Here are six things to know about Kollar-Kotelly.

1. Blocking DOGE's Work

In February, Kollar-Kotelly temporarily blocked DOGE from gaining access to the Treasury Department's payment records.

As part of investigating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, DOGE sought access to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Fiscal Service that handles about 90% of all federal payments.

Several government employee unions sued claiming that DOGE head Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and the social media platform X, should not have access to the information because he is not a full-time federal employee.

2. Her First Trump Election Integrity Case

In 2017, Trump established an Election Integrity Advisory Commission, which sought certain public state voter data.

Vice President Mike Pence was the chairman of the commission and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was the vice chairman. Trump appointed 15 other members.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center sued to get a preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order enjoining the commission from collecting voter roll data.

The judge in July 2017 determined that the nonprofit had standing to sue over the commission's alleged failure to publish a privacy impact assessment.

However, Kollar-Kotelly denied EPIC's request for a temporary injunction. She determined that the Administrative Procedures Act only applies to federal agencies, not advisory committees. She ruled that if "powers of the commission expand beyond those of a purely advisory body — this determination may need to be revisited."

In her ruling, the judge faulted the commission for only releasing an agenda, and not releasing 381-pages of information in a binder for the commission members. However, all of the information was public and available online.

3. Five Years for Pro-Life Activist

Last year, Kollar-Kotelly sentenced a pro-life activist to 57 months in prison after she was convicted of violating the FACE Act for praying near a District of Columbia abortion clinic.

However, after taking office, Trump pardoned Lauren Handy, a 75-year-old Catholic woman.

"I would suggest that, in terms of your religion, that one of the tenets is that you should make the effort during this period of time, when it may be difficult in terms of for your husband, to make every effort to remain alive, to do the things that you need to do to survive, because that's part of the tenets of your religion," Kollar-Kotelly said during the sentencing.

The FACE Act stands for Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers. However, the Biden administration's Justice Department heavily enforced against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.

4. Transgender Military Service

In October 2017, the judge blocked Trump's directive to prevent transgender military service.

Trump directed the Department of Defense to prevent the Obama administration's June 2016 plan to allow transgender individuals to serve openly in the military.

Federal judges in Maryland and Washington state made similar rulings.

5. Gitmo Detainee

In September 2009, Kollar-Kotelly ordered the release of Kuwaiti-national Fouad Mahmoud al-Rabiah, who was being detained at Guantanamo Bay.

This came after he was held in prison for seven years. The judge ruled that federal prosecutors didn't have enough evidence to keep al-Rabiah detained.

Al-Rabiah was a Kuwait Airways engineer. He was captured in Afghanistan and accused of assisting al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and with assisting the Taliban fighters in Tora Bora.

His lawyer argued he was captured based on mistaken identity and Kollar-Kotelly found that he had no ties to terrorism.

6. Sounding Off on Trump's Jan. 6 Pardons

Kollar-Kotelly was among the D.C. judges who presided over cases regarding defendants in the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

After Trump pardoned all of the defendants, Kollar-Kotelly let her disagreement be known in January.

"Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021," Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

She wrote "thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens" preserve the events.

According to a criminal complaint obtained by The Post, an ICE officer and a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official showed up outside Dugan's courtroom April 18 with a warrant for Flores-Ruiz's arrest for illegally entering the US, but were told by a security guard and a sheriff's sergeant to wait outside until after the hearing.

The complaint noted that Flores-Ruiz, 30, had been deported from the US once before in 2013. It was not immediately clear when he crossed the border again, and there is no evidence he did so legally.

Flores-Ruiz was appearing before Dugan April 18 for a pre-trial conference on three misdemeanor battery charges stemming from a fight the previous month in which he was accused of punching another person 30 times after being accused of playing music too loudly, according to a police report obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
[...]
Flores Ruiz had been arrested after police were called to a Milwaukee home for a reported fight March 12. In addition to repeatedly punching a person, the police report says he struck a woman who tried to break up the altercation.

One of the reported victims initially told police that Flores Ruiz was "just a friend that was staying the night." However, when investigators returned to the home the following day, the victims said he had actually been living there for the past year.

Flores Ruiz is now being held in ICE custody at the Dodge Detention Facility in Juneau, about 50 miles northwest of Milwaukee, records show.

Dugan's arrest comes amid a growing feud between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary over the president's tough immigration stance.

In an interview with the Milwaukee Independent in 2016, Dugan had stressed the need for the judiciary system to be free from political pressure.

"The judges in Milwaukee County - the 47 branches of the circuit court and the 19 municipal courts - in my experience act as independent public officials, deciding cases according to the legal process. Sometimes those cases get politicized because of the subject matter," she said at the time.

"It is the role of the judge to be particularly cautious that such cases are handled according to the legal process and not be overwhelmed by political pressure."

While Milwaukee hasn't officially designated itself a "sanctuary city," Democratic Mayor Cavalier Johnson has indicated the city would welcome migrants with open arms, telling WUWM earlier this year that he didn't want to make such a declaration amid fears the city would be targeted by Trump.
[...]
Dugan's arrest cones one day after a recently retired New Mexico judge and his wife were hauled away in cuffs for allegedly sheltering a suspected Tren de Aragua gangbanger at their home.

Ex-Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Jose "Joel" Cano and his wife, Nancy Cano, were accused of harboring Cristhian Ortega-Lopez in their guesthouse after initially hiring him as a handyman.