Tag: doj

DOJ Backs Catholic Nuns Fighting New York Law Requiring Biological Men to Be Housed with Women in Hospice Care

The Trump Justice Department has stepped into a major religious liberty battle, backing an order of Catholic nuns challenging a New York law that would force them to house biological men with female patients in their residential hospice facility.

As The Gateway Pundit reported in April 2026, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, a 125-year-old order of Catholic nuns, were forced to sue radical New York Governor Kathy Hochul and her administration after the state threatened them with fines, license revocation, and even jail time for refusing to house biological men identifying as women in rooms with terminally ill female cancer patients at their free Rosary Hill Home hospice.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Governor Kathy Hochul and the state Department of Health.

The law, the LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights, requires nursing homes to assign patient rooms based on gender identity even over a roommate’s objection, use preferred pronouns including when the patient is not present, allow restroom access based on gender identity, and post public notices of compliance.

The Sisters argue that the state’s transgender accommodation mandate violates their constitutional rights and threatens their ability to continue their century-old mission of caring for the dying poor.

The state sent the sisters three “Dear Administrator Letters” in March 2024, October 2024, and January 2025, notifying them of their obligation to comply. The sisters stated they have not complied, and do not intend to.

The law applies to all licensed nursing homes in New York State, with the trigger being the state license to operate rather than the receipt of state funding. Courts have generally allowed the government to attach conditions to public funding, but applying mandates to private religious organizations that take no public funds is a significantly harder legal argument for the state, and more likely to be seen as direct infringement on religious freedom and free speech. New York granted an exemption to facilities run by the Church of Christ, Scientist, but not to Catholic institutions.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice notified a federal court that it intends to intervene in a lawsuit brought by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne against the State of New York.

“States should take notice that they cannot require Americans to abandon their religious beliefs in the name of woke gender ideology,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division declared.

“For more than a century, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have provided free palliative care to indigent cancer patients in their last days. New York’s law would force these religious women to choose between their faith and their license if they wish to continue serving the dying.”

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What’s missing from the Epstein files? Questions persist about unexplained redactions, missing documents, email gaps

When the Department of Justice released more than 3 million pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, survivors, advocates and lawmakers quickly raised questions about an apparent discrepancy: the DOJ had said it collected more than 6 million pages of material during its investigation but was only releasing half that number.

The Justice Department tells CBS News it “has released every document required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” and maintains that those unreleased 3 million documents were either duplicative, unrelated to Epstein or protected by legal privilege.

But concerns persist about evidence that important documents are still being withheld. CBS News has analyzed the archive not only for what has been disclosed, but also for documents that appear to be absent. Our key findings include:

  • Questionable redactions, including public figures’ names
  • Most Epstein emails from older accounts not included in files
  • Missing email attachments
  • No record of Signal communications
  • Lack of massage scheduling records after 2009
  • Missing prison surveillance footage
  • Missing documents from DEA investigation into Epstein
  • Other potentially relevant materials from ICE, Treasury, CIA and other agencies were not included because the law only applies to DOJ records.

The Government Accountability Office recently announced it was launching an investigation into the way documents that were released had information blacked out. That move comes at the request of several members of Congress.

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Oregon County Prioritizing Housing Aid for Non-White and ‘LGBTQIA2S+’ Homeless Over Struggling Families, DOJ Vows Lawsuit if They Don’t Stop

Multnomah County, Oregon, which is home to Portland, is using a points-based screening system that awards extra priority for housing assistance based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

The policy, part of the county’s Multnomah Services and Screening Tool (MSST) rolled out in 2024, is under fire for not using traditional measures of need to determine who gets assistance, such as length of homelessness, domestic violence survival, and having young children.

Multnomah County uses the MSST through its Coordinated Access process to prioritize who gets access to its limited housing resources.

The tool prioritizes groups described as “over-represented” in the local homeless population, including non-white households and “LGBTQIA2S+” individuals.

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Judge Allows DOJ to Release 70 Hours of Audiotapes of Biden’s Conversations with Ghostwriter

Judge Friedrich stayed her own order pending appeal and gave the DC Circuit Court of Appeals three weeks to make a decision on whether the DOJ can release Biden’s audiotapes.

A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for the Justice Department to release recordings of Biden’s conversations with his ghostwriter to the Oversight Project.

US District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, said the redactions were sufficient.

Biden’s lawyers immediately requested an injunction pending appeal.

The Oversight Project previously filed a FOIA lawsuit requesting records from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden.

Last month, it was reported that the DOJ was preparing to release damning audio of Biden’s interview with former Special Counsel Robert Hur. The Department is also going to release 2017 audio recordings of conversations with his ghostwriter in which he disclosed classified information.

Biden previously asserted executive privilege over the audio recordings related to then-Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into his stolen classified documents scandal.

Then-US Attorney General Merrick Garland classified the audio tapes of Biden’s interview with Hur as “Top Secret” and locked it way in a SCIF.

The Oversight Project vowed to obtain and release Biden’s audio recordings of his conversation with his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.

The Oversight Project celebrated the win on Friday.

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DOJ Probes JPMorgan, Bank of America, Over Political Account Closures

Federal subpoenas hit JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo this week, ordering the banks to name every customer they cut off and to say why.

The legal fight is about fraud statutes and prosecutorial reach. A blunter question sits underneath it. When a bank shuts your account over your politics, where are you supposed to go?

The demands came from the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., run by Jeanine Pirro.

Her prosecutors asked the banks for lists of people who were “debanked” and for the reasons behind shutting them out. Some of the subpoenas reach back more than a year.

The investigation tests whether the account closures violated the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, a law built to chase bank fraud.

Debanking amounts to financial exile. A private institution decides your views, or your line of work, make you a liability, and your access to checking accounts, payroll, and credit can vanish.

There’s no hearing, no judge, and often no warning beyond a card that stops working. The power to do this sits with the bank, and the person on the other end rarely gets to argue back.

Last August, President Trump signed an executive order telling banking regulators to root out “politicized or unlawful debanking” and to penalize it. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency later reviewed the nine largest banks and reported it had found early signs of the practice. Pirro’s office went further on its own, opening the criminal probe without waiting for a referral from those regulators.

The banks’ defense is the one you’d expect. They say they shut accounts only over legal, regulatory, or financial risk, never over belief. That explanation is convenient and hard to check because the standards live inside the banks and the people affected almost never see them. When the threshold for losing your account is “risk” defined by the institution that benefits from defining it loosely, almost any disfavored customer can be folded in.

For the crypto industry, the probe puts a name to a years-old grievance. Digital-asset firms watched their accounts close across 2022 and 2023 and called it “Operation Chokepoint 2.0,” a nod to a 2013 Obama-era program that pushed banks to drop industries the government disliked. The pattern repeats because the method works. You don’t have to outlaw an activity if you can cut off the money that keeps it alive.

That is the chilling effect in its purest form. People and businesses learn that the wrong affiliation can cost them a bank account, so they grow careful about what they say, fund, or build. The punishment never needs a courtroom to land, and it teaches everyone watching to keep their heads down.

JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo have mostly declined to comment on the subpoenas. JPMorgan has disclosed that it faces “reviews, investigations and legal proceedings” tied to the executive order.

The records Pirro wants would show, customer by customer, who the banks decided to drop and why. People shut out of the financial system for their views have spent years being told it never happened.

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DOJ announces seizure of 13 internet domains being operated by suspected Chinese intelligence agents

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that it seized 13 internet domains allegedly being used by Chinese operatives to recruit former and current American officials with security clearances.

Several unnamed individuals are accused of using these websites as a front for fake “consulting companies to recruit individuals in the United States to obtain sensitive and possibly classified information in exchange for monetary payments.”

“A lot of this information came from doing interviews, interviews with people who came forward that something didn’t seem right. They provided information and said, ‘Hey, this is kind of weird, we’re kind of getting paid by a cryptocurrency or an online payment system that’s not typical,” said Dan Wierzbicki, the special agent in charge of the counterintelligence and cyber division of the FBI’s Washington field office in an interview.

The FBI believes that the individuals behind the scheme acted on behalf of the Chinese government “wittingly or unwittingly.”

This operation follows a pattern of heightened economic and political espionage. A report from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) last year accused foreign actors of attempting to hire federal employees and capitalizing on the Trump administration’s plans for layoffs across various companies.

The Five Eyes intelligence alliance — comprising the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — recently issued a joint warning detailing how Chinese military intelligence targets Western personnel.

Operating under the guise of think tanks or private businesses, these operatives post fraudulent job listings for foreign policy and defense analysts on legitimate recruiting sites. Once a candidate applies, handlers pressure them for sensitive information, offering cryptocurrency and online payments for “reports” to effectively conceal their true identities.

“For too long, the Chinese government has tried to exploit U.S. government employees behind the cover of fake companies and phony job postings. Today, we shut them down. These seizures will prevent these fraudulent sites from being used to target Americans with access to sensitive information. The FBI will continue to use every tool available to protect Americans and our national security from this threat,” said Special Agent in Charge Daniel Wierzbicki of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Counterintelligence and Cyber Division.

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A DOJ Brief Preposterously Insists That Trump’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ Was Politically Neutral

In a brief filed on Friday, Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. argues that a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s brazenly corrupt “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is moot because the Justice Department does not plan to implement the idea. Woodward also notes that the lawsuit, Floyd v. Department of Justice, is based on the premise that the fund was designed to benefit Trump’s supporters, excluding Democrats who claim they were victims of Republican “lawfare and weaponization.” And that, he says, is simply not true.

Trump himself cast doubt on both of those arguments in a Meet the Press interview that aired two days after Woodward filed his brief. The president suggested that the fund, which was part of a May 18 “settlement agreement” that resolved his lawsuit against the IRS, might not be dead after all. And he described the intended beneficiaries as people who “have been hurt so badly by radical-left lunatics” who “worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe.”

As the contrast between Woodward’s arguments in court and Trump’s comments on TV illustrates, the Justice Department’s portrayal of the Anti-Weaponization Fund is completely divorced from reality. Woodward’s description of the fund, which he officially approved by signing the “settlement agreement,” glides over the reasons why it provoked the bipartisan backlash that persuaded Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to ditch the idea two weeks after announcing it.

The pretext for the Anti-Weaponization Fund was a lawsuit in which Trump preposterously claimed that IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn’s illegal leaking of his tax returns had caused “at least” $10 billion in damages. In addition to offering an improbable estimate of the injury he had suffered, Trump missed the statutory deadline for filing such claims. And even if he had filed his lawsuit on time, he would have faced the challenge of showing that the IRS was responsible for the crimes of a man it did not employ.

Despite those legal weaknesses, the Justice Department never mounted a defense. That failure underlined the blatant conflicts of interest created by the lawsuit, which pitted Trump against agencies he oversees in a case where both sides were represented by attorneys who work for him. The situation was so bizarre that Kathleen Williams, the federal judge overseeing the case in the Southern District of Florida, questioned whether it involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as required for the lawsuit to proceed.

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4 California School Districts Under DoJ Review Over Gender Ideology, Sex Ed Policies

Four California public school districts face federal inquiries into whether their policies and practices regarding instruction on sexual orientation and gender ideology violate students’ civil rights.

The districts under Justice Department review are all in Northern California, with three in Monterey County—Graves Elementary School District, Santa Rita Union School District, and Soledad Unified School District—as well as San Francisco Unified School District. Their students range from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.

The reviews will determine whether the districts notify parents of their right to opt their children out of instruction on sexual orientation and gender ideology, also known as SOGI, and whether district practices align with federal protections against sex discrimination.

“This Department of Justice will not tolerate local school authorities trampling on the rights of parents concerning the education of their children,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the department’s Civil Rights Division said in a June 8 statement.

“The Supreme Court’s recent decisions in ‘Mahmoud’ and ‘Mirabelli’ have put all school districts on notice: policies that keep parents in the dark about sexuality and gender ideology in the classroom must end now.”

California law mandates sex education to encompass these topics, and state provisions give parents the right to opt their children out of the instruction on these subjects, either entirely or in part.

The San Francisco Unified School District has previously told its teachers that neither parental permission nor notification is needed to teach or discuss SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) topics in the classroom.

In addition, SOGI topics “appear to be embedded in California’s social studies and history classes,” according to the DOJ statement.

The reviews will also cover policies permitting access to single-sex intimate spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms, in addition to girls’ sports teams, based on a student’s perceived gender identity rather than sex. The Justice Department will decide whether these policies are in compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The four districts all receive federal taxpayer funding, subjecting them to Title IX’s prohibitions on sex discrimination in education programs and activities.

The department will evaluate whether the districts have enacted changes in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Mirabelli v. Bonta.

“Plaintiffs alleged that California’s policies permitted disclosure of a student’s gender transitioning at school only if the student consented,” the ruling states.

“Plaintiffs claimed that these policies violated their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“We conclude that the parents who seek religious exemptions are likely to succeed on the merits of their Free Exercise Clause claim.”

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Trump DOJ Announces Largest-Ever Effort to Denaturalize U.S. Citizens Accused of Immigration Fraud or Concealing Serious Crimes

The Trump DOJ is dramatically expanding its campaign to revoke US citizenship from naturalized Americans accused of hiding terrorism ties, violent crimes, immigration fraud, and other serious misconduct during the naturalization process.

The new push, according to reports, marks one of the most aggressive uses of denaturalization in modern American history and reflects President Donald Trump’s broader America First effort to restore consequences inside an immigration system that has been abused for decades.

The Department of Justice announced cases against roughly a dozen foreign-born US citizens, with targets originally from countries including Iraq, Somalia, China, India, Colombia, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Gambia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Bolivia.

Officials said the cases involve allegations ranging from concealed terror affiliations and war crimes to child sexual abuse, sham marriages, false identities, and immigration fraud.

The message is quite clear: American citizenship is not a shield for foreign criminals who lied to obtain it. Naturalization, they argue, is a privilege granted by the United States—not a loophole for people who concealed dangerous pasts.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department would pursue those who misrepresented themselves to become Americans.

Anyone “who intentionally concealed their criminal histories or misrepresented themselves during the naturalization process will face the fullest extent of the law,” Blanche said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

One of the most serious cases involves Ali Yousif Ahmed, who obtained citizenship after claiming he fled Iraq in 2009 because al Qaeda terrorists had attacked his family. Authorities now say Iraq sought his extradition in 2019 after he allegedly murdered two Iraqi police officers while serving as an al Qaeda leader.

Federal officials allege Ahmed omitted that information from the U.S. government. The case has become a stark example of why Trump officials say deeper scrutiny is needed before and after citizenship is granted.

Another case involves Salah Osman Ahmed of Somalia, who naturalized in 2007 and later pleaded guilty in 2009 to providing material support for terrorists and belonging to al Shabaab, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

The Justice Department argues that joining a terrorist organization within five years of naturalization can be grounds for revoking citizenship. For immigration hawks, the case underscores the danger of treating citizenship as irreversible even when national-security issues emerge.

The crackdown also includes Oscar Alberto Pelaez, a Colombian-born Catholic priest convicted in the United States of 13 counts of sexual abuse of a minor, including sodomy. Authorities allege he lied about the crimes during the naturalization process.

Another target, Abduvosit Razikov of Uzbekistan, allegedly entered into a sham marriage to obtain citizenship. Other cases include individuals accused of using false identities, concealing serious crimes, or committing immigration fraud.

In a separate announcement, the Justice Department said it is seeking to denaturalize Manuel Rocha, a former American diplomat who admitted in a criminal case to acting as a Cuban spy.

The Rocha case points to a broader concern: the United States must be willing to revoke citizenship when people obtain it through deceit and then use American status against American interests.

Denaturalization has historically been rare. Between 1990 and 2017, the federal government filed just over 300 such cases, averaging roughly 11 per year.

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Another Huge Victory Against the Transgender Cult

The Trump administration keeps stacking wins for parents and kids, and this one is a big deal. The Justice Department announced a landmark resolution with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, forcing one of America’s most prominent hospital systems to stop performing gender-reassignment procedures on minors.

The transgender movement’s grip on American medicine is loosening fast.

Cleveland Clinic agreed to a decades-long commitment to stop performing or even offering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or any other sex-rejecting procedure to minors. The agreement came as part of deals with both the DOJ and the Ohio Attorney General. The clinic will pay a $308,000 penalty after investigators found it submitted false billings to public and private insurers to secure coverage for these procedures on children. Cleveland Clinic also committed $2 million to fund restorative care for detransitioners, people harmed by these procedures as kids, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay.

For years, not only has the transgender cult refused to acknowledge the existence of detransitioners, but the medical establishment has dismissed them, minimized their suffering, and assured everyone that the consequences of these procedures were manageable or reversible. Now, one of the country’s biggest hospital networks is writing a multi-million-dollar check to clean up the damage it helped cause. The activists who spent years insisting detransitioners were rare and mostly happy have some explaining to do.

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