Politics

The move comes after a federal appeals court last week upheld a court order barring the Trump administration from expelling detained immigrants suspected of gang affiliation, but not convicted or charged with gang-affiliated criminal activity, to a maximum-security Salvadoran mega prison under the Alien Enemies Act.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said in a post on BlueSky that if the Trump administration is "not violating the AEA court order," this action means "these people had final orders of removal." He added, however, that he "wouldn't trust any allegations of gang membership."

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In an aborted plan to roll out the news, the agency would have emphasized the importance of vaccinating people against the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease that has spread to 19 states, the records show.

“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” the statement said, echoing a line from a column Kennedy wrote for the Fox News website. “People should consult with their healthcare provider to understand their options to get a vaccine and should be informed about the potential risks and benefits associated with vaccines.”

On Friday, U.S. Judge J. Paul Oetken in Manhattan issued a temporary restraining order against Lake, the agency, and its acting chief, Victor Morales, saying they could take no additional steps to shutter the Voice of America, the oldest of the five networks. The agency has already indefinitely suspended Voice of America's full-time workforce and terminated all its contractual employees.

Judge Oetken wrote that he repeatedly saw merit in the plaintiffs' allegations that Lake, Morales and the agency had violated the law and constitutional provisions, including the requirement that Trump "take care" to ensure that federal laws are enforced. Oetken noted that Congress has specifically allocated money for Voice of America since its founding.

"This is a 'classic First Amendment injur[y]," Oetken wrote in his ruling Friday. "And it is also a harm stemming from the other unlawful acts resulting in the shuttering of USAGM."

Employees across the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began receiving notices of dismissal on Tuesday in a major overhaul expected to ultimately lay off up to 10,000 people. The notices come just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.

The experiment failed, largely because paying into the fund was optional, and employers dropped out, often to undercut their competitors. But three years later, Congress enacted a federal-state unemployment system that required all employers, including non-profits, to pay into the system so that employees who lose their jobs can pay their basic bills. The only exemptions were for religious employers who conduct programs that are "operated primarily for religious purposes."

Monday's case was brought by a single chapter of Catholic Charities, affiliated with the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin. The chapter contends that it is entitled to be exempted from the state's mandatory unemployment compensation system because it is a charitable organization that carries out a religious mission. At the same time, however, Catholic Charities specifically eschews indoctrination. There is no proselytizing permitted, and employees include Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

But efforts to curb so-called institutional homebuying have gained little traction this legislative session.

A pair of Democratic bills that would cap the number of homes private equity groups can own hasn’t garnered a hearing or any Republican support.

A GOP bill to study the practice, which Abbott vetoed last session during a property tax fight, has similarly gone nowhere.

The judge’s decision prevents U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting individuals subject to final removal orders to third countries — ones not designated in their original immigration proceedings — unless they are first given written notice and the opportunity to seek legal protection.

The restraining order will remain in effect until an April 10 hearing, in which the court will determine whether to impose a longer-term injunction against the policy. Just hours after the decision, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an appeal, arguing that the ruling undermines executive authority over immigration enforcement.

The order from U.S. Judge Dale Ho brings an end to the case against Adams, who had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, bribery, wire fraud and other charges following his indictment last year.

Ho said he was dismissing the case with prejudice, meaning the government could not bring the charges again later — contrary to the Justice Department's request to dismiss the case without prejudice.

Adams was scheduled to go on trial in April until new leadership at the Justice Department under the Trump administration ordered prosecutors in New York in February to drop the case.

On Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge in New York’s Northern District heard opening arguments in the case of Momodou Taal v. Trump. Neither party was present in the courtroom—in large part because Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has been trying to find Taal for days, reportedly staking out his home and entering his university’s campus.

Taal, a British-Gambian doctoral student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, sued the administration on February 15 to challenge Trump’s executive orders curtailing free speech and seeking to deport pro-Palestinian activists, which have been paired with a wave of attacks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers—in some cases masked and hooded—on graduate and undergraduate students.

The temporary injunction from Judge Amy Berman Jackson at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., also prevents the administration from firing any more CFPB workers or from deleting any of the agency's data or records, as part of a sweeping ruling to protect the agency.

President Donald Trump's administration is terminating grants for two clean energy projects and roughly 300 others funded by the Department of Energy are in jeopardy as the president prioritizes fossil fuels.

The DOE is canceling two awards to a nonprofit climate think tank, RMI in Colorado, according to a document from the agency confirming the cancellations that was reviewed by The Associated Press on Friday. One was for nearly $5.3 million to retrofit low-income multifamily buildings in Massachusetts and California to demonstrate ways to reduce the use of energy and lower planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. The other was for $1.5 million to assess business models for electric vehicle carsharing in U.S. cities.

The billionaire got away with it last time. Why not now?

Wisconsin voters will go to the polls next week to choose between candidates for the state’s Supreme Court. Elon Musk has spent $17 million so far to support the Republican-aligned candidate, according to the Associated Press. And the billionaire oligarch is really spreading the money around this weekend before Tuesday’s vote, offering up $1 million each to two people who attend his rally in Wisconsin on Sunday

NASA has awarded SpaceX of Starbase, Texas, a modification under the NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract to add Starship to their existing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch service offerings.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Thursday that the U.S. has revoked over 300 visas amid a government crackdown against immigrants expressing their political views.

Rubio said the visas revoked are primarily for students, but some visitor visas have also been revoked in recent weeks. He said some visas have been revoked due to criminal activity and not due to protests.

Rubio's acknowledgment of the visa revocations comes after the detainment of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who expressed support for Palestinian causes. She is subject to removal from the U.S. after attending Tufts University as a doctoral student.

A nonprofit watchdog, American Oversight, requested the order. A government attorney said the administration already was taking steps to collect and save the messages.

On the chat, Hegseth provided the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop before the attacks against Yemen's Houthis began earlier this month. Hegseth laid out when a "strike window" would open, where a "target terrorist" was located and when weapons and aircraft would be used.

The images of the text chain posted by The Atlantic show that the messages were set to disappear in one week.

This provision has traditionally applied to certain employees at agencies such as the CIA, the FBI or the National Security Agency.

But Trump's order, signed late Thursday, is more far-reaching, and includes employees whose jobs touch on national defense, border security, foreign relations, energy security, pandemic preparedness, the economy, public safety and cybersecurity.

It notably excludes law enforcement. "Police and firefighters will continue to collectively bargain," the White House fact sheet states.

Unions are roundly condemning the move.

"This administration's latest executive order is union busting, pure and simple," said Irma Westmoreland, a registered nurse at a veterans hospital in Augusta, Ga., who spoke in her capacity as chair of Veterans Affairs for National Nurses United.

The events at the Human Trafficking Commission are part of a pattern by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and judiciary to deprive elected Democrats of resources and powers. Shortly after Democrat Roy Cooper was elected governor in 2016, lawmakers passed sweeping legislation that stripped him of various powers, including removing his ability to hire and fire over 1,000 key government positions. (Many of these changes were contested in court, and some were reversed.) Shortly after Democrat Josh Stein was elected to succeed Cooper last fall, the Legislature passed another law that stripped him and other Democratic officials of numerous powers, including control of the board that manages the state’s elections, which is now the subject of multiple lawsuits.

When lawmakers created the budget that redirected funds to the Human Trafficking Commission, they specifically set aside additional money for political allies. One particular faith-based group was prioritized in the budget bill to receive the most funding — $640,000. That group had been created by the former head of the state GOP about two months before its name showed up in the budget bill in 2021. By October 2024, the group had reported to the Human Trafficking Commission that it had helped only four victims, and its executive director said that at least three of those women had been given just food and gas and no long-term services. (The executive director told ProPublica that as of March 2025 the group had helped about two dozen victims.)

As Wisconsin voters head to the polls next week to choose a new state Supreme Court justice, Cowles stands by his assessment. Voters have been hit with a barrage of attack ads from special interest groups, and record-setting sums of money have been spent to sway residents. What’s more, Cowles said, there’s been little discussion of major issues. The candidates debated only once.

“I definitely think that that piece of legislation made things worse,” Cowles said in an interview. “Our public discourse is basically who can inflame things in the most clever way with some terrible TV ad that’s probably not even true.”

More than $80 million has been funneled into the race as of March 25, according to two groups that have been tracking spending in the contest — the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy group that follows judicial races, and the news outlet WisPolitics. That surpasses the previous costliest judicial race in the country’s history, approximately $56 million spent two years ago on the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.

Last week, the US Department of Agriculture announced sweeping plans to increase slaughter line speeds at pork and poultry plants — a move that could further endanger workers who already process animals at a breakneck pace and suffer high levels of injury.

The drama behind the bill’s passage runs deep. For a very long time, Delaware has been home to a majority of American corporations due to its lenient business laws. Recently, the state’s status as the corporate capital of the country was threatened by pressures—from Musk, but also by other major companies and business personalities—to encourage businesses to leave the state. It appears that, in an effort to stop companies from fleeing, the state legislature has acquiesced to businesses’ priorities.

The bill would revoke disclosure requirements for shareholder requests for all kinds of company documents, records, and internal communications. All plaintiffs would be entitled to would be minutes from board meetings, which reveal very little. These alterations would make it almost impossible for shareholders to build any viable lawsuits that could even reach the discovery fact-finding stage of a court case.

The cuts include 3,500 full-time employees at the FDA, 2,400 at the CDC, 1,200 at NIH, and 300 at CMS, according to an HHS fact sheet. It states that the new job cuts at the FDA will not affect drug, medical device, or food reviewers or inspectors. The reorganization will not impact Medicare or Medicaid.

HHS states that the job cuts will save $1.8 billion. The agency currently has a budget of nearly $2 trillion, the majority of which pays for benefits for Americans covered by Medicaid and Medicare.

The Social Security Administration is revising proposed changes that would have required some beneficiaries to prove their identity in-person when seeking services.

Officials said in a statement Wednesday that they are exempting people who apply for Medicare and disability benefits, as well as supplemental income help for the poor, from having to prove their identity in-person at a social security office if they are unable to use the agency's online system.

They also announced they are pushing back the start of the new policy by two weeks, to April 14.

The new rules, which were first announced last week, were met with concerns from advocates for seniors and people with disabilities, as well as lawmakers. Dozens of Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to agency leaders last week asking them to reconsider the change because it would "create additional barriers" for people seeking services — "particularly for those who live far from an office."

Elon Musk’s aerospace giant SpaceX allows investors from China to buy stakes in the company as long as the funds are routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy hubs, according to previously unreported court records.

The rare picture of SpaceX’s approach recently emerged in an under-the-radar corporate dispute in Delaware. Both SpaceX’s chief financial officer and Iqbaljit Kahlon, a major investor, were forced to testify in the case.

In December, Kahlon testified that SpaceX prefers to avoid investors from China because it is a defense contractor. There is a major exception though, he said: SpaceX finds it “acceptable” for Chinese investors to buy into the company through offshore vehicles.

In 2021, New York City adopted Local Law 154, which sets an air emissions limit for indoor combustion of fuels within new buildings. Under the law, the burning of “any substance that emits 25 kilograms or more of carbon dioxide per million British thermal units of energy” is prohibited. That standard effectively bans gas-burning stoves, furnaces, and water heaters, and any other fossil-fuel powered appliances. Instead, real estate developers have to install electric appliances like induction stoves and heat pumps. The policy went into effect in 2024 for buildings under seven stories, and will apply to taller buildings starting in 2027.