Blanche Targets Minnesota Judges

Under the pretext of an ethics complaint against all but one of the active federal judges in Minnesota, Attorney General Todd Blanche signaled yesterday that not only will the Trump administration continue to run roughshod over the judicial branch but that judges had better shut up about it. 

The complaint filed by second and third highest ranking DOJ officials with the uber-right-wing 8th Circuit Court of Appeals is ostensibly about an admittedly unusual decision by the federal judges who bore the brunt of Operation Metro Surge to sit for an interview with the New York Times for a story that ran Sept. 17.

In the interview, the judges — including Patrick Schiltz who was the chief judge during the peak of the flood of mass deportation cases swamping the Minnesota federal court — defended the rule of law, provided a civics lesson on the role of the courts, and described the structural and institutional challenges they had faced. They refrained from talking about individual cases, but they did speak in broad terms about the habeas cases in general, Operation Metro Surge and the conduct of the Trump DOJ.

The complaint — signed by acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter and Associate Attorney General Stan Woodward — accused the judges of pandering to the press and engaging in unethical behavior that “flagrantly violated” the canons of judicial ethics. It specifically called out Judge Schiltz and Judge John R. Tunheim — who were both quoted by name in the NYT article — for what it called “particularly egregious” misconduct.

The Trump DOJ asked the 8th Circuit to appoint a special committee to conduct an investigation of the judges for their allegedly improper behavior and to order Judges Schiltz and Tunheim to recuse themselves from any cases involving DHS.

Blanche: "Today, we're also announcing that just a few minutes ago the DOJ filed a judicial misconduct complaint with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals against all but one district court judge in the District of Minnesota for violating various judicial canons."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-09-30T15:40:45.087Z

The Trump DOJ getting on its high horse about legal ethics is a lot to take on its own. But it’s also striking that the complaint leans into what DOJ officials see as a friendly audience on the 8th Circuit. It emphasizes, for instance, the appeals court’s own decision upholding the Trump administration’s mass detention policy without bond — one of only two appeals courts to do so — in which it overruled the Minnesota judges.

Traditionally, Article III judges have been free to speak publicly on matters of judicial administration, the Constitution, democracy — civics, if you will. They have been free to lobby for more funding, better security protection, restructuring of the judiciary, and reform measures without running afoul of ethics requirements. 

But the Trump DOJ — which has defied orders left and right, hidden its worst conduct behind unprepared junior lawyers, botched cases, fired huge numbers of experienced attorneys, and made a hash of the distinguished department — now wants to clamp down on the ability of judges to stand up against what may be the most sustained assault on the judiciary in the nation’s history.

SCOTUS Takes Up Mass Detentions

As expected, the Supreme Court will take up the Trump administration’s policy of mass detention without bond that the circuit courts have split on, but which dozens of judges in thousands of cases have found to be unlawful.

Renee Good’s Family Sues

The family of Renee Good who was shot and killed by ICE in January during Operation Metro Surge has filed two civil lawsuits against the Trump administration arising from her death. 

Broadview Six Hearing This Afternoon 

A federal judge in Chicago this afternoon will hear arguments over whether to conduct a further inqury into alleged misconduct into Trump’s DOJ’s handling of the grand jury in the Broadview Six case and the aftermath of that now-abandoned prosecution of ICE protesters. 

As Bad as It Gets

The Supreme Court’s prior handling of the third-country removal case was already the most troublesome emergency docket case, Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck argues, then came this week’s unexplained decision in the case: 

“There have certainly been rulings on the emergency docket that I believe to be more clearly and obviously wrong on the merits. And there have been rulings on the emergency docket that have produced even more harmful effects domestically and/or to the separation of powers. But there’s something profoundly ugly about the D.V.D. case that, unfortunately, was on display again on Tuesday.”

Cannon Wiggles Out of Bind

Give her credit: Judge Aileen Cannon has gotten out of the pickle she was in on Volume II of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report. She struck a motion from FBI agents who investigated the Mar-a-Lago documents case and are now being targeted by the Trump DOJ seeking clarification on her order sealing Volume II. Her reason: The lawyers had failed to confer with the co-defendants in the underlying criminal case about their motion before filing it.

808	PAPERLESS ORDER striking for lack of conferral 806 Motion to Intervene and Seek Clarification of Court Order. S.D. Fla. L.R. 88.9(a). Signed by Judge Aileen M. Cannon on 10/1/2026. (sm1) (Entered: 10/01/2026)

11th Circuit Stirs to Action

In the Volume II case which is on appeal, the 11th Circuit the appeals court rescheduled oral arguments yet again but moved them earlier for the first time after months of kicking the can down the road. Instead of January of next year they’re now scheduled for the first week of November. Nothing much going on that week.

Reflecting Pool Case Dismissed With Prejudice

Ruling that “no crime occurred,” a DC judge has ruled that the already-dismissed Reflecting Pool case against David Hearn should be dismissed with prejudice, meaning the Trump DOJ can’t bring the case against him again in the future.

Quote of the Day 

“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era. There is no precedent.”—Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, on last night’s horrific attempted execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee.

Pike remains hospitalized this morning. Gov. Bill Lee (R) has halted executions through the end of the year.

The Administration Finds a New Way to Scoff at Watergate

Earlier this week, one of our TPM reporters let me know he was tuning into the White House’s press conference. I was surprised when he told me who the fill-in press secretary would be that day: Attorney General Todd Blanche.

I probably shouldn’t have been. Blanche, since winning Senate confirmation, has set about fully demolishing yet another norm: that the attorney general stay out of politics. Not only has he given a White House press briefing — in recent weeks, he’s hit the campaign trail.

The press conference this week saw Blanche affirming that Trump and his family were right on all the issues of the day.

• Trump’s castigation of Supreme Court justices after a loss as “not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” “merely a shell of their original selves”? “He is very frustrated,” the attorney general said of the president. “He has every right — and indeed he should — communicate his concerns.”
• Trump’s conspiracy theory that the Biden administration tried to kill him in Butler, Pennsylvania? Reasonable, per Blanche: The Biden administration was trying to put Trump “in prison till he dies.”
• Democrats expressing concern about AI? “Nothing but an effort to influence the midterms.”
• A Russian oligarch funding Don Jr.’s wedding? “When you say, ‘Am I investigating,’ am I investigating what? And when you say this person is a friend of Putin, I don’t even know if that’s true or not.”

Last week, Blanche spoke at the Republican midterms convention, an effort (however questionably successful) to get the base hyped to vote. On Wednesday, he campaign for former RNC head Michael Whatley, who is running for Senate in North Carolina and badly trailing former governor Roy Cooper (D). Blanche’s political campaigning pales in importance compared with the department’s aggressive prosecution of the president’s enemies — from random protesters and social media shit-stirrers to former FBI directors. But it is all of a piece.

The norm of the attorney general remaining apolitical dates back to the ’70s, Charlie Savage writes in the New York Times, when Nixon’s first attorney general, John Mitchell, ran Nixon’s 1968 and 1972 campaigns and, in between, played a central role in multiple aspects of Watergate.

Amid everything going on — Watergate would be a “12-hour news story” today, as JD Vance so memorably put it — it can feel like weak tea to talk about the vagaries of the Hatch Act, or norms of Justice Department independence. It can feel quaint to remember how Merrick Garland launched an investigation into Biden just a few short years ago. Remember the freakout that ensued when Bill Clinton and Obama attorney general Loretta Lynch chatted for 30 minutes on an airport tarmac while Hillary Clinton was under investigation? It may have set off a chain of events that brought us Trump in the first place.

Still, it’s worth keeping sight of how quickly things have changed, just to keep perspective.

When Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-LA) voted to confirm Blanche, he asserted that if Blanche wasn’t the Senate-confirmed attorney general, Trump would likely go find an acting attorney general who was worse. Because Blanche had been Trump’s personal lawyer, he had developed the ability to talk the president out of his worst ideas, Cassidy reasoned. “I am realistic that President Trump can be unrelenting,” he sighed. He, therefore, had not choice but to confirm Blanche, he decided.

That whole line of reasoning may be pathetic, but there’s something to it. And it’s a striking statement on where we’re at.

GOP Sticks by Florida Candidate Who Attended Neo-Nazi Rally, Spent Years Working With Neo-Confederate Group

On Monday, TPM reporter Chris Mathias revealed that Republicans’ nominee for a Florida legislature seat attended the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, part of years of activism alongside a neo-Confederate group called League of the South. Marshall Rawson’s candidacy, we found, had seemingly become a kind of cause célèbre among the furthest-right activists in American politics, who donated at least $15,000 to his campaign. Rawson had personally made it “very clear” to one former Klan lawyer “that he’s taking a stand against discrimination against white people,” the lawyer told us. 

The story was covered by The Washington Post, The New York Times, MS NOW, The New Republic, Politico, The Independent, The Guardian, and local outlets including Charlottesville Weekly, the Tampa Bay Times, and the ABC affiliate for northcentral Florida.

So, is the GOP standing by Rawson?

Yes.

• Chris reached out to GOP officials, including 22 who had endorsed Rawson, leaders in Florida who would have to work with him, and the state and national party apparatus.
• Three endorsees replied, saying that they’d stand with Rawson.
• No one else got back to us, let alone unendorse him.
• Last year, a college Republicans group at the University of Florida was disbanded after it’s members were seen giving Nazi salutes. This semester, it was reinstated. After TPM’s story appeared, Chris noted, Rawson posted a photo with the group. “Who cares about the lying media when  the largest and most active College Republican chapter in the United States is behind you!” he wrote.