Politics

The unpopular legislation that set to clear the House Thursday is substantially more expensive than the version the chamber's Republicans approved in May, and it includes roughly $300 billion more in cuts to Medicaid. The bill now heads to the desk of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly pledged not to cut Medicaid.

Analysts estimate that over the next 10 years, roughly 17 million Americans will lose health coverage under the GOP package, both due to the measure's Medicaid cuts and its failure to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.

According to new court documents filed on Wednesday as part of a lawsuit his wife brought against the Trump administration, Mr Ábrego García and 20 other detainees were repeatedly beaten when they arrived at El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Centre, or Cecot.

Once there, according to the documents, Mr Ábrego García and 20 other deported inmates "were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation".

Mr Ábrego García has also alleged that he and the other prisoners were "forced to kneel" from 9 PM to 6 AM, "with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion".

At one point, guards allegedly threatened to confine him with gang members who would "tear" him apart.

His mistreatment led to him losing 30lbs (14kg) within the first two weeks of his incarceration in El Salvador, according to the complaint.

A federal judge Wednesday ruled as unlawful an executive order by President Donald Trump that barred asylum by claiming an “invasion” at the southern border and the need to protect states.

“The President cannot adopt an alternative immigration system, which supplants the statutes that Congress has enacted,” District of Columbia U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss wrote in his opinion.

“Here, nothing in the (Immigration and Nationality Act) or the Constitution grants the President or his delegees the sweeping authority asserted in the Proclamation and implementing guidance,” continued Moss, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

The order from Moss also prevents the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from enforcing the executive order.

He also agreed to certify a class for potential asylum-seekers, which comes after last week’s Supreme Court ruling that curtailed nationwide injunctions from lower courts. Certifying a class was suggested by the court to give judges an avenue to make an order broader.

The Federal Communications Commission will no longer enforce a rule capping the price of prison phone calls, according to an announcement made Monday by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

The move suspends a 2024 FCC decision that capped the price of in-state phone calls at 6 cents minute for prisons and large jails and 7 cents per minute for medium-sized jails. Before the decision, a 15-minute phone call could cost as much as $11.35 at large jails in some states. Under the 2024 rules, those same phone calls would cost 90 cents.

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump to remove a Democratic member from a federal labor board while his administration appeals a ruling that said her firing was illegal and had reinstated her.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit paused the lower court decision pending the appeal, saying a law shielding members of the Federal Labor Relations Authority from being removed at will likely violated Trump's broad powers to control the executive branch.

“He didn’t even have to ask me. He has my approval,” Trump said during a roundtable discussion at the immigration detention center in the Everglades.

Unlike federal judges, who work for the judicial branch and are independent of the President, immigration judges work under the direction of the U.S. Attorney General. Because the detention center is built on an old airstrip, DeSantis and others have also said it will speed up the deportation process by allowing the federal government to fly migrants out of the site.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans passed President Donald Trump’s intensely contested budget bill for the coming fiscal year, returning it to the House in a form that would slash $93 billion from annual federal Medicaid spending across the next decade, require states to implement Medicaid work requirements for adults (with limited exemptions), and strip health insurance from approximately 12 million people.

Trump’s success in attacking Medicaid represents a change from 2017, when disability advocates were able to convince politicians not to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which expanded Medicaid to low-income adults in the 40 states that implemented it. The new bill will undo much of that work in order to fund tax cuts that principally benefit the ultra-rich, with extreme consequences for millions of Americans kicked off insurance rolls.

For the past several years, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for potential foreign corruption violations related to its activities in China and Mexico, according to the company’s financial filings.

But that appears to have changed after the Trump administration tapped Pam Bondi — previously an outside legal counsel for Pfizer — to lead the Justice department as attorney general.

In the company’s most recent annual report, filed three weeks after Bondi took office in early February, there was no longer any reference to the Justice Department investigations into the company’s potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act. A quarterly report in May also contains no reference to these investigations.

The release of the Guard members comes a day after the Associated Press reported that the top military commander in charge of the task force troops asked whether 200 could be returned to wildfire fighting duty, two U.S. officials told the AP. National Guard members perform a variety of duties, including helping to prevent and fight wildfires through Joint Task Force Rattlesnake.

"At the recommendation of Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, Commander, U.S. Northern Command, and approved by the Secretary of Defense, Task Force 51 will release approximately 150 members of the California National Guard from the Federal Protection mission today," U.S. Northern Command said in a statement. "USNORTHCOM and Task Force 51 are still appropriately sourced to conduct our Federal Protection Mission."

Activation of the National Guard in response to the immigration enforcement protests drew opposition from local and state leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. The Guard is usually activated by the governor at the request of local leaders.

Speaking on Tuesday on a panel of central bankers organised by the European Central Bank (ECB) in Portugal, Powell said the Fed was waiting to assess the inflationary impact of the president’s trade policies.

“In effect we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs,” Powell told the event in Sintra. “Essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs. We didn’t overreact, in fact we didn’t react at all, We’re simply taking some time.”

Asked if the Fed would have cut its key Fed funds rate further, from the current target range of 4.25-4.5%, if it wasn’t for tariffs, Powell said: “I think that’s right.”

Cuts to the weather service by Trump and the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) have left NWS local forecast offices critically understaffed throughout this year’s heightened severe weather. In April, an internal document reportedly described how cuts could create a situation of “degraded” operations – shutting down core services one by one until it reaches an equilibrium that doesn’t overtax its remaining employees.

The changing climate is also making simultaneous weather disasters more likely, such as overlapping tornadoes and flash floods – creating emergency preparedness difficulties and compounding the effects of funding cuts.

Now, additional meteorologists are being remanded from research roles – where they would normally be working to improve techniques and make advances for future years – into the forecasting frontlines in an attempt to fill the staffing gaps.

“The world’s example for weather services is being destroyed,” wrote Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin, on social media earlier this spring after a round of major changes were announced.

The Trump administration has codified its efforts to strip some Americans of their US citizenship in a recently published justice department memo that directs attorneys to prioritize denaturalization for naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes.

The memo, published on 11 June, calls on attorneys in the department to institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either “illegally procured” naturalization or procured naturalization by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”.

At the center of the move are the estimated 25 million US citizens who immigrated to the country after being born abroad, according to data from 2023 – and it lists 10 different priority categories for denaturalization.

According to the memo, those subjected to civil proceedings are not entitled to an attorney like they are in criminal cases. And the government has a lighter burden of proof in civil cases than they do in criminal ones.

Edit: According to the Miami Herald, it depends on where you live:

The Supreme Court’s ruling means the judges’ injunctions blocking Trump’s executive order only affect the jurisdictions where immigrant groups filed their lawsuits — leaving the rest of the country, including Florida, subject to the president’s citizenship order. The turn of events is likely to lead to more federal lawsuits, including a class action case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in New Hampshire on Friday.

Source:

In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.

In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.

Musk wanted legislators to pass new laws that would make it faster and easier for homeowners to install backup power generators, like the kind Tesla makes, on their properties. He wanted them to create new crimes so people who fly drones or interfere with operations at his rocket company SpaceX can be arrested. And he wanted to change who controlled the highway and public beach near SpaceX’s South Texas site so he can launch his rockets according to his timeline.

Musk got them all.

In a Capitol where the vast majority of bills fail to pass, all but three of Musk’s public priorities will become law. The two bills his lobbyists openly opposed are dead, including a measure that would have regulated autonomous vehicles.

"One of the things I think that is exciting about this is, we're offering up our National Guard and other folks in Florida to be deputized to be immigration judges. We're working with the Department of Justice for the approvals. I'm sure Pam [Bondi] will approve," DeSantis said as Trump nodded his head and said, "Yep."

DeSantis didn't elaborate on who the other "folks" would be.

DeSantis continued, "But then...I'll have a National Guard judge advocate here. Someone has a notice to appear, Biden would tell them to come back in three years and appear. Now, you'll be able to appear in like a day or two. So, they're not going to be detained, hopefully, for all that long."

The Education Department began discontinuing the grants in April, claiming that schools diversifying their pool of psychologists are misusing the funds. President Donald Trump’s January executive order called on programs that foster diversity, equity and inclusion in schools to be cut.

The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle to declare the grant terminations unlawful, reinstate the funding and prevent the Education Department “from imposing similar ideological conditions moving forward,” according to a news release from New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Instead of rooting out examples of anti-American ideology, however, commenters have responded by criticizing mosquitoes and staffing cuts and praising the parks’ natural beauty as well as its employees.

The comments overwhelmingly praise the parks as beautiful national treasures, with dozens complimenting rangers for their knowledge and navigational help. Many called for undoing funding cuts and rehiring staff who were fired by the Trump administration.

“The vast majority of public comments show what we’ve always known — people love their national parks and deeply value the dedicated staff who protect them every day,” said Theresa Pierno, president of the NPCA.

That’s thanks to a new law signed by Gov. Greg Abbott that requires autonomous vehicle companies to get state approval before operating without a driver — and gives the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles authority to revoke that approval if companies don’t follow safety standards.

“Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to members of the community, local leaders and stakeholders across the country,” Lee wrote on the social platform X on Saturday. “While there has been a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies — about my bill, many people brought forward sincere concerns.”

The provision would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell as much as 1.225 million acres of public property in 11 Western states. Proponents had argued that the region has a severe shortage of affordable housing and that developers could build new homes on these tracts.

In his post, Lee said that, because of the strict rules governing the budgetary process that Republicans are using to pass the bill, he was “unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.”

But even though the land sales proposal was defeated, experts say federal lands face a slew of other threats from President Donald Trump’s administration. Agency leaders have proposed rolling back the “Roadless Rule” that protects 58 million acres from logging and other uses. Trump’s Justice Department has issued a legal opinion that the president is allowed to abolish national monuments. Regulators have moved to slash environmental rules to ramp up logging and oil and gas production. And Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce have gutted the ranks of the agencies that manage federal lands.

“This is not over even if the sell-off proposal doesn’t make it,” said John Leshy, who served as solicitor for the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Clinton administration. “The whole thing about leasing or selling timber or throwing them open to mining claims, that’s a form of partial privatization. It’s pretty much a giveaway.”

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a group of Maryland parents have a right to opt their elementary-school-aged children out of instruction that includes LGBTQ+ themes. By a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with the parents – who are Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox – that the Montgomery County school board’s refusal to provide them with that option violates their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito acknowledged that “courts are not school boards or legislatures, and are ill-equipped to determine the ‘necessity’ of discrete aspects of a State’s program of compulsory education.” But he emphasized that “what the parents seek here is not the right to micromanage the public school curriculum, but rather to have their children opt out of a particular educational requirement that burdens their well-established right ‘to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children’” under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

The US Supreme Court on Friday upheld a key provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires health plans to fully cover many preventive health care services recommended by a federal panel.

The ruling means that tens of millions of Americans can continue getting a variety of preventive services for free under their plans. Those cost-free services include an array of screenings, such as cancer screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies, as well as screens for obesity, lead exposure in children, high blood pressure, diabetes, and some sexually transmitted diseases, to name a few. The free services also include recommended vaccines for children and adults, well-baby and well-child doctor visits, birth control, statins, PrEP HIV prevention drugs, and fluoride supplements and varnishes for children's teeth.

Donald Trump’s realty firm is representing one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies in its effort to offload a $12 million New York condo—an arrangement that represents yet another apparent conflict of interest for the 47th president of the United States.

The condo on the 39th floor of the Trump International Hotel and Tower at Columbus Circle has been on and off the market for several years but hasn’t been successfully sold. According to real estate websites, it was listed by a different realty firm, Sotheby’s, until late last month. Around that time, it was listed for sale on Trump International Realty’s website. If it sells at its current listing price, it would likely earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions for Trump’s firm.

According to New York real estate records, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche bought the swanky 3,000-square-foot condo back in 2006. The two-bedroom unit features “sweeping views of Central Park,” along with “lacquered custom tray ceilings with custom lighting, custom pocket doors, Steinway black lacquered doors, Corian counters, subzero refrigerator, Wolf convection oven, wine cooler and marble bath.” It’s unclear why Roche—which has offices across the United States—originally purchased the property or why it recently turned to Trump’s real estate firm for help. Roche and its American biotech subsidiary, Genentech, did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did the Trump Organization or Karina Lynch, an attorney with the powerhouse firm DLA Piper, who was recently announced as the Trump Organization’s “outside ethics adviser.”

Relying on an emergency order issued in January 2023 in response to a flood of Cuban and Haitian migrants arriving by boat in the Florida Keys, DeSantis is seizing county land, mobilizing a team of private companies to build a facility big enough to hold 3,000 detained immigrants and deploying Florida National Guard troops to secure the site. The rush of migrant arrivals ended long ago, but the order, which cites then-President Joe Biden’s “inadequate” response to immigration, has been repeatedly extended.

“This is not our first rodeo,” DeSantis told Fox News on Friday while touring an airfield owned by Miami-Dade County that has quickly been turned into a small grid of heavy-duty tents and trailers.