Wisconsin governor says arrest of judge is part of Trump administration effort to ‘undermine our judiciary’ – live
Wisconsin governor statement after arrest of Milwaukee judge: a move by Trump to ‘undermine our judiciary’
Wisconsin’s governor Tony Evers released the following statement regarding the arrest of Milwaukee county judge Hannah Dugan:
In this country, people who are suspected of criminal wrongdoing are innocent until their guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt and they are found guilty by a jury of their peers—this is the fundamental demand of justice in America.
Unfortunately, we have seen in recent months the president and the Trump Administration repeatedly use dangerous rhetoric to attack and attempt to undermine our judiciary at every level, including flat-out disobeying the highest court in the land and threatening to impeach and remove judges who do not rule in their favor.
I have deep respect for the rule of law, our nation’s judiciary, the importance of judges making decisions impartially without fear or favor, and the efforts of law enforcement to hold people accountable if they commit a crime. I will continue to put my faith in our justice system as this situation plays out in the court of law.
Key events
Trump said that sanctuary cities should be closed down when asked for his reaction to a San Francisco judge blocking the federal government from denying federal funds to sanctuary cities. Trump made these comments to press aboard Air Force One.
“We shouldn’t have sanctuary cities, we’ll see how that turns out,” Trump said. “Sanctuary cities are sanctuary for criminals. We should close them down. If we want a safe country we have to get rid of sanctuary cities.”
The Trump administration is starting to remove exhibits from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and returning those pieces to the original owners.
The removal of these artifacts comes after Trump issued an executive order that targeted the Smithsonian for promoting “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives”. Among the artifacts being returned are a bible and George W. Williams’s History of the Negro Race in America, 1618-1880 – one of the first books on racism in America. The books are being returned to Dr. Amos Brown, a civil rights leader and pastor of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, according to emails viewed by Black Press USA, the news site for the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
An inspector general at the treasury department has asked IRS employees to turn over a wide range of documents including any requests for taxpayer data from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, the president, the executive office of the president or the president’s office of management and budget, according to documents obtained by ProPublica.
The investigation comes after several Democrats asked the inspector general to look into whether the Trump administration is violating taxpayer privacy following disclosure of a data-sharing agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS.
“The risks created by these activities cannot be overstated … [IRS] data can be inaccurate because of identity theft, keypunch errors, obsolete address information, and a wide range of other reasons,” the request for investigation reads. “If DHS relies on the same data to deport millions of people without validating its accuracy, it is likely to end up making grave errors that impact American citizens and immigrants with valid legal status.”
DoJ rescinds policy restricting subpoenaing journalists
The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said the Department of Justice will be rescinding a policy instated by her predecessor, Merrick Garland, that limited when the agency could subpoena journalists for records and testimony, according to Axios.
“I have concluded that it is necessary to rescind Merrick Garland’s policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks,” Bondi wrote in a memo obtained by Axios.
Previously, Garland instituted policies that limited government officials’ ability to seize materials and records – like email and phone records – from reporters except in extreme cases. Garland’s policies came after the revelation that the Trump administration, during his first term, had secretly sought and obtained records of at least four reporters including from CNN and the Washington Post.
The Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin said Dugan’s arrest “is a gravely serious and drastic move” that threatens the country’s system of checks and balances:
Make no mistake, we do not have kings in this country and we are a Democracy governed by laws that everyone must abide by. By relentlessly attacking the judicial system, flouting court orders, and arresting a sitting judge, this President is putting those basic Democratic values that Wisconsinites hold dear on the line. While details of this exact case remain minimal, this action fits into the deeply concerning pattern of this President’s lawless behavior and undermining courts and Congress’s checks on his power.
The senator Elizabeth Warren has also weighed in, saying the arrest “rings serious alarm bells”:
“First, Trump ignored the Supreme Court,” Warren posted on BlueSky. “Now, his FBI arrested a judge. This administration is threatening our country’s judicial system.”
The senator Bernie Sanders said Dugan’s arrest has nothing to do with immigration and called on Republicans to stand up to Trump’s “growing authoritarianism”.
“Trump’s latest attack on the judiciary and Judge Dugan is about one thing – unchecked power,” Sanders’ statement read. “He will attack and undermine any institution that stands in his way. Trump continues to demonstrate that he does not believe in the Constitution, the separation of powers, or the rule of law. He simply wants more and more power for himself.”
The Milwaukee city council has called the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan “shocking and upsetting.”
In a statement, the members of the council said Dugan should be “afforded the same respect and due process that she has diligently provided others throughout her career”.
“Perhaps the most chilling part of Judge Dugan’s arrest is the continued aggression by which the current administration in Washington, DC has weaponized federal law enforcement, such as ICE, against immigrant communities,” the statement read. “As local elected officials, we are working daily to support our constituents who grow increasingly concerned and worried with each passing incident.”
Newly revealed Department of Justice documents obtained by USA Today show that the attorney general, Pam Bondi, issued a directive to law enforcement officials to pursue and apprehend people they suspect are gang members, in some cases without a warrant. The documents provide a significant look at how the Trump administration is applying the Alien Enemies Act when it comes to detaining and deporting people they suspect are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The memo, issued on 14 March, gives law enforcement officials permission to “apprehend aliens” based upon a “reasonable belief” that they are a member of Tren de Aragua.
“Given the dynamic nature of enforcement operations, officers in the field are authorized to apprehend aliens upon a reasonable belief that the alien meets all four requirements to be validated as an Alien Enemy,” the memo reads. “This authority includes entering an Alien Enemy’s residence to make an AEA apprehension where circumstances render it impracticable to first obtain a signed Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal.”
The attorneys general of Minnesota, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, California and 14 others states have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its threats to take away federal funding from public schools unless they get rid of all diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The lawsuit, filed today, comes just a day after states were expected to get confirmation from every school in the country that all DEI programs had been eliminated. The California attorney general, Rob Bonta, said the US Department of Education was “unapologetically abandoning its mission to ensure equal access to education”. California receives $7.9bn in federal funding for services related to children and education.
“Let me be clear: the federal Department of Education is not trying to ‘combat’ discrimination with this latest order,” said Bonta. “Instead it is using our nation’s foundational civil rights law as a pretext to coerce states into abandoning efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion through lawful programs and policies. Once again, the President has exceeded his authority under the Constitution and violated the law.”
The day so far
The Trump administration’s battle with the judiciary over his aggressive immigration agenda took a major turn this morning when the FBI arrested Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping a man evade US immigration authorities as they sought to arrest him at her courthouse. In its criminal complaint, the FBI alleges that Dugan escorted Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an undocumented immigrant, and his lawyer out of the courtroom through the jury door on 18 April as a way to help avert his arrest. According to sources speaking to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, however, Ice arrived at the courtroom that morning, and upon them going to Dugan’s office, she directed the defendant and his lawyer to a side door in the courtroom, then down a private hallway and into a public area on the sixth floor. Agents later arrested Flores-Ruiz outside the courthouse. Dugan, who was charged with two federal felony counts of obstruction and concealing an individual, was released from custody after appearing briefly in federal court in Milwaukee and will appear again on 15 May. The arrest is the first publicly known instance of the Trump administration charging a local official for allegedly interfering with immigration enforcement. Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, deemed the arrest a move by Trump to “undermine our judiciary”. The FBI director Kash Patel posted about the arrest on X and then quickly deleted it, for reasons that are as yet unknown.
In other news:
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The Trump administration moved to restore the student visa registrations of potentially thousands of foreign students in the US whose legal status had recently been abruptly terminated. As Politico notes: “[T]he justice department announced the wholesale reversal in federal court after weeks of intense scrutiny by courts and dozens of restraining orders issued by judges who deemed the mass termination of students from a federal database – used by universities and the federal government to track foreign students in the US – as flagrantly illegal.”
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Donald Trump appeared to state that the US position on the future of Crimea was that it would “stay with Russia”, despite the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruling out such a recognition as a red line for his country in any potential peace deal. Trump made the comments in an interview with Time magazine in which he also claimed without evidence that the Chinese president Xi Jinping had called him – prompting another rebuke from the Chinese government that the US and China had not been in talks over trade – and said that he was open to meeting Iran’s supreme leader or president as the two countries began talks on Iran’s nuclear programme.
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George Santos, the disgraced former representative, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison, bringing an end to an extraordinary controversy that began with a fraudulent congressional campaign. Santos lied extensively about his life story both before and after entering the US Congress, and was ultimately convicted of defrauding donors. He sobbed in court as he was sentenced in Long Island, New York. Read the story here.
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Joe Kasper, the chief of staff to the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was central to a dramatic power struggle at the Pentagon, unexpectedly left his post. Despite Hegseth’s assurances just days ago that Kasper would merely transition to “a slightly different role” within the department, Kasper confirmed to Politico that he will instead return to government relations and consulting, maintaining only limited Pentagon ties as a special government employee. Read the story here.
David Smith
Axios interviewer Mike Allen noted that the most definitive photo of last year’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump was taken by an Associated Press (AP) photographer. Yet the White House has now curtailed the AP’s access to the president. “Do you worry about history being lost with these new restrictions?” he asked.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded:
I don’t view them as restrictions. We view them as opening access to more outlets, more voices, more news journalists and outlets. We shouldn’t have a few outlets who have a monopoly over the briefing room or over that 13-person press pool that covers the president.
Trump made more than 30,000 false and misleading statements during his first term in office, according to a Washington Post count, and many would argue he is on course to beat that total second time around. But Leavitt said of Trump:
Look, he is hostile with the media. There’s no doubt about it. He calls them out, rightfully so, when he believes their stories are fake when they are fake. I also promised in my first briefing we would hold the media accountable when they get things wrong.
But we also do recognise and respect that they are legacy media speaking to millions of Americans across the country and we want them to get it right, which is why we engage with them so frequently every single day.
David Smith
Fitting for a city of secrets, I am on the roof of the International Spy Museum in Washington for an event hosted by the Axios news website and featuring White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Interviewer Mike Allen kicked off by asking if her boss, Donald Trump, has lived up to his promise to be the most transparent and accessible president in US history. Unsurprisingly, Leavitt said yes.
We have never seen this level of transparency and accessibility and the press who cover the White House beat every day – they will tell you maybe not on the record, but they’ll tell you off the record that we allow them in, we welcome them in our offices, we talk to them on a daily basis.
Later, and no less predictably, Leavitt took a swipe at Trump’s predecessor.
You had a previous president in Joe Biden who hid from the press, who didn’t do press engagement, hardly did sit-down interviews. I think this is back to what the American people want.
President Trump has revolutionised the way a president communicates. Not only does he engage directly with reporters, but he speaks directly to the public. Truth Social: there’s probably been one since I’ve been sitting on this stage. He put statements out directly. He writes them himself. He dictates them to us as staff. And I think that level of transparency is quite refreshing and I think it’s a big reason he was re-elected again.
Axios has the full FBI complaint against Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan, who was arrested for allegedly trying to help an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest, you can read it here.
According to the complaint, when Dugan learned Ice agents were present at the courthouse to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz with an administrative warrant, she told them to speak to the chief judge first. Dugan meanwhile, allegedly took Flores-Ruiz out of the court room through a juror door, per witnesses cited by the FBI. Agents later arrested him outside the courthouse.
Earlier we reported that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, citing sources it did not identify, said Dugan steered Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to a private hallway and into a public area but did not hide the pair in a jury deliberation room as she has been accused of doing.
Wisconsin governor statement after arrest of Milwaukee judge: a move by Trump to ‘undermine our judiciary’
Wisconsin’s governor Tony Evers released the following statement regarding the arrest of Milwaukee county judge Hannah Dugan:
In this country, people who are suspected of criminal wrongdoing are innocent until their guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt and they are found guilty by a jury of their peers—this is the fundamental demand of justice in America.
Unfortunately, we have seen in recent months the president and the Trump Administration repeatedly use dangerous rhetoric to attack and attempt to undermine our judiciary at every level, including flat-out disobeying the highest court in the land and threatening to impeach and remove judges who do not rule in their favor.
I have deep respect for the rule of law, our nation’s judiciary, the importance of judges making decisions impartially without fear or favor, and the efforts of law enforcement to hold people accountable if they commit a crime. I will continue to put my faith in our justice system as this situation plays out in the court of law.
Donald Trump said on Friday that Ukraine has not yet signed a deal on rare earth minerals and he hopes it will be signed immediately. The US president added that “work on the overall peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is going smoothly”.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote:
Ukraine, headed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has not signed the final papers on the very important Rare Earths Deal with the United States. It is at least three weeks late. Hopefully, it will be signed IMMEDIATELY. Work on the overall Peace Deal between Russia and Ukraine is going smoothly.
The Ukrainian president has not yet commented on Trump’s stance in his Time magazine interview that “Crimea will stay with Russia” as part of a potential peace deal nor his claim that Zelenskyy was apparently on board. But as recently as yesterday Zelenskyy ruled out recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea as a red line for his country.
Andrew Roth
Analysis: Pope’s funeral a diplomatic minefield as Trump sets fire to US alliances
A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of Donald Trump flying to the Vatican this weekend and publicly feuding with international leaders in front of St Peter’s Basilica in the midst of the sombre rituals and rites that will mark the funeral of Pope Francis.
The US leader’s first international trip of his second term comes at one of the most politically fractious and fraught moments in recent memory, as his “America first” project sets fire to US alliances and trade relationships around the world. Between international tariffs, the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, the Trump team’s open antipathy toward Europe and its hard line on immigration from Central and South America, the papal funeral could prove to be a minefield of international diplomacy.
Assuming Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends – on Friday he said “military meetings” might preclude him from making the trip – the funeral will be the first time the Ukrainian leader has been in the same place as Trump since the US president and the vice-president, JD Vance, berated him in the White House in February. Trump cut short that meeting, saying Zelenskyy was “gambling with world war three” and being “very disrespectful”. He has now floated the prospect of the US recognising Russian control of Crimea and accused Zelenskyy of delaying a peace deal, testing the Ukrainian president’s patience and raising the danger of a new meltdown in bilateral relations.
Then there are the EU leaders, members of a bloc that Trump has said was “formed to screw the United States”. At their head is the EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. Despite imposing (and then pausing) a 20% tariff on all goods from the EU, Trump and von der Leyen have not spoken directly or arranged an EU-US summit over the brewing trade war, meaning a meeting on the sidelines of the funeral could be well-timed. Von der Leyen had tacitly criticised the US in print, saying that Europe has “no bros and no oligarchs” and that “the west as we knew it no longer exists.”
The US president has never been known for his tact. And as world leaders gather in the Vatican this weekend and millions tune in to follow the funeral, it is Washington that will be sending the elephant in the room.
Pete Hegseth’s controversial chief of staff Joe Kasper leaves post unexpectedly
Joseph Gedeon
Joe Kasper, the controversial chief of staff to the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was central to a dramatic power struggle at the Pentagon, has left his post, in an unexpected departure.
Despite Hegseth’s assurances just days ago in a TV appearance on the Fox & Friends show that Kasper would merely transition to “a slightly different role” within the department, Kasper confirmed to Politico in a Thursday interview he will instead return to government relations and consulting, maintaining only limited Pentagon ties as a special government employee.
A senior defense official at the Pentagon confirmed the dramatic title change to the Guardian on Friday, saying Kasper would be “handling special projects at the Department of Defense”.
“Secretary Hegseth is thankful for [Kasper’s] continued leadership and work to advance the America First agenda,” the official said in a statement, referring to Donald Trump’s protectionist policy push.
The quick exit comes after Kasper was implicated as the orchestrator of a power grab that led to the dismissal of three senior Pentagon officials – Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll – allegedly as part of a leak investigation.
The administration’s first hundred days created a troubled tenure for Kasper, with anonymous sources claiming he was frequently late to meetings, failed to follow through on critical tasks, and displayed inappropriate behavior, including berating officials and making crude comments allegedly about his bowel movements during high-level meetings.
“He lacked the focus and organizational skills needed to get things done,” one anonymous insider told Politico.
