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THE WEEK IN LAW: WEEKLY GOOD NEWS ROUNDUP FROM THE FRONT – 6/28/26 (feel free to share this!)
by Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. – attorney and law professor emeritus – giving you 100% facts and truth in plain English about what’s going on with this administration and the law
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NOTE: Several people have asked me whether I have staff or other people helping me with Notes from the Front. Nope. It’s all just me. The buck truly does stop here. :~)
Ok, on to this week’s good news! Here’s the recap of all of the good things that have happened over the past week or so in our battle to defend our country from the ravages of the current administration, and to turn this ship around!
HOLY COW! YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE THIS JUDGE’S TAKEDOWN OF THE DOJ OVER THEIR SUBPOENAS TO MINNESOTA OFFICIALS! HE IS *PISSED* AND IT’S LIKE THE ULTIMATE NIMBY (IN A GOOD WAY)
A federal judge in Minnesota just ripped the DOJ not one new one, but several new ones (actually he did it last month but it’s only come to light just now through the Minnesota Attorney General’s office).
Before we go any further, I need to tell you who this judge is, because it’s none other than Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz of the District Court in Minnesota. If his name sounds familiar, well it should, because I’ve written about him before, and he’s b*tch-slapped Trump, ICE, and the DOJ before.
You may recall him as the judge whom the administration had tried to end-run in an earlier case by going behind his back, petitioning the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on a Friday – *without notifying the District Court* – to issue an arrest warrant for Don Lemon, after Judge Schiltz had declined to do so. Of course Judge Schiltz was notified of this by the Court, and I’ll bet that Bondi (who was still around at that time), Blanche, et al were pretty darned surprised when Judge Schiltz *responded* in a letter to his colleague on the 8th Circuit, which started “I am working from home today, as the program that my mentally disabled adult son attends each day is closed because of the extreme cold. At 11:34 am, I received an email regarding Case No. 26-1135, entitled “In re: United States of America.”
THEN Judge Schiltz hauled Todd Lyons before the Court and gave him a severe dressing down in a *different* case for not fully following his orders regarding ICE detention.
So, this is a judge who has repeatedly demonstrated a strong backbone and a sharp tongue when it comes to this administration and their shenanigans.
With that background, you may expect that Judge Schiltz would be *all over* the DOJ attempting to *subpoena the Governor of Minnesota*! (Well, his office.) And the Minneapolis Mayor’s office. AND the St. Paul Mayor’s office. AND the Minnesota Attorney General’s office. AND the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners AND the Hennepin County board of Commissioners.
And he is.
That’s right, the DOJ had issued six subpoenas to the offices of the highest ranking officials in Minnesota, St. Paul, and Ramsey and Hennepin county.
This meant, as the Court points out, that the following parties had to file motions to quash (it’s like squash but without the s) those subpoenas:
“Governor Tim Walz, in.his personal capacity; the Office of the Governor; Mayor Jacob Frey, in his personal capacity; the Office of the Mayor of Minneapolis; the City of Minneapolis; Mayor Kaohly Her; the City of St. Paul; Attorney General Keith Ellison; the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General; the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners; Hennepin County; and Members of the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners.”
But wait, there’s more.
Those subpoenas were the result of the *convening of grand juries* against those officials and their offices!
Judge Schiltz starts right out in the first pages by pointing out that “President Trump has repeatedly insulted Minnesota generally and its Somali population in particular; targeted Democratic-led cities for expanded deportation efforts; asserted that Democratic officials who oppose the deployment of National Guard troops for immigration enforcement should be jailed; issued multiple executive orders threatening to cut off federal funding to “sanctuary” jurisdictions; and sued Minnesota and some of its political subdivisions seeking to invalidate state and local provisions limiting assistance to federal immigration officials.”
Judge Schiltz is not going to stand for this, NIMJ! (Not in My Jurisdiction).
In an incredible 29-page tongue lashing (included for Notes from the Front members) Judge Schiltz eviscerates Trump, the DOJ, and their mothers (ok, not really that last one).
First, setting ‘em up for the take down, he says “The moving parties argue that the subpoenas should be quashed for a number of reasons. The Court need address only one of those reasons: the moving parties’ contention that the subpoenas were issued as part of an unconstitutional effort to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration laws and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so. The Court agrees with the moving parties.”
That’s just page 14. You can imagine what the rest of the opinion and order reads like!
One of the best parts? He decides it based on the 10th Amendment (anti-commandeering) claims in their motions to quash, and, and I quote, “Notably, the Department’s brief did not acknowledge, much less engage with, movants’ arguments with respect to the Tenth Amendment.”
Oops.
After some more amazing tongue-lashing he observes that:
“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action – particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take – is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process.”
About a concurrent request to *unseal* the grand jury documents, Judge Schiltz points out that while typically a court has to consider whether doing so would compromise a criminal investigation, “nothing in this order or in the materials submitted to the Court could possibly compromise a criminal investigation; as the Court has explained at length, the Department is not conducting a criminal investigation, but is instead using the grand-jury process for other (unlawful) purposes.”
Ok, I’m going to stop here because as you can tell, I’m giddy over the entire thing – the entire order is…wow. If you want your hope restored, your faith in the judicial system bolstered, start each morning by reading a passage from this order!
101 FORMER JUDGES FILE ETHICS COMPLAINT AGAINST TODD BLANCHE AND I HAVE THE ACTUAL COMPLAINT
101 former judges, along with a couple of organizations, filed a formal ethics complaint with the New York State bar against Todd Blanche. This is a *73-page* complaint, requesting that the New York State bar initiate an investigation into Blanche and, upon making a determination that he violated his ethical duties as required by the bar, apply appropriate sanctions which may include suspension or being disbarred.
You see, despite all of the tropes out there about lawyers, we lawyers *actually* have a duty to uphold the law, to *not* bring frivolous lawsuits, to *not* bring retaliatory lawsuits, and to generally behave, as officers of the Court, with decorum.
I happen to take that whole “officer of the Court” thing very seriously.
Unfortunately Blanche places party of 1 over his ethical duties as an attorney.
Fortunately there are a whole lot of people, including 101 former judges, who will hold his feet to the fire. (If you’re wondering why it’s always *former* judges who are filing amicus briefs and ethics complaints and why the sitting judges aren’t stepping up, well a) the sitting judges *are* stepping up, with their rulings, and b) I would imagine a sitting judge isn’t going to risk being removed for joining an ethics complaint, especially when they can do more good from the bench (I have *always* said that the best way to fight something is from within).)
The complaint (included for Notes from the Front members) explains that part of the basis for this complaint is that “Mr. Blanche has initiated, induced, participated in, and overseen an ever-growing list of frivolous investigations and prosecutions perpetrated for the apparent purpose of harassing and injuring people and institutions President Trump perceives as his foes. This complaint covers two examples: On May 22, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee concluded that the Department of Justice could not overcome the presumption of vindictive prosecution against Kilmar Ábrego Garcia. Among other things, the Court noted that while he was Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Blanche made several “remarkable statements [that] could directly establish that the motivations for Ábrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights.” Second, in April 2026, Mr. Blanche oversaw the indictment of Former FBI Director James Comey for sharing an Instagram post of seashells arranged to form 86 47.”
Keep in mind that this is the same bar that disbarred Rudy Giuliani, so I generally like the odds, although when you throw into the mix that Blanche is a *sitting* U.S. Attorney General, well, all bets are off. Honestly I think it could either way – I think the NYS bar is very likely to sanction or even disbar him, but I don’t know whether there are rules that they may be bound to follow when it’s a sitting federal attorney general.
JUDGE ISSUES *PERMANENT* INJUNCTION AGAINST TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER THAT MIRRORED THE SAVE ACT
What a great day! First 101 former judges ask the New York State bar to punish Todd Blanche (ok, that actually happened yesterday afternoon but I wrote it up today), and then – just hours ago – a judge issued a *permanent* injunction against Trump’s executive order “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”.
You would be forgiven if you had forgotten about this executive order, it was, after all, issued more than a year ago, and most of the chatter about Trump’s efforts to SAVE our elections (see what I did there?) has been about the SAVE Act, which was Trump’s effort to do the exact same thing by trying to get Congress to pass a law that mirrored his executive order.
In other words, he was trying to do the same thing through two different channels.
In fact, *just today*, Trump announced that he wasn’t going to sign the *bipartisan* housing bill into law unless Congress passes his SAVE Act. (To that I say, as I’ve said many, many times before, in trying to calm people down who were freaking out about the SAVE Act, not gonna happen.)
Anyways, the “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” executive order was basically a mirror image of the SAVE Act, with all of the same horrible provisions, including the ID requirements, and the disallowing mail-in ballots that were mailed by Election Day but not received until after Election Day.
To the latter, the Court said that “the undisputed record shows that disqualifying ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive thereafter would disproportionately harm military voters, elderly voters, voters with disabilities and voters in rural areas, all of whom face unique obstacles to mailing access and service.”
The Court also cited a 2024 study done *by the Post Office* finding that ‘during California’s most recent Statewide Special Election, 13,909 vote-by-mail ballots with a postmark on or before Election Day arrived on the sixth day after Election Day and an additional 5,804 timely postmarked vote-by-mail ballots arrived on the eighth day after Election Day.”
But best of all, the *overall* finding was that… say it with me… the *states* control the elections, *not* the federal government, and certainly not the president. It’s *right* in our Constitution.
In fact, the Court found that Trump had acted *outside* the law – outside his legal authority (ultra vires) – by issuing that executive order. This is one of the reasons that it’s ok that, as you will see when you read the opinion and order, the injunction and enjoined actions are all prefaced with “The Court PERMANENTLY ENJOINS Defendants, except President Trump,” – because by definition he’s not allowed to do it.
Put another way, these actions are *outside the scope of his duty as president* (watching many of you have an “aha!” moment).
As Judge Casper says in this decision, and quoting the Supreme Court, “the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker.”
In other words, you’re supposed to make sure that the laws are upheld, bucko, not make the laws. It’s *Congress* that gets to make the laws, and they aren’t having your bogus voter ID and mail-in voting suppression either.
I keep telling people that executive orders are *not* law. Now this court has made sure that this administration understands that too.
Executive orders are marching orders to the agencies and their agents – the injunction orders those agencies and their agents to *not* carry out those orders.
COURT ORDERS BLANCHE TO PRODUCE A RESPONSE TO THE COURT ABOUT THE WEAPONIZATION FUND
The short explanation of this order is that Blanche tried to say that the weaponization fund issue was mooted by his pinky-swearing to Congress that it wouldn’t move forward. The Court wasn’t having any of it, telling Blanche that:
“Although Acting Attorney General Blanche reiterated several times during his testimony that the Fund was not going forward, when asked whether he would “issue a new memo in writing rescinding that May 18 memo,” he replied, “I’m not committing to putting anything in writing. And I said it over and over again.”
As the Court explained during the June 12 hearing, a civil suit does not necessarily become moot when the defendants agree to stop the conduct at issue in the litigation. Under the voluntary cessation exception to the mootness doctrine, “a party should not be able to evade judicial review, or to defeat a judgment, by temporarily altering questionable behavior.” “
The Court then *ordered* Blanche to respond by July 17th.
COURT SPANKS BLANCHE OVER FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH EPSTEIN FILES ACT – ISSUES INJUNCTION!!
Todd Blanche is having a bad week. First, as I told you yesterday, they lost the lawsuit over the executive order that was a clone of the failed SAVE Act.
Then, as we discussed in our livestream today, a court yesterday *ordered* him to respond to the Court committing to that the weaponization fund will *never* go forward, and pointing out to Blanche that he has now opened himself up to discovery (I still need to write that up for you but gosh it’s been a busy day).
And just now a court ORDERED BLANCHE PERSONALLY to produce *specific Epstein documents by name* (ok, actually by EFTA number) UNREDACTED or with a damned good explanation as to why there are redactions! (Thank you to Jordan Parker for letting me know that this had dropped!)
I told you about this lawsuit – and in fact gave you the Complaint – in April. To refresh your memory, this is the lawsuit filed by journalist Katie Phang, suing over the DOJ’s failure to produce all of the Epstein files by the deadline.
In her lawsuit Phang mentions several specific documents that contain redactions where it would *seem* none were warranted, which is a violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA or “the Act”). Ms. Phang’s lawsuit requests that the Court order the DOJ to produce the *unredacted* documents, or explain why they are redacted.
In the course of writing this up for you I went to TESS and looked up a few of those documents.
One is an email from Epstein to someone who is redacted, and Epstein is telling them, and I quote directly from the email, which I’m looking at right now, “where are you? are you ok I loved the torture video”.
In another Epstein tells a mystery (redacted) person “Thank you for a fun night… Your littlest girl was a little naughty.”
I can’t think of any legitimate reason for the names of the recipients of these emails to be redacted – can you?
Much like the judge in the weaponization case (really, I’ll get it to you, I promise!), this judge, Judge Emmet Sullivan, is clearly not amused by the DOJ’s antics.
The Court observes “The Act required the production of the covered documents and the redaction log by December 19, 2025. The Attorney General conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”
And THEN the Court says:
“The Court Will Not Issue a Stay
The Attorney General requests a stay of seven days to determine whether to seek emergency appellate review. The Attorney General also requests a stay of sixty days to determine whether further appellate review is warranted. The Court will not issue a stay for the reasons stated in this Memorandum Opinion. The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”
Yep, a line so good the Court has to repeat it, and I’m going to re-repeat it: “The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”
Yes, the Acting Attorney General is not having a good week.
YOU KNOW HOW I SAID THAT TODD BLANCHE WAS HAVING A BAD WEEK? WELL IT JUST GOT WORSE!
On Friday morning Blanche was hit with a *4*-page Congressional demand letter, ordering Blanche to respond to six very specific questions about the weaponization fund, and instructing him that in light of the “serious concerns and the unprecedented nature of this suspect payout” he must “provide complete written responses to each of the following questions no later than July 8, 2026 , and produce all documents related to the negotiation, approval, and structure of this settlement.”
You see, in addition to everything else hinky (not a legal term but it should be) around the weaponization fund, it seems that *the very act of creating it* it violates the DOJ’s *own policies and practices*.
And here’s the gotcha, and I quote directly from the letter:
“The Anti-Weaponization Fund is plainly illegal. At a bare minimum, the establishment of the Fund violates requirements the Department itself has imposed on settlements that direct payments to non-governmental third parties in the Justice Manual. But the central question this letter demands you answer is not whether the fund will proceed, but whether the head of the Department of Justice ignored the Department’s own rules to carry out an act of corruption designed to benefit the President and his allies. This question does not become moot simply because courts and public pressure forced the Department to reverse course.”
In other words, Todd m’boy, you have been backed into a corner of your own making. Because in *this* case it doesn’t matter if you never intend to move forward with the fund. In *this* case what matters is what you *already did*. In *this* case it is the very act of *creating* the fund in the first place that has you in hot water.
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And that’s the good news from the past week!
Remember, if you are a Notes from the Front member *all* of the original source documents (transcripts, orders, etc.) are in the archives for you. And don’t forget to share your thoughts and questions about all of this in our private chat! If you’re not a Notes from the Front member yet, please consider joining us! And yes, really, your $5 a month really does help support my coffee habit and helps me keep on with all of the research and writing I do for you (and to answer questions I’ve received, it’s all just me, I don’t have any staff or anyone helping me). Sign up here!:
https://annepmitchell.substack.com/
New by popular demand: Many of you have asked how you can support my work without becoming a full Notes from the Front member (thank you for asking! ❤️), here’s how: https://www.annepmitchell.com/buy-anne-a-coffee/
Until next time, this is me, reporting from the front line of the battle to save the soul of our country.
Anne
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Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.
Internet Law & Policy Attorney, Legislative Advisor
Author: Section 6 of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (the Federal anti-spam law)
CEO Institute for Social Internet Public Policy
Author: Notes from the Front (a Substack publication)
Board of Directors, Denver Internet Exchange
Dean Emeritus, Cyberlaw & Cybersecurity, Lincoln Law School
Prof. Emeritus, Lincoln Law School
Chair Emeritus, Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop
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