Obama Judges Refuse to Revive Trump’s SAVE Citizenship-Verification System Ahead of Midterms — Trump-Appointed Judge Katsas Dissents

 

Obama-appointed Judges Sri Srinivasan (L) and Robert Wilkins (R) rejected the government’s request for a stay.

Two Obama-appointed judges on the D.C. Circuit just slammed the door on President Trump’s effort to give states a working tool to check voter rolls for non-citizens.

In a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to allow the federal government to restart its expanded Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system while the Trump Administration appeals a lower court’s nationwide ruling.

In July that a Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida smashed Sooknanan’s ruling for Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana, states covered by a December 2025 settlement that required DHS to keep those SAVE features online. Judge T. Kent Wetherell II ordered the system restored for those states and rejected Sooknanan’s claim that the upgrades violated the Social Security Act or the Privacy Act. 

The separate Florida decision directing DHS to restore the system’s expanded search capabilities for four states.

We also reported that 26 states were using SAVE for voter registration or list maintenance, that the system processed roughly 198 million cases in 2025, and that 24 states, most of them blue, still refuse to use it. New Jersey jumped into ERIC instead, a system that does not even flag non-citizens. Then the illegal-alien voter scandals started piling up.

On Friday, Obama-appointed Judges Sri Srinivasan and Robert Wilkins rejected the government’s request for a stay. Trump-appointed Judge Gregory Katsas dissented.

The majority called a stay “extraordinary relief” and said the government had not made a “strong showing” it would win on the merits. 

They leaned hard on a procedural claim that the Justice Department forfeited its central arguments under the Social Security Act’s confidentiality rules by raising them too late. They refused to consider those arguments even for purposes of an interim stay.

Judge Katsas was having none of it.

Katsas laid out the history the majority buried.

SAVE exists because Congress said so, first in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, then in the 1996 illegal-immigration law that requires DHS to answer state inquiries about citizenship and immigration status.

For years the old system was nearly useless for elections. States could not check U.S.-born citizens. They could not search by Social Security number. They could not upload voter lists in bulk.

That is why Florida sued. That is why a settlement required the upgrades. That is why Trump’s March 2025 election-integrity executive order directed DHS and the Social Security Administration to make the tool work.

Katsas noted that 27 states now use SAVE for voter verification and that those states made some 60 million voter-verification queries between January 1, 2025, and April 1, 2026. Nationwide, more than 1,300 government agencies use SAVE. It processed about 25 million queries in FY 2024 and 200 million in FY 2025.

His core legal point: the Social Security Act’s confidentiality rule does not ban what modified SAVE actually does. SSA citizenship records rest on statutes that long predate the 1990 cutoff the district court waved around. The upgraded system returns a citizenship or death indicator. It does not dump Americans’ Social Security numbers onto county clerks.

“The government is likely to succeed in showing that modified SAVE does not violate the Social Security Act’s prohibition on disclosure of SSNs or related records,” Katsas wrote.

He also said the government will suffer irreparable harm if the stay is denied, DHS cannot carry out duties Congress imposed, states cannot maintain clean rolls, and the government is trapped between Sooknanan’s nationwide vacatur and the Florida court’s order to restore the same features for four states.

That last point is the circus the Left created. One Biden judge in Washington shuts the system down for the whole country. One Trump judge in Florida orders it turned back on for four states. Two Obama judges in the D.C. Circuit just refused to pause the Washington order.

Report: Dozens of Suspected ‘Directed Energy Attacks’ Carried Out Inside the United States

 Award-winning journalist Catherine Herridge shared shocking details from an exclusive report on Thursday about an investigation into “energy attacks” that may have taken place on American soil.

Herridge appeared on NewsNation to share what she’d learned, saying, “According to my national security contacts, I understand multiple incidents of suspected directed energy attacks were reported in 2021 involving U.S. government personnel who were investigating directed energy weapon technology and trying to reverse-engineer a device.”

“These debilitating brain injuries affecting diplomats, spies, military operatives, and even civilians are known as Havana Syndrome, after a cluster of cases were identified in Cuba a decade ago,” she continued. 

“I understand that more than two dozen suspected incidents had been reported inside the U.S., including a significant number of cases at an off-site U.S. government intelligence research facility in northern Virginia.”

A Space Force veteran sat down with Herridge and told her he was “targeted in his own home outside Washington, D.C.”

The source shared his military medical records, which reportedly documented “multiple conditions,” including a “traumatic brain injury” connected to his service. He claimed he was attacked “five times.” 

“I believe it’s Russia,” he told Herridge.

“I think the objective of what they’re doing is to disrupt American officials and prevent them from doing their mission in the military intelligence agencies.”

“It’s almost a form of terrorism,” the source added.

Herridge shared her interview on social media, noting that America’s top intelligence agencies did not reply to her requests for comment, and added that such weapons do not require “a great deal of power” to work.

“EXCLUSIVE: More than two dozen suspected directed energy attacks have been reported inside the US including a significant cluster of cases at an off-site U.S. government intelligence and research facility in Northern Virginia,” she wrote on X.

“Multiple incidents reported in 2021 involving U.S. government personnel investigating directed-energy weapon technology, as well as efforts to reverse-engineer a directed-energy device. CIA, ODNI, DoW, DHS did not respond to questions seeking comment.”

An article published by NewsNation on Friday cited Dr. James Giordano, chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Center for Clinical Bioethics, who said early intervention is critical.

“Early intervention is going to be essential in being able to mitigate the cascade of signs and symptoms that can be so debilitating,” he said during an appearance on “Katie Pavlich Tonight.”

These weapons are reportedly part of the Pentagon’s stockpile and have become “increasingly compact and easier to conceal,” according to NewsNation.

ICE Locks Up Three Guatemalan Illegal Aliens in Tennessee for Stealing Americans’ Social Security Numbers — One Was Already Deported THREE TIMES

 Federal immigration authorities arrested three Guatemalan illegal aliens in Tennessee during an investigation into the alleged fraudulent use of stolen identities and Social Security numbers.

ICE officers arrested Magdalena Gomez-Garcia, Elias Gomez-Garcia, and Eulalia Ordonez-Carmelo on August 4.

All three Guatemalan nationals were reportedly already subject to final orders of removal from the United States, Border Hawk first reported. 

Magdalena Gomez-Garcia is accused of stealing the identity of a New York resident and using the victim’s Social Security number to obtain employment in Tennessee.

According to Border Hawk, the American victim discovered that wages earned by someone else were being reported under her Social Security number. She was then forced to contact authorities repeatedly to correct her records.

Gomez-Garcia was first encountered by Border Patrol near San Luis, Arizona, in 2018. She was issued a notice to appear before an immigration judge and received a final removal order in absentia in April 2019.

Yet she allegedly remained in the country and found employment using another person’s identity. 

Elias Gomez-Garcia had previously been arrested for traffic offenses in South Carolina and Kentucky. Even more outrageous, he had reportedly been deported from the United States three separate times, in 2009, 2011, and 2018.

Three deportations, and he allegedly returned yet again.

Eulalia Ordonez-Carmelo illegally crossed the southern border near Texas’ Rio Grande Valley on March 13, 2022, during the Biden border catastrophe.

She was issued a notice to appear and then released on her own recognizance. An immigration judge ordered her removed from the United States in February 2023.

But she remained in the country until ICE finally arrested her in Tennessee.

“These crimes have real victims,” ICE New Orleans acting Field Office Director Scott Ladwig told Border Hawk.

“Fraudulent documents and stolen identities can cause lasting harm to victims, workers and businesses,” Ladwig added, praising ICE officers and their partners for protecting American communities.

ICE said additional charges could be forthcoming.