Thirty-four more jurisdictions moved to join the existing sanctuary cities case. The court's response: not a full merge, but an expedited scheduling order as a compromise. What started as a manageable case is turning into a behemoth.
The existing sanctuary cities lawsuit against the Trump administration's funding-withholding policy got dramatically larger on August 7: 34 additional jurisdictions filed to join the case. The sheer number of new parties created a procedural dilemma — fully merging them all at once would have forced the court to slow down and reorganize everything. Instead, the court threaded the needle: it declined to merge immediately but issued an expedited scheduling order to keep the case moving while the additional parties were accommodated. Bryan described the case as becoming a "behemoth" — the growing coalition of municipalities and counties challenging the policy was transforming what started as a single-plaintiff case into a nationwide coordinated challenge. The expedited schedule was the court's way of signaling that the addition of 34 parties wasn't going to function as a delay tactic.
Joinder of additional plaintiffsexpedited scheduling orderSpending Clause (conditions on federal grants to municipalities)
Constitutional question: The Spending Clause limits Congress's ability to attach unconstitutional conditions to federal grants; the sanctuary cities cases argue that withholding already-appropriated funds from jurisdictions based on immigration policy disagreements exceeds those limits. The growing number of jurisdictions joining reflects the breadth of the constitutional stake: if municipalities can be defunded for declining to enforce federal immigration law, the coercive potential reaches every city and county that receives federal funds. The case's growing size is itself constitutionally significant — it documents the nationwide scope of the executive's funding-withholding policy.
The government filed a last-minute motion to cancel the upcoming trial in the California National Guard case. The judge said no. Trial not canceled. And if your next witness isn't ready, that constitutes resting your case.
In Newsom v. Trump (3:25-cv-04870), the California National Guard federalization case, the government filed a motion seeking to cancel or postpone the upcoming trial. Bryan covered the judge's response: the answer was no. The trial was not canceled. The judge added a pointed practical warning: failure to have the next witness ready to go would be treated as the party resting its case — a standard rule, but applied here as a clear signal that the court was not going to accept delay tactics at this stage. The trial would proceed on schedule regardless of the government's preference to avoid it.
Motion to cancelpostpone trialRule 65(a)(2) (combining PI and merits trial)readiness requirement10 U.S.C. § 12406
Constitutional question: The trial represents the first full evidentiary test of the constitutional and statutory authority questions the preliminary injunction only addressed on a preliminary record. The president's claimed authority to federalize California's National Guard over the Governor's objection — and then deploy those troops domestically — requires not just a statutory argument but a factual predicate: that the conditions of 10 U.S.C. § 12406 were actually met. The trial record would either validate or undermine that factual claim. The government's attempt to avoid the trial suggests it understood a full evidentiary record posed more risk than continuing on the preliminary posture.
The Inter-American Foundation is an independent agency created in 1969 to fund development grants in Latin America and the Caribbean. Trump signed an EO to wind it down. The plaintiffs filed a notice saying the rescission order technically didn't affect them — they were already funded for the year. But they still haven't been paid. Bryan: "Bueller? Hello?"
The Inter-American Foundation (IAF) is an independent federal agency established by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1969 to provide development grants to grassroots organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Trump administration issued an executive order directing the IAF to wind down its operations. Plaintiffs in Cristosal v. Morocco — grantee organizations that had been funded through the IAF — filed a notice with the court pointing out that the rescission order technically did not affect them: their grants had already been approved and funded for the current year before the wind-down order. The problem: they still hadn't received the money. The IAF wasn't paying out funds that had already been obligated. Bryan's framing: the plaintiffs had a valid legal argument that they were outside the scope of the rescission, but that argument hadn't resulted in actual payment. The EO created a practical freeze even for grantees the order didn't formally reach.
Independent agencyexecutive wind-down orderForeign Assistance Act of 1969pre-existing grant obligationsAPA (arbitrary and capricious wind-down)
Constitutional question: The IAF's status as an independent agency created by statute raises the same removal and wind-down questions present across the administration's termination of congressionally-created agencies: the president cannot abolish an agency Congress created simply by executive order. The Impoundment Control Act also bears on the non-payment issue — funds appropriated and obligated cannot be withheld from disbursement without specific congressional authorization. The plaintiffs' situation illustrated the gap between legal entitlement (their grants were outside the rescission's scope) and practical enforcement (someone still had to actually write the checks).
The birthright citizenship case: the 9th Circuit affirmed the district court's preliminary injunction blocking Trump's executive order. The Solicitor General is shopping around, looking for which birthright citizenship case to take to SCOTUS. And here's the problem: this case was brought by state AGs on behalf of people — which is exactly the category that Gorsuch's CASA concurrence said was different. If nationwide injunctions get limited to union members only, a citizenship status injunction brought by state AGs might survive. But if each state only covers its own residents, birthright citizenship might depend on where you're born.
Washington v. Trump is one of multiple challenges to Trump's executive order purporting to limit birthright citizenship for children of parents who are undocumented or on temporary visas. The district court had issued a preliminary injunction blocking the EO nationwide in February; the Ninth Circuit affirmed that injunction. As of August 7, the Solicitor General was reportedly considering taking a birthright citizenship case to the Supreme Court but hadn't decided which one to use as the vehicle. Bryan flagged this case as significant for a specific structural reason: unlike the individual-plaintiff CASA case, this case was brought by state Attorneys General on behalf of the people of their states. That distinction matters post-CASA: Gorsuch's concurrence in CASA carved out an exception for state AGs suing on behalf of their citizens — that category might support injunctive relief broader than what individual plaintiffs could get. But if the injunction only protects residents of the states whose AGs joined the case, a child born in a state whose AG did not join might not be protected — creating a situation where birthright citizenship status differs by state of birth, a constitutionally untenable outcome the Fourteenth Amendment's uniform rule was designed to prevent.
Birthright citizenshipFourteenth Amendment Section 1nationwide injunction scope post-CASAstate AG standing to sue on behalf of citizensGorsuch CASA concurrence exception
Constitutional question: The Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause — "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" — was written as a uniform national rule deliberately overriding the pre-Civil-War patchwork in which citizenship status could vary by state. A post-CASA world in which injunctive relief is limited by which states joined a lawsuit would recreate exactly that patchwork for a constitutional right the Amendment was designed to nationalize. Bryan's point was that the CASA principle, if applied mechanically to birthright citizenship cases, produces a constitutional absurdity: the same child born in Virginia (no AG joined) could have a different citizenship status than the same child born in Washington (AG joined). The Fourteenth Amendment's text doesn't permit that outcome, which means courts will eventually have to either distinguish CASA for constitutional-right cases or find a different vehicle that avoids the problem entirely.
