‘First step to being vindicated': Judge blocks Trump Administration latest attack on Harvard
Andrew Weissmann, former top prosecutor for the Justice Department joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to a federal judge blocking the Trump Administration's efforts to stop Harvard from being able to enroll international students, and what comes next in a fight that the Trump Administration will be unwilling to let go.
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Politico
25 minutes ago
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DOJ sues Texas over giving undocumented residents in-state tuition
The Trump administration is suing to overturn Texas law that allows residents without legal status to pay in-state tuition rates at public universities. The Department of Justice filed the complaint Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. It's the latest move in President Donald Trump's bids to reshape both higher education and immigration in advancement of an aggressive 'America First' agenda. 'Under federal law, schools cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,' Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. 'The Justice Department will relentlessly fight to vindicate federal law and ensure that U.S. citizens are not treated like second-class citizens anywhere in the country.' Former Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who served as Trump's energy secretary during the president's first term, made Texas the first state in the nation to grant in-state tuition eligibility for certain undocumented students when he signed the Texas Dream Act in 2001. More than 20 states followed suit, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal. The Texas law has survived multiple attempts to repeal it in the decades since. 'In direct conflict with federal law, Texas law specifically allows an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States to qualify for in-state tuition based on residence within the state, while explicitly denying resident tuition rates to U.S. citizens that do not qualify as Texas residents,' the DOJ wrote in its complaint. Gov. Greg Abbott's office and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board did not immediately respond to a request for comment from POLITICO. Some Republicans nationwide have begun to target in-state tuition rates for undocumented students. Florida Republicans earlier this year repealed a measure that granted in-state tuition to undocumented students who attended Florida high schools. This isn't the first time Trump has looked to crack down on non-U.S. citizens in American colleges. Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a push to 'aggressively revoke' visas for Chinese international students, specifically for 'those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.' The details behind the measure remain unclear, but Trump's allies spent years preparing the policy. The White House has also sought to cut off Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students, who comprise roughly 27 percent of the university's student body.
CBS News
28 minutes ago
- CBS News
Swatting hoaxer admits to scheme targeting dozens of members of Congress and social media influencers
Thomasz Szabo was an invisible menace, according to federal prosecutors. His alleged targets: They are quite visible. Szabo, a Romanian national, has pleaded guilty to leading a scheme to target dozens of politicians and social media influencers with a wave of "swatting" attacks. According to court filings, Szabo began building a network of "swatters" in 2018 to unleash havoc on public figures in the United States. In a swatting hoax, a false emergency call is made to police to lure a SWAT team to a target's home. The swatting call often falsely claims a mass shooting or hostage situation is underway, so as to create an exceptionally large police response and raise the risk of a confrontation at the victim's home. According to the Justice Department, "Szabo made false reports to U.S. law enforcement including a threat in December 2020 to commit a mass shooting at New York City synagogues, and a threat in January 2021 to detonate explosives at the U.S. Capitol and kill the President-elect"—likely referring to Joe Biden. A plea agreement reviewed by CBS News said Szabo's co-conspirators also targeted at least 25 members of Congress or their families, six executive branch officials and Cabinet members, judges, members of the media and at least two dozen former government officials. He was extradited from Romania late last year and will be sentenced on federal conspiracy and threat charges in October. According to the court filings, Szabo's conspiracy sought to victimize targets with large audiences and social media followings, amplifying the impact of the attacks. "The defendant sought to target those who would react publicly to having been swatted." His plea agreement said Szabo's conspiracy would target "streamers" who were broadcasting or speaking to an audience online during the attacks. Among those who say they were targeted was a prolific conservative social media figure known as "Catturd," who posted earlier this week to his 3 million X followers, "This is the guy who swatted me the first three times." Szabo publicized his "swatting" activity to his followers and encouraged them to engage in similar behavior, court documents say. Prosecutors said, "One of (his) subordinates bragged to Szabo: 'I did 25+ swattings today," and, 'creating massive havoc in [A]merica. $500,000+ in taxpayers wasted in just two days." Szabo sought to find and inspire others to execute swattings, according to the Justice Department. Former Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary of Intelligence John Cohen told CBS News, "Increasingly, swatters are doing more than just incentivizing or inspiring attacks. We are seeing the posting of content that is intended to give people detailed instructions on how to carry out the activity." Cohen said the technology and techniques employed by swatters are becoming more sophisticated and potent. "If a swatting call involves reporting a fictitious active shooter event, they'll use artificial intelligence-generated sound effects depicting the sounds of gunfire. That's meant to give it credibility," Cohen said. In Szabo's case, prosecutors alleged he used an internet-based phone platform to execute some hoaxes, which could mask identifying information about Szabo or his co-conspirators. Although charging documents do not name which members of Congress were targeted and disrupted by Szabo or his co-conspirators, several lawmakers have publicly acknowledged being victims of recent swatting attacks across the country. In a 2023 case spotlighted by CBS News, then-Rep. Brandon Williams, a central New York Republican, said the swatting happened on Christmas Day at his home. Williams told CBS News, "I organized my family in the kitchen and told them to hang out and keep their hands visible," to avoid any confusion by officers when police arrived. Williams said the swatting attack put his family in danger. After the police came inside to confirm the call was a hoax, Williams said he began packing the deputies bags with his holiday cookies. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, has publicly posted about a series of recent swatting incidents, including one on Christmas Day 2023, the same day Williams was targeted. Greene wrote on social media at the time, "I was just swatted. This is like the 8th time. On Christmas with my family here. My local police are the GREATEST and shouldn't have to deal with this." Two other high-profile swatting victims from December 2023: Special Counsel Jack Smith and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who prosecuted and oversaw one of the federal criminal cases against President Trump, respectively. Swatting has vexed law enforcement for years — wasting police resources and, in at least one 2017 case unrelated to Szabo, ending in a fatal police shooting. Authorities are also contending with a rise in threats against public officials — from lawmakers to judges and prosecutors — including an eerie and menacing trend in which judges are sent unsolicited pizza orders, indicating that some unknown person knows their personal address. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a statement about Szabo's guilty plea in federal court in Washington, D.C. "This defendant led a dangerous swatting criminal conspiracy, deliberately threatening dozens of government officials with violent hoaxes and targeting our nation's security infrastructure from behind a screen overseas," Bondi said.
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
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DOJ presses federal appeals court to reverse ruling blocking Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship
The Justice Department on Wednesday pressed a federal appeals court to reverse a judge's ruling that blocked nationwide President Donald Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship. The hearing before a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals represents the first time one of the nation's intermediate courts has heard oral arguments over the constitutionality of the controversial policy, which was blocked by several courts earlier this year before it could take effect. The hourlong hearing unfolded at a courthouse in Seattle comes as the Supreme Court is considering whether it should modify the lower-court injunctions so that Trump can begin partially enforcing the policy while the legal challenges are resolved. 'Our position is very firmly grounded in text, history and precedent. But I do want to be clear that the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause sets a floor for birthright citizenship and not a ceiling, so there's nothing in our position that would prevent Congress – if it saw fit and on the terms it saw fit – from granting citizenship to the children of foreigners who are in the country temporarily or unlawfully,' DOJ attorney Eric Dean McArthur told the court. Some of the discussion on Wednesday concerned whether the appeals court should also narrow the reach of the ruling issued in February by US District Judge John Coughenour, with McArthur struggling to answer some questions about how the policy would apply to certain groups of immigrants – like asylum seekers – because officials haven't been able to craft guidance implementing Trump's executive order due to the series of court orders. 'One of the problems with the injunction is that it enjoined the government from even explaining how this order would be implemented,' McArthur said at one point. 'So, how the executive order, if and when it is allowed to take effect, would apply to various categories like asylees, like refugees, is not clear at this point.' But given the Supreme Court's pending ruling on whether the injunctions should be reined in, McArthur suggested later that the appeals court shouldn't yet 'put pen to paper' on its own decision. One member of the panel – Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Trump appointee – asked questions throughout the hearing that were sympathetic to the administration's arguments, including whether a key 19th century Supreme Court Case offered a more limited understanding of who the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause applies to. Bumatay also pressed an attorney representing the states challenging the policy on whether a nationwide injunction was necessary at this point – an argument the administration has consistently pushed after courts blocked the policy across the board. 'The harms to the states that would flow from a piecemeal rule are the same harms that will flow from the rule itself,' Washington state Solicitor General Noah Purcell said. 'Babies will be born in non-plaintiff states, they will not receive a Social Security number, their families will move into our states and when they arrive here we will not have any way under our existing systems to enroll them in programs that they are entitled to participate in,' he added. A different panel of the 9th Circuit declined earlier this year to put Coughenour's ruling on hold, and federal appeals courts in Boston and Richmond similarly rejected requests from the administration to undo other rulings blocking Trump's policy. Trump's order, titled 'Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,' seeks to bar the federal government from issuing 'documents recognizing United States citizenship' to any child born on American soil to parents who were in the country unlawfully or were in the states lawfully but temporarily.
