Judge declines to block Trump's Corporation for Public Broadcasting board firings
A federal judge on Sunday declined to block President Trump's removal of three board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), ruling the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a strong likelihood the firings were unlawful or that they would suffer irreparable harm.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, D.C. rejected a request for a preliminary injunction filed by the three board members — Elizabeth Ross, Bruce Kaplan and Ruby Rothman — who sued the Trump administration after receiving termination notices via email on April 28.
They argued the president lacked the authority to remove them from their position and noted that the CPB, which was created by Congress in 1967, was designed to be protected from political interference. It is the largest single source of funding for public news outlets, including PBS and NPR.
'The credible and urgent threats facing CPB, as a result of the Correspondence are not speculative or theoretical. To the contrary, such threats are well-grounded in the administration's recent terminations of board members at other congressionally-created organizations,' they argued in the lawsuit.
Moss was not convinced Trump's move would bring about any immediate, irreparable harm, and indicated Trump may indeed have the authority to remove them.
'For present purposes and on the present record, it is enough to conclude that Plaintiffs have failed to carry their burden of demonstrating that they are likely to prevail on the merits of their claim for injunctive relief or that Plaintiffs are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief,' the judge's opinion read.
The suit comes as Trump has urged Congress to defund public broadcasters and his Federal Communications Commission chair has vowed to investigate outlets like NPR and PBS over their donation models and perceived editorial bias.
Trump and his allies have long said public broadcasters are biased against conservatives and that taxpayers should not have to underwrite their operations.
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34 minutes ago
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‘No Kings Day' Exposed: Activist Powerhouses Mobilize Across America
Left-wing agitators have been planning events scheduled for this weekend to promote hate against President Donald Trump with 'No Kings Day,' following violent anti-ICE riots across America. The 'No Kings Day' mobilizations are set for June 14 across the country, as The Dallas Express previously reported. Several of these events are occurring across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and are organized by powerful national groups. The group 50501 is a leading force behind these mobilizations – the latest in a series against Trump, with 'Hands Off' and 'May Day' events earlier this year. As The Dallas Express reported, 50501 previously organized demonstrations across the DFW area. Other groups like Indivisible – an influential left-wing network – are also organizing the demonstrations. Indivisible is known for working with groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, whose 'paramilitary wing' is Antifa. According to The Federalist, Indivisible boosted previous protests like 'Hands Off' with things like 'infrastructure to get the campaign off the ground.' A spokesman for 'No Kings Day' told The Dallas Express that 50501 started anti-Trump events earlier this year, and other groups like Indivisible joined. Last month, Indivisible announced that it and other left-wing groups are helping organize the upcoming events. The 'No Kings' spokesman said he could not limit the 'goal to a singular purpose' because the demonstrations are coming from 'different local organizations in each city.' He said national groups like Indivisible, the American Federation of Teachers, SEIU, and other unions are planning the mobilizations. 'No Kings Day' partners also include the ACLU, Bernie Sanders and his group Our Revolution, Move On of the Tesla Takedown demonstrations, and the anti-Trump protest group Families Over Billionaires – which is supported by a billionaire-funded dark money network. 'People are tired of not feeling like they're being heard in Washington D.C., people are tired of feeling like Congress has abdicated its responsibility to be a check and a balance on the executive branch,' the 'No Kings' spokesman said. The upcoming events fall in the wake of violent anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles and Dallas, as The Dallas Express reported. Gov. Greg Abbott deployed the National Guard across Texas this week to keep order. The Dallas Express asked if organizers expect the 'No Kings' events to 'merge with anti-ICE actors,' and the spokesman said he could not speak to it from a 'global perspective.' 'These are grassroots organizations that people want to amplify their voices by partnering up with other organizations,' the spokesman said. 'I don't think anybody's going to say, 'Don't do that.'' The 'No Kings' spokesman said organizers are working with police and training 'marshals' to keep the mobilizations peaceful. He blamed the violence on 'one-sided escalation.' 'I think at their very nature, they're nonviolent, they're peaceful. But then when you do things like calling the National Guard, it amplifies tensions,' he said. The riots in Los Angeles featured burning vehicles, a siege against the ICE building, and attacks against state and federal police, as The Dallas Express previously reported. The Dallas Express asked the spokesman's thoughts on the riots in Los Angeles 'before the National Guard was there,' where rioters started 'throwing rocks at immigration agents and surrounding the federal building.' 'It's very strange to portray single actors throwing rocks as an entire movement if you're not doing the same thing for masked ICE agents kidnapping people in schools, in hospitals, on the streets,' the spokesman replied. The FBI is currently investigating those with 'monetary connections responsible for the riots,' as The Dallas Express previously reported. Tech tycoon Neville Singham – a Marxist sympathizer who moved to Shanghai – uses 'a global web of nonprofits and shell entities' to push Chinese Communist Party propaganda worldwide. Singham supports the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a communist group that helped organize the Los Angeles riots with a 'history of anti-Israel activism,' as The Dallas Express also reported. The group CHIRLA – Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles – helped organize inflammatory rallies in the city, The Dallas Express reported at the time. Singham's wife, Jodie Evans, is the founder of the left-wing activist group Code Pink, which published an anti-ICE toolkit to resist immigration enforcement. The group advocates for Chinese interests, claiming, 'China is not our enemy.' The anti-Trump 'No Kings Day' events are set to take place in Dallas and Fort Worth, as well as the suburbs Arlington, Burleson, Denton, Euless, Flower Mound, Frisco, McKinney, and Sanger. Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker previously told The Dallas Express she has 'full faith' in police to keep Saturday's demonstrations under control. Both the Fort Worth Police Department and the Dallas Police Department are monitoring the events. The Dallas Express reached out to Indivisible and 50501 but did not hear back in time for publication.
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
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Graffiti at night. Cleanup in the morning. The night-and-day difference of L.A. protests
On Wednesday morning, the 18-year-old drove an hour from her home in Ontario to downtown Los Angeles to protest ongoing federal immigration raids and President Trump's deployment of the military to the city. Gryphon Woodson, a new high school graduate, grabbed a pair of goggles and a black bandanna to cover her face. It was her first-ever protest. And after watching videos of chaos in the streets all week, she figured she would be joining throngs of passionate demonstrators. But she arrived too early. As she stood outside the graffiti-covered Federal Building on Los Angeles Street around 11 a.m., the downtown streets were clear. Clusters of police officers stood at ease around courthouses and City Hall, drinking coffee and Red Bull, chatting with dog walkers, scrolling on their phones. "I thought there were gonna be more people here," Woodson said. "I thought people were going to be out, you know, during the day." By 6:30 p.m., it was a different scene entirely. Los Angeles police officers on horseback charged toward hundreds of people who had marched from Pershing Square to the graffiti-marred City Hall, knocking some protesters to the ground as officers on foot fired rubber bullets into the crowd. "It's very disruptive to day-to-day life — the raids, the protest. Everything is destroyed!" said Saul Barnes, a 22-year-old whose family owns a nearby hotel, as he jogged away from a police officer on horseback wielding a baton. "Who the hell wants to work in a state like this?" Calm in the morning. Rowdy at night. That was the routine in downtown Los Angeles this week after Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deployed the National Guard and active-duty Marines to the city amid scattered protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Both police and protesters have said the difference between night and day has been palpable in the city's already quiet downtown, which has struggled with historically high rates of office vacancy since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The intense but isolated chaos has mostly been in and around the Civic Center, which includes City Hall, the LAPD headquarters and multiple courthouses and federal buildings. The area is a few blocks within a city that's just over 500 square miles. There, protesters have burned driverless Waymo vehicles, hurled rocks and bottles at police and National Guard members, and shut down the 101 Freeway. Businesses have been burglarized; windows, smashed. The phrases "F— ICE," "F— LAPD" and "F— Trump" have been spray-painted onto scores of buildings, including City Hall, a 1928 Art Deco landmark. A city-ordered 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. downtown curfew that began Tuesday — along with many protesters' calls for nonviolence — appeared to quell some of the late-night violence and property damage. Trump this week called the nation's second-largest city "a trash heap" that needed rescuing from so-called foreign invaders and rioters. He wrote on Truth Social that "if our troops didn't go into Los Angeles, it would be burning to the ground right now, just like so much of their housing burned to the ground" in the January fires that devastated Pacific Palisades and Altadena. But if the president were to visit the city center during the day, he might be a little bored. On Wednesday morning, a veteran LAPD officer sitting outside City Hall said the days have been mostly calm — and the protest schedule predictable. The officer, who said he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the department, said crowds trickled in around 1 p.m. each day. If they were taking part in an organized protest — the Service Employees International Union rally that drew thousands to Gloria Molina Grand Park on Monday or a march led by faith leaders Tuesday — they were peaceful, if boisterous. In the late afternoon and at night, he said, "the ones that are here to agitate" show up. Many are teenagers. Sitting next to him, smoking a cigar, a 53-year-old LAPD officer described the late-night protesters as "the Mad Max crowd: people with mini bikes, people with masks, rocks, bottles, fireworks." The officer, a Latino who was born at L.A. County-USC hospital and raised in East L.A., said with a sigh that he loved his home city, and "we have nothing to do with ICE; we have nothing to do with the raids, but we're here because of the disorder." On Wednesday afternoon, Reginald Wheeler, a 62-year-old homeless services worker, said he had been attending protests all week after his work day ended around 3 p.m. and staying until things got rowdy. He referenced the 1984 hip-hop song "Freaks Come Out at Night" by Whodini and said "that's the vibe" when the sun goes down. "The more peaceful protesters tend to leave," he said. "They've got dinner to cook." Edward Maguire, a criminologist at Arizona State University, said that's "a common dynamic" during times of major protest, with "criminal offenders" taking advantage of the commotion — and, often, the nighttime darkness — to wreak havoc near the sites of more ideologically-motivated demonstrations. The provocations in Los Angeles appear to have been made worse by the presence of uniformed soldiers, Maguire said, because "people have a strong drive to reject this idea of troops in the street, particularly in an instance like this where it's clearly not warranted." Calvin Morrill, a professor of law and sociology at UC Berkeley, said most modern protests are nonviolent and highly organized by activists, labor unions and community organizations. "Under normal circumstances in most democratic countries, when police perceive protests to be potentially more violent, more of a threat, they will escalate as well, and there's a dance between policing and protest," Morrill said. "But that's not what's happening in Los Angeles. ... This is a spectacle that is constructed by the federal administration to dramatize the threat, the fear, for people who aren't local Angelenos, who are very far from the actual place. It's dramatized for media consumption." Although Trump has portrayed the entire city as a lawless place — where federal agents have been "attacked by an out of control mob of agitators, troublemakers, and/or insurrectionists," he wrote on Truth Social — the literal night-and-day differences have played out all week. Early Monday evening, after a few hundred people ignored dispersal orders near the Federal Building, police — firing less-lethal munitions and tossing flash-bang grenades — pushed protesters into Little Tokyo, where businesses and the Japanese American National Museum were heavily vandalized. Daylight Tuesday brought a starkly different scene: volunteers scrubbing graffiti from the exterior of the museum, which highlights the painful lessons of Japanese Americans' mass incarceration during World War II. After seeing images of the vandalism on her social media feeds, Kimiko Carpenter, a West L.A. mom and hospice volunteer, stopped at Anawalt Lumber to buy $50 worth of rags, gloves, scraping brushes and canisters of graffiti remover. She drove downtown and rolled up her sleeves. Wiping sweat off her brow with the elbow of her white button-down shirt, Carpenter said she had no official affiliation with the museum but was half Japanese and had volunteered there years ago as a teenager. Working to remove the spray paint scrawled across the windows felt like a tangible thing she could do for a few hours before she had to pick up her young children from school. Shortly before the curfew went into effect Tuesday night, hundreds of people led by a coalition of faith leaders marched from Grand Park to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building on Los Angeles Street, stepping in front of another, more contentious protest group. As the faith leaders arrived and asked their group to take a knee and pray on the building's steps, Department of Homeland Security officers trained pepper-ball guns on clergy members, and National Guard members tensed their riot shields. 'We see that you are putting on your masks; you don't need them,' Rev. Eddie Anderson, pastor of McCarty Memorial Christian Church and a leader with LA Voice, said to the officers and guardsmen. 'The people have gathered together to remind you there is a higher power. To remind you that in Los Angeles everybody is free, and no human is illegal.' When the clock struck 8 p.m., the religious group left. A few dozen people remained. Someone threw a glass bottle at officers from a nearby pedestrian bridge. Officers on horseback wove chaotically through traffic, knocking a protester to the ground. Within 30 minutes, the familiar sounds of LAPD less-lethal munition launchers and screaming demonstrators filled downtown again. The next morning, Woodson showed up to the quiet Federal Building, where she and a handful of other young women were outnumbered by journalists. "My plan today was to make as much noise as possible," she said. "Trump likes to try to suppress our voices. ICE wants to suppress our voices. LAPD wants to suppress our voices. I'll be damned — I refuse. As a Black person in the United States, I'm not gonna have my voice suppressed anymore.' Around 11:20 a.m. Wednesday, five camouflaged National Guard members lined up on the building's front steps, standing behind clear riot shields. At the sight of them, Woodson tied her bandanna around her face and started marching back and forth, screaming: "Immigrants are not the problem! Immigrants are never the problem!" Marching quietly behind her, a Mexican flag draped over her shoulders, was 19-year-old Michelle Hernandez, a daughter of Mexican immigrants who lives in East L.A. and had been worried about family members and friends during the ICE raids. She spoke softly but said she wanted "to be a voice for those who cannot speak." She said it hurt to see Latino police officers and federal agents involved in the immigration crackdown and that it was "very heartbreaking seeing your own people betray you." As the young women marched, several Latino maintenance workers snaked a power hose across the Federal Building steps, paying no mind to the heavily-armed National Guard soldiers as they sprayed away graffiti. One worker, a 67-year-old from East L.A., said he was glad to see the soldiers outside the building where he had been employed for the last 20 years because he figured the vandalism would have been worse without them. George Dutton, a UCLA professor who teaches Southeast Asian history, stood by himself in front of the Federal Building steps, holding up a sign that read: "It's Called the Constitution You F—" as the young women walked back and forth behind him. Dutton, who was taking a break from grading final exams, was not surprised at the quiet. 'It speaks to the various paradoxes around this — it's a movement that ebbs and flows,' he said. 'I see soldiers carrying guns and wearing fatigues, so maybe they're trying to create the idea that this is a war zone," he added. "And if you did a tight shot on one of these National Guardsmen, you might actually cast that impression. But if you pull back, you get the big picture and you realize that, no, it's literally manufactured.' Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
San Diego Police Department urges peace, warns against violence in anti-ICE protests
(Above: Report by FOX 5/KUSI's Jennifer Franco on May 30 about the ICE operations at Buona Forchetta) SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The San Diego Police Department issued a statement Friday regarding the federal immigration enforcement actions happening nationwide. Following on the heels of an announcement made earlier this week by the San Diego County Chiefs and Sheriff's Association, SDPD said it 'fully supports the right to peacefully assemble and exercise free speech' and that it recognizes how the actions taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have 'deeply affected' the community. What is the difference between democracy and authoritarian rule? However, the department warned that damaging property or conducting other violent acts will have legal consequences. 'The San Diego Police Department does not enforce federal immigration laws, nor do we inquire about immigration status,' the department stated. 'Our mission is focused on public safety.' At the end of last month, ICE agents conducted two immigration enforcement operations at an Italian restaurant, Buona Forchetta, and its sister restaurant in South Park. San Diego police officers were also called in to assist after the heightened response led to a crowd of people gathering around the scene, attempting to prevent the ICE agents and their vehicles from leaving. The warnings come ahead of another wave of protests planned for Saturday called 'No Kings Day,' a nationwide movement which is aimed against several policies and actions made by the Trump administration, including strict immigration enforcement. Here's where 'No Kings' events are happening in San Diego County. SDPD's reaction to the federal crackdown on illegal immigration echoes a similar sentiment made by the county's law enforcement association on Tuesday. Chula Vista Police Chief Roxana Kennedy, who is also the president of the San Diego County Chiefs and Sheriff's Association, said assaults on law enforcement or acts like looting, vandalism and arson 'will not be tolerated.' 'Should federal authorities request our assistance due to safety concerns, local law enforcement will respond as necessary to ensure the protection of all involved—officers, agents, and members of the public alike,' her statement on behalf of the association read. 'This support is strictly for safety and security purposes and does not reflect participation in immigration enforcement.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
