pelespirit

Appeals court denies White House bid to stay May 22 decision

Ruling prevents Trump administration from shedding jobs, shuttering offices

White House likely to ask Supreme Court to pause May ruling

May 30 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday refused to allow President Donald Trump's administration to carry out mass layoffs of federal workers and a restructuring of agencies, leaving a lower court order in place that blocked the sweeping government overhaul.

The decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that, for now, the Trump administration cannot proceed with plans to shed tens of thousands of federal jobs and shutter many government offices and programs.

The State Department has told U.S. consulates and embassies to immediately begin reviewing the social media accounts of Harvard’s student visa applicants for antisemitism in what it called a pilot program that could be rolled out for colleges nationwide.

The cable signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, obtained by POLITICO, was sent late Thursday. It says consular officers should “conduct a complete screening of the online presence of any nonimmigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose.” The policy, while primarily affecting students, will also include faculty members, researchers, staff members and guest speakers at Harvard.

The policy will take effect immediately, per the cable. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The impersonator texted one lawmaker for a list of people who should be pardoned, a request that was initially taken to be real. In another case, Wiles’ impersonator asked for a cash transfer, according to the report.

Some requests came off as suspicious as they contained questions about Donald Trump that Wiles would know, and had broken grammar in other cases. But some said that they had engaged with Wiles’ impersonator before they realized it wasn’t her.

The administration had asked the high court to halt a Massachusetts judge’s order that stopped the Department of Homeland Security from revoking a Biden-era grant of temporary relief (called “parole”) to noncitizens from those countries.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. In her dissent, joined by Sotomayor, Jackson criticized the majority for letting “the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.” She said the court let the government “do what it wants to do” while “rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process.”

In Missouri, the 2025 legislative session was dominated by Republican lawmakers trying to reverse two major measures that voters had put on the ballot and approved just months before; one made abortion in the state legal again, while the other created an employee sick leave requirement.

GOP lawmakers in Alaska and Nebraska also have moved to roll back sick leave benefits that voters approved last year, while legislators in Arizona are pushing new restrictions on abortion access, despite voters six months ago approving protections.

At the same time, Republican leaders in Florida, Utah, Montana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Ohio, North Dakota and South Dakota have approved efforts to restrict citizen-led ballot initiatives or are considering measures to do so, essentially trying to make it harder for voters to change laws outside legislatures.

In some cases, legislators aren’t just responding to measures that voters approved; they’re acting shortly after citizen-led efforts failed but came too close for comfort, such as an abortion-rights initiative in Florida, which in November fell just short of the 60% of votes needed to pass and loosen the state’s ban on the procedure.

A pair of hikers in New York called emergency services to report that a third member of their group had died, but when a park ranger responded to rescue them it turned out they were just high on hallucinogenic mushrooms, officials say.

The third hiker was uninjured - and not dead - and the hikers were "in an altered mental state", according to a report issued by parks officials.

The incident took place on 24 May on Cascade Mountain in the Adirondacks High Peaks of upstate New York.

The third person also called 911 during the hike, "and was not injured", the report states. They were allowed to continue their camping trip, while the pair were taken to police.

Data analysed by the BBC show that Ukraine's Western allies have paid Russia more for its hydrocarbons than they have given Ukraine in aid.

In the wake of the February 2022 invasion, Ukraine's allies imposed sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. The US and UK banned Russian oil and gas, while the EU banned Russian seaborne crude imports, but not gas.

Despite this, by 29 May, Russia had made more than €883bn ($973bn; £740bn) in revenue from fossil fuel exports since the start of the full-scale invasion, including €228bn from the sanctioning countries, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

The lion's share of that amount, €209bn, came from EU member states.

Elon Musk is leaving his government role as a top adviser to President Donald Trump after spearheading efforts to reduce and overhaul the federal bureaucracy.

His departure, announced Wednesday evening, marks the end of a turbulent chapter that included thousands of layoffs, the evisceration of government agencies and reams of litigation. Despite the upheaval, the billionaire entrepreneur struggled in the unfamiliar environment of Washington, and he accomplished far less than he hoped.

He dramatically reduced his target for cutting spending — from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to $150 billion — and increasingly expressed frustration about resistance to his goals. Sometimes he clashed with other top members of Trump’s administration, who chafed at the newcomer’s efforts to reshape their departments, and he faced fierce political blowback for his efforts.

The U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday blocked steep reciprocal tariffs unilaterally imposed by President Donald Trump on scores of countries in April to correct what he said were persistent trade imbalances.

The ruling deals a potentially serious blow to the Republican president’s economic agenda and ongoing efforts to negotiate trade deals with various nations.

Dow futures jumped 500 points on news of the ruling, which the Trump administration immediately appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The Supreme Court backed a multibillion-dollar oil railroad expansion in Utah on Thursday, endorsing a limited interpretation of a key environmental law.

The unanimous decision comes after an appeal to the high court from backers of the project, which is aimed at quadrupling oil production in the remote area of sandstone and sagebrush. The backers said limiting the scope of environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act would speed up development.

A federal judge in Boston will continue blocking Donald Trump’s administration from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, dealing another blow to the government's pressure campaign against the nation’s oldest school.

Just six miles from where Harvard’s commencement ceremonies are underway, Massachusetts District Judge Allison Burroughs told attorneys for the administration and Ivy League institution that she intends to issue a “broad” injunction that blocks officials from trying to stop Harvard from keeping foreign students on campus.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, the state’s chief legal officer, faces a contempt of court hearing on Thursday afternoon in a politically fraught immigration case before a Miami federal judge who could fine him or send him to jail.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams found Uthmeier violated her temporary restraining order last month to stop enforcing a new state law that makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants to enter Florida after illegally crossing into the United States.

At first, Uthmeier seemed to obey her order when he instructed the Florida Highway Patrol and other police agencies in mid-April that they had to refrain from enforcing the new law — after Williams learned FHP officers had arrested more than a dozen people for illegally entering the state under the new misdemeanor law, including a U.S. citizen.

But Judge Williams said the attorney general crossed the line days later when Uthmeier informed those same police agencies “there remains no judicial order that properly restrains you from” enforcing the statute.