Lindsey Halligan, a prosecutor closely aligned with President Donald Trump, is leaving the U.S. Justice Department, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Jan. 20, ending a controversial stint as U.S. Attorney. Bondi announced Halligan's departure on X, blaming Senate Democrats who opposed renewing her as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where she unsuccessfully pursued criminal cases against two of Trump's adversaries. Without Senate confirmation Halligan was limited to a 120-day interim appointment, which a judge found had ended last year. On Jan. 20, another U.S. District judge, David Novak, ordered Halligan to stop referring to herself as the top federal prosecutor in Virginia's Eastern District in court filings before him, suggesting the Justice Department was defying a court order that found she was unlawfully appointed. Even under the Justice Department's more generous view of when her interim term would end, that 120-period concluded on Tuesday. Novak described her continued use of the title as a "charade" and suggested the Justice Department was defying a court order that found she was unlawfully appointed. Novak, who was nominated by Trump during his first term, threatened disciplinary proceedings against Halligan and any other prosecutor who continues using the title in his court. Trump had handpicked Halligan, a former personal attorney of his, to lead investigations into former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, two of Trump's perceived political enemies. A different judge dismissed those cases, finding that Halligan's appointment was unlawful. The Justice Department is appealing those dismissals. The Trump administration had been waiting for the Senate to consider Halligan's nomination for the post, but Virginia's two Democratic senators can block the nomination under a longstanding Senate tradition known as the blue slip process. In a defiant filing last week, the department accused Novak of exceeding his authority by questioning Halligan's appointment. In his ruling on Jan. 20, Novak said the department's filing "contains a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable-news talk show and falls far beneath the level of advocacy expected from litigants in this Court, particularly the Department of Justice." Also on Jan. 20, the chief judge of the court solicited applications for a court-appointed successor to Halligan.

The U.S. Supreme Court was set on Jan. 20 to weigh a challenge to a Hawaii law restricting the carry of handguns on private property that is open to the public, such as most businesses, without the owner's permission. The court will hear arguments in an appeal by the challengers - three Hawaii residents with concealed-carry licenses and a Honolulu-based gun rights advocacy group - of a lower court's ruling against them. The lower court found that Hawaii's measure likely complies with the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Hawaii's law requires "express authorization" to bring a handgun onto private property open to the public, either as verbal or written authorization, including "clear and conspicuous signage." Hawaii argued in court papers that its law strikes a proper balance between "the right to bear arms and property owners' undisputed right to choose whether to permit armed entry onto their property." The plaintiffs sued to challenge Hawaii's restrictions weeks after Gov. Josh Green signed the measure into law in 2023. They are being backed by President Donald Trump's administration, which argued in court papers that Hawaii's law "deprives individuals who want to exercise their Second Amendment rights of their ability to go about their daily lives." A federal judge preliminarily blocked Hawaii's restrictions. But the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely ruled against the law's challengers, prompting their appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did not take up an aspect of the legal challenge that focused on the law's provisions banning the carrying of handguns at beaches, bars and other sensitive places. The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, widened gun rights in three major rulings in 2008, 2010 and most recently in 2022. The plaintiffs in the Hawaii case have cited that 2022 ruling's holding that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. That landmark 6-3 decision, called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, was powered by the court's six conservatives, over dissents from the three liberal justices. The Bruen decision invalidated New York state's limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home. In doing so, the court created a new test for assessing firearms laws, saying that restrictions must be "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," not simply advance an important government interest. The court in 2024 ruled 8-1 that a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns satisfied the court's stringent history-and-tradition test.

A federal judge on Jan. 15 dismissed a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit that sought an unredacted statewide voter registration list from California. U.S. District Judge David Carter in Santa Ana said the Justice Department's claims were insufficient under federal civil rights law and voting laws, adding that its demands, which included voter names, dates of birth, driver’s license information and partial social security numbers violated privacy laws. The Trump administration's Justice Department filed lawsuits against California and several other mostly Democratic-led states in September for not providing voter registration lists. It cited laws it said allowed the attorney general to demand statewide voter lists and to ensure states effectively maintained voter data. California resisted the request, arguing it was not legally entitled to hand over the voter information. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters reported in September that the DOJ was in talks with a division of the Department of Homeland Security about transferring voter roll data for use in criminal and immigration investigations. Trump and many of his allies have long spread unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, including that immigrants living illegally in the country are voting in large numbers.