Federal immigration judges fired by the Trump administration are filing appeals, pursuing legal action and speaking out in an unusually public campaign to fight back.

More than 50 immigration judges — from senior leaders to new appointees — have been fired since Donald Trump assumed the presidency for the second time. Normally bound by courtroom decorum, many are now unrestrained in describing terminations they consider unlawful and why they believe they were targeted.

Their suspected reasons include gender discrimination, decisions on immigration cases played up by the Trump administration and a courthouse tour with the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat.

“I cared about my job and was really good at it,” Jennifer Peyton, a former supervising judge told The Associated Press this week. “That letter that I received, the three sentences, explained no reason why I was fired.”

Peyton, who received the notice while on a July Fourth family vacation, was appointed judge in 2016. She considered it her dream job. Peyton was later named assistant chief immigration judge in Chicago, helping to train, mentor and oversee judges. She was a visible presence in the busy downtown court, greeting outside observers.

She cited top-notch performance reviews and said she faced no disciplinary action. Peyton said she’ll appeal through the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent government agency Trump has also targeted.

Peyton’s theories about why she was fired include appearing on a “bureaucrat watchdog list” of people accused by a right-wing organization of working against the Trump agenda. She also questions a courthouse tour she gave to Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois in June.

Durbin blasted Peyton’s termination as an “abuse of power,” saying he’s visited before as part of his duties as a publicly-elected official.

The nation’s immigration courts — with a backlog of about 3.5 million cases — have become a key focus of Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement efforts. The firings are on top of resignations, early retirements and transfers, adding up to 106 judges gone since January, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents judges. There are currently about 600 immigration judges.

Several of those fired, including Peyton, have recently done a slew of interviews on local Chicago television stations and with national outlets, saying they now have a platform for their colleagues who remain on the bench.

“The ones that are left are feeling threatened and very uncertain about their future,” said Matt Biggs, the union’s president.

Carla Espinoza, a Chicago immigration judge since 2023, was fired as she was delivering a verdict this month. Her notice said she’d be dismissed at the end of her two-year probationary period with the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

A House subcommittee on Wednesday voted to subpoena the Department of Justice for files in the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein after Democrats successfully goaded GOP lawmakers to defy President Donald Trump and Republican leadership to support the action.

The vote showed the intensifying push for disclosures in the Epstein investigation even as House Speaker Mike Johnson — caught between demands from Trump and clamoring from his own members for the House to act — was sending lawmakers home a day early for its August recess. The House Committee on Oversight also issued a subpoena Wednesday for Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex offender and girlfriend of the late Epstein, to testify before committee officials in August.

Meanwhile, Democrats on a subcommittee of the powerful House Oversight Committee made a motion for the subpoena Wednesday afternoon. Three Republicans on the panel voted with Democrats for the subpoena, sending it through on an 8-2 vote tally.

The Republican subcommittee chairman, Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, said that work was beginning to draft the subpoena but did not give a timeline for when it would be issued.

“I’ve never handled a subpoena like this. This is some fascinating stuff,” said Higgins, who voted against the motion.

Democrats cheered the action as proof that their push for disclosures in the Epstein investigation was growing stronger. The committee agreed to redact information on victims, yet Democrats successfully blocked a push by Republicans to only subpoena information that was deemed to be “credible” — language that Trump has also used when discussing what he would support releasing.

“Democrats are focused on transparency and are pushing back against the corruption against Donald Trump. What is Donald Trump hiding that he won’t release the Epstein files?” said Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the oversight committee.

A Virginia man pleaded guilty Friday in a federal case that accused him of stockpiling the largest number of finished explosives in FBI history and of using then-President Joe Biden’s photo for target practice.

Brad Spafford pleaded guilty in federal court in Norfolk to possession of an unregistered short barrel rifle and possession of an unregistered destructive device, according to court documents. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for December.

Federal authorities said they seized about 150 pipe bombs and other homemade devices last fall at Spafford’s home in Isle of Wight County, which is northwest of Norfolk.

The investigation into Spafford began in 2023 when an informant told authorities that Spafford was stockpiling weapons and ammunition, according to court documents. The informant, a friend and member of law enforcement, told authorities that Spafford was using pictures of then-President Joe Biden for target practice and that “he believed political assassinations should be brought back,” prosecutors wrote.

Two weeks after the assassination attempt of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2024, Spafford told the informant, “bro I hope the shooter doesn’t miss Kamala,” according to court documents. Former Vice President Kamala Harris had recently announced she was running for president. On around the same day, Spafford told the informant that he was pursuing a sniper qualification at the local gun range, court records stated.

Spafford stored a highly unstable explosive material in a garage freezer next to “Hot Pockets and frozen corn on the cob,” according to court documents. Investigators also said they found explosive devices in an unsecured backpack labeled “#NoLivesMatter.”

Spafford has remained in jail since his arrest last December. U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen ruled against his release last January, writing that Spafford has “shown the capacity for extreme danger.” She also noted that Spafford lost three fingers in an accident involving homemade explosives in 2021.

Spafford had initially pleaded not guilty to the charges in January. Defense attorneys had argued at the time that Spafford, who is married and a father of two young daughters, works a steady job as a machinist and has no criminal record.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Swartz said at Spafford’s January detention hearing that investigators had gathered information on him since January 2023, during which Spafford never threatened anyone.

“And what has he done during those two years?” Swartz said. “He purchased a home. He’s raised his children. He’s in a great marriage. He has a fantastic job, and those things all still exist for him.”

Investigators, however, said they had limited knowledge of the homemade bombs until an informant visited Spafford’s home, federal prosecutors wrote in a filing.

“But once the defendant stated on a recorded wire that he had an unstable primary explosive in the freezer in October 2024, the government moved swiftly,” prosecutors wrote.

House Republicans were grasping late Thursday to formulate a response to the Trump administration’s handling of records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, ultimately putting forward a resolution that carries no legal weight but nodded to the growing demand for greater transparency.

The House resolution, which could potentially be voted on next week, will do practically nothing to force the Justice Department to release more records in the case. Still, it showed how backlash from the Republican base is putting pressure on the Trump administration and roiling GOP lawmakers.

The House was held up for hours Thursday from final consideration of President Donald Trump’s request for about $9 billion in government funding cuts because GOP leaders were trying to respond to demands from their own ranks that they weigh in on the Epstein files. In the late evening they settled on the resolution as an attempt to simultaneously placate calls from the far-right for greater transparency and satisfy Trump, who has called the issue a “hoax” that his supporters should forget about.

Yet the House resolution was the latest demonstration of how practically no one is moving on from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s promises to publicly release documents related to Epstein. Since he was found dead in his New York jail cell in August 2019 following his arrest on sex trafficking charges, the well-connected financier has loomed large among conservatives and conspiracy theorists who have now lashed out at Trump and Bondi for declining to release more files in the case.

“The House Republicans are for transparency, and they’re looking for a way to say that they agree with the White House. We agree with the president. Everything he said about that, all the credible evidence should come out,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday afternoon.

Democrats vehemently decried the resolution’s lack of force. They have advanced their own legislation, with support from nine Republicans, that would require the Justice Department to release more information on the case.

Rep. Jim McGovern, who led the Democrats’ debate against the Republican resolution Thursday night, called it a “glorified press release” and “a fig leaf so they can move on from this issue.”

Under pressure from his own GOP members, Johnson had to demonstrate action on the Epstein files or risk having Republicans support the Democratic measures that would force the release of nearly all documents.

“The American people simply need to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a news conference. “Democrats didn’t put this into the public domain. The conspiracy theory provocateur-in-chief Donald Trump is the one, along with his extreme MAGA Republican associates, who put this whole thing into the public domain for years. And now they are reaping what they have sown.”

Still, Democrats, who hold minorities in both chambers, have relished the opportunity to make Republicans repeatedly block their attempts to force the Justice Department to release the documents.

Trump in recent years has suggested he would release more information about the investigation into Epstein, especially amid speculation over a supposed list of Epstein’s clients.

In February, the Justice Department released some government documents regarding the case, but there were no new revelations. After a months-long review of additional evidence, the department earlier this month released a video meant to prove that Epstein killed himself, but said no other files related to the case would be made public.

A White House spokeswoman said Thursday that Trump would not recommend a special counsel in the case. But later Thursday, the president said he had asked Bondi to seek the release of testimony from grand jury proceedings in the case.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs.

The justices overrode lower court orders that temporarily froze the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency.

The court said in an unsigned order that no specific cuts were in front of the justices, only an executive order issued by Trump and an administration directive for agencies to undertake job reductions.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenting vote, accusing her colleagues of a “demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.”

Jackson warned of enormous real-world consequences. “This executive action promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it,” she wrote.

The high court action continued a remarkable winning streak for Trump, who the justices have allowed to move forward with significant parts of his plan to remake the federal government. The Supreme Court’s intervention so far has been on the frequent emergency appeals the Justice Department has filed objecting to lower-court rulings as improperly intruding on presidential authority.

The Republican president has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate for the work, and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE. Musk recently left his role.

“Today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling is another definitive victory for the President and his administration. It clearly rebukes the continued assaults on the President’s constitutionally authorized executive powers by leftist judges who are trying to prevent the President from achieving government efficiency across the federal government,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.

In May, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trump’s administration needs congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce. By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block Illston’s order, finding that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nation’s food-safety system and health care for veterans.

Illston directed numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management. Illston was nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton.

The labor unions and nonprofit groups that sued over the downsizing offered the justices several examples of what would happen if it were allowed to take effect, including cuts of 40% to 50% at several agencies. Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco were among cities that also sued.

“Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy. This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution,” the parties that sued said in a joint statement.

Among the agencies affected by the order are the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, the Interior, State, the Treasury and Veterans Affairs. It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

A Georgia appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that said county election officials in the state must vote to certify results according to deadlines set in law.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney had ruled in October that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Republican Fulton County election board member Julie Adams, who abstained from certifying primary election results last year.

A three-judge panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals last week upheld McBurney’s ruling, saying “Adams’ contention that the trial court erred by declaring she had a mandatory duty to certify election results is without merit.”

Certification, an administrative task that involves certifying the number of votes, became a political flashpoint when President Donald Trump tried to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 general election. Republicans in several swing states refused to certify results during primary elections last year, and some sued to try to keep from being forced to sign off on election results.

In the run-up to last year’s presidential election, Democrats and some voting rights groups worried that Trump-allied election officials could refuse to certify election results if he were to lose to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump ended up beating Harris.

Georgia law says county election superintendents, which are generally multimember boards, shall certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election, or the Tuesday after if Monday is a holiday.

McBurney had written in his order that Georgia law allows county election officials to examine whether fraud has occurred and what should be done about it. They should share any concerns with the appropriate authorities for criminal prosecution or use them to file an election challenge in court, but cannot use their concerns to justify not certifying results, the judge wrote.

The Court of Appeals opinion echoed McBurney’s ruling.

The appeals court also noted that state law limits county election officials’ review of documents to instances when the total number of votes exceeds the total number of voters or ballots and also limits the review to documents related to the relevant precinct. To the extent that McBurney’s ruling allows a more expansive review, the judges sent it back to him for reconsideration.