The Researcher
@listen_2learn
Norm Eisen said his longtime friend John Roberts probably did not like Trump’s address to Congress so Norm thinks John and Amy Coney-Barrett (who also apparently does not like Trump) will continue to vote against the Trump administration.
12:37 PM · Apr 3, 2025
·46.7K Views
https://x.com/listen_2learn/status/1907834792768356527
If they vote against Trump, it will be proof they are biased and can be removed from the court.Eisen isn't doing those two any favors.
Same judge blocking CIA efforts to fire DEI employees hamstrung the Steele Dossier prosecution
(I’m only posting 1 page on this 8 page massive article on Judge Trenga because he’s so fucking corrupt, you have to read the whole thing yourself, link below, Trenga buddies with Boasberg and Contrares.)
The Bush-appointed judge who blocked efforts by the CIA to fire employees involved in DEI programs also serves on the FISA Court — is the same judge who undercut one of John Durham's Russian collusion hoax prosecutions.
By Jerry Dunleavy Updated: April 3, 2025 12:05am
The judge who this week blocked efforts by the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to fire employees involved with divisive DEI programs previously helped kneecap one of special counsel John Durham’s cases tied to the Russia collusion hoax.
Judge Anthony Trenga, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by President George W. Bush, blocked efforts by the CIA and the ODNI to terminate intelligence officers who had been tied to so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts during the Biden administration.
Trenga, the judge who also oversaw Durham’s case against the Russian-born Igor Danchenko, kneecapped the special counselahead of the October 2022 trial, including ruling that Durham could not use details from the FBI’s prior counterintelligence investigation into Danchenko. He was accused of being the main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s debunked dossier. Trenga limited a host of other evidence Durham had sought to show the jury as well.
During the trial,Trenga dealt Durham's case another blow as he dismissed one of the false-statement charges brought against Danchenko, who was acquitted of all charges in October 2022. The Eastern District of Virginia is known for handling many national security cases, andTrenga has also been a member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court since May 2020, and has been the presiding judge on the secretive court since May 2023.
Trump's "Anti-DEI" executive order
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” on the day he was sworn in for his second term. The executive order is sweeping in scope, and applies to all federal agencies and their contractors. Trump also ordered each department and agency head to “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI…offices and positions” and “all DEI…performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees.”
The president followed this up with an executive order on “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” the next day, arguing that “these illegal DEI…policies also threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of..
The Justice Department said last month that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were implementing it…But, as of earlier this week, Trenga blocked the termination efforts by the CIA and ODNI following a lawsuit by anonymous intelligence community employees.
Durham and Danchenko: Igor Danchenko was on the FBI’s payroll as a confidential human source from March 2017 to October 2020 before he was charged in November 2021 with five counts of making false statements to the bureau. The FBI agent assigned to be the handler for Danchenko testified that he sought to have the bureau pay Danchenko more than $500,000.
Trenga tossed that charge out before the jury could decide on it.
Durham’s indictment also said Danchenko lied to the FBI about a phone call he claims he received from Sergei Millian, an American citizen born in Belarus, who the Steele source had allegedly told him about a conspiracy of cooperation between former President Donald Trump and the Russians — collusion allegations which the special counsel said were baseless. Despite its lack of merit, the narrative of Trump being in league with Putinhas been the centerpiece of many Democratic candidates' campaign advertising, including Joe Biden's.
Durham's indictment of Danchenko argued that the Steele source falsely told the FBI in 2017 that, in late July 2016, he had received a phone call from Millian. He claimed Millian told him about a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between Trump and Russians and further allegedly falsely claimed Millian had agreed to meet with him in New York in 2017.Danchenko denied this, and was found not guilty related to all charges.
https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/judge-who-blocked-cia-efforts-fire-dei-employees-kneecapped-durhams?
Oh and BTW Trenga as a Bush appointed conservative judge, (NOT) Did this in 2017 to Trump
US judge: Terror watchlist violates constitutional rights
By MATTHEW BARAKAT Published 9:05 PM EDT, September 4, 2019
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — The government’s watchlist of more than 1 million people identified as “known or suspected terrorists” violates the constitutional rights of those placed on it, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga grants summary judgment to nearly two dozen Muslim U.S. citizens who had challenged the watchlist with the help of a Muslim civil-rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.But the judge is seeking additional legal briefs before deciding what remedy to impose.
==The plaintiffs said they were wrongly placed on the list and that the government’s process for adding names is overbroad and riddled with errors.
The watchlist is disseminated to a variety of governmental departments, foreign governments and police agencies.
The FBI declined comment on the ruling Wednesday. In court, the FBI’s lawyers argued that the difficulties suffered by the plaintiffs pale in comparison to the government’s interests in combatting terrorism.
Gadeir Abbas, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the ruling a victory. He said he will be asking the judge to severely curtail how the government compiles and uses its list.
“Innocent people should be beyond the reach of the watchlist system,”Abbas said.“We think that’s what the Constitution requires.”(what a weird statement, “we think” and “the constitution doesn’t require it” and what you think has nothing to do with it)
Abbas said that while there has been significant litigation over the no-fly list, which forced the government to improve the process for people seeking to clear their name from the list, he said Trenga’s ruling is the first to broadly attack the government’s use of the watchlist. Trenga also wrote in his 31-page ruling that the case “presents unsettled issues.”
Ultimately, Trenga ruled that the travel difficulties faced by plaintiffs — who say they were handcuffed at border crossings and frequently subjected to invasive secondary searches at airports — are significant, and that they have a right to due process when their constitutional rights are infringed.
He also said the concerns about erroneous placement on the list are legitimate.
“There is no evidence, or contention, that any of these plaintiffs satisfy the definition of a ‘known terrorist,” Trenga wrote. And the alternate standard for placement — that of a “suspected terrorist” — can easily be triggered by innocent conduct that is misconstrued, he said.
The watchlist, also known as the Terrorist Screening Database, is maintained by the FBI and shared with a variety of federal agencies. Customs officers have access to the list to check people coming into the country at border crossings, and aviation officials use the database to help form the no-fly list, which is a much smaller subset of the broader watchlist.
The watchlist has grown significantly over the years. As of June 2017, approximately 1.16 million people were included on the watchlist, according to government documents filed in the lawsuit. In 2013, the number was only 680,000. The vast majority are foreigners, but according to the government, there are roughly 4,600 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents on the watchlist as of 2017.
Abbas argued at a court hearing earlier this year that the intrusions imposed on those listed are all for naught and that the list is worthless in terms of preventing terrorism. He noted that Omar Mateen, the man who shot and killed 49 people at an Orlando nightclub in 2016, was at one time on the list but was later removed from it. Others who have committed terrorist acts have never even been included on the watchlist.
Earlier this year, the House of Representatives adopted a proposal from Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar that would force President Donald Trump’s administration to disclose details about how it shares the watchlist with foreign countries.
https://apnews.com/general-news-f8abc66af1a64cc7a5f4fba0420cfc54
Well the judge thinks Muslims are more important than citizens. Ultimately Trump won this in court, but it took a couple of years.
Plus didn't you know, Left leaning judges know the hearts of Muslims are peaceful but Americans are far right.
EMERGENCY DOCKET:Supreme Court allows Trump to halt millions in teacher training grants
By Amy Howe on Apr 4, 2025 at 5:38 pm
The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon put on hold an order by a federal judge in Massachusetts that would have required the Department of Education to reinstate more than $65 million in grants that it terminated in February because they funded programs that included diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
In an unsigned three-page opinion, a majority of the court explained that the government likely would not be able to get the funds back once they were disbursed. Moreover, the majority added, the recipients of the funds would not be permanently harmed if the funds are withheld while the litigation continues.
The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts indicating that he would have denied the government’s request. Justice Elena Kagan dissented, calling the court’s ruling a “mistake.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in an opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also dissented, writing that it was “beyond puzzling that a majority of the Justices conceive of the Government’s application as an emergency.”
At issue in the case are two grant programs intended to address a nationwide shortage of teachers. The Department of Education canceled all but five of the 109 grants after reviews found “objectionable” diversity and equity training material in the recipient programs.
Eight states, led by California, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts in early March. They contended that universities and nonprofits in their states had received grants through the programs, andthat the Department of Education had violated the federal law governing administrative agencies when it ended those grants.
A federal district judge issued a temporary order that required the government to reinstate the grants that it had terminated in the states bringing the lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun also prohibited the government from implementing other terminations in those states.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit declined to put the district court’s order on hold while the government appealed, but it fast-tracked the appeal itself.
The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on March 24, asking the justices to step in. Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris asserted that unless the justices intervened, federal courts around the country will continue to exceed their powers “by ordering the Executive Branch to restore lawfully terminated grants across the government, keep paying for programs that the Executive Branch views as inconsistent with the interests of the United States, and send out the door taxpayer money that may never be clawed back.” Harris appealed to the justices to “put a swift end to federal district courts’ unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of Executive Branch funding and grant-disbursement decisions.”
California and the other states urged the court to stay out of the dispute. Joun, they said, “acted responsibly — entering a narrow and time-limited restraining order to preserve the status quo while moving rapidly to adjudicate” the state’s request for a preliminary injunction. The government cannot appeal the district court’s order, in any event the government’s appeal will be moot (that is, no longer a live controversy) by early April, they concluded.
In its order granting the Trump administration’s request on Friday, the majority first noted that although temporary orders like the one entered by Joun in this case are not normally appealable, it could nonetheless weigh in here because the order “carries many of the hallmarks of a preliminary injunction,” which can be appealed.
And the government is likely to show, the majority continued, that Joun lacked the power to order the government to make the payments under the federal law governing administrative agencies. Although that law waives the federal government’s general immunity from lawsuits, the majority explained, the waiver is a limited one that does not apply to court orders that would require the government to pay money for a contractual obligation. Instead, the majority continued, another federal law – the Tucker Act – gives another court, the Court of Federal Claims, the power to hear lawsuits arising from contracts with the United States.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/supreme-court-allows-trump-to-halt-millions-in-teacher-training-grants/
2/2
Other considerations also weigh in favor of granting the government’s request, the majority wrote.On the one hand, the government contended (and the states do not dispute) that, once the funds are disbursed, it likely will not be able to recover them. By contrast, the majority stressed, the states have indicated that they have enough money to be able to continue their programs without the federal funding while the litigation moves forward…..
Kagan complained that the government had not defended “the legality of canceling the education grants at issue” in this case. Moreover, she continued, the states challenging the termination of the grants do say that the termination of the grant “will force them—indeed, has already forced them—to curtail teacher training programs.” And the court’s conclusion that the dispute belongs in the Court of Federal Claims, rather than a federal district court, she suggested, is “at the very least under-developed, and very possibly wrong.”
More broadly, she wrote, the chance that the justices will make such a mistake increases when, as in this case, the justices act quickly, outside the normal briefing and argument schedule. She acknowledged that such fast action is sometimes necessary “despite the risk.” But for Kagan, “nothing about this case demanded our immediate intervention. Rather than make new law on our emergency docket,” she concluded, “we should have allowed the dispute to proceed in the ordinary way.”
Jackson called what she characterized as the majority’s “eagerness to insert itself into this early stage of ongoing litigation over the lawfulness” of the Department of Education’s actions “equal parts unprincipled and unfortunate.”
Noting that Joun’s order will expire in just three days, she emphasized that it only bars the government from implementing a “mass termination” of grants; it does not prohibit the government from deciding, under its normal review process, to terminate individual grants.
Moreover, she continued, “there is no evidence that grantees have rushed to draw down the remaining $65 million in grant funds” in the 25 days since the order was entered. But if they did, she added, the government does have mechanisms to recover those funds.
Jackson criticized both the government’s decision to seek emergency relief without addressing the merits of the challenge and her colleagues’ decision to grant it, “If the emergency docket has now become a vehicle for certain defendants to obtain this Court’s real-time opinion about lower court rulings on various auxiliary matters, we should announce that new policy and be prepared to shift how we think about, and address, these kinds of applications.”
Finally, she insisted that the harm to the states challenging the grant terminations is – contrary to the majority’s suggestion – real. “In Massachusetts,” for example, she wrote,“Boston Public Schools has already had to fire multiple full-time employees due to this loss of grant-funding.”boo hoo
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/supreme-court-allows-trump-to-halt-millions-in-teacher-training-grants/