Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz and Erie County Parks, Recreation and Forestry Commissioner Troy Schinzel join sculptor Eric Jones and Visit Buffalo Niagara CEO Patrick Kaler at Chestnut Ridge Park, one of three stops on the trail.
The BuffaSNOW Art Trail is a new, free experience for families to enjoy between Presidents’ Day weekend and the February school break.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor unleashed fury on her conservative colleagues for their decision overruling a lower court and giving the Trump administration the go-ahead to significantly slash the workforce of the Department of Education.
"That decision is indefensible," she wrote on Monday.
"When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it," she continued.
"Two lower courts rose to the occasion, preliminarily enjoining the mass firings while the litigation remains ongoing. Rather than maintain the status quo, however, this Court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the Government to proceed with dismantling the Department. That decision is indefensible. It hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave. Unable to join in this misuse of our emergency docket, I respectfully dissent."
It was another decision along ideological lines with a 6-3 ruling.
According to Sotomayor, the Department of Education was established by Congress, and thus, only the legislative branch "has the power to abolish the Department.
More than three months after a federal judge threatened to hold representatives of the Donald Trump administration in contempt for delaying an order to halt deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants, the case remains stalled with no explanation, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
“It’s very unusual,” Stephen Vladeck, law professor at Georgetown University, told the Times. “An appeals court may need hours or days to figure out an administrative stay, but it doesn’t need weeks and certainly not months.”
The case stems from an emergency order in March by Judge James Boasberg, who instructed the Trump administration to halt flights deporting more than 100 Venezuelans to El Salvador. Alleged to have ties to the Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua, the migrants were mid-flight when Boasberg ordered the planes turned around.
According to a DOJ whistleblower's account, the deportations went forward despite the order. Boasberg pressed the DOJ for weeks in an effort to determine whether the administration had deliberately ignored his ruling and, on April 16, warned that the government would either need to provide the deported individuals with due process or face a contempt investigation that could result in criminal charges.
Two days later, however, an appeals court issued an administrative stay pausing Boasberg’s proceedings, with the court having taken no action since.
“Justice (Amy Coney) Barrett said administrative stays could be problematic because they can be issued quickly and without delving into the merits of a case,” wrote Alan Feuer with the New York Times Tuesday. “If left to linger, she suggested, they could be used as a way to freeze a case in place without discussing any of its underlying facts.”
