The month in photos: March 2025
A heated exchange between Memphis Democratic Rep. Justin Pearson and Sevierville Republican Rep. Andrew Farmer forced the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee into recess on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo: John Partipilo)
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump Wants to Make It More Expensive to Sue Over His Policies
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump and his allies are pursuing an alternative strategy to defend against mounting court orders blocking his policies: Raise the financial stakes for those suing the administration. Shuttered NY College Has Alumni Fighting Over Its Future Trump's Military Parade Has Washington Bracing for Tanks and Weaponry NYC Renters Brace for Price Hikes After Broker-Fee Ban Do World's Fairs Still Matter? NY Long Island Rail Service Resumes After Grand Central Fire Republicans want to force people suing the US to post financial guarantees to cover the government's costs if they win a temporary halt to Trump's policies but ultimately lose the case. A measure in the House's 'big, beautiful' tax-and-spending bill would condition a judges' power to hold US officials in contempt for violating their orders to the payment of that security. A new proposed version of the bill announced by Senate Republicans on Thursday removes the contempt language but would broadly restrict judges' discretion to decide how much of a security payment to order from challengers who win initial pauses to Trump's policies, or to waive it altogether. While the legislation faces hurdles, the push to make suing the government more expensive is gaining steam. Critics say it's part of a broader effort to discourage lawsuits against the Trump administration. In addition to the tax bill provision, Republican lawmakers have introduced a plan to require plaintiffs who lose suits against the administration to cover the government's legal costs. Meanwhile, Trump has directed the Justice Department to demand bonds from court challengers when judges temporarily halt his policies. Trump has also targeted law firms over everything from past work for Democratic rivals to their diversity policies. Courts historically haven't required bonds to be put up in lawsuits against the government. In recent cases, the Trump administration's bond requests included $120,000 in litigation over union bargaining and an unspecified amount 'on the high side'' in a fight over billions of dollars in frozen clean technology grants. Judges in those and other cases have denied hefty requests or set smaller amounts, such as $10 or $100 or even $1. 'Having to put that money up is going to prevent people from being able to enforce their rights,' said Eve Hill, a civil rights lawyer who is involved in litigation against the administration over the treatment of transgender people in US prisons and Social Security Administration operations. The Trump administration has faced more than 400 lawsuits over his policies on immigration, government spending and the federal workforce, among other topics, since his inauguration. A Bloomberg analysis in May found that Trump was losing more cases than he was winning. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement that 'activist organizations are abusing litigation to derail the president's agenda' and that it is 'entirely reasonable to demand that irresponsible organizations provide collateral to cover the costs and damages if their litigation wrongly impeded executive action.' Dan Huff, a White House lawyer during Trump's first term, defended the idea but said the language needed fixes, such as clarifying that it only applies to preliminary orders and not all injunctions. Huff, whose op-eds in support of stiffer injunction bonds have circulated among Republicans this year, said that Congress wanted litigants 'to have skin in the game.' Some judges have already found in certain cases that the administration was failing to fully comply with orders. Alexander Reinert, a law professor at Cardozo School of Law, said the timing of Congress taking up such a proposal was 'troubling and perverse.' 'Defy Logic' Some efforts by the Trump administration to curb lawsuits have already paid off. By threatening probes of law firms' hiring practices, the White House struck deals with several firms that effectively ruled out their involvement in cases challenging Trump's policies. Other aspects of the effort have been less successful. Judges have overwhelmingly rebuffed the Justice Department's efforts that plaintiffs put up hefty bonds. A judge who refused to impose a bond in a funding fight wrote that 'it would defy logic' to hold nonprofit organizations 'hostage' for the administration's refusal to pay them. Several judges entered bonds as low as $1 when they stopped the administration from sending Venezuelan migrants out of the country. In a challenge to federal worker layoffs, a judge rejected the government's push for a bond covering salaries and benefits, instead ordering the unions that sued to post $10. The clause in the House tax bill tying contempt power of judges to injunction bonds was the work of Trump loyalists. Representative Andy Biggs, a Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee, pushed to include the provision, Representative Jim Jordan told Bloomberg News. Jordan, who chairs the committee, said Biggs and Representative Harriet Hageman, another Republican, were 'very instrumental in bringing this to the committee's attention.' Biggs' office did not respond to requests for comment. Hageman said in a statement that the measure will 'go a long way in curbing this overreach whereby judges are using their gavels to block policies with which they disagree, regardless of what the law may say.' Liberals have slammed the proposed clause in the tax-and-spending bill as an attack on the judiciary, but it may not be the controversy that dooms it in the Senate. Reconciliation, the process lawmakers are using to pass the bill with only Republican support, requires the entire bill to relate directly to the budget. 'Make It Happen' Several Republicans have expressed skepticism the measure can survive under that process. But, Jordan, the House judiciary chair, said Republican lawmakers will seek an alternative path to pass the measure if it's ruled out in the Senate. 'I'm sure we'll look at other ways to make it happen,' Jordan said. The bond fight stems from an existing federal rule that says judges can enter temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions 'only if' the winning side posts a security that the court 'considers proper.' The bond is to cover 'costs and damages' if they ultimately lose. University of Notre Dame Law School professor Samuel Bray, a proponent of injunction bonds, said courts should account for whether litigants have the ability to pay. Still, he said, defendants should be able to recover some money if a judge's early injunction — a 'prediction' about who will win, he said – isn't borne out. 'If courts routinely grant zero dollars, what they are doing is pricing the effect of a wrongly granted injunction on the government's operations at zero,' Bray said. Courts have interpreted the rule as giving judges discretion to decide what's appropriate, including waiving it, said Cornell Law School Professor Alexandra Lahav. The bond issue usually comes up in business disputes with 'clear monetary costs,' she said, and not in cases against the federal government. 'It's not clear to me what kind of injunction bond would make sense in the context of lawsuits around whether immigrants should have a hearing before they're deported,' Lahav said. 'I'm not really sure how you would price that.' (Updates with Senate proposal in the third paragraph.) American Mid: Hampton Inn's Good-Enough Formula for World Domination The Spying Scandal Rocking the World of HR Software New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years As Companies Abandon Climate Pledges, Is There a Silver Lining? US Tariffs Threaten to Derail Vietnam's Historic Industrial Boom ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Predator Drones Are Being Flown Over Protesters In Los Angeles
As part of the massive deployment of federal law enforcement and even active duty troops to Los Angeles, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine Operations (AMO) department has been flying MQ-9 Predator B drones over the city. CBP has been flying these unmanned aircraft since 2005 in service of their mission of detecting illegal border crossings. Now, they are being used to conduct aerial surveillance of the protests against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. LA is a fair distance from the border, and the protestors are not crossing it anyway, meaning the drones are getting used outside of their main mission. This isn't the first time they've been pulled into domestic surveillance duty. During the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020, CBP flew them over Minneapolis to keep eye on the protestors there. This drew swift criticism at the time, including by Democratic members of Congress, and Predators do not appear to have been used for this purpose again until now. That said, aerial surveillance of protests, notably by helicopters, is a common practice. The question now is whether unmanned platforms will start being used more regularly, particularly under an aggressive Trump administration. Read more: The Best-Looking Pickup Trucks Ever Sold, According To Our Readers The Predator B drones (which are called "Reapers" in their military variation) used by CBP are strictly surveillance aircraft; they are not armed with any ordnance. While they do have radar systems, those are mostly useful for detecting vehicles; what's relevant here is their electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors, basically cameras capable of seeing into both visible and infrared spectrums. Eyes in the sky, in other words. The Department of Homeland Security has released some footage captured by the Predators on X, cut with some intimidating music in a clear effort to push a specific narrative (the post's text, "California politicians must call off their rioting mob," is not exactly subtle or, for that matter, accurate). Low-rent movie trailer music aside, the footage does demonstrate the drone's ability to capture wide-angle shots of the situation. For what it's worth, CBP told The War Zone that the drones are specifically "providing officer safety surveillance" and are "not engaged in the surveillance of First Amendment activities." Given that clashes with protestors is what's at issue, though, that's functionally not much of a distinction. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
Hamilton Spectator
24 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Tennessee judge will hear arguments about releasing Kilmar Abrego Garcia from pretrial detention
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation has become a flashpoint in President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, on Friday will stand before a Tennessee judge who'll decide whether he can be released while awaiting trial on human smuggling charges. Before the hearing began in Nashville, Abrego Garcia's wife told a crowd outside a church that Thursday marked three months since the Trump administration 'abducted and disappeared my husband and separated him from our family.' Her voice choked with emotion, Jennifer Vasquez Sura said she saw her husband for the first time on Thursday. She said, 'Kilmar wants you to have faith,' and asked the people supporting him and his family ''to continue fighting, and I will be victorious because God is with us.'' Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador who had been living in the United States for more than a decade before he was wrongfully deported by the Republican administration in March. The expulsion violated a 2019 U.S. immigration judge's order that shielded him from deportation to his native country because he likely faced gang persecution there. While the Trump administration described the mistaken removal as 'an administrative error,' officials have continued to justify it by insisting Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang . His wife and attorneys have denied the allegations, saying he's simply a construction worker and family man. Trump's administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. last week to face criminal charges related to what it said was a human smuggling operation that transported immigrants across the country. The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with eight passengers. His lawyers have called the allegations 'preposterous.' U.S. attorneys have asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes to keep Abrego Garcia in jail, describing him as a danger to the community and a flight risk. Abrego Garcia's attorneys disagree, pointing out he was already wrongly detained in a notorious Salvadoran prison thanks to government error and arguing due process and 'basic fairness' require him to be set free. The charges against Abrego Garcia are human smuggling. But in their request to keep Abrego Garcia in jail, U.S. attorneys also accuse him of trafficking drugs and firearms and of abusing the women he transported, among other claims, although he is not charged with such crimes. The U.S. attorneys also accuse Abrego Garcia of taking part in a murder in El Salvador. However, none of those allegations is part of the charges against him, and at his initial appearance June 6, the judge warned prosecutors she cannot detain someone based solely on allegations. One of Abrego Garcia's attorneys last week characterized the claims as a desperate attempt by the Trump administration to justify the mistaken deportation three months after the fact. 'There's no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,' private attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said. In a Wednesday court filing, Abrego Garcia's public defenders argued the government is not even entitled to a detention hearing — much less detention — because the charges against him aren't serious enough. Although the maximum sentence for smuggling one person is 10 years, and Abrego Garcia is accused of transporting hundreds of people over nearly a decade, his defense attorneys point out there's no minimum sentence. The average sentence for human smuggling in 2024 was just 15 months, according to court filings. The decision to charge Abrego Garcia criminally prompted the resignation of Ben Schrader, who was chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Tennessee. He posted about his departure on social media on the day of the indictment, writing, 'It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I've ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.' He did not directly address the indictment and declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press. However, a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter confirmed the connection. Although Abrego Garcia lives in Maryland, he's being charged in Tennessee based on a May 2022 traffic stop for speeding in the state. The Tennessee Highway Patrol body camera video of the encounter that was released to the public last month shows a calm exchange between officers and Abrego Garcia. It also shows the officers discussing among themselves their suspicions of human smuggling before sending him on his way. One of the officers says, 'He's hauling these people for money.' Another says Abrego Garcia had $1,400 in an envelope. Abrego Garcia was not charged with any offense at the traffic stop. Sandoval-Moshenberg, the private attorney, said in a statement after the video's release that he saw no evidence of a crime in the footage. Meanwhile, the lawsuit over Abrego Garcia's mistaken deportation isn't over. Abrego Garcia's attorneys have asked a federal judge in Maryland to impose fines against the Trump administration for contempt, arguing that it flagrantly ignored court orders for several weeks to return him. The Trump administration said it will ask the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it followed the judge's order to return him to the U.S. ___ This story has been corrected to show the Trump administration said that the human smuggling operation transported immigrants across the country, not that it brought immigrants into the country illegally. ___ Finley reported from Norfolk, Va. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
