Executive Power

Congress has told the Trump administration that it has to produce a public war powers report by March 1. And if that doesn’t happen, private citizens can now sue over it.

New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance filed a brief to the Supreme Court in the case seeking the enforcement of a grand jury subpoena for President Trump’s financial records as part of an investigation into potential financial and tax-related crimes. The brief argues that the president’s Article II immunity extends only to official acts and provides no immunity for private conduct, and that “immunity from investigation for private conduct runs counter to precedent, the structure and operation of the Constitution, and the bedrock principle that no person is above the law.”

A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled that President Donald Trump's border wall emergency proclamation, which gave the adminstration the ability to use funding for other activities to pay for construction of the border wall, was unlawful. The ruling also permanently enjoined the heads of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior and the Treasury Department from using emergency construction funds for the wall other than those appropriated by Congress in the 2019 Consolidated Appropriations Act.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has denied President Trump's petition for a rehearing en banc in Donald J. Trump v. Mazars, LLP et al. The order was issued per curiam with Judges Karen Henderson, Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao dissenting. The court also denied a motion for a panel rehearing. Both orders can be view below.

Denial of Rehearing En Banc