Cristian Farias

New York

Writer and Editor at Freelance

Legal Affairs Contributor at Vanity Fair

Legal journalist and beachgoer. I’ve written about law, justice, and the politics shaping them in lots of places. Edit: @_inquest_. Hablo y pienso en español.

Articles

Judge Dugan's Arrest Has Nothing to Do With Public Safety

2 weeks ago | nymag.com | Cristian Farias

When Donald Trump was criminally indicted in Manhattan in 2023, he was given a courtesy that's not the norm for the many New Yorkers accused of crimes on any given day: He was given a heads-up about the charges against him and told to appear in court for his arraignment, without the need to arrest him and bring him before the judge. As a former president, the first in history to be indicted, he was neither a flight risk nor a danger to public safety, the thinking went.
Why the Supreme Court Put Its Foot Down on One Lawless Trump Deportation

1 month ago | vanityfair.com | Cristian Farias

Nearly one month has gone by since Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, a Maryland husband and father whom an immigration judge had expressly allowed to remain in the United States years ago, was taken from his family, put on a plane, and sent to a so-called “terrorism confinement center” in El Salvador. The Trump administration did this in our names by mistake and without legal authority, acknowledging in a court of law that an “administrative error” had caused this unlawful disappearance.
The Conservative Legal Advocates Working to Kill Trump’s Tariffs

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Cristian Farias

The New Civil Liberties Alliance, or N.C.L.A., was founded during the early days of the first Trump Administration by a group of conservative-leaning legal advocates, to “tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies.” Many of their cases have targeted the same kind of administrative power that President Trump himself is determined to stamp out—including his all-out assault on independent watchdogs and agencies.
The Most Important Judge in America

1 month ago | nymag.com | Cristian Farias

The Saturday that Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., was assigned the case challenging Donald Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, he was not dressed for the occasion. The case had been filed alongside an urgent motion to prevent the deportation of five people their lawyers feared would soon be disappeared to El Salvador.
How John Roberts Has Empowered a Lawless Presidency

1 month ago | rsn.org | Cristian Farias

The Chief Justice’s rebuke of Donald Trump over his calls to impeach judges obscures Roberts’s own role in fostering the destruction in Washington.
How John Roberts Has Empowered a Lawless Presidency

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Cristian Farias

In the first landmark Supreme Court decision of the Trump years, back in 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts established how a President hostile toward a group of noncitizens may bar them under existing immigration laws, so long as the President’s publicly stated reasons for doing so are “facially neutral.” If that test is met, the courts must bow to the President’s action, no matter the evidence of any prior hostility toward the group in question.
How John Roberts Has Empowered a Lawless Presidency

1 month ago | flipboard.com | Cristian Farias

1 day agoFox News Hosts Put Ridiculous Spin On Group War Chat ScandalWill Cain's "bigger takeaway" was a particular head-scratcher. Jesse Watters talked about "raunchy plans." Sean Hannity ranted. Personalities on Fox News on Monday furiously attempted to spin the Trump administration’s accidental addition of The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat discussing …17 hours agoTrump says recent Venezuelan deportees are gang members. Evidence is thin.
Donald Trump, Mahmoud Khalil, and Free Speech Under Siege: “We’re in an Alarming Period”

2 months ago | vanityfair.com | Cristian Farias

“Do you believe in the First Amendment, Tom Homan?” yelled one incensed protester in the direction of the Trump administration’s so-called border czar. Homan was in Albany on Wednesday to try to convince New York lawmakers to make it easier for the federal government to detain and deport immigrants by doing away with protections that grant them sanctuary at the local level. But the crowd gathered at the state capitol had other ideas.
Elon Musk’s Shadow Government Is on Shaky Legal Ground

2 months ago | vanityfair.com | Cristian Farias

When the attorneys general of New Mexico, Arizona, and Michigan, all of them Democrats, announced they’d be leading a multistate constitutional challenge to Elon Musk’s authority as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, they borrowed a page from the Republican playbook—alluding to the founders, the separation of powers, and the dangers of delegating executive authority to a bureaucrat no one elected and who’s not accountable to the people.
The Federal Workforce Resistance to Donald Trump Is Here

Feb 11, 2025 | vanityfair.com | Cristian Farias

In the 90 years the National Labor Relations Board has been in existence—through the Great Depression, World War II, and up to the current era—no president had ever fired a single Senate-confirmed board member. The reason is simple: Congress didn’t make it easy.