A federal judge in Virginia has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from taking further steps to establish or operate a proposed $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a program designed to compensate individuals the administration says were harmed by government “weaponization.” U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s order pauses the initiative for at least two weeks while the court considers a broader legal challenge alleging political discrimination and unlawful government action.

The dispute is now playing out in the Eastern District of Virginia in Floyd et al v. Department of Justice et al. At this early stage, the court’s intervention is significant less for what it finally decides than for what it immediately prevents: the administration cannot move forward with implementing a fund of substantial size and political consequence until the legality of the program is tested.

For litigators, the order is a reminder that courts remain willing to scrutinize fast-moving executive programs when challengers frame concrete constitutional or administrative harms.

A new post-grant review proceeding at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board could be worth watching for companies and counsel operating in competitive consumer product and health-tech markets. In PGR2026-00051, titled Hyper Ice, Inc., a petitioner has asked the PTAB to review the validity of a recently issued patent associated with Hyper Ice, Inc. The petition was filed on May 26, 2026.

At this early stage, the PTAB docket signals the opening of a post-grant challenge, but practitioners should note that post-grant review itself already says a great deal about the patent at issue.

More than 30 former federal judges have asked a federal judge in Florida to examine whether the administration’s reported $1.8 billion settlement resolving President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS may constitute a “fraud on the court,” escalating what had appeared to be a closed dispute into a potentially significant fight over judicial integrity and executive-branch litigation conduct.

The filing is notable not because it decides anything on the merits, but because of who is making the request and what doctrine they are invoking.

A federal judge has refused to immediately block President Trump’s executive order imposing tighter rules on mail-in voting, allowing the measure to remain in effect while the underlying lawsuit proceeds. The ruling is procedural rather than final: the court did not resolve the merits of the Democratic plaintiffs’ constitutional and election-law claims, but it did conclude that emergency relief was not warranted at this stage.

That distinction matters.

The Ninth Circuit has handed Alaska regulators a significant win in a dispute over access to oil-and-gas well information, ruling that federal law does not preempt an Alaska statute requiring disclosure of certain ConocoPhillips well data. The decision reverses a lower-court ruling that had allowed the records to remain confidential and marks an important appellate development at the intersection of energy regulation, public-records obligations, and preemption doctrine.

At a high level, the fight centered on whether federal statutes and regulations governing energy-related information displaced Alaska’s disclosure regime.

Searching by docket number is one of the most common things users do, and we've been working to make it faster, smarter, and easier. Whether you live in the query builder or just type straight into the search bar, this round of updates is about getting you to the right case with fewer steps, fewer cleanup tasks, and fewer irrelevant results. Here's what's new.

Dedicated Docket Number + Court fields at the top of the Query BuilderThe Query Builder now has a dedicated Search by Docket Number section at the top, with a docket number field and a court selector right next to it.

The Justice Department’s second indictment of former FBI Director James Comey over his “86 47” social-media post has quickly become one of the most closely watched criminal matters on the federal docket. The case sits at the intersection of true-threat doctrine, prosecutorial discretion, and the constitutional limits of charging politically charged speech.

According to reporting on the matter, prosecutors contend the post amounted to a threat against the president.

In a notable turn for crypto enforcement, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it is joining Gemini Trust Company LLC in seeking relief from judgment in Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Gemini Trust Company, LLC, pending in the Southern District of New York. According to the agency, a post hoc review concluded that the complaint would not have been filed under the CFTC’s current enforcement standards.

That is a striking position for any regulator to take after obtaining a judgment or settlement, and it immediately raises questions about how far agencies may go in revisiting prior enforcement actions when policy priorities change.

Pinterest, Inc. has filed a new inter partes review petition at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, opening IPR2026-00366 on May 22, 2026. For patent litigators and in-house IP teams, the filing is worth watching not only for the substantive patentability issues it may raise, but also for what it could signal about Pinterest’s broader litigation and defensive patent strategy.

At this stage, the PTAB docket identifies the proceeding by petitioner name—Pinterest, Inc.—but practitioners should review the underlying petition papers on Docket Alarm for the specific patent number, challenged claims, and real-party-in-interest disclosures as they become available.

A Texas state court has ruled that a judge may decline to perform same-sex marriages based on sincerely held religious beliefs, a closely watched decision at the intersection of judicial ethics, equal-treatment principles, and religious-liberty protections. The case stems from disciplinary action against Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley, who challenged a public warning issued by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct after she said she would not officiate same-sex weddings.

For court watchers, the dispute has long been about more than one judge’s wedding calendar.

The Department of Justice has recently underscored two of its core criminal-enforcement priorities: large-scale financial fraud and organized violent crime. In one matter, financier Greg Lindberg was sentenced to 12 years in prison in connection with bribery and a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme tied to his business empire. In another, federal prosecutors in Indianapolis unsealed a sweeping RICO indictment against 12 alleged members of the “Crown Hill Enterprise,” charging crimes that include murder, kidnapping, arson, drug trafficking, and firearms offenses.

For legal professionals, the pairing is notable.

Pinterest, Inc. has filed a new inter partes review petition, IPR2026-00365, at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board on May 22, 2026. The proceeding puts another PTAB spotlight on the increasingly important area of platform recommendation and content-delivery technology—an area where social media, e-commerce, and advertising companies continue to face significant patent assertion risk.

At this stage, the publicly available docket reflects that Pinterest is the petitioner, but practitioners will want to watch closely for the identification of the patent owner, the specific patent claims challenged, and the prior art combinations asserted in the petition as the record develops.

Appellee MIT has asked the First Circuit for summary disposition in appeal No. 26-1510, a procedural move designed to end the appeal without full merits briefing or oral argument. In practical terms, the motion argues that the appellant’s position is so clearly foreclosed—whether by settled law, lack of appellate jurisdiction, waiver, or obvious deficiencies on the record—that the court can dispose of the case now.

While the docket entry does not spell out the underlying dispute, the filing itself is notable because summary disposition motions are not routine.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Eli Lilly’s constitutional challenge to the False Claims Act’s qui tam mechanism, preserving one of the government’s most potent civil fraud enforcement tools. The petition arose from litigation brought by whistleblower Ronald Streck, who accused Lilly of misconduct tied to Medicaid drug rebate reporting.

By denying review, the Court leaves in place lower-court rulings that allowed the case to proceed and, more broadly, avoids reopening a recurring defense-side attack on the False Claims Act’s structure.

A May 15 filing in Daitona Carter, Federal Circuit No. 26-1721, spotlights one of the most consequential forms of interim appellate relief: an emergency stay pending appeal.