Wednesday, June 24 — the courtroom as last resort

0:00 Today was a day of judges saying no. No to the Pentagon weaponizing its own contracts against an AI company that refused to build killing machines.

0:11 No to the Justice Department demanding the medical records of transgender kids.

0:17 And no to a USDA ban on soda and candy for low-income families — a policy the court found the agency simply didn't have the authority to write. Let's start with the Pentagon.

0:29 The story of Anthropic, the AI company behind the assistant Claude, is a microcosm of where Project 2025 is taking the military.

0:40 Last year, the Pentagon gave Anthropic a 200-million-dollar contract, billed as a milestone for responsible AI in defense. By March, that contract was dead. The reason?

0:53 Anthropic refused to remove its own policy barring use of its models for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.

1:02 The Pentagon retaliated by slapping Anthropic with a supply-chain risk designation — the same tool normally used against foreign adversaries. The message is clear: if you are a U.S.

1:15 company and you say no to an illegal order, you lose. No ethical guardrails allowed. That ruling — by a judge in Washington, D.C.

1:26 — Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from letting states ban SNAP recipients from buying soda and candy. Judge Amy Berman Jackson found the USDA simply lacked the legal authority to approve those waivers.

1:42 The ruling halts the policy in five states, and underscores a pattern: this administration keeps trying to rewrite SNAP through executive action rather than legislation.

1:55 Meanwhile, a federal judge in New York blocked the Justice Department — acting under Attorney General Pam Bondi — from enforcing criminal grand jury subpoenas against NYU Langone and other New York providers for the medical records of transgender youth.

2:13 Judge Katherine Polk Failla found the subpoenas likely violate the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. This is not a routine discovery request.

2:23 It is a campaign — straight out of Project 2025 — to criminalize gender-affirming care and intimidate doctors who follow state law. The court drew a line.

2:36 Then there was a big win for due process in the immigration system. On June 23, a federal judge in California vacated Trump-era policies that allowed ICE to arrest people at or inside courthouses without a warrant.

2:52 Judge P. Casey Pitts found the policies arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.

3:01 The ruling restores an earlier standard: if ICE wants to arrest someone at a courthouse, they need a warrant or an exigent circumstance. It is a check on the administration's policy of using courthouses as traps.

3:16 And on June 20, a judge ordered DHS to return a 20-year-old Honduran man who had no criminal record and was deported despite pending legal proceedings — calling his removal, quote, "in a manner that boggles the mind."

3:32 That follows the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man illegally deported in March 2025. These are not isolated errors. They are a pattern of executive overreach that the courts keep having to correct.

3:49 Across the country, a grassroots revolt against Big Tech AI data centers is gaining ground. In Versailles, Kentucky, the city council voted a unanimous moratorium on new data centers.

4:03 In Lawrence County, Tennessee, thousands signed a petition demanding an 18-month pause.

4:10 And on Capitol Hill, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the AI Data Center Moratorium Act, which would bar new large-scale data centers until federal regulations protect communities, water, and energy resources.

4:30 These are two tracks — local action and federal legislation — and they are producing real delays in Big Tech's expansion. Finally, two rulings that highlight the patchwork of law around AI and digital privacy.

4:47 A federal judge in Manhattan granted a warrant for OpenAI to turn over ChatGPT records as evidence in a crypto fraud case.

4:56 But in a separate civil case, the same judge blocked a subpoena for ChatGPT records, protecting them under work-product doctrine. Different legal standards, different outcomes.

5:08 The point is: we have no clear rules for when prosecutors or civil litigants can compel AI platforms to hand over user data. And that is a gap that will only grow. And as all of this unfolds, we keep reading.

5:23 We have now tracked 147 actions from Project 2025, reframed and logged, and 902 distinct actions are on the record and mapped. The watch is constant.

5:37 We do not reverse anything ourselves — but we document it, piece by piece, so that the full arc stays visible.

5:44 Tomorrow, June 25, is the deadline for public comments on the FCC's proposed rule to require government-issued ID for all mobile phone customers — effectively ending the burner phone. Reply comments are due July 27.

6:01 The Sixth Circuit's split ruling on Michigan's voter rolls opens the door for a possible Supreme Court appeal. And the House will take up the next round of appropriations. That's the news. Judges drew some lines today.

6:16 But lines only hold if we keep watching, keep reading, keep showing up. I'm Gus Calloway. We'll do it again tomorrow.