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Thank goodness January is over.
A few updates as we head into the week:
The Supreme Court added a case to its docket regarding the scope of the Video Protection Act. It announced last week that it will hear oral argument in Salazar v. Paramount Global, a case out of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the Court didn’t order expedited briefing, which means the case will probably be heard in the term of Court starting October 2026. It’s a highly significant case because the decision has the potential to limit class action lawsuits against websites that share their customers’ video viewing habits (think: Meta and Facebook) with third parties. The outcome will turn on the definition of who qualifies as a “consumer” for purposes of the Act.
The case reminds me of the adage, "If something is free, you’re the product."
In deep red Tarrant County, Texas, Democrat Taylor Rehmet beat Republican Leigh Wambsganss in a special election for a state senate seat. Trump won the district by 17 points in 2024. Rehmet, who is a labor union leader and veteran, carried the race by more that 14%. The district hasn’t voted Democratic in half a century. If Tarrant County is a harbinger, Trump is in trouble.
The Trump administration is now eyeing Ohio for immigration enforcement operations that could begin as early as next week. The expectation is that they will target Haitian immigrants there, perhaps in retaliation for the beating Trump and JD Vance took over the whole “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” incident.
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For Haitian families, TPS began as an emergency escape in response to the devastating 2010 earthquake. As we’ve been discussing, the administration has tried to revoke their temporary protected status (TPS), which is now set to end on Tuesday, February 3. DHS’s website notes, “After consulting with interagency partners, Secretary Noem concluded that Haiti no longer meets the statutory requirements for TPS. This decision was based on a review conducted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, input from relevant U.S. government agencies, and an analysis indicating that allowing Haitian nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is inconsistent with U.S. national interests.”
There are cases moving through the courts that could disallow the arbitrary termination, but the Supreme Court muddied the waters in an earlier decision off of the Shadow Docket that permitted some deportations to proceed. DHS’s website now admonishes, “If you are an alien who is currently a beneficiary of TPS for Haiti, you should prepare to depart if you have no other lawful basis for remaining in the United States.” The loss of that status will make Haitians, and others, easy targets for the administration’s deportation efforts.
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But as we head into this new week, there is also some good news, and a judicial opinion that will make you smile.
Released!
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The Judge’s opinion begins like this: “Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law.” He explains, “The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.”
With that, five-year-old Liam, who won our hearts with his blue bunny ears hat and Spider-Man backpack, was released from immigration detention. He should never have been detained—he and his father were in asylum proceedings, which gives them protection from deportation until their rights are determined.
Liam is just five. The heartless way he was treated by ICE and CBP is far too reminiscent of how Nazis treated children. The reality is, there are a lot of Liams out there, and their parents, too. We don’t know all of them by name, but it’s certain their stories are every bit as gut-wrenching. Due process denied so DHS can make its quotas. The people who set them, Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, and others need to be stopped before it gets even worse. It’s past time for Congress to step up.
There is now reporting of a measles outbreak in the detention facility.
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The Judge’s opinion is unusual. In just three pages, he schools the government and educates the public. Trump and his cronies will surely criticize the Judge, Fred Biery, in the Western District of Texas as just another activist leftist judge. He is, after all, a Clinton appointee. But Judge Biery, who was born in McAllen, Texas, went to Texas Lutheran College, then Southern Methodist University for his law degree, and served in the Army reserves in the 1970s. He has been on the bench for more than thirty years.
Judge Biery has entered other opinions that have drawn attention for their <