Politics

According to attorney John De La Vega, a Miami immigration attorney, “There are three groups [being focused on,]” De La Vega said. “However, no one safe.”

"The final issue for HB 18 is that the law fails to define key categories of prohibited topics, including 'grooming,' 'harassment,' and 'substance abuse,'" Pitman wrote in his ruling. "At what point, for example, does alcohol use become 'substance abuse?' When does an extreme diet cross the line into an 'eating disorder?' What defines 'grooming' and 'harassment?' Under these indefinite meanings, it is easy to see how an attorney general could arbitrarily discriminate in his enforcement of the law."

Today we released our archive of data.gov on Source Cooperative. The 16TB collection includes over 311,000 datasets harvested during 2024 and 2025, a complete archive of federal public datasets linked by data.gov. It will be updated daily as new datasets are added to data.gov.

This is the first release in our new data vault project to preserve and authenticate vital public datasets for academic research, policymaking, and public use.

We’ve built this project on our long-standing commitment to preserving government records and making public information available to everyone. Libraries play an essential role in safeguarding the integrity of digital information. By preserving detailed metadata and establishing digital signatures for authenticity and provenance, we make it easier for researchers and the public to cite and access the information they need over time.

In a federal lawsuit filed this week in the U.S. District Court in Dayton, the city of Springfield alleged that the Blood Tribe and its leadership fueled fear and anger with its coordinated “hit” on the town to stop the “invasion” of Haitian immigrants. Springfield is seeking damages from the white supremacist organization for conspiracy to violate civil rights, public nuisance, telecommunications harassment, menacing, ethnic intimidation, and inciting violence.

The plaintiffs, which include the city and multiple residents and local officials, are being represented by lawyers from the Anti-Defamation League. Besides the Blood Tribe itself, the plaintiffs are suing the hate group’s leaders, Christopher Pohlaus and Drake Berentz, as well as seven other members of the organization.

The pause is only temporary. It was issued this morning through an executive order, which says that the de minimis exemption will be removed again when the Secretary of Commerce notifies the administration that “adequate systems are in place to fully and expediently process and collect tariff revenue.”

One of the major issues facing implementation of the tariffs was processing and collecting fees on the vast number of packages that were no longer safe under the exemption. The executive order seems to acknowledge the need for process and staffing changes, halting the de minimis removal until at least some of the shipping chaos can be contained.

In apparent defiance of court orders, the Trump administration is refusing to release congressionally authorized spending for electric vehicle infrastructure, Politico reported.

On Thursday, the Trump administration halted $5 billion in funding allocated via the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, appearing to violate the 1974 Impoundment Control Act as well as multiple court orders requiring the Trump administration to halt its unilateral funding freeze.

According to a letter from a Federal Highway Administration official, Emily Biondi, the administration is halting “new obligations” under the electric vehicle infrastructure program while allowing states to receive reimbursements for “existing obligations.”

Tens of thousands of tons of food purchased through a federal program to feed hungry people overseas is stuck at a warehouse in Houston's port after President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid, according to an email from an international food agency and an employee with the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The pause comes as the Trump administration moves to dismantle USAID, one of the world's largest government aid organizations. The organization spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year through its Food for Peace program to distribute surplus crops from American farmers around the globe, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Rep. Takano (D-CA) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Democrats visit the Department of Education amid reports that the Trump administration intends to dismantle the department without consulting Congress. They are denied access.

Edit: They updated the body to have one now, I originally had to type it out myself from a hover. They have a different headline on the frontpage as well:

Acting Education Secretary Denise Carter was accused by House Oversight Democrats of locking the front doors to the Department of Education and refusing members of Congress public access. Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) and members of the House Oversight Committee held a press conference where they demanded a meeting with the acting secretary to discuss the Trump administration's desire to dissolve the department. The members said they wanted to ask the acting secretary in person if she would "comply with an illegal executive order (by President Trump) to shut down the department." Democrats led a call to action urging Americans to get involved and prevent the funds already allocated to the department by Congress from being diverted to other sectors of the federal government, noting public schools and children with special needs were most at risk

A self-avowed Christian Nationalist, Vought is a wonky bureaucrat and Washington insider committed to Trump’s obsession with “draining the swamp.” During Trump’s first term, he tested the boundaries of the law to advance the president’s radical goals. Founder of the conservative think-tank Center for Renewing America, he is also one of the architects behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 mandate for Trump’s comeback, advocating for expanding presidential powers and subjugating the federal government.

While in charge of OMB, Vought spearheaded the effort to implement Schedule F, an executive order meant to strip thousands of career civil servants from job protections and replace them with handpicked MAGA loyalists. Vought has talked about putting federal workers ‘in trauma” and make them “not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

“In addition to Vought’s intention to dismantle the civil service,” a statement submitted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) opposing his nomination reads “the Senate cannot ignore his willingness and intentions to misuse his own authority and craft plans for the president to subvert the law and, in the process, American democracy.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing in female sports. The measure, called the “No Men in Women’s Sports Executive Order,” is the fourth executive order targeting transgender people he has signed since he took office Jan. 20.

A US federal judge has blocked Donald Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship for children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily.

"Today, virtually every baby born on US soil is a US citizen upon birth," Maryland district Judge Deborah Boardman ruled. "That is the law and tradition of our country."

The ruling extends the existing pause on Trump's 20 January executive order until the legal process plays out, which could take months or even years.

It comes two weeks after a federal judge in Seattle called Trump's order "blatantly unconstitutional" and issued a 14-day restraining order. The judge will hold another hearing when that ruling expires on Thursday.

The Lever reported Tuesday that USAID’s inspector general was in the process of investigating its own public-private partnership between Musk’s Starlink and the Ukrainian government at the time that the billionaire’s DOGE crippled the agency. Publicly available information about that probe is still online. An announcement from last May reads: “The USAID Office of Inspector General, Inspections and Evaluations Division, is initiating an inspection of USAID’s oversight of Starlink satellite terminals provided to the Government of Ukraine. Our objectives are to determine how (1) the Government of Ukraine used the USAID-provided Starlink terminals, and (2) USAID monitored the Government of Ukraine’s use of USAID-provided Starlink terminals.”

The leader of the largest union for federal employees has warned a congressional committee that Donald Trump’s campaign to dramatically downsize the government amounts to “the biggest assault” on its workforce in American history.

“In just the past week, we have seen the administration issue a legally dubious policy to drain departments and agencies of experienced and dedicated professionals, clearly with the objective of crippling the ability of federal agencies to do their jobs and setting them up to fail in the eyes of the American taxpayer. What is happening today is not a drive to streamline government but to destroy it,” Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement submitted today to the House oversight committee, which is holding a hearing focusing on Trump’s government reform campaign.

Kelley pointed to Trump’s order to reclassify tens of thousands of nonpartisan government employees in a way that will make them easier to fire, calling it “the biggest assault on the federal workforce in American history.”

“Make no mistake about it: if the assault that the Trump Administration initiated last month continues unchallenged, every member of Congress will soon hear from angry or confused constituents about why their VA claims have not been processed or why their Soc

The U.S. Postal Service said it will resume accepting all inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong on Wednesday, a day after temporarily suspending such service.

"The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery," it said in a statement.

Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (DOGE) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington, DC, today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency.

“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.”