Good evening. Federal judges in Minnesota are prepared to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for continuing to violate court orders as they seek mass deportations. And in New Jersey, a federal judge excoriated immigration and Justice Department officials for “intentional misconduct” as court orders go unheeded in immigration cases there.
In Kansas, two men are challenging the state’s dramatic new law that invalidated driver’s licenses and restricts bathroom use.
Across the states, lawmakers advanced bills to limit screen time by children and govern data center expansion.
In South Carolina, advocates are working to protect Black educational history.
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The chief U.S. District Court judge in Minnesota, Patrick Schiltz, said the federal judiciary is prepared to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt, which could include jail time, for continuing to violate court orders as they seek mass deportations, Minnesota Reformer reports.
Schiltz’s order ratchets up the pressure on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Justice to comply with orders from Minnesota’s increasingly impatient and irate federal judges, who have repeatedly threatened government officials with civil contempt for flouting their orders regarding illegally detained immigrants.
“The Court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt — again and again and again — to force the United States government to comply with court orders,” wrote Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee and one-time clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon.
“This Court will continue to do whatever is required to protect the rule of law, including, if necessary, moving to the use of criminal contempt. One way or another, ICE will comply with this Court’s orders.”
Schiltz’s order came the same day another U.S. District Court judge in Minnesota ordered officials to appear before him and explain why they should not be held in contempt for continually failing to return property taken from people who were illegally detained during Operation Metro Surge.
Meanwhile, a federal judge in New Jersey warned he would order federal prosecutors to answer questions under oath if they continued to seek arrests and detentions under a portion of the federal code already rejected in hundreds of cases, New Jersey Monitor reports.
Federal prosecutors previously told the court they had violated 72 court orders since early December in cases where immigrants challenged the legality of their detention.
“The Government’s continued actions after being called to task can now only be deemed intentional. The undersigned will not stand idly by and allow this intentional misconduct to go on,” Quraishi wrote, referring to himself. “It ends today.”
Related coverage:
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The Diana E. Murphy federal courthouse is shown in Minneapolis. Judges in Minnesota and elsewhere are growing increasingly concerned about violations of court orders by federal officials. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
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| Two transgender men are suing over a new Kansas law that invalidates driver’s licenses and restricts bathroom use based on sex assigned at birth, Kansas Reflector reports.
The case, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that the measure, which took effect Thursday, violates constitutional rights to personal autonomy, privacy, equity, due process and freedom of expression.
The Legislature adopted the law through a series of procedural moves that were designed to minimize public input and opposition: A rushed hearing on a bill to regulate gender markers on driver’s licenses and birth certificates, an unscheduled move to add a provision that unleashes vigilante policing of bathrooms, the shuffling of legislation from a House to Senate bill, an immediate vote in both chambers, and silenced debate when overriding the governor’s veto in the House.
New Hampshire: Following high-profile reports of abuse, neglect, and untimely deaths, a bipartisan group of state senators proposed legislation to protect people with disabilities in state care.
Kansas: Food assistance program data shared with the federal government won’t be given to foreign governments in an agreement reached this week by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who initially refused to turn over the information.
Wisconsin: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has demanded that President Donald Trump release $29 million the state was promised to complete an upgrade of its unemployment insurance system.
Minnesota: Democratic Gov. Tim Walz released an anti-fraud legislative package and denounced the Trump administration for new cuts to the state’s Medicaid program.
Tennessee: Legislation is advancing to create a statewide recovery fund to provide disaster aid to local governments and individuals not helped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Arkansas: A federal judge ended a 43-year desegregation case, ruling the Pulaski County Special School District was now providing equitable facilities to its students after years of court supervision.
Kentucky: A Republican-backed bill opting the state into a tax credit program promoted by the Trump administration to fund private school scholarships for K-12 students is headed to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s desk.
Alabama: A bill to limit screen time for young children in child care facilities was approved by legislators, sending it to the governor’s desk.
Florida: A DeSantis-backed bill banning artificial intelligence data center companies from keeping secret their plans to locate or expand in the state unanimously cleared the Senate.
Michigan: A bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled a set of data center regulation bills, including a moratorium on new construction.
West Virginia: A D.C.-based real estate firm said it would invest $4 billion for a sprawling new data center campus, though many details related to the development remain unclear.
About 1,200 people attended Missouri’s 25th annual Disability Rights Legislative Day this week, with hundreds packing into the Capitol rotunda for a rally. (Photo by Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)
Personal testimony from dozens of Missourians earlier this month moved a bipartisan group of lawmakers to pledge to restore $80.7 million in cuts to disability care services recommended in Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2027. But lawmakers still have to work out funding sources and come to an agreement on a final budget plan, a task that could prove difficult in a tight budget year.
Suzie Parker, president of People First of Missouri, told the gathering that their stories are why lawmakers are scrambling to find funding for the services.
“The impact is our story,” Parker said. “The impact is what [lawmakers] will take when they are arguing the bills on the House floor and how they affect our lives.”
President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing at the White House Feb. 20 in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against his use of emergency powers to implement international trade tariffs. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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U.S. Senate Democrats sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday demanding the administration refund businesses that paid tariffs to import goods into the United States under authority the Supreme Court has ruled the president never held, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports.
“The American people — small business owners, importers, manufacturers, and the consumers who ultimately bore the cost of these illegal taxes — deserve better than this stonewalling,” the group wrote. “This money does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to the businesses and individuals you illegally taxed.”
The Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 20 that President Donald Trump wrongly instituted tariffs under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act.
Trump held a press conference later that day declaring he would institute tariffs under other authorities. But he didn’t give a clear answer about whether the federal government would refund the businesses that paid IEEPA tariffs.
More from the D.C. Bureau:
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Across the country, bills that would classify abortion as homicide fizzle, while crackdowns on the availability of abortion medications — the most common way to terminate a pregnancy — advance. Elsewhere, Democratic lawmakers are moving to fortify shield laws, States Newsroom’s Reproductive Rights Team reports in our legislative tracker.
And in court, there’s a new effort to characterize medication abortions as unlawfully barbaric, a strategy that worked for anti-abortion advocates in the past, the team reports.
The arguments were put forward in a brief submitted to a federal judge as part of Louisiana’s effort to limit access to the abortion medication mifepristone. The state’s quest for an injunction could halt access to telehealth abortion throughout the country.
But reproductive legal experts who support abortion rights say the gruesome or barbaric argument mischaracterizes the realities of medication abortion, which is approved to induce a miscarriage within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.
For years, voucher and scholarship programs that used taxpayer dollars for private school tuition were limited to low-income or special needs students.
Now, states like Arizona, Iowa and Texas have universal programs that allow any student to use public money for private school tuition. By the 2026-2027 school year, at least 17 states are expected to have that policy.
In Episode 17, you’ll hear about the culture shift on school choice from Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who wrote “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.”
And we’ll look at South Carolina, where legislators are dealing with some unintended consequences of a school voucher law they wrote in 2025. They’re now debating whether homeschooled students should be included in the voucher system.
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