Politics

“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety; financial stability; the core foundations of our democracy,” Booker said on the floor. “These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.”

“Generations from now will look back at this moment and have a single question — where were you?”

Now, in a decision that could have major implications for states’ efforts to regulate abortion help and helpers in the post-Roe era, a federal judge in Montgomery, Alabama, has ruled that Attorney General Steve Marshall’s threats to prosecute abortion advocates violate fundamental protections for free speech and the right to travel.

“Alabama’s criminal jurisdiction does not reach beyond its borders, and it cannot punish what its residents do lawfully in another State,” US District Judge Myron H. Thompson declared in a 131-page ruling issued Monday, adding: “The Attorney General cannot prosecute those who assist people in Alabama to travel out of state to obtain a lawful abortion.”

But on Saturday, interior department officials reportedly granted at least two Doge employees the access they had requested, the two people told the Times.

With this access, the Doge employees now have visibility into sensitive employee information, like social security numbers, and are able to more easily hire and fire federal workers, according to the Times, citing the two people with knowledge who spoke with the newspaper on condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution.

A second said his planes’ air conditioning kept breaking — an experience consistent with at least two publicly reported onboard incidents — and their lavatories kept breaking, something another flight attendant reported as well. But the planes kept flying. “They made us flush with water bottles,” he said.

But the flight attendants were most concerned about their inability to treat their passengers humanely — and to keep them safe. (In 2021, an ICE spokesperson told the publication Capital & Main that the agency “follows best practices when it comes to the security, safety and welfare of the individuals returned to their countries of origin.”)

A standard flight had more than a dozen private security guards — contractors working for the firm Akima — along with a single ICE officer, two nurses, and a hundred or more detainees. (Akima did not respond to a request for comment.) The guards were in charge of delivering food and water to the detainees and taking them to the lavatories. This left the flight attendants, whose presence was required by the FAA, with little to do.

Global X Airlines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Crossing_Airlines

An effort by the Trump administration to unilaterally strip the temporary protected status (TPS) of approximately 350,000 Venezuelan refugees living in the United States was blocked Monday night by a federal court judge who described the order by Secretary of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as being "motivated by unconstitutional animus."

In a 78-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco said Noem's rescinding of an order made under the Biden administration "threatens to: inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States. At the same time, the government has failed to identify any real countervailing harm in continuing TPS for Venezuelan beneficiaries."

“A year from now people will notice things are missing that used to be there and Doge and others promoting this will say: ‘See, told you government can’t do things’, rather than: ‘We broke it and it got worse,’” he said.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has placed its entire staff on administrative leave.

The IMLS is a relatively small federal agency, with around 70 employees, that awards grant funding to museums and libraries across the United States.

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.

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.”

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.

In its announcement, issued Tuesday night, the USDA said grant recipients will have 30 days to review and revise their project plans to align with President Trump’s Unleashing American Energy Executive Order, which prioritizes fossil fuel production and cuts federal support for renewable energy projects.

Some of the roughly 6,000 grant applicants have already completed the solar, wind, or other energy projects and are awaiting promised repayment from the government. Others say they can’t afford to take on the projects they’d been planning unless the grant money comes through.

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."

Visual only, no text.

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."

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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.

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.)