The lawyer representing Renee Good’s family is accusing the Department of Justice of possibly impairing the investigation into her death.
Good, a queer mother of three, was fatally shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross earlier this month. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Good of trying to run over Ross, which multiple videos showed was not true, which increased calls that she be impeached.
Instead, the administration has doubled down on its position that Good herself is to blame for her death and started investigating her widow, Becca Good. The Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights said that it was not investigating Ross for a possible use of excessive force.
The Good family hired attorney Antonio Ramanucci, who represented George Floyd’s family, and he told the Legal AF podcast that the government is making it harder to know if Good’s vehicle is being preserved as evidence.
“Very likely, there are either some bullet fragments or bullets themselves that are inside the vehicle,” he said on the podcast. “There may be shell casings that wound up inside the vehicle. There may be other pieces of evidence inside that vehicle.”
Ramanucci explained that, in a case like this, a lot has to be done immediately to prevent evidence from becoming useless over time. He said he sent a “letter of preservation” to the DOJ asking that they preserve the vehicle because it could be used as evidence in a possible civil case.
“We asked them to preserve that vehicle, to make sure that it’s stored in a safe manner so that none of the evidence gets altered, modified, destroyed, or spoiled,” he said. “If there’s any testing, it’s got to be done with us present.”
Podcast host Adam Klasfeld brought up the possibility that ICE agents kept paramedics at bay even though Renee Good may still have had a pulse by the time they got to her.
“One of the things we learned from the 911 calls was that there was a physician who was on site who said, ‘I could help,'” Ramanucci replied. “And he was denied any opportunity to help Renee while she was on-scene.”
“It could have, at least potentially, saved her life,” Klasfeld said.
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The thing afforded the highest protections of the Fourth Amendment is a person’s home. This isn’t even a controversial statement. It has been that way ever since this amendment was ratified.
But, under Trump, we’re constantly seeing that the administration considers all rights to be privileges — something only granted to people this administration likes.
The Associated Press has obtained a blockbuster leak — one that shows ICE officers have been told that they’re free to enter homes without a judicial warrant. Instead, they can just write themselves an administrative warrant and then just go about their business of terrorizing a nation.
ICE carries around things they call warrants, but hardly resemble the real thing. An administrative warrant is self-issuing. The officer who wants to use it only needs to fill in a few blanks and sign it before heading out to try to arrest the person listed on the paperwork. There’s no signature line for supervisors, which means these aren’t reviewed by anyone else but the person writing them.
But since last May, ICE officers have been instructed they can treat these pieces of paper like actual warrants — you know, the ones that are subjected to at least a cursory review by a judge.
The whistleblower report [PDF] contains screenshots of the memo issued by ICE head Todd Lyons, last seen here complaining repeatedly about people who complain about ICE officers acting like paramilitary kidnapping squads.
What’s contained in that memo is batshit insane. First of all, it’s the DHS telling itself that it’s okay to ignore the Fourth Amendment.
Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.
There’s a very good reason the DHS has “not historically relied” on administrative warrants to enter people’s homes in search of arrestable migrants. That reason would be the US Constitution, which only “recently” fell out of favor with the GOP ruling class.
According to Lyons and the completely compromised DHS Office of the Legal Counsel, the only thing needed to engage in what is absolutely a warrantless entry is a final order of removal. A couple of paragraphs later, the memo states explicitly what ICE officers are authorized to do under the power of this memo (which definitely isn’t what they’re authorized to do under the Constitution):
Should the alien refuse admittance, ICE officers and agents should use only a necessary and reasonable amount of force to enter the alien’s residence…
You can write a memo and issue it and claim the in-house lawyers said it was all cool and legal, but that still doesn’t make it cool and legal. All it does is add another layer of “good faith” to ICE officers’ violations of the Fourth Amendment. After all, if they were told they could do this, how could they be expected to know it was actually illegal?
A footnote follows that, which makes it clear ICE officers will engage in warrantless entries even if they haven’t actually obtained a final order of removal.
This scoping is not intended to concede that an administrative warrant would be insufficient to arrest an alien in his or her place of residence prior to a final order of removal or where there is a final order of removal issued by an immigration officer.
In other words, ICE officers can enter any alleged migrant’s house without a warrant at pretty much any time, so long as they’re carrying their self-issued non-warrants (the Form I-205 referenced throughout the memo).
This directly contradicts ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations) training for ICE officers, which is included in the leaked documents the AP obtained. That training spells it out succinctly and explicitly (caps in the original):
An administrative arrest warrant does NOT alone authorize a 4th Amendment search of any kind.
That’s no longer the case, apparently. It’s not like this training has been rescinded. It seemingly remains on the books because it creates even more plausible deniability for officers being sued.
And ICE director Todd Lyons (along with his OLC enablers) know the contents of this memo can’t possibly be legal. That’s why this memo has never been officially added to ERO training or otherwise officially made part of the ICE operations manual. If Lyons and other top immigration enforcement officials actually thought this shit would hold in court, they wouldn’t have done this:
While addressed to “All ICE Personnel,” in practice the May 12 Memo has not been formally distributed to all personnel. Instead, the May 12 Memo has been provided to select DHS officials who are then directed to verbally brief the new policy for action. Those supervisors then show the Memo to some employees, like our clients, and direct them to read the Memo and return it to the supervisor.
In the case of the whistleblower who gave this to the Associated Press, they were instructed to read it and return it. They were not allowed to take notes. They were also informed that another employee had been reassigned for questioning ICE policies, which was taken by the whistleblower as the overt threat it is.
This is fucking insane. A federal government agency has decided the Fourth Amendment no longer exists and has done everything it can from keeping this clearly unconstitutional policy change from spreading beyond those who’ve already bought into the DHS’s new direction as the expression of the GOP’s white nationalist goals.
And it’s a problem that’s only going to get exponentially worse as ICE frantically on-boards new hires, who are given plenty of cash, but nearly nonexistent training before being sent out to fulfill the racist desires of people like White House advisor Stephen Miller. What little they may know (or care) about constitutional rights is being eroded even further by official memos that claim it’s perfectly legal to do something that clearly — under the DHS’s own published training — violates the Fourth Amendment.
Without a doubt, the administration will shrug this off and/or tell people they shouldn’t believe things they’ve seen with their own eyes. For now, we can only hope this might knock a few Republicans out of the MAGA loop, even if it’s only the ones who realize they definitely wouldn’t want to turn this unearned expansion of power over to an administration not run by one of their own.
Homophobia, catphobia, and dog park etiquette collided over the weekend when a gay man walking his cat in a local London park got into it with a dog owner offended by the pair’s repeated appearance there.
“It’s 2026. People are gonna walk their cats,” Bengal owner Jerome said in an Instagram reel chronicling the ugly encounter. His cat-centric account boasts 140,000 followers.
Jerome and his partner Jacques are well known around the neighborhood and the internet for walking their two cats, a Bengal named Rajah and a Russian Blue named Lupin, and offering up “free pet therapy” for those who could use it. The dogwalker in this unfortunate story appears to be someone who might benefit from some counseling.
“Being threatened, sworn at and called slurs because I walked my cat into a public space?” Jerome asked in his post accompanying the video.
According to Jerome, “This person is always hostile towards us whenever he sees us here. I chose to stand up for myself after he had already said a few words to me off camera, asking me to leave, all because he thinks his dogs shouldn’t have to be in the same space as our cats.”
“Rajah was completely under my control, on his lead; his dogs were both off lead. I was nowhere near him – his dogs didn’t even seem to react to us. I just simply entered the park and attempted to avoid him like I always do,” Jerome continued.
That didn’t help mitigate the encounter, apparently. But rather than ignore the dog owner’s taunts, Jerome pulled out his phone and filmed the encounter, defending himself and his cat.
“It’s not a dog park. It’s a park for all animals. And I can do what I want with my cat,” Jerome shouts across the grass to the man.
“You can f**k off,” the dog owner replies. “C**t.”
The man’s dachshund mix and pit bull terrier seemed oblivious to the human altercation.
After Jerome wouldn’t back down, the dogwalker added, “I’ll do more than talk if I see you with that f*cking cat.”
The verbal brawl in the park, adjacent to a neighborhood church, then drew in fellow pet owners who had gone out for their own Sunday strolls.
“Keep it down, you stupid motherf**kers,” said one woman fed up with the loud bickering.
“What makes you so entitled, my friend?” Jerome finally shouted to the man as he heads for an exit, clearly unhappy that his intolerance was being recorded.
“Yeah, s**t on me,” the man replied.
In a breakdown of the incident, Jerome lamented the dogwalker’s refusal to change his views on cats in the churchyard.
“I’m respectful. Most people are respectful,” Jerome said of his cats’ interactions with their traditional canine enemies and dog owners.
“I’m gonna walk my cat,” Jerome added. “I give grace and patience to people, but if I’m being bullied over and over again in a public space that I have access to, that I’ve been using, you’ve lost my respect at this point, and I’m not going to tolerate it.
“So to the man who called me a f**got, and had all the profanities in the world to say to me because I for once stood up to them, you’ll be hearing from the police. Trust and believe. No cat owner should ever have to put up with that,” he promised.
“Let’s end dog owner entitlement in 2016,” Jerome closed. “It’s not cute.”
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A federal judge has voided a Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoena requiring Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. to hand over private information on young patients receiving gender-affirming care (GAC). The ruling is just the latest roadblock in the DOJ’s quest to end GAC for trans youth; however, the hospital stopped offering GAC last July in response to the current presidential administration’s threats to defund institutions that offer such care.
The case involved eight families that received transition-related healthcare through the hospital’s Gender Development Program between 2020 and 2025. The families said that the DOJ’s subpoena — which demanded their addresses, children’s social security number, medical diagnoses, prescriptions, and all documents affirming parental authorization, among other information — violated their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, and their Fifth Amendment right to privacy in their medical records.
The DOJ argued that the families lacked legal standing to oppose the subpoena because none of them directly received it — the subpoena was sent to hospital workers — and because the families challenged the subpoena after the DOJ’s deadline for patient information had passed.
But, because the subpoena sought “private medical records containing highly sensitive treatment” about children, U.S. District Judge Julie R. Rubin wrote in her ruling that the families had legal standing, both because the subpoena put an “undue burden” upon the families and because their children were relying on their parental guardians “to protect [their] interests because [they lack legal] capacity to act in self-protection.”
“This court joins the district courts around the country in finding that the Government’s Subpoena lacks a proper investigatory purpose under law; serves only to bolster the Executive’s policy objective of terminating access to gender affirming healthcare for adolescents; and has no plausible or coherent tether to its stated purpose,” Rubin wrote.
Last June, the DOJ sent subpoenas to 20 medical providers who offer gender-affirming care to trans youth. Under the pretense of investigating healthcare fraud, the DOJ demanded patients’ Social Security numbers, emails, home addresses, and information about the care they received.
The DOJ said that its subpoenas seek to prevent healthcare fraud and “off-label” use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat youth gender dysphoria, beyond the “on-label” uses approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The blockers and hormone treatments in question have been used safely on children for decades to treat precocious puberty and certain cancers, and off-label uses of these drugs for trans individuals have also occurred safely for decades without any additional federal government oversight.
However, Judge Rubin said that DOJ lawyers “failed to place before the court any information, record, or evidence” — such as an affidavit, complaint, or whistleblower statement — “supporting or pertaining to the investigation of the hospital for any health care offense.”
“The Government seeks to investigate how the Hospital treats its patients; specifically, in the context of gender-affirming patient care,” the judge wrote. But the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) that the DOJ cited in its investigatory subpoena “regulates commerce, not patient care,” the judge added. As such, the DOJ shouldn’t need such sensitive private medical information in order to investigate alleged healthcare fraud, the judge ruled.
“The court concludes the Subpoena was not issued for a legitimate governmental purpose, is not limited in scope to any legitimate purpose, and is oppressive in its breadth,” Judge Rubin wrote. “The court finds the Subpoena is a pretext to fulfill the Executive’s well-publicized policy objective to terminate and block gender affirming healthcare.”
“The Subpoena bears no credible connection to an investigation of any statutory violation by the Hospital,” Judge Rubin continued. “Rather, the Subpoena appears to have no purpose other than to intimidate and harass the Hospital and [the families], and those similarly situated. The Government seeks to fulfill its policy agenda through compliance born of fear. Moreover, in the view of the court, the Subpoena is the classic impermissible fishing expedition.”
While the judge applied her ruling only to the eight families that sued, her mention of the DOJ’s “fishing expedition” echoes a federal judge’s ruling last September that reached the same conclusion, as well as a similar ruling issued by another federal judge in November.
“Today’s ruling is a crucial victory for families and for the fundamental right to medical privacy,” said Donovan Bendana, Liman Law Fellow at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law) and counsel for the families. “The court saw through the government’s attempt to use its investigative powers as a weapon against families who are simply trying to access healthcare for their children. These families should never have been forced to go to court to protect their children’s private medical information from government intrusion. This decision makes clear the federal government does not have the authority to intimidate patients and doctors or to insert itself into private medical decisions. We are grateful the court stood up for these families and for the principle that all Americans have a right to make healthcare decisions without fear of government harassment.”
“When families fear their private health information could be exposed or used against them, they may delay or avoid seeking necessary medical care – putting children’s health and wellbeing at risk. The court’s decision protects not only the families who brought the case, but reinforces fundamental principles of medical privacy and limitations on government power that benefit all Americans,” said Jennifer Levi, Senior Director of Transgender and Queer Rights at GLAD Law.
“Parents of transgender adolescents want what every parent wants: to ensure their children get the medical care they need to be healthy and thrive,” said Eve Hill, Partner at Brown, Goldstein & Levy. “This ruling affirms that the government cannot intrude into the exam room or second-guess the medical decisions families make with their doctors.”
The administration’s “toxic” war on gender-affirming care
Though there is no federal law banning gender-affirming care, the current presidential administration has sought to eradicate the practice through a January executive order (that has since been blocked by several courts). The order instructed the DOJ to extend the time that patients and parents can sue gender-affirming doctors and to use laws against false advertising to prosecute any entity that may be misleading the public about the long-term effects of gender-affirming care.
In April, Bondi issued a memo to DOJ employees, telling them to investigate and prosecute cases of minors accessing gender-affirming care as female genital mutilation (FGM), even though hospitals don’t conduct such female genital surgeries. The memo threatened to jail doctors for 10 years if they provide gender-affirming care to young trans people.
Additionally, the DOJ sought information about the providers’ employees and their correspondence with pharmaceutical manufacturers, marketing departments, and sales representatives, as well as other sensitive information dating back to January 2020.
Fewer than 3,000 teens nationwide receive puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy, according to a 2025 JAMA analysis of private insurance data. Gender-affirming care is supported by all major medical associations in the U.S., including the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as safe and life-saving for young people with gender dysphoria.
One doctor interviewed by The Washington Post called the federal government’s crusade against gender-affirming care a “toxic plan” that will force some patients to detransition, potentially forcing them into adverse psychological and physical effects, including increased anxiety, depression, and the development of unwanted physical changes.
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