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“Retaliation and intimidation against public servants doing their jobs will not be tolerated.” The Cuyahoga County Council this week unanimously approved a $400,000 settlement with Georgeanna Semary, a court worker who provided documents to The Marshall Project following a public records request. Semary claimed that she was demoted because she had provided TMP with invoices suggesting a conflict of interest between a local judge and receiver. She sued. TMP’s Mark Puente continues our coverage of this story. The Marshall Project TMP Context: Some of our prior coverage of Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze’s legal troubles. The Marshall Project

“It is profoundly un-American.” President Donald Trump acted illegally when federalizing the California National Guard, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday, handing control of Guard members back to Gov. Gavin Newsom. CalMatters U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer held that the Trump administration’s "argument for a president to hold unchecked power to control state troops would wholly upend the federalism that is at the heart of our system of government." NPR Trump administration officials say they’ll appeal the ruling. The Associated Press Related: Read the ruling. U.S. District Court, Northern District of California

More evidence that Trump’s immigration agents aren’t just targeting noncitizens. Congressional investigators confirm what many have seen with their own eyes: U.S. citizens have been detained and mistreated by federal immigration agents in cities and towns across the country. ProPublica Federal judges across the country say conditions inside immigration detention facilities fail to meet constitutional standards. In one instance, a judge ruled that a New York man was treated with “deliberate indifference” by federal officials. The New York Times Federal judges around the U.S. also have agreed that the administration’s mandatory detention policy for immigrants facing deportation is unconstitutional. The Washington Post

Goodbye to the disparate impact analysis. The Justice Department takes a step to kill a civil rights provision that allows statistical disparities to be used as evidence of racial discrimination. The Washington Post And say goodbye to whatever protection transgender federal prisoners had from being raped or sexually harassed behind bars. Bloomberg TMP Context: Transgender prisoners “fear for their lives.” The Marshall Project More: The DOJ is investigating Colorado prisons as a way to try to free Trump ally TIna Peters from a state prison there. She is serving a nine-year sentence for election interference-related charges. The New Republic

Immigration nation. ICE arrests of Afghans, including those who are U.S. citizens, have risen since the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., last month. The Associated Press So far, state and federal judges have upheld Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s authoritarian push to investigate and intimidate nonprofit immigration advocacy groups. The Texas Tribune Federal immigration agents in Minnesota arrested a U.S. citizen (and cut off her wedding ring) after she confronted them while they were arresting three neighbors this week. MPR Federal immigration agents now concede that 400 children were detained this summer for longer than the law allows, locked away in dirty, dangerous conditions. The Associated Press

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument on Wednesday in an Alabama case about an exception to the death penalty for prisoners deemed too “intellectually disabled” to be executed. SCOTUSBlog The state wants to make it easier to execute people with such cognitive impairment. The Associated Press Related: Read the transcript of today’s argument. U.S. Supreme Court TMP Context: Remembering the Corey Williams case. The Marshall Project

Youths consigned to spending time in adult prisons in Connecticut suffer from long periods of isolation, few programs and little mental health care, says a new state report. CT Mirror TMP Context: When your 18th birthday gift is a transfer to adult prison. The Marshall Project

A year in the life of Illinois’ Massey Commission, a police reform initiative named after Sonya Massey, who was fatally shot in her own home by a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy. Commission members worked diligently, fought occasionally, overcame obstacles from police officials and others, and ended up making state law a little more fair and reasonable. Bolts

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, recently encouraged his constituents to follow the social media accounts of a writer who rejects “race-mixing” and who has contributed to a white supremacist publication. Westword

In Massachusetts, Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins is accepting political donations to help pay for the lawyers representing him in a federal case in which he’s accused of extorting a cannabis company. WBUR

“This is the way a fascist talks” and this is the way a fascist audience responds. Trump’s relentless attacks on Somali Americans are a textbook example: “vilifying an ethnic minority, blaming them collectively for crimes, rallying crowds against them, and wielding state power against them.” The Bulwark

Lessons about autocrats from reading Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel. “The new haters offer nothing original. Their malevolence, prejudices, and paranoia are outdated, obsolete, and even ancient, but in an evolutionary stage of predation, they’ve adapted to modern terrain.” Washington Monthly We must prosecute those Trump administration officials committing crimes in plain sight. Lincoln Square

How not to appoint a U.S. attorney. “The Justice Department’s conduct in the Habba case might be understood as the inverse of how legalistic noncompliance conceals disregard for the courts: Here, the government is complying, but in a posture of opposition that seeks to obscure to the public that the administration is actually doing what the judiciary requires.” The Atlantic

The Justice Department tries an aggressive new approach in charging members of the transnational “Nihilistic Violent Extremist” movement. “By deploying a statute traditionally reserved for international terrorism, or more recently, other types of domestic terrorists, the DOJ has signaled that NVE networks … are terrorist enterprises. They are engaged in organized campaigns of violence and coercion designed to terrorize, destabilize, and degrade society to the point of total collapse.” Just Security

The First Amendment, the Catholic Church and a Nativity display in Boston. Archbishop Richard Henning has been a vocal proponent of helping immigrants withstand the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign. But now he says an anti-ICE display at a church in Dedham should be removed. The Boston Globe

An administration in conflict with itself over alleged war crimes. The Pentagon wanted to send survivors of an October missile strike on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean to a notorious Salvadoran prison. The State Department rejected the idea and the men were repatriated instead to Ecuador and Colombia, their home countries. The New York Times

Has a selective prosecution run aground? Justice Department officials conceded this week that there are legal obstacles that may prevent them from reindicting former FBI Director James Comey on a retaliatory false-statement charge. The Washington Post More: A federal judge in New York has approved the release of grand jury records from the 2019 Jeffrey Epstein case. NBC News

A different form of misogyny. ICE officials are violating their own policies by mistreating pregnant women in immigration detention. Slate Torture techniques were reportedly used on immigration detainees at the “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in the Florida Everglades. Forever Wars More: For the first time, the U.S. voted against a United Nations resolution opposing torture. Just Security

“Even in this place, I’m still alive, and I still [have] opportunities to do things better.” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and his wife, MK Pritzker, visited the Pope in Rome last month. They gave Leo XIV a handmade self-portrait done by Yesenia Diaz, a prisoner who created the work as part of an “Art Is Healing” program. Diaz is scheduled to be released in 2041. WBEZ

The need for bail reform, set to music. Robe Imbriano’s powerful new short film, “Criminal,” is an animated musical documentary that shines light on dire conditions inside the jail in Harris County, Texas, a place marked by understaffing, overcrowding and a lack of due process for pretrial detainees. Deadline