Tag: doj

DOJ Opens New Front in Second Amendment Fight Against California

It’s a pretty grand time to be a Second Amendment advocate. The right to keep and bear arms has been boosted by several recent court decisions, key among them being New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which changed the landscape of legal matters concerning the Second Amendment for good.

As a result of Bruen, several anti-gun laws and proposed laws have been, one might say, shot down. Now, in the latest, Harmeet Dhillon, United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, has announced a new lawsuit by the Justice Department (DOJ) challenging California’s Glock ban and handgun roster law.

The official press release, found here, states in part:

“The Civil Rights Division will defend law-abiding citizens from states that seek to disarm them illegally,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This lawsuit is yet another example of this Justice Department enforcing the Second Amendment by protecting citizens against unconstitutional state regulation of firearms.”

California’s new law would ban the retail purchase of common handguns manufactured by Glock and guns with similar firing mechanisms. The state’s existing “Handgun Roster” further limits the types of handguns citizens can lawfully purchase in California. The United States Supreme Court recently reaffirmed that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense in Wolford v. Lopez. The Court reiterated that states cannot prevent citizens from using commonly used firearms for self-defense.

Yes, the right to keep and bear arms properly falls to the Civil Rights Division. People on the left, most of whom lack even a nodding acquaintance with the Bill of Rights, don’t get that, but the right to keep and bear arms, acknowledged (not granted) by the Second Amendment, is a fundamental civil right.

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Judge Blocks USPS Ballot Rule Tied To Trump’s Election Integrity Order

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the U.S. Postal Service from implementing a Trump administration proposal to boost election integrity by enhancing ballot tracking and verification, finding it conflicted with a 2021 settlement requiring the agency to prioritize the timely delivery of election mail.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled on July 1 that USPS could not move forward with the proposed rule, which would have required states using the mail for federal absentee and mail-in voting to adopt standardized ballot envelopes with trackable barcodes and provide USPS with voter participation lists to make ballot verification easier. Ballot mailings that failed to comply would have been rejected.

One day after the proposed rule was published in early June, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) returned to court in a long-running lawsuit originally filed during the 2020 election, asking Sullivan to enforce a 2021 settlement that requires USPS to prioritize the monitoring and timely delivery of election mail through the 2028 election cycle.

The proposed rule stems from President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing USPS to develop new standards for handling federal ballot mail as part of a broader thrust to bolster election integrity.

The Justice Department, which represented USPS in the case, did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

Rule Boosts Election Integrity, DOJ Says

In opposing the NAACP’s motion, the Department of Justice (DOJ) argued in a court brief that the proposed rule was designed to improve—not hinder—the handling of election mail.

Attorneys representing the Trump administration wrote that requiring standardized Election Mail logos and Intelligent Mail barcodes would make ballots easier to identify throughout the postal network. They argued this would allow USPS to better monitor the movement of mail-in ballots and help implement the “extraordinary measures” USPS has traditionally used to expedite election mail before federal elections.

“Such requirements promote the ’monitoring and timely delivery of Election Mail’; they do not frustrate it,” they wrote in the brief. “And while the Postal Service has proposed requiring state and local election officials to identify the names and addresses of the persons to whom they send ballots and to provide the barcodes for the ballot envelopes, requiring this information—which officials already, by definition, have—would not compromise the lawful delivery of any mail.”

The administration stated in the proposal that the new rule would strengthen election integrity by creating a uniform ballot-tracking system while leaving decisions about voter eligibility entirely to the states.

Election officials—not USPS—would determine who is eligible to vote by mail and would submit lists of voters receiving mail ballots, together with unique barcode information, through a federal portal. The Postal Service would use that information only to verify ballot mailings and improve tracking, not to decide who could vote.

“State and local election officials would maintain full control over who they send ballots to,” government attorneys said in the brief.

“There are no plausible concerns, certainly at this stage, that the Proposed Rule would negatively impact USPS’s ability to timely and reliably deliver Election Mail. Rather, this provision would, again, assist USPS in better being able to track (and thus deliver) such important mail.”

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DOJ Launches New Crackdown on Birth Tourism After Supreme Court Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announces on Wednesday DOJ will prioritize prosecutions of birth tourism schemes involving visa fraud as foreign nationals continue exploiting U.S. citizenship loopholes despite yesterday’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling striking down President Trump’s executive order.

On Tuesday, the Trump Department of Justice directed federal prosecutors across the country to prioritize investigations and prosecutions of birth tourism schemes.

The move, announced just hours after the high court struck down President Trump’s executive order protecting the meaning and value of American citizenship, shows the administration is not backing down. Instead, it is weaponizing existing criminal law against the fraudsters who exploit the loophole.

Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald issued a department-wide memo Tuesday directing every U.S. Attorney’s office to work closely with DHS on these cases.

Potential charges include visa fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and wire fraud for foreign nationals who come to the United States under “false pretenses” to give birth and secure automatic citizenship for their child.

“The Department of Justice will zealously protect the sanctity of United States citizenship by investigating and prosecuting those who fraudulently exploit our immigration system,” McDonald wrote.

The memo notes that many of these schemes begin with lies on visa applications about the true purpose and length of stay — conduct that has always been illegal. Past prosecutions focused heavily on visa fraud, but the directive makes clear prosecutors should pursue the full range of criminal statutes when the evidence supports it.

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DOJ Sues States Over Alleged Failure To Turn Over Food Stamp Data

The Trump administration has sued four states, accusing them of withholding crucial data on food stamp applicants.

Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania refused to turn over information to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would let federal officials identify fraud, Trump administration lawyers said in lawsuits filed on June 26 against the states.

Officials are asking judges to enter injunctions that would force state authorities to hand over the last five years of applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the food stamp program known as SNAP.

The USDA requested the SNAP data in 2025, citing an executive order from President Donald Trump that directed agencies to stop waste, fraud, and abuse, and many states complied with the request.

Data from those states showed that states had enrolled some 186,000 people in SNAP despite those people being deceased, among the discrepancies that added up to $3 billion in wasteful spending, the department said in a report.

The government spends nearly $100 billion a year on SNAP.

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DOJ Grand Jury Probes Neville Roy Singham’s Marxist NGO Empire: Report

Perhaps we are finally learning why President Trump has taken to Truth Social in recent days to blast the socialists and Marxists who are transforming the Democratic Party into an anti-American movement that seeks to end capitalism and the Western world.

The party’s leftward drift became so glaring last week that even top Democrats were forced onto mainstream media to address the party’s dangerous shift toward the far-left.

The timing of Trump’s Truth Social posts suggests the president may have been briefed on a federal grand jury probe in Manhattan examining alleged financial crimes tied to far-left, China-based tech financier Neville Roy Singham, who has reportedly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into left-wing nonprofits, media operations, and activist networks that seek to sow chaos and spread communism inside the US.

Fox News’ Asra Nomani reports that on Monday, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York, authorized by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is examining whether Singham, NGOs he funded, or their leaders committed wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, or other financial crimes.

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Trump DOJ to California: Drop the Glock Ban or Get Sued

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon advised Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and California AG Rob Bonta on Wednesday to drop their Glock ban or face a lawsuit.

Dhillon posted to X: “Today, I notified Newsom and Bonta to drop the unconstitutional restrictions on law-abiding citizens’ rights to purchase legal firearms before the ban goes into effect, or we will sue. Stay tuned!”

Breitbart News reported that Newsom signed California’s Glock ban into law on October 10, 2025. It is set to take effect on July 1, 2026.

The ban was sponsored by Democrat lawmakers and fashioned as a response to the use of “Glock switches,” which are already illegal. “Glock switches” are federally prohibited plastic pieces that can be affixed to the rear of a Glock slide to make the pistol shoot full auto.

Such switches are wildly popular with gangs and street criminals — therefore California Democrats are banning new sales of one of the most popular handguns ever made, the Glock pistol.

On May 12, 2025, Breitbart News pointed to the language of the Glock ban legislation, noting that Democrats secured passage of the ban by labeling Glocks as “machinegun-convertible pistol[s].”

Newsom and Bonta are now on notice that the DOJ will take action if they allow the ban to go into effect.

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Trump instructs DOJ to investigate possible gasoline price gouging amid U.S.-Iran negotiations

President Donald Trump has called for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to “immediately” investigate possible gasoline price gouging as prices at the pump are slow to drop after the Strait of Hormuz was reopened during U.S.-Iran negotiations.

“The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil. Those prices are dropping like a rock!” Trump proclaimed in a Truth Social post early on Wednesday. “In other words, customers are being ‘gouged.’”

“I have instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into this,” he added. “Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing!”

After the signing of an initial memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the U.S. and Iran, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil prices, the American benchmark, were under $70 per barrel as of Wednesday, down from about $112 per barrel in April.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the average price of gasoline in the U.S. was about $3.93 per gallon. This is lower than $4.52 a month prior, but more than $0.70 higher than the average price a year ago, according to AAA.

The opening of the Strait improved crude and gasoline supplies, though stockpiles were depleted during the military actions in the Middle East as countries tried to soften price hikes.

In another post on Wednesday, Trump added that Iran committed to imposing zero tolls on ships traveling through the important waterway, which should help to move traffic out of the oil-rich Gulf countries to export to other nations around the globe.

“Iran has informed the U.S. that, despite troublemaking Fake News reporting to the contrary, there are NO TOLLS, NO INSURANCE COSTS, & NO OTHER CHARGES OF ANY KIND BEING SOUGHT OR RECEIVED BY IRAN ON SHIPS TRAVELING THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ. If this is false information, negotiations would end, immediately!” he clarified.

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UNREAL! Biden and Clinton Appointed Judges Block DOJ’s Ability To See Michigan’s Dirty Voter Rolls – Decision Makes It Easier For SOS Benson To Steal Her Own Governor’s Race

In a 2-1 decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, President Trump’s Department of Justice was told it lacked the legal authority to demand Michigan’s entire voter file from America’s dirtiest Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson.

The request for the full voter rolls was a central part of the ongoing UOCAVA lawsuit filed by Harmeet Dhillon on behalf of the Republican National Committee and the Michigan GOP. The goal was to examine Michigan’s voter registration system for potential irregularities, particularly the presence of non-citizens — including illegal aliens — on the voter rolls.

Michigan’s registration policies under Jocelyn Benson have made it ridiculously easy for ineligible voters to be added to the rolls, while at the same time, impossible to determine if non-citizens are on the voter rolls because of privacy laws that protect the status of non-citizens, something that election integrity advocates have been sounding the alarm about for years. Recently, in an exclusive report, the Gateway Pundit revealed 6 of the DHS’s “Worst of the Worst” non-citizens in Michigan are not only present on Jocelyn Benson’s voter rolls, but two of them have voted in more than one election.

The majority opinion was written by Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., appointed by President Bill Clinton, and Judge Mathis, appointed by President Biden. Judge John B. Nalbandian, while a strong dissent was written by the President Trump-appointed judge.

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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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