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August 22, 2025

3 entries on this date.

Justice Department fired San Francisco immigration judge Chloe Dillon amid purge of high asylum-grant-rate judges

The U.S. Department of Justice fired San Francisco immigration judge Chloe Dillon by email on August 22, 2025, giving no reason, amid a wave of firings of high asylum-grant-rate judges that coincided with a DOJ memo on scrutinizing judges' case-outcome statistics. Dillon's supervising assistant chief immigration judge had warned her months earlier that "the White House" was watching after she resisted a directive to grant all ICE requests to transfer cases to a different venue. In a whistleblower complaint filed September 10, 2026, Dillon alleged the firing came two days after she separately reported that ICE agents had unlawfully detained an unaccompanied minor who had just appeared in her courtroom.

HHS de-recognized union contracts at CDC, FDA, and other agencies, stripping collective bargaining rights

The Department of Health and Human Services moved on August 22, 2025, to de-recognize all collective bargaining agreements covering workers at the CDC, FDA, and other HHS divisions, stripping thousands of federal public health employees of union rights. The action implemented a Trump labor-management executive order, making HHS the latest agency in a rolling campaign that had already reached the VA on August 6 and the EPA on August 8. The American Federation of Government Employees condemned the action as an illegal decertification of unions.

FBI searched home and office of former national security adviser Bolton; Trump privately directed investigation toward vocal critic

On August 22, 2025, FBI agents searched the Maryland home and Washington office of former national security adviser John Bolton as part of a classified-information investigation. Bolton, a vocal Trump critic since leaving the administration in 2019, was not detained and no charges were filed at the time. The Washington Post reported that Trump had privately pointed a finger at Bolton in the days immediately preceding the raids, while the Biden-era Justice Department had reviewed the same underlying materials and declined to prosecute.