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A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held Thursday that the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence must reinstate 19 career intelligence officers fired for working on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. The panel found the agencies violated the governing employee-termination regulation and the officers’ due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. (Opinion.) (NYT.)
Judge Amir Ali (D.D.C.) denied the alleged Jan. 6 pipe bomber’s motion to dismiss his indictment, holding that the president’s Jan. 20, 2025, pardon of all “individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” does not apply to the alleged bomber, as he had been neither charged nor convicted at the time the pardon was issued. (Opinion.) (CBS.)
Judge Algenon L. Marbley (S.D. Ohio) preliminarily enjoined the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from enforcing, with respect to the plaintiffs in Doe v. Edlow, USCIS’s freeze on adjudicating certain foreign nationals’ immigration benefit applications and ordered USCIS to resume processing the plaintiffs’ applications. (Opinion.) (Newsweek.)
Bob Bauer argued that, contrary to common lines of commentary, President Trump’s unprecedented self-enrichment in office subjects him to serious legal risks, and he cannot rely on the Supreme Court’s immunity decision and or the pardon power to protect him. (Executive Functions.)
Michael Dorf argued that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions “handed the Trump administration in particular enormous power” and were “blind to the consequences” of doing so. (SCOTUSblog.)
Julia Curlee and Michael Feinberg argued that the “decline of ODNI’s effectiveness, analytic rigor, and political neutrality is deleterious for the nation’s security” but is “unsurprising.” (Lawfare.)