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Trump Judge’s Controversial Injunction Against Biden Hands Disney ‘Open and Shut’ Case Against DeSantis: Legal Expert
A highly-controversial injunction against the Biden administration from a Trump-appointed federal judge could mean Disney’s First Amendment lawsuit against Florida GOP governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is a “solid” and “open and shut” case, according to a top law professor and civil rights attorney.
On July 4, the Chief U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Louisiana, Terry Doughty, blocked the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among other federal entities, from working with social media companies to combat posts on a wide range of topics, from child pornography to election, COVID, and vaccine misinformation.
The Washington Post reports the injunction bars “key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies about ‘protected speech,’ in an extraordinary preliminary injunction in an ongoing case that could have profound effects on the First Amendment.” It comes in response to a lawsuit from Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri.
“The Donald Trump-appointed judge’s move could undo years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies. For more than a decade, the federal government has attempted to work with social media companies to address criminal activity, including child sexual abuse images and terrorism,” the Post reports.
READ MORE: Trump Unleashes Another Call for Americans to Come Out and ‘Protest’
“The injunction is strikingly broad and clearly intended to chill any kind of contact between government actors and social media platforms,” Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School, told the Post.
In December of 2021, as deaths from COVID-19 hit 800,000 in the U.S., ahead of an expected post-holiday spike, Judge Doughty blocked President Biden’s mandate requiring healthcare workers be vaccinated against the deadly disease. To do so, the judge cited “the claims of a doctor who falsely said that the Covid-19 vaccine was not effective in preventing transmission of the disease,” as CNN reported.
Last year, Judge Doughty blocked President Biden’s vaccine mandate requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for workers at Head Start programs, which help children 3-5 years of age, and their families. Studies show a majority of families that contracted COVID did so via children. One study, published by the University of Minnesota, “suggests that 70.4% of nearly 850,000 US household COVID-19 transmissions originated with a child.” It also found younger children “more likely to spread” the virus.
Judge Doughty’s injunction blocking the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies is being widely criticized.
“It engages in dangerous censorship in the name of fighting censorship. It must be challenged in the name of the First Amendment. No competent lawyer could defend it. And the states that won this relief lack Article III standing anyway!” writes University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, Laurence Tribe, the noted constitutional scholar.
“Censoring a broad swath of vital communications between government and social media platforms in the name of combating censorship makes a mockery of the first amendment,” he adds, and calls it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Former FBI Counterintelligence Deputy Assistant Director Pete Strzok calls Judge Doughty’s injunction “an ourobouros of conspiracy clusterfuckery,” with “the judge adding himself – and his office – to the narrative.”
“The transcripts of the government deponents in the case,” he adds, “feature a walking QAnon DeepState conspiracy-fest by some of the plaintiff’s attorneys.”
Meanwhile, civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, the former President and Director-Counsel of NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), a Senior Fellow at the Ford Foundation, and a professor of law at Howard University, sees one bright spot in. The injunction could be a boon for The Walt Disney Company.
Disney is suing DeSantis, alleging the company’s First Amendment free speech rights were violated as the Florida governor repeatedly attacked and retaliated against the entertainment giant, ultimately rescinding its 50-year old “independent special district” tax and governing status after the company quietly opposed and then spoke out against his extreme “Don’t Say Gay” law.
“The evidence cited by the judge doesn’t add up to govt [government] censorship,” Ifill writes on Twitter, about the social media injunction.
“I hope that Disney is reading the decision carefully,” she adds. “Cause by this analysis they have a solid First Amend[ment] claim against Ron DeSantis. Open & shut.”
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
