Education Secretary Linda McMahon is expected to move quickly now that the Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to continue unwinding her department.

The justices on Monday paused a lower court order that had halted nearly 1,400 layoffs and had called into question the legality of President Donald Trump’s plan to outsource the department’s operations to other agencies.

Now, Trump and McMahon are free to execute the layoffs and break up the department’s work among other federal agencies. Trump had campaigned on closing the department, and McMahon has said the department has one “final mission” to turn over its power to the states.

“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE,” Trump said late Monday in a post on Truth Social. “Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!”

Department lawyers have already previewed McMahon’s next steps in court filings.

What happens with student loans, civil rights cases

Trump and McMahon have acknowledged only Congress has authority to close the Education Department fully, but both have suggested its core functions could be parceled out to different federal agencies.

Among the most important decisions is where to put management of federal student loans, a $1.6 trillion portfolio affecting nearly 43 million borrowers.

Trump in March suggested the Small Business Administration would take on federal student loans, but a June court filing indicated the Treasury Department is expected to take over the work. The Education Department said it had been negotiating a contract with Treasury but paused discussions when the court intervened. That work is now expected to proceed in coming days.

Under a separate arrangement, nine Education Department workers already have been detailed to Treasury, according to a court filing.

The department had also recently struck a deal to outsource the management of several grant programs for workforce training and adult education to the Department of Labor. The Education Department agreed to send $2.6 billion to Labor to oversee grants, which are distributed to states to be passed down to schools and colleges.

Combining workforce training programs at Education and Labor would “provide a coordinated federal education and workforce system,” according to the agreement.

Additional agreements are expected to follow with other agencies. At her Senate confirmation hearing, McMahon suggested that enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act could be handled by the Department of Health and Human Services. Civil rights work could be managed by the Justice Department, she said.

Democracy Forward, which represents plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said it will pursue “every legal option” to fight for children. The group’s federal court case is proceeding, but the Supreme Court’s emergency decision means the Education Department is allowed to downsize in the meantime.

“No court in the nation — not even the Supreme Court — has found that what the administration is doing is lawful,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the group, in a statement.

Trump campaigned on a promise to close the agency, and in March ordered it to be wound down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” McMahon had already started a dramatic downsizing, laying off about 1,400 workers.

Education Department employees targeted by the layoffs have been on paid leave since March, according to a union that represents some of the agency’s staff. The lower court order had prevented the department from fully terminating them, though none had been allowed to return to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. Without the lower court order, the workers would have been terminated in early June.

The absence of those staffers already had caused problems in the office that handles student loans, said Melanie Storey, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. College financial aid staffers reported delays and breakdowns in federal systems — such as an hours-long outage on StudentAid.gov the day after departmental layoffs. Communication with the Education Department eroded, Storey said.

“It is concerning that the Court is allowing the Trump administration to continue with its planned reduction in force, given what we know about the early impact of those cuts on delivering much-needed financial assistance to students seeking a postsecondary education,” Storey said.

Gutting the Education Department will hinder the government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws, especially for girls, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students and students of color, said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president at the National Women’s Law Center. Laid-off staff in the Office of Civil Rights were handling thousands of cases.

“Without enough staff and resources, students will face more barriers to educational opportunity and have fewer places to turn to when their rights are violated,” Burroughs said in a statement. “This is part of a coordinated plan by the Trump administration to dismantle the federal government and roll back hard-won civil rights protections.”

President Donald Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch Friday, a day after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The move came shortly after the Justice Department asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Epstein’s sex trafficking case, as the administration seeks to contain the firestorm that erupted after it announced that it would not be releasing additional files from the case, despite previously pledging to do so.

The controversy has created a major fissure between Trump and his loyal base, with some of his most vocal supporters slamming the White House for the way it has handled the case, and questioning why Trump would not want the documents made public.

Trump had promised to sue the Wall Street Journal almost immediately after the paper put a new spotlight on his well-documented relationship with Epstein by publishing an article that described a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

Trump denied writing the letter, calling the story “false, malicious, and defamatory.”

The suit, filed in filed in federal court in Miami, accuses the paper and its reporters of having “knowingly and recklessly” published “numerous false, defamatory, and disparaging statements,” which, it alleges, caused “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” to the president.

In a post on his Truth Social site, Trump cast the lawsuit as part of his efforts to punish news outlets, including ABC and CBS, which both reached multimillion-dollar settlement deals with the president after he took them to court.

“This lawsuit is filed not only on behalf of your favorite President, ME, but also in order to continue standing up for ALL Americans who will no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings of the Fake News Media,” he wrote.

A spokesperson for Dow Jones, the Journal’s publisher, responded Friday night, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

The letter revealed by The Wall Street Journal was reportedly collected by disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell as part of a birthday album for Epstein years before the wealthy financier was first arrested in 2006 and subsequently had a falling-out with Trump.

The letter bearing Trump’s name includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and ends with, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the newspaper.

Trump denied writing the letter and promised to sue. He said he spoke to both to the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its top editor, Emma Tucker, before the story was published and told them the letter was “fake.”

“These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures,” the president insisted.

The outlet described the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely or provide details on how it came to learn about it.

In the lawsuit, Trump takes issue with that fact. The defendants, it attests, “failed to attach the letter, failed to attach the alleged drawing, failed to show proof that President Trump authored or signed any such letter, and failed to explain how this purported letter was obtained.”

“The reason for those failures is because no authentic letter or drawing exists,” it goes on to charge, alleging that the “Defendants concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity and deceptively portray him in a false light.”

Earlier Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche filed motions in a separate federal court urging them to unseal the Epstein transcripts as well as those in the case against Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Epstein killed himself in 2019 shortly after his arrest while awaiting trial.

The Justice Department’s announcement that it would not be making public any more Epstein files enraged parts of Trump’s base in part because members of his own administration had hyped the expected release and stoked conspiracies around the well-connected financier.

The Justice Department said in the court filings that it will work with with prosecutors in New York to make appropriate redactions of victim-related information and other personally identifying information before transcripts are released.

“Transparency in this process will not be at the expense of our obligation under the law to protect victims,” Blanche wrote.

But despite the new push to release the grand jury transcripts, the administration has not announced plans to reverse course and release other evidence in its possession. Attorney General Pam Bondi had hyped the release of more materials after the first Epstein files disclosure in February sparked outrage because it contained no new revelations.

A judge would have to approve the release of the grand jury transcripts, and it’s likely to be a lengthy process to decide what can become public and to make redactions to protect sensitive witness and victim information.

The records would show testimony of witnesses and other evidence that was presented by prosecutions during the secret grand jury proceedings, when a panel decides whether there is enough evidence to bring an indictment, or a formal criminal charge.

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 federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the U.S. illegally, issuing the third court ruling blocking the birthright order nationwide since a key Supreme Court decision in June.

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, joining another district court as well as an appellate panel of judges, found that a nationwide injunction granted to more than a dozen states remains in force under an exception to the Supreme Court ruling. That decision restricted the power of lower-court judges to issue nationwide injunctions.

The states have argued Trump’s birthright citizenship order is blatantly unconstitutional and threatens millions of dollars for health insurance services that are contingent on citizenship status. The issue is expected to move quickly back to the nation’s highest court.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement the administration looked forward to “being vindicated on appeal.”

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who helped lead the lawsuit before Sorokin, said in a statement he was “thrilled the district court again barred President Trump’s flagrantly unconstitutional birthright citizenship order from taking effect anywhere.”

“American-born babies are American, just as they have been at every other time in our Nation’s history,” he added. “The President cannot change that legal rule with the stroke of a pen.”

Lawyers for the government had argued Sorokin should narrow the reach of his earlier ruling granting a preliminary injunction, saying it should be “tailored to the States’ purported financial injuries.”

Sorokin said a patchwork approach to the birthright order would not protect the states in part because a substantial number of people move between states. He also blasted the Trump administration, saying it had failed to explain how a narrower injunction would work.

“That is, they have never addressed what renders a proposal feasible or workable, how the defendant agencies might implement it without imposing material administrative or financial burdens on the plaintiffs, or how it squares with other relevant federal statutes,” the judge wrote. “In fact, they have characterized such questions as irrelevant to the task the Court is now undertaking. The defendants’ position in this regard defies both law and logic.”

Sorokin acknowledged his order would not be the last word on birthright citizenship. Trump and his administration “are entitled to pursue their interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and no doubt the Supreme Court will ultimately settle the question,” Sorokin wrote. “But in the meantime, for purposes of this lawsuit at this juncture, the Executive Order is unconstitutional.”

The administration has not yet appealed any of the recent court rulings. Trump’s efforts to deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily will remain blocked unless and until the Supreme Court says otherwise.

A federal judge in New Hampshire issued a ruling earlier this month prohibiting Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide in a new class-action lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante in New Hampshire had paused his own decision to allow for the Trump administration to appeal, but with no appeal filed, his order went into effect.

On Wednesday, a San Francisco-based appeals court found the president’s executive order unconstitutional and affirmed a lower court’s nationwide block.

A Maryland-based judge said last week that she would do the same if an appeals court signed off.

The justices ruled last month that lower courts generally can’t issue nationwide injunctions, but it didn’t rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The Supreme Court did not decide whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.

Plaintiffs in the Boston case earlier argued that the principle of birthright citizenship is “enshrined in the Constitution,” and that Trump does not have the authority to issue the order, which they called a “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”

They also argue that Trump’s order halting automatic citizenship for babies born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily would cost states funding they rely on to “provide essential services” — from foster care to health care for low-income children, to “early interventions for infants, toddlers, and students with disabilities.”

At the heart of the lawsuits is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. That decision found that Scott, an enslaved man, wasn’t a citizen despite having lived in a state where slavery was outlawed.

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.