Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in deportations to third countries

USA Today

28-05-2025

Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in deportations to third countries | The Excerpt
On Wednesday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to intervene in its effort to rapidly deport migrants to "third countries." USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe discusses the high court's move to take another look at whether a police officer who partially blinded a teenager during the 2020 George Floyd protests can be sued. USA TODAY Education Reporter Zach Schermele has the latest on President Trump's feud with Harvard. The Trump administration halts scheduling of new student visa appointments. SpaceX's Starship rocket breaks up again.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, May 28th, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today, Trump asked the Supreme Court to intervene in deportations to third countries. Plus, the high court orders another look at whether a police officer who partially blinded a teenager during the George Floyd protests can be sued. And where do things stand on Trump versus Harvard?
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The Trump Administration asked the Supreme Court yesterday to intervene in its efforts to deport migrants to countries other than their own, without the opportunity to raise claims that they fear being persecuted, tortured, or killed there. The Justice Department requested that the justices lift a U.S. judge's injunction requiring that migrants be given the chance to seek legal relief from deportation before they're sent to third countries while litigation continues in the case. The Department of Homeland Security had moved in February to determine if people granted protections against being removed to their home countries could be redetained and sent to a third country. Immigrant rights groups mounted a class-action lawsuit seeking to prevent rapid deportation to newly identified third countries without notice and a chance to assert the harms they could face.
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A police officer partially blinded a teenager amid George Floyd protests five years ago, and the Supreme Court is weighing in. I spoke with USA TODAY's Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe to learn more.
Hey, Maureen.
Maureen Groppe:
Hey, how are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good. Good. Thanks for hopping on today. So, let's go back to 2020. What happened here as it pertains to this police officer and this teenager during the George Floyd protests?
Maureen Groppe:
Yeah, so in the days after George Floyd's murder in a protest, Minneapolis police officer shot a nineteen-year-old in the face with a chemical-filled projectile, and he shot him at close range, and that left the teen legally blind in one eye, among other injuries. The officer said he was trying to stop an assault on another cop, and he used a method less lethal than a gun to do so. But the teenager said that response was excessive, and he is trying to sue the officer.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. What had the lower courts ruled on this case?
Maureen Groppe:
Well, there's a high bar for suing police officers, and the officer, in this case, said that that bar had been cleared, and he wanted the lawsuit dismissed before it went to trial. The federal district court judge and the appeals court both disagreed. They said a jury could reasonably conclude that the teenager had not been an immediate threat to police when he was hit in the face.
Taylor Wilson:
Fast-forward to the Supreme Court. How is the high court now getting involved, Maureen?
Maureen Groppe:
Well, so the police officer appealed to the Supreme Court and, instead of taking up the case themselves, the justices said the lower court should reconsider its decision that allowed the lawsuit to move forward. So they threw out that decision, and depending on what the lower court now does, the case may or may not come back to the Supreme Court.
Taylor Wilson:
Maureen, there was a recent Supreme Court decision about a fatal traffic stop dealing with police deadly force. What happened there? And does that move mean anything for this case?
Maureen Groppe:
Yeah, and that's why the Supreme Court acted now. They had held onto this appeal from the Minneapolis police officer until they reached a decision on this other case from Texas that involved a fatal traffic stop where a man was stopped because a car he was driving showed there were some unpaid tolls connected with this car, which happened to be a rental car. And in the encounter with the police officer, as the man's car started to roll, the officer shot him and killed him. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the family of the man who was shot. They said the lower court should have looked at everything that led up to the officer thinking his life was in danger when he made that decision to fire into the car. And, in this case, the Supreme Court said the same standard should be applied. So, while that standard didn't help the officer in the traffic stop case, it helps the man who was shot in this case, looking at the bigger picture could help the officer avoid a lawsuit.
Taylor Wilson:
Maureen, the timing here is interesting. We're just a days past the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder and the Justice Department just days ago said it's dropping negotiations for a court-approved settlement with Minneapolis, a separate situation. Remind us what happened last week there.
Maureen Groppe:
So, during the Biden Administration, the Justice Department launched a number of investigations into police departments for such things as excessive use of force or racially-motivated policing. But they hadn't reached binding court agreements with the police departments they were investigating before the change in administrations. So last week, the Justice Department under Trump said it's dropping the negotiations that were underway for settlements with both the Minneapolis and the Louisville police agencies. They said these agreements threaten local control of policing and that they are often motivated by what they called an anti-police agenda.
Taylor Wilson:
Maureen Groppe covers the Supreme Court for A Today. Thanks as always, Maureen.
Maureen Groppe:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
President Trump's feud with Harvard has reached new heights in recent weeks. Ahead of the summer months, I caught up with USA TODAY education reporter, Zach Schermele, for the latest. Thanks as always for joining me, Zach.
Zach Schermele:
Thanks, Taylor.
Taylor Wilson:
So you know, Zach, we've seen a lot of twists and turns here. What happened yesterday in this latest chapter of Trump's feud with Harvard?
Zach Schermele:
So, days after the President attempted to ban the Ivy League School from enrolling international students, a move that a federal judge immediately blocked, by the way, the General Services Administration, which is a federal agency, directed all other federal agencies to explore ways to cut their remaining contracts with Harvard. That's according to a Senior Administration Official.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Zach, this is really the latest in a series of moves the White House has taken recently aimed at punishing the Harvard community. What else have we seen, especially in recent weeks?
Zach Schermele:
As you said, Taylor, this is just the most recent battle in a broader war that the Trump Administration is waging against Harvard. That feud has escalated on an almost daily basis; it's halted major research trials at the university. It has frozen billions of dollars in their funding and prompted several high-stakes lawsuits. And the reasons why Trump is targeting Harvard are kind of complicated. So, he and members of his administration have roundly criticized the school and its Jewish President, Alan Garber, for creating a campus environment that Trump and critics of the university say is really rife with anti-Semitism, especially since protests broke out in response to the Israel-Hamas war. But the Ivy League school has really long been a punching bag for conservatives, many of whom view it as kind of a ground zero for liberal ideology. And more recently, Trump has complained in an increasingly forceful way about Harvard enrolling too many students from other countries.
Taylor Wilson:
Zach, we're entering the summer months with the spring semester behind us. This is often a time when international students might travel to their home countries or elsewhere. I'm just curious what this moment is like for them, and what are they actually doing?
Zach Schermele:
There's a lot of fear. There is a lot of anxiety. Harvard's foreign students really spent the final days of their spring semester not knowing what the future held for them, particularly those that weren't graduating and might have a year or two or three left in their time at Harvard. So, the Trump Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and secretary Kristi Noem told them, just a week before graduation ceremonies for some of them were meant to start, that they need to transfer to another institution or risk losing their ability to remain in the U.S. The only thing that really kept that threat at bay was a federal court order. The change was supposed to go into effect immediately, but Harvard sued the following morning, accusing federal officials of violating multiple laws, and hours after the university filed the lawsuit, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, keeping the change from going into effect.
Taylor Wilson:
And Zach, there are also escalating tensions, of course, over federal funding as it pertains to Harvard. What's the latest on this front?
Zach Schermele:
The first major threat to Harvard's funding came in March when a task force of several agencies said they would be reviewing roughly $9 billion in contracts and grants to the school. And they made a list of really unprecedented demands to the university to halt that review. When Harvard would not comply with those demands, the Trump Administration froze roughly $2.2 billion of the school's federal funding. The university filed an initial lawsuit against the White House on April 21st to try and restore that federal funding. And in the week since, federal agencies have deemed Harvard ineligible for any new federal research grants, they've yanked an additional $450 million in funding from the school. And they're still considering cutting off even more government support.
Taylor Wilson:
Just talking about huge sums of money and big stakes there. Trump also said earlier this month that the IRS would strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status. Can they do this act? Will they do this? And how is Harvard pushing back?
Zach Schermele:
The university could lose hundreds of millions of dollars from this change by some estimates, but typically there's sort of an apolitical process that the IRS follows to try and strip nonprofits like universities of their tax-exempt status. The executive branch is prohibited by federal law from influencing IRS audits and investigations. So, Harvard says that there's no legal basis that the Administration could take to rescind that tax exemption.
Taylor Wilson:
We're talking as the Trump Administration just yesterday put a stop to the scheduling of new student visa appointments. What can you tell us about this move, Zach?
Zach Schermele:
Right. So multiple news outlets, including Reuters, are reporting that Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has ordered embassies and consular sections to stop scheduling new appointments for student visa applicants. This is still pretty fresh news because, up until now, visa interviews really seem to be keeping pace with normal years, but we're just going to have to see how that change coupled with the Trump Administration's broader targeting of international students at institutions like Harvard is going to potentially influence whether or not foreign students feel welcome in the U.S.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Zach Schermele covers education for USA TODAY. Great insight for us as always, Zach. Thanks so much.
Zach Schermele:
Appreciate it, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
SpaceX's Starship rocket made it to space yesterday, but then spun out of control about halfway through its flight, almost an hour after it took off. After two test flights ended in dramatic explosions earlier this year, the company's ninth test of its Starship vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly as confirmed by SpaceX on X. That's the same language used when Starship's January and March flight test unexpectedly exploded in the sky. The incident meant that the rocket's team was unable to achieve some of its most important testing goals and the recent setbacks point to SpaceX's struggles to overcome complications to Starship's multi-billion-dollar development. But the company's engineering culture is built on a flight testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then works on improvements through repetition. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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We need rare earth minerals if we want our electronics and many other products that we use regularly to work properly. Getting these minerals requires mining, but the technology in use now has changed the process in major ways.
Scott McWhorter:
There's sensors and AI and machine learning that go into that as well as you're drilling, that tell you: are you drilling in the right location?
Taylor Wilson:
Scott McWhorter is an engineer focused on energy innovation at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He spoke with my colleague, Dana Taylor, about how we're getting these minerals in Georgia and California. You can hear that conversation right here on this feed today, beginning at 4 P.M. Eastern time.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and as always, you can email us at [e-mail]. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.