April 9–10, 2026 — Aloha Friday

The DC case (narrower, more contract-focused) had lost its bid to enforce a preliminary injunction at the DC Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel acknowledged significant harm to Anthropic, but held that the harm to the government of overriding a national security designation while the country was at war outweighed it. Bryan's read: this was a preliminary equitable decision, not a merits ruling, so balance of harms was the whole ballgame. The California injunction — the broader one, about the substance of the First Amendment retaliation — was still standing. And regardless of how both cases resolve, Bryan's position was that the real win had already landed: transparency. Drawing public attention to the fact that the DOD was trying to use AI to surveil American citizens and fly lethal drones. That conversation happened. That's not nothing.

Two simultaneous fronts. In Tennessee on the criminal case: the judge had already found that a legal basis for vindictive prosecution existed — meaning the burden had shifted to the government to prove its prosecution was not retaliation for Garcia's assertion of his constitutional rights. Garcia's lawyers had presented emails and a timeline showing potential D.C.-to-Tennessee influence. The government's defense: the Tennessee prosecutor just happened to reopen the closed case a couple weeks after it was closed, for no particular reason. The judge was considering the memos. In Maryland on the habeas/deportation case: the feds wanted to send Garcia to Liberia now (having already sent him to El Salvador by mistake). They wanted the court to dissolve the injunction protecting him by a deadline they had set — or they would "deem" the motion denied. The judge's order in response was a tour de force. She laid out every single hearing where DOJ had appeared with no plan, no information, nothing. She told them: this delay is on you. If you have a plan now, fine, file your materials. We'll talk on April 28th when I decide we will. Also: the government suggested Garcia could go to Costa Rica on his own if he wanted to avoid Liberia. She pointed out that he was being prosecuted for human trafficking. How was he supposed to arrange his own international travel exactly?

Minneapolis protesters had sued ICE over crowd control techniques used during Operation Metro Surge. The district court had issued an injunction. The feds appealed, freezing the case. Then Operation Metro Surge ended. The injunction, even if affirmed on appeal, would now apply to nothing — a moot order against conduct that wasn't happening. Plaintiffs moved to dissolve it. The feds resisted, knowing exactly what dissolution meant: once the injunction went away, so did the stay, and plaintiffs could file for a new, better-tailored injunction with lessons from the last round applied. The court dissolved it anyway. Moot is moot. And the judge's comment about a potential future injunction request was not encouraging for the government.

Ed Martin — briefly a would-be US attorney, now Trump's pardon attorney — was facing DC bar ethics charges over First Amendment threats to Georgetown University and an ex parte communication with judges. (Ex parte = talking to a judge without opposing counsel present. Very big ethical no-no.) He argued that as a member of the executive branch, DC courts had no authority over his bar admission and he wanted the case moved to federal court. Bryan's read: every state licenses its own attorneys. This would be open-and-shut if DC were a state. The DC courts are a special case, technically — created so federal courts didn't have to handle local matters — so there might be a "tiny bit of wiggle room." But a federal judge had already told Jeffrey Clark the same thing in the last Trump administration and said no. Same argument, same answer likely coming. Bryan was holding his laugh until after the ruling. Not for long.