“The judge found that many of those swept up in immigration raids were taken to the basement of a federal building in Los Angeles to a room known as “B-18” meant to temporarily house arrestees while they are being processed. Frimpong found that many detainees were held there for hours without access to counsel.”
“European leaders knew it would be much easier for Trump — who sees global politics, from trade to NATO, largely as zero-sum financial transactions — to agree to supply arms for Ukraine if the Europeans bought them, allowing the U.S. to swing a profit.
But they were also aware of Trump’s reluctance to abandon the isolationist wing of his MAGA movement by taking a more active role in defending Ukraine and directly confronting Putin. By providing American weapons themselves, the Europeans are providing Trump with cover to act.”
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“France, whose President Emmanuel Macron has long pushed for Europeans to build up their own defense industrial base by buying locally, was a notable omission from the list.
Paris will not join the initiative to buy U.S. weapons for that reason, according to two French officials with knowledge of the issue. The French government is also struggling to boost its own defense spending as it tries to make budget cuts and rein in its staggering deficit.
But given Europe’s limited manufacturing capacity, Merz’s government believes buying American is one of the only ways to swiftly supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs.”
“The first possibility is that the most senior officials in the Trump administration — including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel — exploited a terrible child sex trafficking tragedy for their personal political and financial gain. Some of these officials, perhaps all of them, knew that there was no elaborate government conspiracy or cover-up surrounding Epstein’s crimes or his death, but they intentionally misled millions of Americans for years to make money, get Trump back in the White House or both. And now that they’re in office, they’re dealing with the mess they made.
A second possibility is that the Justice Department’s review of the evidence in the Epstein case turned up references to Trump — on something akin to a “client list” or otherwise — and that the government is now engaged in a cover-up to protect the president. This cannot be ruled out given Trump’s social history with Epstein prior to Epstein’s arrest; Trump has previously been referenced in public documents released in court cases surrounding Epstein, though Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the matter. Also potentially notable is Trump’s hyper-defensive attempt to turn the page at a Cabinet meeting last week by claiming that the public needed to ignore the conspiracy theories and move on — a striking position for a man who is famous for his own conspiracy theories and never moving on from things.
Still a third possibility is that the administration has been telling the truth from the start — that officials believed the conspiracy theories they had fueled and are only now discovering there is no Epstein “client list” and no evidence that Epstein blackmailed anyone. In this scenario, Trump and everyone else were all just as surprised by these revelations as many of Trump’s supporters are, and now they’re struggling with the fallout.”
“International students represent 71 percent of the full-time graduate students in computer and information sciences and 73 percent in electrical and computer engineering at U.S. universities. It is already much easier to transition from a student visa to a work visa and then to permanent residence in Canada and other countries than in the United States. International student interest in coming to U.S. universities will plummet without the ability to work in their field after graduation. That will sever America’s talent pipeline.”
“President Donald Trump recently banned travel and immigration to the United States for nationals of a dozen countries, insisting that this would protect the U.S. from terrorists and criminals.
The ban applies to Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. (It allows minor exceptions for immediate family members of U.S. citizens and adoptions, as well as a few other limited categories.)
Trump’s proclamation states that the restriction is intended to “protect [Americans] from terrorist attacks and other national security or public-safety threats.” Those countries’ “vetting and screening information is so deficient,” the administration insists, that such procedures can’t help U.S. officials identify and deny entry to terrorists and criminals.
But we already know that people from those countries do not pose a substantial risk to the United States.
The president is probably correct that many of those countries’ regimes either can’t or won’t properly identify terrorists and criminals, or are unwilling to share that information with the United States. That still doesn’t make his travel ban necessary.
If the lack of information sharing by those countries posed a significant terrorism risk, we should have seen evidence already. Considering all immigrants or visitors from those dozen banned countries over the past 50 years, one terrorist attack occurred on U.S. soil, killing one U.S. citizen. It was committed by a single individual, Emanuel Kidega Samson from Sudan. (He committed a shooting at a Tennessee church in 2017, killing one victim and wounding seven others.)”
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“Travelers and immigrants from the named countries don’t pose a disproportionate criminal risk of any sort. The 2023 national incarceration rate for travelers and immigrants, aged 18 to 54, from those countries is 37 per 10,000. That’s approximately 70 percent below the incarceration rate of native-born Americans.
While the risks to Americans from letting in people from those countries are minimal, the travel and migration benefits to the targeted people are massive. Those countries have autocratic, socialist, totalitarian, theocratic, or otherwise dysfunctional governments. Allowing people to escape them, even temporarily, can and does increase prosperity and help spread ideas for reform.”
“A divided Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Education Department to fire almost 40 percent of its workforce four months after President Donald Trump ordered his administration to begin closing down the department.
The justices, by an apparent 6-3 vote announced Monday, lifted an injunction a federal judge in Boston granted in May against the firings. That judge found that the staff cuts were so drastic they would prevent the department from carrying out duties mandated by Congress. He also said the mass firings appeared to be part of Trump’s plan to eliminate the Education Department entirely, despite a lack of congressional authorization to do so.
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The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision, but all three liberal justices joined a 19-page dissent that accused the court’s conservative majority of favoring the Trump administration when considering emergency appeals.
“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
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The majority stressed in that decision that the high court was not giving its legal blessing to any specific plan to downsize any particular agency. But now it appears to have done just that with the Education Department.”
“Trump on Monday went further than he ever has in helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia, greenlighting a European purchase of Patriot missile defense systems and other weapons for Ukraine.
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Even as Trump wants to up the pressure on Moscow, bucking the isolationist wing of the MAGA movement, he is insisting that this latest move aligns with his “America First” strategy and fits into a decades-long view that America has been ripped off by allies and that Europe, in particular, has gotten a free ride on defense.
Trump, during an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday, exaggerated how much money the U.S. has already spent on aid to Ukraine and emphasized that Europeans would finally pay their fair share.”
“It has been several months since the first major law firm brokered a deal with Trump to get out from under an executive order penalizing the firm for conducting work or hiring lawyers that the White House disfavors. Eight firms followed that precedent in order to avoid becoming targeted themselves, ultimately committing a combined total of nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal services to largely unspecified initiatives supported by the Trump administration. Four firms refused to buckle and successfully challenged the orders targeting them in federal district court in Washington, D.C.”