FBI serves subpoenas asking for records and communications, source says

The Department of Justice has dropped the subpoena hammer on some Minnesota Democrats who apparently thought obstructing ICE was just another day at the office. Grand jury subpoenas went out Tuesday to five state and local government outfits, including the Governor's Office, the Attorney General's office, and the Minneapolis Mayor's Office, in a federal probe into what sources describe as a possible conspiracy to mess with or straight-up obstruct federal immigration enforcement during ICE ops in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (and apparently endless sanctimony).

The FBI handled the deliveries, demanding records and communications. The DOJ, in classic fashion, had no comment, because hey, why spoil the surprise?

Late last week, Fox News got the scoop that federal prosecutors were eyeballing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for allegedly throwing sand in the gears of law enforcement. U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche didn't mince words when he chatted with Fox:

"When the governor or the mayor threaten our officers, when the mayor suggests that he's encouraging citizens to call 911 when they see ICE officers, that is very close to a federal crime," Blanche said.

Walz, never one to let a federal investigation pass without a dramatic pivot, immediately cried foul on X, accusing the Trump administration of "weaponizing the justice system."

"Two days ago, it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly," Walz wrote in an X post. "Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic. The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her."

Frey chimed in with his own brave stand on social media, vowing he "will not be intimidated.""This is an obvious attempt to intimidate me for standing up for Minneapolis, local law enforcement, and residents against the chaos and danger this Administration has brought to our city," Frey wrote on X. "I will not be intimidated. My focus remains where it’s always been: keeping our city safe."

Sure, Jake. Because nothing says "keeping our city safe" like turning a blind eye—or worse—to federal officers doing their jobs while your rhetoric gets people whipped into a froth.

The White House wasn't having any of the chaos theater. After a mob of anti-ICE agitators reportedly barged into the Cities Church in St. Paul on Sunday, right in the middle of services, no less, disrupting worship because they decided the pastor was secretly an ICE honcho, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson unloaded on Fox News Digital.

"There is no low these radical leftists won’t stoop to," Jackson said Monday morning. "Jacob Frey and Tim Walz have whipped these rioters into a frenzy and turned them loose to wreak havoc on Minneapolis."

"Frey and Walz should be ashamed for inciting such chaos, but the Trump Administration will continue enforcing the law," she added.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced Sunday that the DOJ was launching an investigation into the church disruption, zeroing in on potential federal civil rights violations for "these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshipers."George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley weighed in on the legal side of things, breaking down the potential ramifications of the Justice Department’s look into the agitators who targeted that Minnesota church they thought housed an ICE official.

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All in all, it's another chapter in the ongoing saga of blue-state officials discovering that federal law doesn't come with a "sanctuary" opt-out clause. The subpoenas are out, the whining is predictable, and the left is once again shocked—shocked!—that there might be consequences for treating immigration enforcement like an optional suggestion. Stay tuned; this one's got legs. Or at least grand jury intrigue.

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SCOTUS backs Trump's removal of Biden's appointees from federal boards

The Supreme Court just handed President Trump a. big win, backing his move to remove two Democratic appointees, Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), from their federal perches. 

This Thursday ruling is a big deal, settling a heated fight over how much power a president has to fire agency officials who don’t jive with his agenda.

The drama kicked off when Chief Justice John Roberts hit the pause button on reinstating Wilcox and Harris, both Biden picks who got the axe from Trump earlier this year. Both cried foul, calling their terminations “unlawful” in lawsuits filed in D.C. federal court, but the Supreme Court’s decision suggests Trump’s got the upper hand—for now.

That said, the court dropped a hint it might not be so quick to let Trump replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who’s been in Trump’s crosshairs for not slashing interest rates fast enough. (Good luck firing a guy who controls the money printer, right?)

At the heart of this mess is a 90-year-old Supreme Court ruling called Humphrey’s Executor, which said presidents can’t just fire independent board members without a good reason. The question before the justices: Can Wilcox and Harris, both Biden appointees, keep their jobs while the courts wrestle with whether to chuck Humphrey’s into the legal dustbin?

The court’s three liberal justices—Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—weren’t having it. Kagan came out swinging in her dissent: “Not since the 1950s (or even before) has a President, without a legitimate reason, tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency.” She didn’t stop there, accusing her colleagues of itching to give Trump “the most unitary, meaning also the most subservient, administration since Herbert Hoover (and maybe ever).” 

That’s Kagan saying that the majority’s playing favorites, and it’s not subtle.

Trump’s legal team, meanwhile, was all about keeping Wilcox and Harris out of their jobs while the case grinds through the lower courts. They even pushed for the Supreme Court to skip the usual appeals process and fast-track the whole thing with a rare “certiorari before judgment” move, because letting Wilcox and Harris back in would, in their words, “entrust” the president’s powers “for the months or years that it could take the courts to resolve this litigation.” That, they argued, “would manifestly cause irreparable harm to the President and to the separation of powers.” 

In other words, if Trump can’t control his own executive branch, it’s chaos, and he’d have to spend months undoing whatever these two do in the meantime.

Rewind to earlier this month when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 7–4 to put Wilcox and Harris back on their boards, leaning on Humphrey’s Executor and another oldie, Wiener v. United States. Those rulings say the president’s power to fire members of independent agencies like the NLRB and MSPB isn’t absolute. The D.C. Circuit wasn’t buying Trump’s argument for an administrative stay to keep the removals in place, pointing out that the Supreme Court has never overturned these precedents. “The Supreme Court has repeatedly told the courts of appeals to follow extant Supreme Court precedent unless and until that Court itself changes it or overturns it,” the judges wrote. 

Fair point, but it didn’t last long.

Trump’s team ran straight to the Supreme Court, which slapped an emergency stay on the reinstatement, keeping Wilcox and Harris sidelined. In their own filings, Wilcox and Harris’s lawyers begged the court to let them back in until the appeals process plays out. They warned against rushing things, with Harris’s team telling the justices, “Rushing such important matters risks making mistakes and destabilizing other areas of the law.” Wilcox’s camp doubled down, arguing that yanking her from the NLRB’s three-member panel could “bring an immediate and indefinite halt to the NLRB’s critical work of adjudicating labor-relations disputes.” 

Their point is that kicking her out doesn’t just tweak policy, it grinds the agency to a halt, which they say screws over Congress’s mandate.

This isn’t the only case poking at the president’s firing powers. Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee to the Office of Special Counsel, also sued after getting fired on Feb. 7. He argued he could only be fired for job performance issues, which Trump’s team didn’t bother citing in their dismissal email. Dellinger dropped his suit after the D.C. Circuit sided with Trump in an unsigned order, but the broader fight’s far from over.

And the Justice Department is not hiding its cards. Back in February, they told Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) they’re gunning to overturn Humphrey’s Executor altogether. If that happens, it’s a whole new ballgame for how much control a president has over the so-called “independent” agencies. 

Buckle up—this one’s got legs.

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