Appeals Court Refuses To Lift Judge Boasberg’s Block On Trump Deportations
With a 2-1 decision,the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has denied President Donald Trump’s request to halt US District Judge James Boasberg’s decision that blocked his proclamation applying the Alien Enemies Act to support deportations of suspected members of a Venezuelan gang.
The Justice Department had urged the three-judge panel on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to immediately block Boasberg’s order, casting it as an intrusion on the president’s executive authority over national security.
Judges Karen Henderson and Patricia Millett opposed the administration’s request while Judge Justin Walker dissented.
“the Executive’s burdens are comparatively modest compared to the plaintiffs’. Lifting the injunctions risks exiling plaintiffs to a land that is not their country of origin.”
Millett, meanwhile, praised the district court’s handling of the case and said:
“there is neither jurisdiction nor reason for this court to interfere at this very preliminary stage or to allow the government to singlehandedly moot the Plaintiffs’ claims by immediately removing them beyond the reach of their lawyers or the court.”
Walker’s dissent stated that:
“the government has … shown that the district court’s orders threaten irreparable harm to delicate negotiations with foreign powers on matters concerning national security.”
Republicans have criticized Boasberg as allegedly overstepping his power by questioning President Donald Trump’s national security authority.
The Trump administration could now seek emergency review from the Supreme Court, but the case is meanwhile progressing in Boasberg’s court.
Unions representing federal workers can sue the Trump administration over its mass terminations, as opposed to being restricted to bringing challenges to federal labor boards, a judge said on March 24.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said that the boards would not be able to adjudicate the unions’ claims that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) violated the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.
“In sum, but for district court jurisdiction, the public-sector unions will be precluded from judicial recourse and relief even for their separation-of-powers claim,” Alsup said in the ruling.
The American Federation of Government Employees and other unions sued the administration in February over OPM directives sent to agency heads, which aimed to further President Donald Trump’s goal of reducing the federal workforce and said agencies should fire newer employees who were not deemed critical to the mission of each agency.
Alsup concluded on Feb. 27 that OPM lacked authority to hire or fire any employees outside of the office but also ruled that while he had jurisdiction over newly fired workers, unions must take their complaints to federal labor boards rather than the courts.
In the new order, Alsup said he was wrong, breaking from three recent rulings in other cases.
The claims brought by the unions, including that OPM violated the separation of powers by directing other agencies to terminate their employees, are standard constitutional law questions that are considered by the courts, the judge said.
The expertise of the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board would not help resolve the claims that revolve around OPM’s authority and do not directly implicate the Civil Service Reform Act, which outlines the system for reviewing terminations and other personnel action against federal employees, according to the ruling.
Three other U.S. district judges have found that similar cases should go before a federal board, but those cases are different in part because they challenged separate aspects of the mass terminations, such as Trump’s order to agencies to carry out firings through plans called reductions-in-force, Alsup said.
The judge ordered parties in the case, including the government, to file responses to his order by March 28.
The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, plaintiffs in the case, did not respond to requests for comment. The U.S. Department of Justice did not return an inquiry.
Alsup and another judge recently ordered the government to reinstate nearly 25,000 newer workers whom officials had fired across 18 agencies. An appeals court upheld Alsup’s order, prompting the administration to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices have not yet weighed in on the matter.
Trump Vows To Probe Ashli Babbitt Homicide, Consider Comp Fund For Pardoned J6ers
President Trump on Tuesday vowed that he would bring new scrutiny to the Department of Justice’s handling of the killing of Ashli Babbitt by a Capitol police officer during the Jan 6, 2021 riot, and to explore the possibility of a compensation fund for the 1,500 Capitol riot defendants he pardoned.
Trump’s promises came in a Roosevelt Room interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly. When Kelly asked Trump about the DOJ continuing to mount a defense against a $30 million wrongful death claim filed by Babbitt’s husband, Trump said he wasn’t aware of it but would look into the matter:
“Well, I’ll look into that. I mean, you’re just telling me that for the first time, I haven’t heard that. I’m a big fan of Ashli Babbitt. And Ashli Babbitt was a really good person who was a big MAGA fan, Trump fan. And she was innocently standing there; they even say trying to sort of hold back the crowd. And a man did something to her that was unthinkable when he shot her. And I think it’s a disgrace. I’m going to look into that. I did not know that.”
Babbitt was shot and killed by US Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Michael Byrd as she attempted to climb through a broken window that was part of an interior doorway close to the House chamber. Though the unarmed, 5’2″, 115-pound Babbitt posed no imminent threat of inflicting death or serious injury as she awkwardly navigated the narrow space — with a furniture barricade still ahead of her — Boyd opted against using any type of nonlethal force, and instead shot her from an ambush position, killing her with a bullet that perforated her trachea and lung.
Despite the damning facts of the case, leftists in and out of media have treated Byrd as a hero for fending off a nonexistent “insurrection.” He was not only officially cleared of wrongdoing, but promoted to the rank of captain in 2023. In Tuesday’s interview, Kelly also asked Trump how he felt about Byrd still being on duty, with a pay raise and higher rank. The president replied:
“I think it’s a disgrace. I’m going to take a look at it. I’m going to look at that, too. His reputation was … I won’t even say; let’s find out about his reputation. We’re going to find out. But I watched that and I saw that. And by the way, she was killed, but nobody else was killed.”
Noting that the 1,500 Jan 6 defendants pardoned by Trump had “lost opportunity, lost income,” Kelly asked Trump if there was any plan in the works to compensate Jan 6ers for their excessively harsh treatment. “There’s talk about that,” said Trump. “A lot of the people that are in the government now talk about it, because a lot of the people in government really like that group of people. They were patriots as far as I was concerned…they were treated very unfairly.”
President Trump addresses the latest on the case of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter who was shot and killed at the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, rips the police shooting, the overall treatment of now-pardoned defendants, and the actions of the former House J6 select committee. pic.twitter.com/kPXPyGVuJT
Analyst and financial writer John Rubino warned last October that “Chaos is Coming.”
With exploding Tesla dealerships, mass deportations of violent gangs, DOGE uncovering massive fraud and waste, and an out-of-control Leftist judiciary trying to stop President Trump at every turn, you could say chaos is here.
“We are finding out that the federal government is a big money laundering operation. There are so many different ways and so many different avenues that take cash from taxpayers or newly created cash . . . and it basically funnels it to political operatives, political class and the ‘expert’ class all around the world…
We have created this class of people who are effectively grifters . . . because they don’t do anything worthwhile at all. Do you think that think-tanks produce anything of value, or lobbyists or Washington law firms or regulators? The regulator is basically on a long job interview for the company you are regulating.
You prove you are a team player and then Pfizer hires you for 10 times your FDA salary. So, everywhere you look it’s a form of money laundering.”
So, now interest payments are spiraling to infinity with massive amounts of debt and currency creation. Rubino says, “We have hit the death spiral point for the dollar and the other big fiat currencies, which means the cost to maintain this debt starts to spiral out of control and people lose faith in the currency or the currency collapses or you have a currency reset…”
” What is really interesting about the Trump Administration is it contains a lot of gold bugs…
There is a decent chance of instead of having this gigantic collapse because the dollar is basically evaporating, that this government will be smart enough to do the monetary reset. Go back to a gold standard . . . go back to some sort of commodity base standard where we peg the dollar to something that is real and cannot be created in infinite quantities on a printing press. It could be we do that without insane amounts of pain and stress, but it would still be painful. Anybody who has dollars will watch those dollars be devalued dramatically.”
In this scenario, the dollar sinks in value. What happens to gold? Rubino says,
“Everybody who runs the numbers says gold has to be $10,000 per ounce at a minimum and maybe much higher. Gold has to go way up in price in a currency reset. . . . So, your gold becomes much more valuable, and your silver gets pulled along by gold and goes up by some multiple of gold’s percentage gains. If gold goes up three times, silver will go up five to ten times.”
Rubino thinks Europe is headed for war with Russia or civil war. Either way, the Euro will not survive. Rubino says the domestic violence will continue here in America but thinks the Deep State won’t stop President Trump’s agenda. Rubino also says everybody should concentrate on owning real things such as farm land, gold, silver and a good vehicle. Rubino also says some emergency food and a garden are good ideas too.
There is much more in the 58-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with financial writer John Rubino of the popular site called Rubino.Substack.com for 3.25.25.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, is pushing a plan to ban pharmaceutical ads from television. He’s right to push for it—and not just because the U.S. is one of only two countries on earth that allows such advertising (the other being New Zealand).
America’s health system isn’t just flawed; it’s harming public health, distorting journalism, and fueling Big Pharma’s malignant influence over our daily lives.
Let’s start with the obvious: TV drug ads aren’t designed to inform—they’re designed to manipulate. The formula is always the same. Cue soft lighting and sappy piano music. A sad, listless person pops a pill and suddenly life is vibrant again. They’re running through fields, laughing with family, walking dogs across idyllic bridges.
Then, in a breathless voiceover, the side effects come tumbling out like a legal disclaimer roulette wheel—stroke, heart failure, suicidal thoughts. The goal? Make viewers want a drug before they even talk to their doctor. It’s emotional coercion dressed up as health education.
This completely inverts how medicine is supposed to work. Health care decisions should be made inside the exam room, not in a 60-second marketing spot. Patients should go to their doctors with symptoms, and those doctors—armed with clinical training and knowledge of the patient’s full health profile—should decide whether a drug is even necessary.
Many issues could be better addressed through lifestyle changes, diet, supplements, or preventative care. But instead, America has normalized a pill-for-everything culture, supercharged by the fact that doctors are often nudged by patients demanding whatever drug they saw advertised last night during a commercial break.
This isn’t just bad medicine—it’s dangerous. And it’s no accident.
Big Pharma isn’t spending billions on advertising because it cares about your health. It’s doing it because the return on investment is enormous. Studies estimate the ROI on direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug ads ranges from 100% to 500%, depending on the drug. In 2025 alone, pharmaceutical companies are projected to spend over $5 billion on national linear TV ads, according to iSpot.tv. That number balloons even higher when you include digital and streaming. Just a handful of blockbuster drugs—like Skyrizi, Jardiance, and Ozempic—are burning through tens of millions in TV ads every month.
This revenue isn’t just padding Big Pharma’s pockets—it’s quietly buying influence in the media. Nearly 31% of ad minutes on major nightly news broadcasts in 2024 came from pharmaceutical brands. That means a huge portion of media budgets depend on the very companies they should be holding accountable. And surprise, surprise: when Big Pharma misleads the public, many news outlets are either silent or hesitant to report critically. The financial conflict of interest is baked in.
We saw the worst-case version of this during the COVID-19 pandemic. The novel mRNA shots—rushed to market under emergency use—were sold to the public as miracle solutions. Government officials and media outlets claimed these vaccines would “stop infection,” “prevent death entirely,” and “end the pandemic.” Younger, healthy individuals were told they needed them for everyone’s safety, despite already low statistical risk. None of these claims held up. As the data evolved, we learned the vaccines offered some reduction in severe disease, but not sterilizing immunity. Yet the media rarely corrected course.
Why would they? Pharma ads were paying the bills. Meanwhile, federal workers were mandated—and many private sector employees coerced—into getting injections under false pretenses. Billions of dollars flowed to Big Pharma. The American public was misled.
This pattern of deception is not new. Pfizer alone has paid billions in legal penalties over the years for unethical marketing, off-label promotion, and other violations. The most infamous: a $2.3 billion settlement in 2009—the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history at the time. Yet companies like Pfizer, AbbVie, and Johnson & Johnson still enjoy a polished image on TV, thanks in part to relentless ad spending and regulatory leniency.
RFK Jr.’s plan, while legally uphill, is not without precedent. In 1970, President Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, which banned tobacco ads from TV and radio. Cigarettes were legal, yet too dangerous to promote on air. The same principle should apply here. Just because a drug is FDA-approved doesn’t mean it should be marketed like soda. Approval doesn’t equal infallibility—just ask anyone who took Vioxx or OxyContin.
Critics, including the Wall Street Journal, have framed RFK’s proposal as a personal vendetta. That’s both lazy and misleading. In reality, there’s wide bipartisan and public support for reining in pharma ads. The American Medical Association called for a ban back in 2015. A STAT/Harvard poll found that 57% of Americans support banning TV drug ads. Even hosts on CNBC—hardly anti-business—agreed the ads are unnecessary. “Don’t you think doctors should prescribe it if you need it?” asked Joe Kernen. Exactly.
The pharmaceutical industry’s defenders like to invoke the First Amendment, claiming that banning ads would be unconstitutional. But commercial speech does not enjoy absolute protection. Under the Central Hudson test, the government can regulate ads if it has a substantial interest, the regulation directly advances that interest, and the restriction is narrowly tailored. Protecting public health from misleading pharmaceutical marketing clears all three hurdles. Even if a full ban doesn’t survive, tighter restrictions—like banning ads for certain drug classes, or requiring full price transparency—could pass muster.
More importantly, even the threat of a ban could pressure drugmakers to change course voluntarily. They did it before in 2008, when criticism led to updated self-regulatory guidelines. If Kennedy’s push forces them to rethink their practices, that alone is a win.
Pharma companies will no doubt fight this tooth and nail. But that’s not a reason to back down—it’s a reason to press harder. We’ve allowed an industry with an immense profit motive to shape our health decisions for too long. The result? A country drowning in prescriptions, mired in chronic disease, and confused about who to trust.
Enough is enough. RFK Jr.’s proposal to kick drug ads off TV isn’t radical—it’s responsible. And it’s long overdue.
Four Missing US Army Troops In Lithuania Found Dead: NATO
An unusual and alrming headline is emerging out Europe, as a major search was underway since yesterday for four US Army soldiers who had gone missing in Lithuania. The Associated Press in a breaking headline is now reporting they are dead:
NATO CHIEF SAYS 4 MISSING US SOLDIERS WERE KILLED: AP
The incident of the missing personnel and military search operation was first reported by Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT and subsequently picked up in European media. They first disappeared on Tuesday, along with a military vehicle, and belonged to the US Army’s 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division.
“A possible scene has now been identified, and a search and rescue operation is underway,” the Lithuanian military said in a statement hours prior to the announcement of their deaths.
The troops had been undergoing tactical training at the time the went missing. According to The Guardian:
The Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT reported that four US soldiers and a vehicle were reported missing on Tuesday afternoon during an exercise at the General Silvestras Žukauskas training ground in Pabradė, a town located less than 10km (6 miles) from the border with Belarus.
The Belarus angle and the proximity of the border could be alarming, given the US essentially considers it an ‘enemy’ state given its support to the Russian side of the Ukraine war.
“A search operation is currently under way, involving military personnel, rescue services, and firefighters. Lithuanian police also have launched an investigation,” US state-funded RFERL writes. According to further statements and details:
Lithuanian officials have given few details, with Gintautas Ciunis, a military spokesman, confirming only that “these are foreign soldiers.”
US Army Europe and Africa on March 26 confirmed that the soldiers had gone missing, saying in a statement that they were “conducting scheduled tactical training at the time of the incident.”
“I would like to personally thank the Lithuanian Armed Forces and first responders who quickly came to our aid in our search operations,” said Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, the V Corps commanding general.
US intelligence agencies have reaffirmed that there’s no evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons or that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has reversed his 2003 fatwah that banned the production of weapons of mass destruction.
“The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
Gabbard’s comments were based on the annual threat assessment, which is released by the ODNI with input from all US intelligence agencies. The report did note that there have been more calls inside Iran to reverse the ban on nuclear weapons, which have grown in response to Israeli aggression in the region.
“In the past year, there has been an erosion of a decades-long taboo on discussing nuclear weapons in public that has emboldened nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus,” the report reads.
“Khamenei remains the final decision maker over Iran’s nuclear program, to include any decision to develop nuclear weapons,” it notes.
The threat assessment comes amid increasing US sanctions and threats of military action over Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian officials have rejected the idea of talks with the US in the face of President Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign,” but have said the door is open for indirect negotiations.
The hype over Iran’s nuclear program revolves around the enrichment of some uranium at 60%, the highest level Iran has achieved but still lower than the 90% needed for weapons-grade. Iran first took the step to enrich at 60% in response to a 2021 Israeli sabotage attack against its Natanz nuclear facility, which was meant to sabotage talks between the Biden administration and Tehran.
Iran is still a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it won’t enrich uranium beyond the 60% level.
Still, more of this alarmism is coming out…
BREAKING: “Iran has reduced the time required to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear device from 10-15 days to presumably less than one week.” — U.S. STRATCOM
Amid increasing US and Israeli threats about its nuclear program, Iran has recently pointed out that Israel has a secret nuclear weapons stockpile, and its nuclear program is not subject to IAEA inspections since Israel is not a signatory to the NPT.
Nintendo Shares Jump After Goldman Sees Switch 2 Unlocking Dormant Users
Nintendo shares in Tokyo posted their biggest gain in months after Goldman analysts Minami Munakata and Haruki Kubota resumed coverage of 11 Japanese companies in the games, entertainment, and internet sector. The analysts noted that “the global games market re-entered a growth phase since 2024” and forecasted “the number of active consoles to continue renewing fresh highs globally from 2025.”
Munakata expects the near-term rollout of Nintendo Switch 2 (the successor to the Nintendo Switch) will “unlock dormant hardware and dormant users” and send “the number of active consoles to continue to renew record highs.”
“Nintendo plans to launch the Switch 2 in 2025, with details due to be announced on April 2,” the analyst said, adding the reason for increased demand for Switch 2 is because of its “unique feature” that allows “and friends to play games together in person either as a home console or as a portable console.”
Tune in tomorrow, March 27th, at 7 a.m. PT for a livestreamed #NintendoDirect, featuring around 30 minutes of upcoming games for Nintendo Switch. There will be no updates about Nintendo Switch 2 during this presentation.
10 best-selling Nintendo Switch first-party titles as of Dec 2024
Munakata also pointed out that the global games industry entered into a growth phase in 2024:
Munakata reinstated coverage of Nintendo with a buy rating and a 12-month price target of ¥13,600, representing a 26% upside from Tuesday’s close. Shares in Tokyo closed up 5%.
It all comes down to console growth—which is the main reason why Munakata is bullish on gaming stocks, including both platform providers and publishers:
Among game platformers, we recommend Sony Group (Buy), which has unique entertainment drivers such as anime streaming platform Crunchyroll in addition to its games business, and Nintendo (Buy), for which we expect a further expansion of the active user base after the launch of the Switch 2. We see scope for valuations at both to rise as the market prices in their robust fundamentals amid a supportive games market environment.
Among game publishers, we are Buy-rated on Bandai Namco, Capcom and Konami as beneficiaries of the favorable market environment for console + PC games, and are Sell-rated on Square Enix and Nexon, for which we consider valuations stretched amid our outlook for earnings momentum to slow.
We are Neutral on Oriental Land, which operates physical entertainment businesses, and on three internet sector stocks (Recruit Holdings, CyberAgent and LY Corp) in light of the market climate and limited upside/fair valuation.
Separately, the release of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto VI later this year is expected to provide additional tailwinds for the gaming industry, which had been stuck in a rut for years but appears to have entered a renewed growth trajectory in 2024.
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s stellar 2Y auction, moments ago the Treasury sold $70BN in 5 year paper in an auction which may not have been quite as impressive at first sight, but which was nonetheless just as solid when taking a closer look below the surface.
The auction stopped at a high yield of 4.100%, down from 4.123% last month and the lowest since September; however, it also tailed the When Issued 4.095% by 0.5bps, the first tailing 5Y auction since October.
The bid to cover was also a bit on the light side, sliding from 2.42 in February to 2.33, the lowest since May 2024.
But this is where the weakness ended, because the internals were probably the strongest since middle 2024: Indirects were awarded 75.84%, the highest since October and well above the six auction average of 69.3%. And with Directs dropping to just 10.97%, which was the lowest since last October, and well below the 18.9% recent average. This left 13.2% to Dealers, up from 10.6% in February and the highest since, you guessed it, October.
Overall, the optics of the auction were not very strong – despite the stellar foreign demand – and the market reacted accordingly,pushing the 10Y yield higher by about 1bp near session highs on the break. Which is notable because the stock market is dumping and one would expect a rotation out of equities and into rates, but we are certainly not seeing that today.
Stocks Sink As White House Confirms President Trump To Announce Auto Tariffs This Afternoon
Update (1315ET): White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt just confirmed that President Trump will hold a press conference at 4pmET today to announce auto tariffs.
The level and scope of the auto tariffs are not clear, including what, if any, exemptions would be included or considered.
It’s also unclear if the tariffs would go into effect immediately or over time, and whether they would hit finished vehicles or also auto parts.
* * *
Following President Trump’s comments earlier in the week that he would detail the scale of auto levies in the coming days, Bloomberg reports that – citing the usual people familiar with the matter – the Trump administration is readying an announcement on auto tariffs as soon as today.
Bloomberg adds that the people shared the timing of the expected announcement on condition of anonymity, to discuss plans not yet made public.
One of the people, though, cautioned that the president’s plans could still shift.
This is a move that would escalate Trump’s fight with global trading partners ahead of a broader tariff push next week.
The broad market was already lower but accelerated on the report…
Treasury yields also sank…
The president has said the levies will help spur growth in the domestic auto sector and force companies to move more production to the US.
The move risks disrupting operations for North American automakers, who rely on highly integrated chains across the US, Mexico and Canada; and Ford and GM shares are falling on the report.
Minutes after Bloomberg’s report, the following headlines hit:
*GM CEO MARY BARRA TO MEET TRUMP ADMIN. OVER TARIFFS: FREE PRESS
*FORD CHAIR BILL FORD TO MEET TRUMP ADMIN THIS WEEK: FREE PRESS
The level and scope of the auto tariffs are not clear, including what, if any, exemptions would be included or considered. It’s also unclear if the tariffs would go into effect immediately or over time.
