“Unprecedented”: Trump-Appointed Judge Rejects His Frivolous Lawsuit

A Trump-appointed federal judge just did something truly unexpected.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas T. Cullen dismissed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit challenging a Maryland judge’s two-day waiting period on deportations—and offered a scathing rebuke of the administration’s attacks on the federal judiciary. 

The judge defended a previous ruling that granted immigrant detainees a 48-hour long temporary stay of removal, to provide judges with enough time to actually read their habeas petitions.  

In May, Chief Judge George L. Russell III had originally ruled that the brief stay was necessary to “preserve existing conditions and the potential jurisdiction of this Court over pending matters while the Court determines the scope of its authority to grant the request[ed] relief.”

The DOJ challenged the ruling, alleging that the court had overstepped its authority, violated local court rules, and wrongly granted automatic relief to a special class of litigants. 

But in his 39-page filing Tuesday, Cullen wrote that the government had gone about its grievances all wrong.

“Fair enough, as far as it goes. If these arguments were made in the proper forum, they might well get some traction,” Cullen wrote, adding, “But as events over the past several months have revealed these are not normal times—at least regarding the interplay between the Executive and this coordinate branch of government. It’s no surprise that the Executive chose a different, and more confrontational, path entirely.”

In a footnote, Cullen slammed the Trump administration’s “smear” campaign against the federal judiciary.

“Indeed, over the past several months, principal officers of the Executive (and their spokespersons) have described federal district judges across the country as ‘left-wing,’ liberal,’ ‘activists,’ ‘radical,’ ‘politically minded,’ ‘rogue,’ ‘unhinged,’ ‘outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional,’ ‘c]rooked,’ and worse,” Cullen wrote. “Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system, this concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate.”

Cullen wrote that there was “no alternative but to dismiss” the government’s lawsuit. 

“To hold otherwise would run counter to overwhelming precedent, depart from longstanding constitutional tradition, and offend the rule of law,” the judge wrote. “All of this isn’t to say that the Executive is without any recourse; far from it. If the Executive truly believes that Defendants’ standing orders violate the law, it should avail itself of the tried-and-true recourse available to all federal litigants: It should appeal.”

There’s some good news in Utah: On Monday, Judge Dianna Gibson blocked the state’s Republican-controlled legislature from enacting their heavily gerrymandered congressional map, declaring it unconstitutional. Instead the state will defer to the independent redistricting reform that citizens voted for back in 2018, known as “Proposition 4.” 

“Proposition 4 is the law in Utah on redistricting. H.B. 2004, the 2021 Congressional Map, which was not enacted under S.B. 200 and not Proposition 4, cannot lawfully govern future elections in Utah,” Gibson wrote. “The Legislature intentionally stripped away all of Proposition 4’s core redistricting standards and procedures that were mandatory and binding on it.... To permit the 2021 Congressional Plan to remain in place would reward the very constitutional violation this Court has already identified and would nullify the people’s 2018 redistricting reform.” 

Republican attempts to supersede Proposition 4 began in 2021, when they ignored ballot measures and split up Salt Lake County, the district that contains most of the state’s Democratic voters. Now that their move has been struck down, lawmakers have just under a month to bring the map up to Proposition 4 standards.   

This comes as Texas and California are locked in a heated gerrymandering battle, as the former carries out a Trump-backed effort to add multiple Republican seats to the House, while the latter starts its own retaliatory redistricting effort under Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom. The results in Utah, in addition to the language in Gibson’s ruling, serve as a positive sign for those who want to bring legal challenges on gerrymandering in the near future. 

Nobody seems to like Cracker Barrel’s brand overhaul—including the president.

Donald Trump weighed in on the culture war fiasco Tuesday, urging the Tennessee-born “old country store” to return to its design roots.

“Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity. Have a major News Conference today. Make Cracker Barrel a WINNER again.”

The U.S. leader then took the opportunity to toot his own horn, absurdly claiming that he had resurrected America from a supposedly decrepit state last year.

“Remember, in just a short period of time I made the United States of America the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World,” Trump noted. “One year ago, it was ‘DEAD.’ Good luck!”

The restaurant chain’s redesign stripped down its logo, removing the imagery of the old man (known as “Uncle Herschel”) and his barrel, replacing it with simple, minimalist text. The stores are expected to undergo a similar redecoration, eschewing the company’s old-timey, gold and wood-toned brand for grayer, cleaner decor that would have been on trend if it was unveiled some 15 years ago.

It took the brains of three PR firms—Prophet, Viral Nation and Blue Engine—to cook up Cracker Barrel’s $700 million transformation.

While no one seems particularly jazzed about the overhaul—the company’s stock plummeted by almost $100 million in the wake of the announcement—MAGA pundits have taken particular issue with Cracker Barrel’s rebrand.

Podcaster Matt Walsh called the effort “generic.” Fox & Friends called it “woke.” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was particularly chuffed—in separate posts, Kirk claimed that Cracker Barrel was “targeted” to promote “LGBTQ propaganda,” and also used the fiasco as an opportunity to fat shame, likening the new logo to an overweight woman while comparing the old one to Sydney Sweeney in her “great genes” American Eagle ad campaign.

The division wasn’t entirely partisan, however. The official X account for the Democratic party chimed in on the rebrand last week, writing: “We think the Cracker Barrel rebrand sucks too.”

The company practically apologized for its new look Monday, releasing a statement recognizing the design misstep while emphasizing that the brand had not forgotten about Uncle Herschel.

“If the last few days have shown us anything, it’s how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel,” the company posted on its website Monday. “You’ve also shown us that we could’ve done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be.”

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order to bolster his federal occupation of Washington, D.C., and create a “quick reaction force” in the National Guard that could be deployed to tamp down civil protests across the country.

Hidden in that executive order is a chilling directive to the “D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force,” led by White House adviser Stephen Miller to “establish an online portal for Americans with law enforcement or other relevant backgrounds and experience to apply to join Federal law enforcement entities” in support of his previous order declaring a “crime emergency” in D.C.

The order continues:

“Each law enforcement agency that is a member of the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, as well as other relevant components of the Department of Justice as the Attorney General determines, shall further, subject to the availability of appropriations and applicable law, immediately create and begin training, manning, hiring, and equipping a specialized unit that is dedicated to ensuring public safety and order in the Nation’s capital that can be deployed whenever the circumstances necessitate, and that could be deployed, subject to applicable law, in other cities where public safety and order has been lost.” [emphasis added]

The move is sure to receive a warm reception from the far-right vigilante groups that are already, as The New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant recently wrote, nodding along to federal forces’ actions on the streets of D.C.

Grant observed, for example, that Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, in a recent interview, spoke favorably of Trump’s crackdown on the capital and urged him to call up a militia for immigration enforcement. “He should call up all of us,” Rhodes said. “Every able-bodied male in this nation, age 17 to 45 could be called up as the militia.” For Rhodes and his ilk, Trump’s Monday executive order is surely a step in the right direction.

Some of President Donald Trump’s biggest supporters are arguing that he just made a very bad move.

On Monday, the president offered a concession to China amid ongoing trade talks with Beijing, informing reporters at the White House that the administration would permit hundreds of thousands of Chinese students to continue their studies in the U.S.

“We’re going to allow their students to come in,” Trump said. “It’s very important, 600,000 students. It’s very important. But we’re going to get along with China.”

But that did not sit well with his MAGA base, who claimed that the administration would never accomplish its “mass deportation” if it allowed immigrants into the country.

“I didn’t vote for more Muslims and Chinese people to be imported to my country,” far-right provocateur Laura Loomer wrote on X. “Sorry but these immigrants from communist countries and Sharia shitholes where child rape is legalized don’t make America great.”

“Please don’t Make America China,” she continued. “MAGA doesn’t want more immigrants.”

In another post, Loomer urged Trump to “do the math,” lamenting that the country would never “get rid of the millions who came in under Biden” if it followed through on Trump’s plan.

“If we are only mass deporting 1,000 illegals each day but allowing 600,000 Chinese spies to come to our country, how can we call them mass deportations?” she wrote.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was also outraged, preaching on social media that the country should not “let in” thousands of students who she claimed could be “loyal” to the Chinese Communist Party.

“If refusing to allow these Chinese students to attend our schools causes 15 percent of them to fail then these schools should fail anyways because they are being propped up by the CCP,” Greene wrote. “Why are we allowing 600,000 students from China to replace our American student’s opportunities? We should never allow that.”

America’s relationship with China has been fraught since Trump returned to office. Earlier this year, the president imposed a whopping 145 percent tariff on all Chinese goods—a threat that provoked a quick response from Beijing, which imposed a 125 percent tariff on U.S. exports in return.

China’s defiant negotiating strategy with the U.S. became an international model in May when Trump’s tariffs plummeted, proving that the country’s refusal to play the White House’s waiting game had earned them a significantly better deal.

But the U.S. leader’s economic threats have continued, nonetheless. In the same White House presser Monday, Trump curiously fixated on magnets, warning China that it must hand more over or face a “200 percent tariff or something.”