better Act passed the House on Nov. 19, 2021, but objections from centrists like then-Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., killed the bill in the Senate.
Bowman incited controversy in his district by making several statements that were criticized as antisemitic. He lost his primary to Rep. George Latimer, D-N.Y.
Bush, who was defeated by Rep. Wesley Bell, D-Mo., blamed her congressional loss on the American-Israeli activist group AIPAC, claiming they "radicalized" her in her concession speech.