Please click here to opt in to receive the Executive Functions Roundup via email and to subscribe to Executive Functions.
The solicitor general on Monday asked the Supreme Court to stay Judge Royce C. Lamberth’s (D.D.C.) Aug. 26 order barring the Bureau of Prisons from enforcing a 2026 policy that ends hormone therapy, “sex-trait-modification surgery,” and social accommodations for inmates with gender dysphoria. The application argues that the district court “substitute[d] its own policy judgment for that of the agency” and that its order violates the Prison Litigation Reform Act. (Docket.) (Stay Application.) (SCOTUSblog.)
Judge Amir H. Ali (D.D.C.) on Monday vacated five conditions that the Federal Emergency Management Agency attached to its 2026 counterterrorism grants, including requirements that states run their full voter rolls through the SAVE citizenship database. FEMA would have withheld 20 percent of a state’s funds until it complied. Judge Ali held that FEMA exceeded its statutory authority in imposing the conditions: election integrity “may be a laudable goal, but it is not a counterterrorism goal.” (Memorandum Opinion.) (Order.)
Judge Ali on Friday allowed foreign aid organizations to proceed with most of their claims challenging the Trump administration’s refusal to spend appropriated foreign aid and its dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Judge Ali held that the Impoundment Control Act does not bar suits to enforce the appropriations laws. The plaintiffs’ constitutional challenge to USAID’s alleged abolition also survived. (Memorandum Opinion and Order.)
Judge Allison D. Burroughs (D. Mass.) on Monday sanctioned the Department of Homeland Security for its delayed compliance with her March order vacating the April 2025 mass-email terminations of parole for migrants who had scheduled their entry through the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol One (“CBP One”) app. The order requires the department to treat those terminations “as if they had never occurred” and to notify affected parolees. (Memorandum and Order.)
The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday filed a class action in the District of Columbia challenging President Trump’s August executive order restricting birthright citizenship. The complaint alleges that the order—which denies citizenship to certain U.S.-born children of noncitizens—is part of an “ongoing, unlawful effort to carve out new exceptions to the Citizenship Clause” that began with the 2025 order the Supreme Court struck down in June. (Complaint.)
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in a memorandum dated Sept. 22 and released Monday, directed the Defense Intelligence Enterprise to “execute collection and production on foreign threats to our elections” and U.S. Cyber Command to counter potential foreign cyber threats in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security. (Memorandum.) (Press Release.) Per Axios, the mobilization will rely on “the most advanced artificial intelligence capabilities to date.” (Axios.)
Bob Bauer argued that the administration’s recent taxpayer-funded ads featuring President Trump violate the federal ban on spending appropriated funds for “propaganda,” but that consequences will likely depend on Congress—which “faces a major legal and policy challenge in giving any teeth to the ban.” (Executive Functions.)
Mary B. McCord surveyed the laws governing domestic use of the military—which she characterized as “outdated, vague,” and “subject to abuse”—and proposed reforms including judicial review of a president’s deployment determinations and time limits on deployments not authorized by Congress. (Just Security.)
Pending Interim Order Applications Involving the U.S. Government in the Supreme Court
Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D.: The government filed an application to the Supreme Court on September 24 seeking a stay of a district court judgment setting aside the Department of Homeland Security’s third-country removal guidance. The respondents filed a response on September 28, arguing that the government seeks “to relitigate the now-dissolved preliminary injunction” that the Court stayed in 2025 “rather than confront the fundamentally different posture of the case today.”
Trump v. Kingdom: The government filed an application to the Supreme Court on September 28 seeking a stay of the district court’s August 26 order barring enforcement of the Bureau of Prisons’ 2026 policy ending hormone therapy, “sex-trait-modification surgery,” and social accommodations for inmates with gender dysphoria. The Chief Justice requested a response to the application by 4 p.m. on October 8.