Avalon Zoppo

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, sitting in Boston, shot down the federal government's argument that Congress delegated taxing power to the executive branch in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Engelhardt, whom President Donald Trump elevated to the Fifth Circuit in 2018, wrote in a letter that he will retire from active service on Dec. 31 or upon confirmation of a successor.

The case was back before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the appellate court was wrong to set aside the FDA's application denials as arbitrary and capricious under the Tobacco Control Act.

“As a sitting judge, I have the right to decide who works for me as a law clerk,” said Daniel Traynor, currently a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota. “When this matter was reviewed by the Eighth Circuit and other courts around the country, they concluded that judges do not surrender their First Amendment rights when they become judges.”

The appeals court pressed the attorney for the now-defunct Ross Intelligence on whether it used nearly 3,000 of Westlaw's headnotes—editor-written summaries of judicial opinions' legal conclusions—to build a permissible distinct, transformative technology or just a competing one.

The judicial picks' responses to questions about who won the 2020 election did not ease concerns from progressive groups.

The U.S. Justice Department—and some of the court's most conservative members—argued the Ninth Circuit's practice violates the U.S. Supreme Court's 2009 Nken v. Holder decision that judges must not “reflexively hold a final order in abeyance pending review” and instead evaluate the petitioner's likelihood of success on the merits.

This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on June 12, 2026.

Justin Smith, as an attorney at the boutique firm James Otis Law Group, represented Trump in his effort to overturn a 2023 jury verdict finding him liable for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.

“The public has a right to observe the cases before the highest court, and these Supreme Court decisions have national importance, and they affect the lives of every American," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "This legislation ensures access to all Americans, even those who may not have resources to travel to Washington, D.C., and observe the court in person.”