That bombing of the boat that allegedly was carrying drugs from the cartels is now elevating this issue with China now offering Venezuela its support:
update - Immigration Dept pushes unconstitutional policy of automatic bail denial in immigration proceedings
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The Trump administration must release billions of dollars in foreign aid approved by Congress, including money that President Donald Trump said last week he would not spend, a federal judge has ordered.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington ruled Wednesday that the Republican administration's decision to withhold the funding was likely illegal. He issued a preliminary injunction ordering the release of $11.5 billion that is set to expire at the end of the month.
“To be clear, no one disputes that Defendants have significant discretion in how to spend the funds at issue, and the Court is not directing Defendants to make payments to any particular recipients,” wrote Ali, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden. “But Defendants do not have any discretion as to whether to spend the funds.”
The administration filed a notice of appeal on Thursday.
“President Trump has the executive authority to ensure that all foreign aid is accountable to taxpayers and aligns with the America First priorities people voted for,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement.
Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, president and CEO of Global Health Council, one of the groups in the case, said in a statement the decision was a victory for “the rule of law" and reaffirmed that “only Congress controls the power of the purse."
Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a letter on Aug. 28 that he would not spend $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.
He used what’s known as a pocket rescission. That is when a president submits a request to Congress toward the end of a current budget year to not spend the approved money. The late notice means Congress cannot act on the request in the required 45-day window and the money goes unspent. It’s the first time in nearly 50 years that a president has used the tactic. The fiscal year draws to a close at the end of September.
Ali said Congress would have to approve the rescission proposal for the administration to withhold the money.
The law is “explicit that it is congressional action—not the President’s transmission of a special message—that triggers rescission of the earlier appropriations,” he wrote.
The money at issue includes nearly $4 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to spend on global health programs and more than $6 billion for HIV and AIDS programs. Trump has portrayed the funding as wasteful spending that does not align with his foreign policy goals, and in January, he issued an executive order directing the State Department and USAID to freeze spending on foreign aid.
Nonprofit organizations that sued the government said the freeze shut down funding for urgent lifesaving programs abroad.
A divided panel of appeals court judges ruled last month that the administration could suspend the money. The judges later revised that opinion, reviving the lawsuit before Ali.
In his ruling, Ali said he understood that his decision would not be the last word in the case, adding that “definitive higher court guidance now will be instructive.”
“This case raises questions of immense legal and practical importance, including whether there is any avenue to test the executive branch’s decision not to spend congressionally appropriated funds,” he wrote.
Judge orders Trump administration to release billions in foreign aid approved by Congress
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington ruled Wednesday that the Republican administration's decision to withhold the funding was likely illegal. He issued a preliminary injunction ordering the release of $11.5 billion that is set to expire at the end of the month.
“To be clear, no one disputes that Defendants have significant discretion in how to spend the funds at issue, and the Court is not directing Defendants to make payments to any particular recipients,” wrote Ali, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden. “But Defendants do not have any discretion as to whether to spend the funds.”
The administration filed a notice of appeal on Thursday.
“President Trump has the executive authority to ensure that all foreign aid is accountable to taxpayers and aligns with the America First priorities people voted for,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement.
Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, president and CEO of Global Health Council, one of the groups in the case, said in a statement the decision was a victory for “the rule of law" and reaffirmed that “only Congress controls the power of the purse."
Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a letter on Aug. 28 that he would not spend $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.
He used what’s known as a pocket rescission. That is when a president submits a request to Congress toward the end of a current budget year to not spend the approved money. The late notice means Congress cannot act on the request in the required 45-day window and the money goes unspent. It’s the first time in nearly 50 years that a president has used the tactic. The fiscal year draws to a close at the end of September.
Ali said Congress would have to approve the rescission proposal for the administration to withhold the money.
The law is “explicit that it is congressional action—not the President’s transmission of a special message—that triggers rescission of the earlier appropriations,” he wrote.
The money at issue includes nearly $4 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to spend on global health programs and more than $6 billion for HIV and AIDS programs. Trump has portrayed the funding as wasteful spending that does not align with his foreign policy goals, and in January, he issued an executive order directing the State Department and USAID to freeze spending on foreign aid.
Nonprofit organizations that sued the government said the freeze shut down funding for urgent lifesaving programs abroad.
A divided panel of appeals court judges ruled last month that the administration could suspend the money. The judges later revised that opinion, reviving the lawsuit before Ali.
In his ruling, Ali said he understood that his decision would not be the last word in the case, adding that “definitive higher court guidance now will be instructive.”
“This case raises questions of immense legal and practical importance, including whether there is any avenue to test the executive branch’s decision not to spend congressionally appropriated funds,” he wrote.
Judge orders Trump administration to release billions in foreign aid approved by Congress
NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s attorney general moved Thursday to have the state’s highest court reinstate President Donald Trump’s staggering civil fraud penalty, appealing a lower-court decision that slashed the potential half-billion-dollar fine to $0.
Attorney General Letitia James’ office filed a notice of appeal with the state’s Court of Appeals, seeking to reverse the mid-level Appellate Division’s ruling last month that the penalty violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on excessive fines.
James, a Democrat, had previously said she would appeal.
Trump declared “TOTAL VICTORY” after the Appellate Division wiped away his fine, but the five-judge panel left other punishments in place and narrowly endorsed a trial court’s finding that he committed fraud by padding his wealth on financial paperwork given to banks and insurers.
Trump, a Republican, filed his own appeal last week, asking the Court of Appeals to throw out those other punishments, which include a multiyear ban on him and his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., from holding corporate leadership positions in New York.
Those measures have been on hold during the appellate process and the Appellate Division judges said in their Aug. 21 ruling that Trump can seek a court order to extend the pause pending further appeals.
Trump’s legal team accused James on Thursday of continuing a “political crusade” against Trump, saying in a statement that she “should focus on her own problems and stop wasting New York State taxpayers’ hard earned dollars on her failed Witch Hunt” against him and his business empire.
In a statement the day the Appellate Division ruled, James said: “It should not be lost to history: yet another court has ruled that the president violated the law, and that our case has merit.”
James’ appeal is the latest twist in a lawsuit she filed against Trump in 2022, which alleged that he inflated his net worth by billions of dollars on his financial statements and habitually misled banks and others about the value of prized assets, including golf courses, hotels, Trump Tower, and his Mar-a-Lago estate.
After a trial that saw a sometimes testy Trump take the witness stand, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last year that James had proven he engaged in a yearslong conspiracy with executives at his company to deceive banks and insurers about his wealth and assets.
Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355 million — payback of what the judge deemed “ill-gotten gains” from his puffed-up financial statements. That amount soared to more than $515 million, including interest, by the time the Appellate Division ruled.
The five-judge Appellate Division panel was sharply divided on many issues in Trump’s appeal, but a majority said the monetary penalty was “excessive.”
“While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award,” two of the judges wrote.
___
Michael R. Sisak, The Associated Press
New York attorney general asks court to reinstate President Trump’s massive civil fraud penalty
Attorney General Letitia James’ office filed a notice of appeal with the state’s Court of Appeals, seeking to reverse the mid-level Appellate Division’s ruling last month that the penalty violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on excessive fines.
James, a Democrat, had previously said she would appeal.
Trump declared “TOTAL VICTORY” after the Appellate Division wiped away his fine, but the five-judge panel left other punishments in place and narrowly endorsed a trial court’s finding that he committed fraud by padding his wealth on financial paperwork given to banks and insurers.
Trump, a Republican, filed his own appeal last week, asking the Court of Appeals to throw out those other punishments, which include a multiyear ban on him and his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., from holding corporate leadership positions in New York.
Those measures have been on hold during the appellate process and the Appellate Division judges said in their Aug. 21 ruling that Trump can seek a court order to extend the pause pending further appeals.
Trump’s legal team accused James on Thursday of continuing a “political crusade” against Trump, saying in a statement that she “should focus on her own problems and stop wasting New York State taxpayers’ hard earned dollars on her failed Witch Hunt” against him and his business empire.
In a statement the day the Appellate Division ruled, James said: “It should not be lost to history: yet another court has ruled that the president violated the law, and that our case has merit.”
James’ appeal is the latest twist in a lawsuit she filed against Trump in 2022, which alleged that he inflated his net worth by billions of dollars on his financial statements and habitually misled banks and others about the value of prized assets, including golf courses, hotels, Trump Tower, and his Mar-a-Lago estate.
After a trial that saw a sometimes testy Trump take the witness stand, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last year that James had proven he engaged in a yearslong conspiracy with executives at his company to deceive banks and insurers about his wealth and assets.
Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355 million — payback of what the judge deemed “ill-gotten gains” from his puffed-up financial statements. That amount soared to more than $515 million, including interest, by the time the Appellate Division ruled.
The five-judge Appellate Division panel was sharply divided on many issues in Trump’s appeal, but a majority said the monetary penalty was “excessive.”
“While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award,” two of the judges wrote.
___
Michael R. Sisak, The Associated Press
New York attorney general asks court to reinstate President Trump’s massive civil fraud penalty
Hundreds of workers at a Hyundai Motor car battery facility under construction in Georgia were detained in a major raid by US authorities late on Thursday, stopping work on a plant that is one of the Korean automaker's major investments in the US
About 475 workers were arrested, according to US immigration officials, the largest single-site enforcement operation in the US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) history.
President Donald Trump's administration has been escalating a crackdown on immigrants, disrupting businesses around the country, even as the White House has encouraged more inflows from foreign investors.
The arrests could exacerbate tensions between Washington and Seoul, a key ally and investor in the US The countries have been at odds over the details of a trade deal that includes $350 billion of investments. At a summit last month, South Korea pledged $150 billion in US investments - including $26 billion from Hyundai Motor.
Homeland Security officials said the workers arrested at the Ellabell, Georgia site were barred from working in the US after crossing the border illegally or overstaying visas. The investigation took place over several months, Steven Schrank, special agent in charge of investigations for Georgia, said during a press briefing.
The Atlanta office of the US Justice Department agency ATF reported the raid in a post on X/Twitter.
"This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses," he said. Schrank said there was a network of subcontractors on the site; a Hyundai Motor spokesperson said none of the people detained were employed directly by the automaker, which complies "with all laws and regulations wherever we operate."
The workers were being held at ICE's Folkston, Georgia detention facility, Schrank said. Most of the 475 people are Korean nationals, he said. Local Korean media said roughly 300 people detained were South Korean nationals.
A spokesperson at Hyundai's battery joint venture partner, South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solutions, said in a statement it was cooperating and had paused construction work. The facility, a joint venture between LGES and Hyundai Motor, was due to start operations at the end of this year, according to LGES.
LGES shares dropped 2.3%.
Under Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, part of DHS, has driven the Republican leader's sweeping crackdown on migrants, bolstered by record funding and new latitude to conduct raids.
Trump has said he wants to deport "the worst of the worst" criminals but ICE figures have shown a rise in non-criminals being picked up. Rights advocates have denounced such raids.
The White House said Friday that "any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations."
South Korea's Foreign Ministry expressed regret and concern about the raid. "The economic activities of our companies investing in the United States and the interests of our citizens must not be unduly violated during the course of US law enforcement," ministry spokesperson Lee Jae-woong said in a statement on Friday.
Social media video showed a man wearing a vest with the letters HSI, an acronym for Homeland Security Investigations, telling workers in yellow safety vests: "We have a search warrant for the whole site. We need construction to cease immediately. We need all work to end on the site right now."
The US Department of Justice, in a statement, said several people tried to flee during the raid. Some had to be fished out of a sewage pond on the site, DOJ said.
Georgia's Democratic Party condemns raid calling it use of fear tactics
Georgia's Democratic Party condemned the raid, calling it part of "politically-motivated fear tactics designed to terrorize people who work hard for a living, power our economy, and contribute to the communities across Georgia that they have made their homes." In a statement, a spokesman for Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said: “In Georgia, we will always enforce the law, including all state and federal immigration laws."
Hyundai said its production of electric vehicles at the sprawling site was not affected.
In 2023, Hyundai Motor and LG Energy announced the $4.3 billion venture to produce EV battery cells, with each company holding a 50% stake. The plant will supply batteries for Hyundai, Kia and Genesis EV models.
The battery factory is part of Hyundai's $12.6 billion investments in the state, including the automaker's just-opened car factory, in what would be "the largest economic development project in the state’s history."
Work paused at Hyundai's US site after hundreds of workers detained in raid
About 475 workers were arrested, according to US immigration officials, the largest single-site enforcement operation in the US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) history.
President Donald Trump's administration has been escalating a crackdown on immigrants, disrupting businesses around the country, even as the White House has encouraged more inflows from foreign investors.
The arrests could exacerbate tensions between Washington and Seoul, a key ally and investor in the US The countries have been at odds over the details of a trade deal that includes $350 billion of investments. At a summit last month, South Korea pledged $150 billion in US investments - including $26 billion from Hyundai Motor.
Homeland Security officials said the workers arrested at the Ellabell, Georgia site were barred from working in the US after crossing the border illegally or overstaying visas. The investigation took place over several months, Steven Schrank, special agent in charge of investigations for Georgia, said during a press briefing.
The Atlanta office of the US Justice Department agency ATF reported the raid in a post on X/Twitter.
"This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses," he said. Schrank said there was a network of subcontractors on the site; a Hyundai Motor spokesperson said none of the people detained were employed directly by the automaker, which complies "with all laws and regulations wherever we operate."
The workers were being held at ICE's Folkston, Georgia detention facility, Schrank said. Most of the 475 people are Korean nationals, he said. Local Korean media said roughly 300 people detained were South Korean nationals.
A spokesperson at Hyundai's battery joint venture partner, South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solutions, said in a statement it was cooperating and had paused construction work. The facility, a joint venture between LGES and Hyundai Motor, was due to start operations at the end of this year, according to LGES.
LGES shares dropped 2.3%.
Under Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, part of DHS, has driven the Republican leader's sweeping crackdown on migrants, bolstered by record funding and new latitude to conduct raids.
Trump has said he wants to deport "the worst of the worst" criminals but ICE figures have shown a rise in non-criminals being picked up. Rights advocates have denounced such raids.
The White House said Friday that "any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations."
South Korea's Foreign Ministry expressed regret and concern about the raid. "The economic activities of our companies investing in the United States and the interests of our citizens must not be unduly violated during the course of US law enforcement," ministry spokesperson Lee Jae-woong said in a statement on Friday.
Social media video showed a man wearing a vest with the letters HSI, an acronym for Homeland Security Investigations, telling workers in yellow safety vests: "We have a search warrant for the whole site. We need construction to cease immediately. We need all work to end on the site right now."
The US Department of Justice, in a statement, said several people tried to flee during the raid. Some had to be fished out of a sewage pond on the site, DOJ said.
Georgia's Democratic Party condemns raid calling it use of fear tactics
Georgia's Democratic Party condemned the raid, calling it part of "politically-motivated fear tactics designed to terrorize people who work hard for a living, power our economy, and contribute to the communities across Georgia that they have made their homes." In a statement, a spokesman for Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said: “In Georgia, we will always enforce the law, including all state and federal immigration laws."
Hyundai said its production of electric vehicles at the sprawling site was not affected.
In 2023, Hyundai Motor and LG Energy announced the $4.3 billion venture to produce EV battery cells, with each company holding a 50% stake. The plant will supply batteries for Hyundai, Kia and Genesis EV models.
The battery factory is part of Hyundai's $12.6 billion investments in the state, including the automaker's just-opened car factory, in what would be "the largest economic development project in the state’s history."
Work paused at Hyundai's US site after hundreds of workers detained in raid
Federal law enforcement officers forced open the doors of a snack bar manufacturer and took away dozens of workers in a surprise enforcement action that the plant's owner on Friday called “terrifying.”
“There's got to be a better way to do it,” Lenny Schmidt said at Nutrition Bar Confectioners, a day after officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other agencies raided the family-owned business in Cato, New York, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of Syracuse.
The facility’s employees had all been vetted and had legal documentation, Schmidt said, adding that he would have cooperated with law enforcement if he'd been told beforehand.
“Coming in like they did, it's frightening for everybody — the Latinos, Hispanics that work here, and everybody else that works here as well, even myself and my family. It's terrifying," he said.
Cayuga County Sheriff Brian Schenck said his deputies were among those on scene Thursday morning after being asked a month ago to assist federal agencies, including U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, in executing a search warrant “relative to an ongoing criminal investigation.”
New York Factory Raided© ASSOCIATED PRESS
He did not detail the nature of the investigation, referring questions to HSI, which he said was leading it.
HSI did not respond to requests for information.
The explanation left state Sen. Rachel May, a Democrat who represents the district, with questions.
“It's not clear to me if it's a longstanding criminal investigation why the workers would have been rounded up,” May said by phone Friday. “I feel like there are things that don’t quite add up.”
Briefly detained worker describes surprise raid
Video and photos from the scene showed numerous law enforcement vehicles outside the plant and workers being escorted from the building to a Border Patrol van.
A 24-year-old worker who was briefly detained said Friday that immigration agents ordered everyone to a lunchroom where they asked for proof they were in the country legally.
The worker, who declined to be named for fear of retribution, said that after showing the agents he is a legal resident, they wrote down his information and photographed him.
“Some of the women started to cry because their kids were at school or at day care. It was very sad to see,” the worker, who arrived from Guatemala six years ago, said.
His partner, who lacks legal status, was among those taken away.
The two of them started working at the factory about two years ago. He was assigned to the snack bar-wrapping department and she to the packing area. He said he couldn’t talk to her before she was led away by agents. He still doesn’t know where she is being detained.
“I could tell she was sad,” the worker said. “What they are doing to us is not right. We’re here to work. We are not criminals.”
Schmidt said he doesn't believe his plant was specifically targeted and that immigrations enforcement agents are singling out any company with “some sort of Hispanic workforce, whether small or large.”
The raid came the same day that immigration authorities detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, at a manufacturing site in Georgia where Korean automaker Hyundai makes electric vehicles.
Without his missing employees, Schmidt estimated production at the food manufacturer would drop by about half, making it a challenge to meet customer demand. The plant employs close to 230 people.
“We’ll just do what we need to do to move forward to give our customers the product that they need,” he said, “and then slowly recoup, rehire where we need.”
Dozens still held a day later
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was outraged by the raid and said those detained included parents of "at least a dozen children at risk of returning from school to an empty house.”
“I’ve made it clear: New York will work with the federal government to secure our borders and deport violent criminals, but we will never stand for masked ICE agents separating families and abandoning children," she said in a statement.
The advocacy group Rural and Migrant Ministry said between 50 and 60 people, most of them from Guatemala, were still being held Friday. Among those released late Thursday, after about 11 hours, was a mother of a newborn child who urgently needed to nurse her baby, the group's chief program officer, Wilmer Jimenez, said. He said she was told to report in later.
Jimenez said employees were in a panic during the hours law enforcement officers were on site.
“The way they went into the factory was very aggressive," Jimenez said. "They used crowbars to open the doors in many directions and it was just something that people were not expecting.”
The worker who was briefly detained said he has been helping to support his parents and siblings who grow corn and beans in Guatemala. He became a legal resident two years ago after working with an immigration attorney.
He said he took Friday off but plans to get back to work on Monday.
“I have to go back because I can’t be without work,” he said.
d analysis, The Independent now enjoys a reach that was inconceivable when it was launched as an upstart player in the British news industry. For the first time since the end of the Second World W
Raid on upstate New York food manufacturer leads to dozens of detentions
“There's got to be a better way to do it,” Lenny Schmidt said at Nutrition Bar Confectioners, a day after officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other agencies raided the family-owned business in Cato, New York, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of Syracuse.
The facility’s employees had all been vetted and had legal documentation, Schmidt said, adding that he would have cooperated with law enforcement if he'd been told beforehand.
“Coming in like they did, it's frightening for everybody — the Latinos, Hispanics that work here, and everybody else that works here as well, even myself and my family. It's terrifying," he said.
Cayuga County Sheriff Brian Schenck said his deputies were among those on scene Thursday morning after being asked a month ago to assist federal agencies, including U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, in executing a search warrant “relative to an ongoing criminal investigation.”
New York Factory Raided© ASSOCIATED PRESS
He did not detail the nature of the investigation, referring questions to HSI, which he said was leading it.
HSI did not respond to requests for information.
The explanation left state Sen. Rachel May, a Democrat who represents the district, with questions.
“It's not clear to me if it's a longstanding criminal investigation why the workers would have been rounded up,” May said by phone Friday. “I feel like there are things that don’t quite add up.”
Briefly detained worker describes surprise raid
Video and photos from the scene showed numerous law enforcement vehicles outside the plant and workers being escorted from the building to a Border Patrol van.
A 24-year-old worker who was briefly detained said Friday that immigration agents ordered everyone to a lunchroom where they asked for proof they were in the country legally.
The worker, who declined to be named for fear of retribution, said that after showing the agents he is a legal resident, they wrote down his information and photographed him.
“Some of the women started to cry because their kids were at school or at day care. It was very sad to see,” the worker, who arrived from Guatemala six years ago, said.
His partner, who lacks legal status, was among those taken away.
The two of them started working at the factory about two years ago. He was assigned to the snack bar-wrapping department and she to the packing area. He said he couldn’t talk to her before she was led away by agents. He still doesn’t know where she is being detained.
“I could tell she was sad,” the worker said. “What they are doing to us is not right. We’re here to work. We are not criminals.”
Schmidt said he doesn't believe his plant was specifically targeted and that immigrations enforcement agents are singling out any company with “some sort of Hispanic workforce, whether small or large.”
The raid came the same day that immigration authorities detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, at a manufacturing site in Georgia where Korean automaker Hyundai makes electric vehicles.
Without his missing employees, Schmidt estimated production at the food manufacturer would drop by about half, making it a challenge to meet customer demand. The plant employs close to 230 people.
“We’ll just do what we need to do to move forward to give our customers the product that they need,” he said, “and then slowly recoup, rehire where we need.”
Dozens still held a day later
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was outraged by the raid and said those detained included parents of "at least a dozen children at risk of returning from school to an empty house.”
“I’ve made it clear: New York will work with the federal government to secure our borders and deport violent criminals, but we will never stand for masked ICE agents separating families and abandoning children," she said in a statement.
The advocacy group Rural and Migrant Ministry said between 50 and 60 people, most of them from Guatemala, were still being held Friday. Among those released late Thursday, after about 11 hours, was a mother of a newborn child who urgently needed to nurse her baby, the group's chief program officer, Wilmer Jimenez, said. He said she was told to report in later.
Jimenez said employees were in a panic during the hours law enforcement officers were on site.
“The way they went into the factory was very aggressive," Jimenez said. "They used crowbars to open the doors in many directions and it was just something that people were not expecting.”
The worker who was briefly detained said he has been helping to support his parents and siblings who grow corn and beans in Guatemala. He became a legal resident two years ago after working with an immigration attorney.
He said he took Friday off but plans to get back to work on Monday.
“I have to go back because I can’t be without work,” he said.
d analysis, The Independent now enjoys a reach that was inconceivable when it was launched as an upstart player in the British news industry. For the first time since the end of the Second World W
Raid on upstate New York food manufacturer leads to dozens of detentions
After losing a court battle over state law requiring the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in the state, the top law enforcement official in Texas is now urging students to recite the Lord’s prayer.
Texas lawmakers recently approved voluntary periods of prayer and Bible reading in public schools. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is going a step further with his vision for state-backed Christian education by “encouraging” schools to “begin the legal process of putting prayer back in classrooms.”
Paxton “encourages all Texas schools to implement dedicated time for prayer and the reading of scripture,” his office said this week.
“In Texas classrooms, we want the Word of God opened, the Ten Commandments displayed, and prayers lifted up,” he said on government letterhead, with a copy of the Lord’s prayer printed beneath his statement.
He claimed “twisted, radical liberals want to erase Truth” and “dismantle the solid foundation that America’s success and strength were built upon, and erode the moral fabric of our society.”
“Our nation was founded on the rock of Biblical Truth, and I will not stand by while the far-left attempts to push our country into the sinking sand,” he said.
“Texas schools don’t need the government telling kids to pray — much less which prayer, or which god,” the Freedom from Religion Foundation said in a statement in response. This isn’t ‘religious freedom,’ it’s state-sponsored Christianity.”
In a letter urging Paxton to retract his statement, the group wrote that “the ‘solid foundation’ of our country is not biblical truth, but rather our secular Constitution that protects the rights of all Americans, including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, the nonreligious, and everyone else, to believe as they choose without government interference or favoritism.”
Last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked a recently passed state law requiring the Ten Commandments in classrooms, potentially setting up yet another Supreme Court showdown on the church and state firewall after several other Republican-led states have tried, and failed, to implement similar laws.
The Texas law, which was set to take effect September 1 as students returned to classrooms for the fall semester, likely violates the First Amendment’s prohibitions against government interference and endorsement of religion, according to the order from District Judge Fred Biery.
Paxton’s office has appealed the decision.
A federal judge agreed that posting the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms would force a state-favored religion in violation of the First Amendment (AP)
The law signed by Governor Greg Abbott forces all public elementary or secondary schools to “display in a conspicuous place in each classroom of the school a durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments.”
A lawsuit was filed by a group of Texas families with Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Unitarian Universalist, and nonreligious backgrounds, including clergy, with children in public schools.
The judge agreed with plaintiffs that those displays “are likely to pressure” children “into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption” of the state’s favored religious doctrine while “suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs,” according to the judge.
Lawmakers in Arkansas have advanced similar legislation, and Oklahoma’s chief school official mandated copies of the Bible and Ten Commandments in all classrooms with “immediate and strict compliance.”
Last year, District Judge John Wheadon deGravelles paused a similar Louisiana law that had swiftly drawn legal challenges from civil rights groups anticipating a Supreme Court battle.
Legislation to incorporate Christian teachings in public schools joins a nationwide effort from conservative special interest groups to move public funds into religious education.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court reached a surprise tie in a case that could decide whether Oklahoma could open the first-ever taxpayer funded Catholic public charter school, which triggered a high-profile legal battle to decide whether public funds can be used to create religious schools — setting up a major test to the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
The 4-4 decision, from which Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, upheld an earlier ruling that blocked the school’s opening — for now.
Texas pushes Lord’s prayer in public schools after losing legal battle over Ten Commandments in classrooms
Texas lawmakers recently approved voluntary periods of prayer and Bible reading in public schools. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is going a step further with his vision for state-backed Christian education by “encouraging” schools to “begin the legal process of putting prayer back in classrooms.”
Paxton “encourages all Texas schools to implement dedicated time for prayer and the reading of scripture,” his office said this week.
“In Texas classrooms, we want the Word of God opened, the Ten Commandments displayed, and prayers lifted up,” he said on government letterhead, with a copy of the Lord’s prayer printed beneath his statement.
He claimed “twisted, radical liberals want to erase Truth” and “dismantle the solid foundation that America’s success and strength were built upon, and erode the moral fabric of our society.”
“Our nation was founded on the rock of Biblical Truth, and I will not stand by while the far-left attempts to push our country into the sinking sand,” he said.
“Texas schools don’t need the government telling kids to pray — much less which prayer, or which god,” the Freedom from Religion Foundation said in a statement in response. This isn’t ‘religious freedom,’ it’s state-sponsored Christianity.”
In a letter urging Paxton to retract his statement, the group wrote that “the ‘solid foundation’ of our country is not biblical truth, but rather our secular Constitution that protects the rights of all Americans, including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, the nonreligious, and everyone else, to believe as they choose without government interference or favoritism.”
Last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked a recently passed state law requiring the Ten Commandments in classrooms, potentially setting up yet another Supreme Court showdown on the church and state firewall after several other Republican-led states have tried, and failed, to implement similar laws.
The Texas law, which was set to take effect September 1 as students returned to classrooms for the fall semester, likely violates the First Amendment’s prohibitions against government interference and endorsement of religion, according to the order from District Judge Fred Biery.
Paxton’s office has appealed the decision.
A federal judge agreed that posting the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms would force a state-favored religion in violation of the First Amendment (AP)
The law signed by Governor Greg Abbott forces all public elementary or secondary schools to “display in a conspicuous place in each classroom of the school a durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments.”
A lawsuit was filed by a group of Texas families with Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Unitarian Universalist, and nonreligious backgrounds, including clergy, with children in public schools.
The judge agreed with plaintiffs that those displays “are likely to pressure” children “into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption” of the state’s favored religious doctrine while “suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs,” according to the judge.
Lawmakers in Arkansas have advanced similar legislation, and Oklahoma’s chief school official mandated copies of the Bible and Ten Commandments in all classrooms with “immediate and strict compliance.”
Last year, District Judge John Wheadon deGravelles paused a similar Louisiana law that had swiftly drawn legal challenges from civil rights groups anticipating a Supreme Court battle.
Legislation to incorporate Christian teachings in public schools joins a nationwide effort from conservative special interest groups to move public funds into religious education.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court reached a surprise tie in a case that could decide whether Oklahoma could open the first-ever taxpayer funded Catholic public charter school, which triggered a high-profile legal battle to decide whether public funds can be used to create religious schools — setting up a major test to the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
The 4-4 decision, from which Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, upheld an earlier ruling that blocked the school’s opening — for now.
Texas pushes Lord’s prayer in public schools after losing legal battle over Ten Commandments in classrooms
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Department prosecutors are dropping their federal case against a woman who was charged with threatening to kill President Donald Trump — the latest in a string of self-inflicted setbacks for prosecutors during President Donald Trump's law-enforcement surge in the nation's capital.
A grand jury refused to indict Nathalie Rose Jones before U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office asked a judge on Friday to dismiss her case in district court. A one-page court filing by Pirro’s office says dismissing the case against Jones “is in the interests of justice,” but it doesn't elaborate.
Jones was due back in court Monday for a preliminary hearing. Her attorney, Mary Petras, asked the court to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” which would prevent prosecutors from reviving the case.
“Given the grand jury’s decision, Ms. Jones should not be forced to live under the threat of later charges and rearrest,” Petras wrote.
Petras said a prosecutor notified her Friday that “no additional presentations were made to the grand jury.”
“The charges against Ms. Jones were based on interpretations of statements the government presented to the grand jury," she wrote. "The grand jury rejected that interpretation of the statements and apparently agreed that Ms. Jones’s statements were consistent with her First Amendment rights.”
It is extraordinarily rare for a grand jury to balk at returning an indictment, but it has happened at least seven times in five cases since Trump's surge started nearly a month ago.
One of the instances involved the case against a man charged with hurling a sandwich at a federal agent, a confrontation captured on a viral video. A grand jury also declined to indict Edward Alexander Dana, who was charged with making a death threat against Trump while in police custody on Aug. 17.
Prosecutors on Thursday asked a magistrate judge to dismiss the federal case against Dana, but they charged him with misdemeanors in D.C. Superior Court.
A spokesperson for Pirro's office didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Jones' case.
Jones, 50, of Lafayette, Indiana, was arrested Aug. 16 in Washington on charges that she made death threats against Trump on social media and during an interview with Secret Service agents.
Prosecutors said Jones posted an Aug. 6 message on Facebook that she was “willing to sacrificially kill this POTUS by disemboweling him and cutting out his trachea.” When Secret Service agents questioned her on Aug. 15, Jones said she hoped to peacefully remove Trump from office but “will kill him out at the compound if I have to,” according to prosecutors. Jones was arrested a day later in Washington, where she joined a protest near the White House.
Jones repeatedly told Secret Service agents that she had no intent to harm anyone, didn’t own any weapons and went to Washington to peacefully protest, according to her attorney.
Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press
Prosecutors drop federal case against woman accused of threatening to kill Trump
A grand jury refused to indict Nathalie Rose Jones before U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office asked a judge on Friday to dismiss her case in district court. A one-page court filing by Pirro’s office says dismissing the case against Jones “is in the interests of justice,” but it doesn't elaborate.
Jones was due back in court Monday for a preliminary hearing. Her attorney, Mary Petras, asked the court to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” which would prevent prosecutors from reviving the case.
“Given the grand jury’s decision, Ms. Jones should not be forced to live under the threat of later charges and rearrest,” Petras wrote.
Petras said a prosecutor notified her Friday that “no additional presentations were made to the grand jury.”
“The charges against Ms. Jones were based on interpretations of statements the government presented to the grand jury," she wrote. "The grand jury rejected that interpretation of the statements and apparently agreed that Ms. Jones’s statements were consistent with her First Amendment rights.”
It is extraordinarily rare for a grand jury to balk at returning an indictment, but it has happened at least seven times in five cases since Trump's surge started nearly a month ago.
One of the instances involved the case against a man charged with hurling a sandwich at a federal agent, a confrontation captured on a viral video. A grand jury also declined to indict Edward Alexander Dana, who was charged with making a death threat against Trump while in police custody on Aug. 17.
Prosecutors on Thursday asked a magistrate judge to dismiss the federal case against Dana, but they charged him with misdemeanors in D.C. Superior Court.
A spokesperson for Pirro's office didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Jones' case.
Jones, 50, of Lafayette, Indiana, was arrested Aug. 16 in Washington on charges that she made death threats against Trump on social media and during an interview with Secret Service agents.
Prosecutors said Jones posted an Aug. 6 message on Facebook that she was “willing to sacrificially kill this POTUS by disemboweling him and cutting out his trachea.” When Secret Service agents questioned her on Aug. 15, Jones said she hoped to peacefully remove Trump from office but “will kill him out at the compound if I have to,” according to prosecutors. Jones was arrested a day later in Washington, where she joined a protest near the White House.
Jones repeatedly told Secret Service agents that she had no intent to harm anyone, didn’t own any weapons and went to Washington to peacefully protest, according to her attorney.
Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press
Prosecutors drop federal case against woman accused of threatening to kill Trump
A powerful Justice Department appeals panel has declared that anyone in deportation proceedings who entered the U.S. without legal authorization is not entitled to be considered for release on bond by an immigration judge.
The ruling upends a decades long understanding of federal law and could subject millions of immigrants to mandatory detention — a loss of liberty that advocates say could cause many to voluntarily leave the country even if they have meritorious cases to remain.
It also conflicts with recent federal court rulings finding the administration’s efforts to expand immigration detention violate the law and due process.
Previously, foreigners who entered illegally but could show they had been living in the U.S. for more than two years could ask an immigration judge for release on bond. But the decision Friday from the Board of Immigration Appeals concludes that detention is mandatory for anyone in deportation proceedings who entered the U.S. “without inspection.”
The ruling comes two months after the Trump administration altered its own interpretation of the law to insist on mandatory detention for immigrants apprehended within the United States — even if they had been present for decades. The change in policy has led to a flood of arrests of immigrants attending routine court proceedings and check-ins with federal authorities, despite previous decisions by immigration courts that they posed no danger or risk of fleeing.
Federal judges have repeatedly found the administration’s interpretation to be flagrantly illegal, a defiance of the “plain language” of the law that would render carefully crafted legislation on the issue — including the recently passed Laken Riley Act championed by President Donald Trump — superfluous.
But the ruling by the BIA — part of the executive branch — complicates the equation.
The decision is binding on federal immigration courts, the network of executive branch judges who handle routine deportation proceedings and are distinct from the federal judiciary. Rulings by immigration courts, including the BIA, can ultimately be overturned by the attorney general, who oversees the system.
The BIA ruling, however, is not binding on the judicial branch. And under recent Supreme Court precedents it is unclear how much weight those judges — and ultimately the Supreme Court — will give to the Justice Department’s view of the law.
One former immigration judge, Dana Leigh Marks, said in an interview that the ruling seems intended to encourage those in deportation proceedings to give up the fight and agree to return to their countries of origin or another country.
“It’s horrific,” said Marks, a former head of the immigration judges’ union. “No self-respecting lawyer could look themselves in the mirror and take these positions. … It’s a total cynical move to try to force people to litigate their cases while they’re detained.”
The BIA ruling Friday dealt with Venezuelan-born Jonathan Javier Yajure Hurtado, who crossed into Texas from Mexico in November 2022 without being inspected by U.S. border officials. He later received temporary protected status, which expired in April. Within days, he was detained by immigration officials.
Yajure, who is currently in a Tacoma, Washington, immigration detention center, could appeal the BIA ruling to the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, as could immigrants in other deportation cases who are denied hearings as a result of the new precedent.
While the decision could trigger a wave of new appeals in federal courts, immigrants in various parts of the country have already filed cases in federal district courts challenging as illegal the practice of denying them a bond hearing.
In dozens of cases in recent months, district court judges have sided with the immigrants, finding that the deportation scheme enacted by Congress was intended to distinguish between those apprehended at the border or shortly after entering and those who had been residing in the United States long-term. Those rulings have pointed to a 2018 Supreme Court precedent as supporting that distinction.
President Donald Trump has promised to remove millions of people from the United States in the largest deportation program in American history. But his immigration agenda is facing various tests in the U.S. courts.
For example, a federal appeals court ruled last week that the Trump administration cannot use an 18th-century wartime law to speed deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members, setting up a likely return showdown at the Supreme Court.
Some of the president's policies affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. Here are some Trump administration efforts that have come under court scrutiny:
Alien Enemies Act
The Trump administration has used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove people it accused of being in the Tren de Aragua gang, arguing it's an invading force.
The administration deported people it designated as members to a notorious prison in El Salvador and argued that American courts could not order them freed. The Alien Enemies Act was only used three times before in U.S. history, all during declared wars — in the War of 1812 and the two world wars.
A man is detained by immigration agents at a car wash on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, in Montebello, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)© The Associated Press
More than 250 of the men who were deported by the U.S. to El Salvador were returned to Venezuela earlier this summer in a complex deal brokered between the three countries. But litigation over the matter has continued.
In Tuesday's ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, two judges on a three-judge panel agreed with immigrant rights lawyers and lower court judges who argued the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was not intended to be used against gangs such as Tren de Aragua.
Lee Gelernt, who argued the case for the ACLU, said the ruling reined in "the administration’s view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts.”
But Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the president has the authority “to conduct national security operations in defense of the United States and to remove terrorists.”
“We expect to be vindicated on the merits in this case,” she said.
Birthright citizenship
President Trump issued an executive order that attempts to redefine birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
The amendment's Citizenship Clause says all people born or naturalized in the U.S., and subject to U.S. jurisdiction, are citizens. The Trump administration asserts that a child born in the U.S. is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
States that have sued over the order — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — argue that it ignores the plain wording of the Citizenship Clause as well as a landmark birthright citizenship case in 1898. The Supreme Court had found that a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by virtue of his birth on American soil.
A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled in late July that Trump's order is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision in New Hampshire that blocked the order's enforcement nationwide.
Third-country deportations
The Trump administration has been sending people to countries where they have no ties, including El Salvador in Central America and the African nation of South Sudan.
Trump officials have said these immigrants often come from countries that won’t take them back or were convicted of violent crimes. Advocacy groups sued this year, arguing that people's due process rights were being violated and that immigrants were being sent to countries with long histories of human rights violations.
In late March, a federal judge temporarily blocked third-country deportations of people without first being allowed to argue that it would jeopardize their safety. But in June, a divided Supreme Court halted that order, allowing the swift removal of immigrants to countries other than their homelands.
Lawyers for five men who were deported to the African country of Eswatini in July said Tuesday that the men have held prison for seven weeks without charges and no access to legal counsel.
Attorneys for one of the men, Jamaican national Orville Etoria, said his home country was willing to accept him back.
California immigration stops
Earlier this year, U.S. immigration authorities began conducting mass immigration raids in Southern California, rounding up predominantly Latino immigrants from locations like car washes, Home Depots, and bus stops, even sometimes ensnaring U.S. citizens.
The practice prompted a lawsuit by immigrant advocacy groups that accused the administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people in the region. The Justice Department has argued that federal agents are allowed to consider factors like race or ethnicity and occupations in an area it considers a “top enforcement priority.”
A federal judge ordered the administration to halt such tactics in seven California counties, including Los Angeles, writing that they violated the U.S. Constitution. A federal appeals court upheld the judge’s temporary order.
The Trump administration filed an emergency petition in early August that asks the Supreme Court to halt the lower court’s ruling, with Solicitor General D. John Sauer arguing that it puts a “straitjacket” on federal agents.
Temporary Protected Status
The Trump administration has sought to end programs that offer legal yet temporary authorization for people to live and work in the U.S. if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe.
The efforts have prompted lawsuits across the country that say more than 1.5 million people are under what's known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, or humanitarian parole.
Temporary Protected Status allows people already living in the U.S. to stay and work legally for up to 18 months if their homelands are unsafe because of civil unrest or natural disasters. The status can be repeatedly renewed.
More than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela live in the U.S. under humanitarian parole, which allows people from countries where there’s war or political instability to enter and temporarily live in the U.S.
To qualify, they had to fly to the U.S. at their own expense and have a financial sponsor. For most people, the designation lasts for two years.
In May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to revoke TPS and humanitarian protections while the lawsuits proceed. As a result, it’s possible that people who had protections could be deported before the legal cases are completed.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen restored TPS protections for 1.1 million Venezuelans and Haitians, ruling that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had no legal authority to revoke extensions granted under the Biden administration. In August, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed him up in a related appeal.
On the East Coast, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is deciding whether to uphold a Boston judge’s order halting humanitarian parole terminations for roughly 430,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Fast-track deportations
The Department of Homeland Security announced in January that it was expanding the use of expedited removal, a fast-track deportation process for migrants who came to the country illegally and have been here less than two years.
It allows for their removal without appearing before a judge first.
Before Trump's second term, expedited removal was only used for migrants who were stopped within 100 miles of the border and who had been in the U.S. for less than 14 days.
The change has triggered lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant rights groups. In late August, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb temporarily blocked the administration's expansion, suggesting that it's trampling on people's due process rights.
In another case, Cobb agreed in early August to temporarily block the administration’s efforts to expand fast-track deportations of immigrants who legally entered the U.S. under humanitarian parole.
Cobb said the case’s “underlying question” is whether people who escaped oppression will have the chance to “plead their case within a system of rules.”
Ben Finley, The Associated Press
Several of Trump's immigration policies have faced lawsuits, court rulings
For example, a federal appeals court ruled last week that the Trump administration cannot use an 18th-century wartime law to speed deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members, setting up a likely return showdown at the Supreme Court.
Some of the president's policies affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. Here are some Trump administration efforts that have come under court scrutiny:
Alien Enemies Act
The Trump administration has used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove people it accused of being in the Tren de Aragua gang, arguing it's an invading force.
The administration deported people it designated as members to a notorious prison in El Salvador and argued that American courts could not order them freed. The Alien Enemies Act was only used three times before in U.S. history, all during declared wars — in the War of 1812 and the two world wars.
A man is detained by immigration agents at a car wash on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, in Montebello, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)© The Associated Press
More than 250 of the men who were deported by the U.S. to El Salvador were returned to Venezuela earlier this summer in a complex deal brokered between the three countries. But litigation over the matter has continued.
In Tuesday's ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, two judges on a three-judge panel agreed with immigrant rights lawyers and lower court judges who argued the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was not intended to be used against gangs such as Tren de Aragua.
Lee Gelernt, who argued the case for the ACLU, said the ruling reined in "the administration’s view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts.”
But Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the president has the authority “to conduct national security operations in defense of the United States and to remove terrorists.”
“We expect to be vindicated on the merits in this case,” she said.
Birthright citizenship
President Trump issued an executive order that attempts to redefine birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
The amendment's Citizenship Clause says all people born or naturalized in the U.S., and subject to U.S. jurisdiction, are citizens. The Trump administration asserts that a child born in the U.S. is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
States that have sued over the order — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — argue that it ignores the plain wording of the Citizenship Clause as well as a landmark birthright citizenship case in 1898. The Supreme Court had found that a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by virtue of his birth on American soil.
A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled in late July that Trump's order is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision in New Hampshire that blocked the order's enforcement nationwide.
Third-country deportations
The Trump administration has been sending people to countries where they have no ties, including El Salvador in Central America and the African nation of South Sudan.
Trump officials have said these immigrants often come from countries that won’t take them back or were convicted of violent crimes. Advocacy groups sued this year, arguing that people's due process rights were being violated and that immigrants were being sent to countries with long histories of human rights violations.
In late March, a federal judge temporarily blocked third-country deportations of people without first being allowed to argue that it would jeopardize their safety. But in June, a divided Supreme Court halted that order, allowing the swift removal of immigrants to countries other than their homelands.
Lawyers for five men who were deported to the African country of Eswatini in July said Tuesday that the men have held prison for seven weeks without charges and no access to legal counsel.
Attorneys for one of the men, Jamaican national Orville Etoria, said his home country was willing to accept him back.
California immigration stops
Earlier this year, U.S. immigration authorities began conducting mass immigration raids in Southern California, rounding up predominantly Latino immigrants from locations like car washes, Home Depots, and bus stops, even sometimes ensnaring U.S. citizens.
The practice prompted a lawsuit by immigrant advocacy groups that accused the administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people in the region. The Justice Department has argued that federal agents are allowed to consider factors like race or ethnicity and occupations in an area it considers a “top enforcement priority.”
A federal judge ordered the administration to halt such tactics in seven California counties, including Los Angeles, writing that they violated the U.S. Constitution. A federal appeals court upheld the judge’s temporary order.
The Trump administration filed an emergency petition in early August that asks the Supreme Court to halt the lower court’s ruling, with Solicitor General D. John Sauer arguing that it puts a “straitjacket” on federal agents.
Temporary Protected Status
The Trump administration has sought to end programs that offer legal yet temporary authorization for people to live and work in the U.S. if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe.
The efforts have prompted lawsuits across the country that say more than 1.5 million people are under what's known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, or humanitarian parole.
Temporary Protected Status allows people already living in the U.S. to stay and work legally for up to 18 months if their homelands are unsafe because of civil unrest or natural disasters. The status can be repeatedly renewed.
More than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela live in the U.S. under humanitarian parole, which allows people from countries where there’s war or political instability to enter and temporarily live in the U.S.
To qualify, they had to fly to the U.S. at their own expense and have a financial sponsor. For most people, the designation lasts for two years.
In May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to revoke TPS and humanitarian protections while the lawsuits proceed. As a result, it’s possible that people who had protections could be deported before the legal cases are completed.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen restored TPS protections for 1.1 million Venezuelans and Haitians, ruling that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had no legal authority to revoke extensions granted under the Biden administration. In August, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed him up in a related appeal.
On the East Coast, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is deciding whether to uphold a Boston judge’s order halting humanitarian parole terminations for roughly 430,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Fast-track deportations
The Department of Homeland Security announced in January that it was expanding the use of expedited removal, a fast-track deportation process for migrants who came to the country illegally and have been here less than two years.
It allows for their removal without appearing before a judge first.
Before Trump's second term, expedited removal was only used for migrants who were stopped within 100 miles of the border and who had been in the U.S. for less than 14 days.
The change has triggered lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant rights groups. In late August, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb temporarily blocked the administration's expansion, suggesting that it's trampling on people's due process rights.
In another case, Cobb agreed in early August to temporarily block the administration’s efforts to expand fast-track deportations of immigrants who legally entered the U.S. under humanitarian parole.
Cobb said the case’s “underlying question” is whether people who escaped oppression will have the chance to “plead their case within a system of rules.”
Ben Finley, The Associated Press
Several of Trump's immigration policies have faced lawsuits, court rulings
Last edited:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries.
“We have much bigger and better cards than they do,” he said of China last month. Compared with Canada, he said in June, “we have all the cards. We have every single one.” And most famously, he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in their Oval Office confrontation earlier this year: “You don’t have the cards.”
The phrase offers a window into the worldview of Trump, who has spent his second stint in the White House amassing cards to deploy in pursuit of his interests.
Seven months into his second term, he has accumulated presidential power that he has used against universities, media companies, law firms, and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents.
And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re egging him on.
“Weaponizing the state to win the culture war has been essential to their agenda,” said David N. Smith, a University of Kansas sociologist who has extensively researched the motivations of Trump voters. “They didn’t like it when the state was mobilized to restrain Trump, but they’re happy to see the state acting to fight the culture war on their behalf.”
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump listen during a dinner in the State Dinning Room of the White House, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)© The Associated Press
How Trump has weaponized the government
Trump began putting the federal government to work for him within hours of taking office in January, and he’s been collecting and using power in novel ways ever since. It's a high-velocity push to carry out his political agendas and grudges.
This past month, hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops fanned out across Washington after Trump drew on a never-used law that allows him to take control of law enforcement in the nation’s capital. He’s threatened similar deployments in other cities run by Democrats, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York and New Orleans. He also fired a Federal Reserve governor, pointing to unproven claims of mortgage fraud.
Trump, his aides and allies throughout the executive branch have trained the government, or threatened to, on a dizzying array of targets:
—He threatened to block a stadium plan for the Washington Commanders football team unless it readopted the racial slur it used as a moniker until 2020.
—He revoked security clearances and tried to block access to government facilities for attorneys at law firms he disfavors.
—He revoked billions of dollars in federal research funds and sought to block international students from elite universities. Under pressure, Columbia University agreed to a $220 million settlement, the University of Pennsylvania revoked records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and presidents resigned from the University of Virginia and Northwestern University.
—He has fired or reassigned federal employees targeted for their work, including prosecutors who worked on cases involving him.
—He dropped corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams to gain cooperation in his crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally.
—He secured multimillion-dollar settlements against media organizations in lawsuits that were widely regarded as weak cases.
—Attorney General Pam Bondi is pursuing a grand jury review of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and appointed a special prosecutor to scrutinize New York Attorney General Letitia James and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff.
That's not weaponizing government, says White House spokesperson Harrison Fields; it's wielding power.
“What the nation is witnessing today is the execution of the most consequential administration in American history,” Fields said, “one that is embracing common sense, putting America first, and fulfilling the mandate of the American people.”
Trump has a sixth sense for power
There’s a push and a pull to power. It is both given and taken. And through executive orders, personnel moves, the bully pulpit and sheer brazenness, Trump has claimed powers that none of his modern predecessors came close to claiming.
He has also been handed power by many around him. By a fiercely loyal base that rides with him through thick and thin. By a Congress and Supreme Court that so far have ceded power to the executive branch. By universities, law firms, media organizations and other institutions that have negotiated or settled with him.
The U.S. government is powerful, but it’s not inherently omnipotent. As Trump learned to his frustration in his first term, the president is penned in by the Constitution, laws, court rulings, bureaucracy, traditions and norms. Yet in his second term, Trump has managed to eliminate, steamroll, ignore or otherwise neutralize many of those guardrails.
Leaders can exert their will through fear and intimidation, by determining the topics that are getting discussed and by shaping people's preferences, Steven Lukes argued in a seminal 1974 book, “Power: A Radical View.” Lukes, a professor emeritus at New York University, said Trump exemplifies all three dimensions of power. Trump's innovation, Lukes said, is “epistemic liberation” — a willingness to make up facts without evidence.
“This idea that you can just say things that aren’t true, and then it doesn’t matter to your followers and to a lot of other people ... that seems to me a new thing,” at least in liberal democracies, Lukes said. Trump uses memes and jokes more than argument and advocacy to signal his preferences, he said.
Trump ran against government weaponization
Central to Trump’s 2024 campaign was his contention that he was the victim of a “ vicious persecution ” perpetrated by “the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Injustice.”
Facing four criminal cases in New York, Washington and Florida, Trump said in 2023 that he yearned not to end the government weaponization, but to harness it. “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Aug. 4, 2023.
“If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them,’” he said in a Univision interview on Nov. 9, 2023. And given a chance by a friendly Fox News interviewer to assure Americans that he would use power responsibly, he responded in December that year that he would not be a dictator “ except on day one.”
He largely backed off those threats as the election drew closer, even as he continued to campaign against government weaponization. When he won, he declared an end to it.
“Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents — something I know something about,” Trump said in his second inaugural address.
A month later: “I ended Joe Biden’s weaponization soon as I got in,” Trump said in a Feb. 22 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. And 10 days after that: “We’ve ended weaponized government, where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent, like me.”
Two days later, on March 6, Trump signed a sweeping order targeting a prominent law firm that represents Democrats. And on April 9, he issued presidential memoranda directing the Justice Department to investigate two officials from his first administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor.
With that, the weaponization has come full circle. Trump is no longer surrounded by tradition-bound lawyers and government officials, and his instinct to play his hand aggressively faces few restraints.
Jonathan J. Cooper, The Associated Press
How Donald Trump is weaponizing the government to settle personal scores and pursue his agenda
“We have much bigger and better cards than they do,” he said of China last month. Compared with Canada, he said in June, “we have all the cards. We have every single one.” And most famously, he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in their Oval Office confrontation earlier this year: “You don’t have the cards.”
The phrase offers a window into the worldview of Trump, who has spent his second stint in the White House amassing cards to deploy in pursuit of his interests.
Seven months into his second term, he has accumulated presidential power that he has used against universities, media companies, law firms, and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents.
And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re egging him on.
“Weaponizing the state to win the culture war has been essential to their agenda,” said David N. Smith, a University of Kansas sociologist who has extensively researched the motivations of Trump voters. “They didn’t like it when the state was mobilized to restrain Trump, but they’re happy to see the state acting to fight the culture war on their behalf.”
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump listen during a dinner in the State Dinning Room of the White House, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)© The Associated Press
How Trump has weaponized the government
Trump began putting the federal government to work for him within hours of taking office in January, and he’s been collecting and using power in novel ways ever since. It's a high-velocity push to carry out his political agendas and grudges.
This past month, hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops fanned out across Washington after Trump drew on a never-used law that allows him to take control of law enforcement in the nation’s capital. He’s threatened similar deployments in other cities run by Democrats, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York and New Orleans. He also fired a Federal Reserve governor, pointing to unproven claims of mortgage fraud.
Trump, his aides and allies throughout the executive branch have trained the government, or threatened to, on a dizzying array of targets:
—He threatened to block a stadium plan for the Washington Commanders football team unless it readopted the racial slur it used as a moniker until 2020.
—He revoked security clearances and tried to block access to government facilities for attorneys at law firms he disfavors.
—He revoked billions of dollars in federal research funds and sought to block international students from elite universities. Under pressure, Columbia University agreed to a $220 million settlement, the University of Pennsylvania revoked records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and presidents resigned from the University of Virginia and Northwestern University.
—He has fired or reassigned federal employees targeted for their work, including prosecutors who worked on cases involving him.
—He dropped corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams to gain cooperation in his crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally.
—He secured multimillion-dollar settlements against media organizations in lawsuits that were widely regarded as weak cases.
—Attorney General Pam Bondi is pursuing a grand jury review of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and appointed a special prosecutor to scrutinize New York Attorney General Letitia James and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff.
That's not weaponizing government, says White House spokesperson Harrison Fields; it's wielding power.
“What the nation is witnessing today is the execution of the most consequential administration in American history,” Fields said, “one that is embracing common sense, putting America first, and fulfilling the mandate of the American people.”
Trump has a sixth sense for power
There’s a push and a pull to power. It is both given and taken. And through executive orders, personnel moves, the bully pulpit and sheer brazenness, Trump has claimed powers that none of his modern predecessors came close to claiming.
He has also been handed power by many around him. By a fiercely loyal base that rides with him through thick and thin. By a Congress and Supreme Court that so far have ceded power to the executive branch. By universities, law firms, media organizations and other institutions that have negotiated or settled with him.
The U.S. government is powerful, but it’s not inherently omnipotent. As Trump learned to his frustration in his first term, the president is penned in by the Constitution, laws, court rulings, bureaucracy, traditions and norms. Yet in his second term, Trump has managed to eliminate, steamroll, ignore or otherwise neutralize many of those guardrails.
Leaders can exert their will through fear and intimidation, by determining the topics that are getting discussed and by shaping people's preferences, Steven Lukes argued in a seminal 1974 book, “Power: A Radical View.” Lukes, a professor emeritus at New York University, said Trump exemplifies all three dimensions of power. Trump's innovation, Lukes said, is “epistemic liberation” — a willingness to make up facts without evidence.
“This idea that you can just say things that aren’t true, and then it doesn’t matter to your followers and to a lot of other people ... that seems to me a new thing,” at least in liberal democracies, Lukes said. Trump uses memes and jokes more than argument and advocacy to signal his preferences, he said.
Trump ran against government weaponization
Central to Trump’s 2024 campaign was his contention that he was the victim of a “ vicious persecution ” perpetrated by “the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Injustice.”
Facing four criminal cases in New York, Washington and Florida, Trump said in 2023 that he yearned not to end the government weaponization, but to harness it. “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Aug. 4, 2023.
“If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them,’” he said in a Univision interview on Nov. 9, 2023. And given a chance by a friendly Fox News interviewer to assure Americans that he would use power responsibly, he responded in December that year that he would not be a dictator “ except on day one.”
He largely backed off those threats as the election drew closer, even as he continued to campaign against government weaponization. When he won, he declared an end to it.
“Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents — something I know something about,” Trump said in his second inaugural address.
A month later: “I ended Joe Biden’s weaponization soon as I got in,” Trump said in a Feb. 22 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. And 10 days after that: “We’ve ended weaponized government, where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent, like me.”
Two days later, on March 6, Trump signed a sweeping order targeting a prominent law firm that represents Democrats. And on April 9, he issued presidential memoranda directing the Justice Department to investigate two officials from his first administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor.
With that, the weaponization has come full circle. Trump is no longer surrounded by tradition-bound lawyers and government officials, and his instinct to play his hand aggressively faces few restraints.
Jonathan J. Cooper, The Associated Press
How Donald Trump is weaponizing the government to settle personal scores and pursue his agenda
Way too many words to read on an escort review site, but I agree 100% with denying bail to non legal immigrants, because once out the majority will disappear into the underground
”American immigration courts consistently have the highest failure to appear (FTA) rates of any state or federal courts in the country.”
”American immigration courts consistently have the highest failure to appear (FTA) rates of any state or federal courts in the country.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Donald Trump on Monday to keep a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission away from her post for now, temporarily pausing a judicial order that required the reinstatement of the commissioner who the Republican president has sought to oust.
The court's action, known as an administrative stay, gives the justices additional time to consider Trump's formal request to let him fire Rebecca Slaughter from the consumer protection agency that enforces antitrust law prior to her term expiring.
The stay was issued by Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency filings arising in Washington, D.C. Roberts asked Slaughter to file a response by next Monday.
The Justice Department made the request on Thursday after Washington-based U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan blocked Trump's firing of Slaughter. AliKhan ruled in July that Trump's attempt to remove Slaughter did not comply with removal protections in federal law. Congress put such tenure protections in place to give certain regulatory agencies a degree of independence from presidential control.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on September 2 in a 2-1 decision upheld the judge's ruling, prompting the administration's request to the Supreme Court.
The lower courts ruled that the statutory protections shielding FTC members from being removed without cause conform with the U.S. Constitution in light of a 1935 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Humphrey's Executor v. United States.
In that case, the court ruled that a president lacks unfettered power to remove FTC commissioners, faulting then-President Franklin Roosevelt's firing of an FTC commissioner for policy differences.
The administration in its Supreme Court filing argued that "the modern FTC exercises far more substantial powers than the 1935 FTC," and thus its members can be fired at will by the president.
The court in a similar ruling in May said the Constitution gives the president wide latitude to fire government officials who wield executive power on his behalf.
The administration has repeatedly asked the justices this year to allow implementation of Trump policies impeded by lower courts. The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has sided with the administration in almost every case that it has been called upon to review since Trump returned to the presidency in January.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
US Supreme Court lets Trump remove FTC member for now
The court's action, known as an administrative stay, gives the justices additional time to consider Trump's formal request to let him fire Rebecca Slaughter from the consumer protection agency that enforces antitrust law prior to her term expiring.
The stay was issued by Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency filings arising in Washington, D.C. Roberts asked Slaughter to file a response by next Monday.
The Justice Department made the request on Thursday after Washington-based U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan blocked Trump's firing of Slaughter. AliKhan ruled in July that Trump's attempt to remove Slaughter did not comply with removal protections in federal law. Congress put such tenure protections in place to give certain regulatory agencies a degree of independence from presidential control.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on September 2 in a 2-1 decision upheld the judge's ruling, prompting the administration's request to the Supreme Court.
The lower courts ruled that the statutory protections shielding FTC members from being removed without cause conform with the U.S. Constitution in light of a 1935 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Humphrey's Executor v. United States.
In that case, the court ruled that a president lacks unfettered power to remove FTC commissioners, faulting then-President Franklin Roosevelt's firing of an FTC commissioner for policy differences.
The administration in its Supreme Court filing argued that "the modern FTC exercises far more substantial powers than the 1935 FTC," and thus its members can be fired at will by the president.
The court in a similar ruling in May said the Constitution gives the president wide latitude to fire government officials who wield executive power on his behalf.
The administration has repeatedly asked the justices this year to allow implementation of Trump policies impeded by lower courts. The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has sided with the administration in almost every case that it has been called upon to review since Trump returned to the presidency in January.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
US Supreme Court lets Trump remove FTC member for now
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court for an emergency order to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen.
The crux of the legal fight is over nearly $5 billion in congressionally approved aid that President Donald Trump last month said he would not spend, invoking disputed authority that was last used by a president roughly 50 years ago.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled that the Republican administration’s decision to withhold the funding was likely illegal.
Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a letter on Aug. 28 that he would not spend $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.
He used what’s known as a pocket rescission. That's when a president submits a request to Congress toward the end of a current budget year to not spend the approved money. The late notice means Congress cannot act on the request in the required 45-day window and the money goes unspent.
Ali said Congress would have to approve the rescission proposal for the Trump administration to withhold the money. The law is “explicit that it is congressional action — not the President’s transmission of a special message — that triggers rescission of the earlier appropriations,” he wrote.
President Donald Trump speaks at a hearing of the Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)© The Associated Press
The Trump administration has made deep reductions to foreign aid one of its hallmark policies, despite the relatively meager savings relative to the deficit and possible damage to America’s reputation abroad as foreign populations lose access to food supplies and development programs. The administration turned to the high court after a panel of federal appellate judges declined to block Ali’s ruling.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the ruling “an unlawful injunction that precipitates an unnecessary emergency and needless interbranch conflict.” He urged the justices to immediately block it.
But lawyers for the nonprofit organizations that sued the government said it's the funding freeze that violates federal law, noting that it has shut down funding for even the most urgent lifesaving programs abroad.
“This marks the third time in this case alone that the Administration has run to the Supreme Court in a supposed emergency posture to seek relief from circumstances of its own making — this time to defend the illegal tactic of a ‘pocket rescission,’" attorney Lauren Bateman of Public Citizen Litigation Group, lead counsel for the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition plaintiffs, said in a statement. "The Administration is effectively asking the Supreme Court to bless its attempt to unlawfully accumulate power.”
Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge last month that another $6.5 billion in aid that had been subject to the freeze would be spent before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The case has been winding its way through the courts for months, and Ali said he understood that his ruling would not be the last word on the matter.
“This case raises questions of immense legal and practical importance, including whether there is any avenue to test the executive branch’s decision not to spend congressionally appropriated funds,” he wrote.
In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out an earlier injunction Ali had issued to require that the money be spent. But the three-judge panel did not shut down the lawsuit.
After Trump issued his rescission notice, the plaintiffs returned to Ali's court and the judge issued the order that's now being challenged.
Trump asks Supreme Court for emergency order to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen
The crux of the legal fight is over nearly $5 billion in congressionally approved aid that President Donald Trump last month said he would not spend, invoking disputed authority that was last used by a president roughly 50 years ago.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled that the Republican administration’s decision to withhold the funding was likely illegal.
Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a letter on Aug. 28 that he would not spend $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.
He used what’s known as a pocket rescission. That's when a president submits a request to Congress toward the end of a current budget year to not spend the approved money. The late notice means Congress cannot act on the request in the required 45-day window and the money goes unspent.
Ali said Congress would have to approve the rescission proposal for the Trump administration to withhold the money. The law is “explicit that it is congressional action — not the President’s transmission of a special message — that triggers rescission of the earlier appropriations,” he wrote.
President Donald Trump speaks at a hearing of the Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)© The Associated Press
The Trump administration has made deep reductions to foreign aid one of its hallmark policies, despite the relatively meager savings relative to the deficit and possible damage to America’s reputation abroad as foreign populations lose access to food supplies and development programs. The administration turned to the high court after a panel of federal appellate judges declined to block Ali’s ruling.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the ruling “an unlawful injunction that precipitates an unnecessary emergency and needless interbranch conflict.” He urged the justices to immediately block it.
But lawyers for the nonprofit organizations that sued the government said it's the funding freeze that violates federal law, noting that it has shut down funding for even the most urgent lifesaving programs abroad.
“This marks the third time in this case alone that the Administration has run to the Supreme Court in a supposed emergency posture to seek relief from circumstances of its own making — this time to defend the illegal tactic of a ‘pocket rescission,’" attorney Lauren Bateman of Public Citizen Litigation Group, lead counsel for the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition plaintiffs, said in a statement. "The Administration is effectively asking the Supreme Court to bless its attempt to unlawfully accumulate power.”
Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge last month that another $6.5 billion in aid that had been subject to the freeze would be spent before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The case has been winding its way through the courts for months, and Ali said he understood that his ruling would not be the last word on the matter.
“This case raises questions of immense legal and practical importance, including whether there is any avenue to test the executive branch’s decision not to spend congressionally appropriated funds,” he wrote.
In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out an earlier injunction Ali had issued to require that the money be spent. But the three-judge panel did not shut down the lawsuit.
After Trump issued his rescission notice, the plaintiffs returned to Ali's court and the judge issued the order that's now being challenged.
Trump asks Supreme Court for emergency order to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen
This thread has 341,000 views. I am suggesting that people with better literacy skills than you actually read the thread and benefit from it.
But each to his own, I guess.
A federal appeals court in New York has upheld a $83.3 million judgement against Donald Trump for defaming E Jean Carroll after the president claimed he was immune from liability.
Trump “failed to identify any grounds” to reconsider the case on the grounds of presidential immunity, and the jury’s verdict was “fair and reasonable” given the “unique and egregious facts of this case,” the appellate judges said Monday.
Last year, a unanimous jury returned a verdict awarding $83.3 million in damages to the former Elle magazine writer for the president’s defamatory statements during his first term in office and in the years that followed. A separate jury had already awarded Carroll $5 million in 2022 after finding Trump liable for sexual abuse.
Trump was accused of repeatedly defaming Carroll by claiming he had never met her, labelling her a liar and denying that he had sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store in the 1990s.
After a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation in 2023, a different jury in a second case awarded Carroll more than $18 million in compensatory damages in addition to $65 million in punitive damages.
“Trump acted with, at a minimum, reckless disregard for the truth” by calling Carroll a liar and stating that she is not his “type,” the judge said Monday.
“After Trump released his statements, which were viewed by between 85.8 to 104 million people, Carroll was instantly and continuously attacked on Twitter and Facebook and in emails,” they added. “She received thousands of such attacks, including hundreds of death threats.”
During the trial, more than a dozen such messages were entered into evidence, and Carroll testified “about her continued fear for her safety and her inability to afford stronger personal security measures” as well as “the impact of Trump's statements on Carroll's reputation and career,” the judges wrote.
Appeals court judges rejected Trump’s arguments that he is shielded from liability under presidential immunity, after lawyers for Carroll said his defamatory statements were ‘quintessentially” personal conduct that had nothing to do with his duties as president (AFP via Getty Images)
In that trial, Trump was barred from disputing that the facts of that case, including whether he sexually abused Carroll, leaving the trial to focus exclusively on damages owed to her.
A different panel of New York appellate judges in December refused to overturn the $5 million verdict after the president argued that the trial judge should not have let jurors hear testimony from two other women who accused him of sexual misconduct. Trump’s lawyers also contented that jurors should not have listened to his comments on the so-called Access Hollywood tape, on which the president is heard bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.
Trump is expected to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in that case.
In his appeal of the second defamation verdict, Trump’s attorneys argued that he should be shielded from liability under the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity, which shields the president from prosecution for official acts in office.
Trump insists that he has never met Carroll and has repeatedly branded her a liar and the case a “hoax” against him — claims at the center of Carroll’s defamation lawsuits.
His legal team had argued that the initial statements denying Carroll’s allegations were “issued through official White House channels” and “fall squarely within the outer perimeter” of the president’s official duties.
But Carroll’s attorneys had argued to the appellate court that Trump’s statements and actions involved “personal conduct” that have nothing to do with the White House.
Trump “was not speaking here about a governmental policy or a function of his responsibilities,” they argued. “He was defaming Carroll because of her revelation that many years before he assumed office, he sexually assaulted her. The defamation at issue concerned quintessentially ‘personal' conduct.’”
The Carroll verdicts added to a tidal wave of litigation against the president after leaving the White House and campaigning for a second term, including criminal convictions for falsifying business records and a massive fraud judgment putting him on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars.
He avoided any consequences after his conviction in the criminal case in Manhattan, and he has successfully appealed a part of the fraud judgment.
Trump must pay $83 million to E Jean Carroll after ‘egregious’ defamation case, appeals court rules
Trump “failed to identify any grounds” to reconsider the case on the grounds of presidential immunity, and the jury’s verdict was “fair and reasonable” given the “unique and egregious facts of this case,” the appellate judges said Monday.
Last year, a unanimous jury returned a verdict awarding $83.3 million in damages to the former Elle magazine writer for the president’s defamatory statements during his first term in office and in the years that followed. A separate jury had already awarded Carroll $5 million in 2022 after finding Trump liable for sexual abuse.
Trump was accused of repeatedly defaming Carroll by claiming he had never met her, labelling her a liar and denying that he had sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store in the 1990s.
After a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation in 2023, a different jury in a second case awarded Carroll more than $18 million in compensatory damages in addition to $65 million in punitive damages.
“Trump acted with, at a minimum, reckless disregard for the truth” by calling Carroll a liar and stating that she is not his “type,” the judge said Monday.
“After Trump released his statements, which were viewed by between 85.8 to 104 million people, Carroll was instantly and continuously attacked on Twitter and Facebook and in emails,” they added. “She received thousands of such attacks, including hundreds of death threats.”
During the trial, more than a dozen such messages were entered into evidence, and Carroll testified “about her continued fear for her safety and her inability to afford stronger personal security measures” as well as “the impact of Trump's statements on Carroll's reputation and career,” the judges wrote.
Appeals court judges rejected Trump’s arguments that he is shielded from liability under presidential immunity, after lawyers for Carroll said his defamatory statements were ‘quintessentially” personal conduct that had nothing to do with his duties as president (AFP via Getty Images)
In that trial, Trump was barred from disputing that the facts of that case, including whether he sexually abused Carroll, leaving the trial to focus exclusively on damages owed to her.
A different panel of New York appellate judges in December refused to overturn the $5 million verdict after the president argued that the trial judge should not have let jurors hear testimony from two other women who accused him of sexual misconduct. Trump’s lawyers also contented that jurors should not have listened to his comments on the so-called Access Hollywood tape, on which the president is heard bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.
Trump is expected to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in that case.
In his appeal of the second defamation verdict, Trump’s attorneys argued that he should be shielded from liability under the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity, which shields the president from prosecution for official acts in office.
Trump insists that he has never met Carroll and has repeatedly branded her a liar and the case a “hoax” against him — claims at the center of Carroll’s defamation lawsuits.
His legal team had argued that the initial statements denying Carroll’s allegations were “issued through official White House channels” and “fall squarely within the outer perimeter” of the president’s official duties.
But Carroll’s attorneys had argued to the appellate court that Trump’s statements and actions involved “personal conduct” that have nothing to do with the White House.
Trump “was not speaking here about a governmental policy or a function of his responsibilities,” they argued. “He was defaming Carroll because of her revelation that many years before he assumed office, he sexually assaulted her. The defamation at issue concerned quintessentially ‘personal' conduct.’”
The Carroll verdicts added to a tidal wave of litigation against the president after leaving the White House and campaigning for a second term, including criminal convictions for falsifying business records and a massive fraud judgment putting him on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars.
He avoided any consequences after his conviction in the criminal case in Manhattan, and he has successfully appealed a part of the fraud judgment.
Trump must pay $83 million to E Jean Carroll after ‘egregious’ defamation case, appeals court rules
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court for an emergency order to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen.
The crux of the legal fight is over nearly $5 billion in congressionally approved aid that President Donald Trump last month said he would not spend, invoking disputed authority that was last used by a president roughly 50 years ago.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled that the Republican administration’s decision to withhold the funding was likely illegal.
Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a letter on Aug. 28 that he would not spend $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.
He used what’s known as a pocket rescission. That's when a president submits a request to Congress toward the end of a current budget year to not spend the approved money. The late notice means Congress cannot act on the request in the required 45-day window and the money goes unspent.
Ali said Congress would have to approve the rescission proposal for the Trump administration to withhold the money. The law is “explicit that it is congressional action — not the President’s transmission of a special message — that triggers rescission of the earlier appropriations,” he wrote.
President Donald Trump speaks at a hearing of the Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)© The Associated Press
The Trump administration has made deep reductions to foreign aid one of its hallmark policies, despite the relatively meager savings relative to the deficit and possible damage to America’s reputation abroad as foreign populations lose access to food supplies and development programs. The administration turned to the high court after a panel of federal appellate judges declined to block Ali’s ruling.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the ruling “an unlawful injunction that precipitates an unnecessary emergency and needless interbranch conflict.” He urged the justices to immediately block it.
But lawyers for the nonprofit organizations that sued the government said it's the funding freeze that violates federal law, noting that it has shut down funding for even the most urgent lifesaving programs abroad.
“This marks the third time in this case alone that the Administration has run to the Supreme Court in a supposed emergency posture to seek relief from circumstances of its own making — this time to defend the illegal tactic of a ‘pocket rescission,’" attorney Lauren Bateman of Public Citizen Litigation Group, lead counsel for the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition plaintiffs, said in a statement. "The Administration is effectively asking the Supreme Court to bless its attempt to unlawfully accumulate power.”
Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge last month that another $6.5 billion in aid that had been subject to the freeze would be spent before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The case has been winding its way through the courts for months, and Ali said he understood that his ruling would not be the last word on the matter.
“This case raises questions of immense legal and practical importance, including whether there is any avenue to test the executive branch’s decision not to spend congressionally appropriated funds,” he wrote.
In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out an earlier injunction Ali had issued to require that the money be spent. But the three-judge panel did not shut down the lawsuit.
After Trump issued his rescission notice, the plaintiffs returned to Ali's court and the judge issued the order that's now being challenged.
Trump asks Supreme Court for emergency order to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen
The crux of the legal fight is over nearly $5 billion in congressionally approved aid that President Donald Trump last month said he would not spend, invoking disputed authority that was last used by a president roughly 50 years ago.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled that the Republican administration’s decision to withhold the funding was likely illegal.
Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a letter on Aug. 28 that he would not spend $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.
He used what’s known as a pocket rescission. That's when a president submits a request to Congress toward the end of a current budget year to not spend the approved money. The late notice means Congress cannot act on the request in the required 45-day window and the money goes unspent.
Ali said Congress would have to approve the rescission proposal for the Trump administration to withhold the money. The law is “explicit that it is congressional action — not the President’s transmission of a special message — that triggers rescission of the earlier appropriations,” he wrote.
President Donald Trump speaks at a hearing of the Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)© The Associated Press
The Trump administration has made deep reductions to foreign aid one of its hallmark policies, despite the relatively meager savings relative to the deficit and possible damage to America’s reputation abroad as foreign populations lose access to food supplies and development programs. The administration turned to the high court after a panel of federal appellate judges declined to block Ali’s ruling.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the ruling “an unlawful injunction that precipitates an unnecessary emergency and needless interbranch conflict.” He urged the justices to immediately block it.
But lawyers for the nonprofit organizations that sued the government said it's the funding freeze that violates federal law, noting that it has shut down funding for even the most urgent lifesaving programs abroad.
“This marks the third time in this case alone that the Administration has run to the Supreme Court in a supposed emergency posture to seek relief from circumstances of its own making — this time to defend the illegal tactic of a ‘pocket rescission,’" attorney Lauren Bateman of Public Citizen Litigation Group, lead counsel for the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition plaintiffs, said in a statement. "The Administration is effectively asking the Supreme Court to bless its attempt to unlawfully accumulate power.”
Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge last month that another $6.5 billion in aid that had been subject to the freeze would be spent before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The case has been winding its way through the courts for months, and Ali said he understood that his ruling would not be the last word on the matter.
“This case raises questions of immense legal and practical importance, including whether there is any avenue to test the executive branch’s decision not to spend congressionally appropriated funds,” he wrote.
In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out an earlier injunction Ali had issued to require that the money be spent. But the three-judge panel did not shut down the lawsuit.
After Trump issued his rescission notice, the plaintiffs returned to Ali's court and the judge issued the order that's now being challenged.
Trump asks Supreme Court for emergency order to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen
Yup, to each their own and my literacy skills are equal if not superior to yours
I am suggesting that out of 341,000 “ views” about 4-6 people with better literacy than you actually read every word
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