Court Rules Trump Can Exclude Journalists From Oval Office
A federal appeals court has ruled that President Donald Trump can exclude journalists from the Oval Office, Air Force One and other 'restricted' spaces based on their editorial decisions, handing the administration a win in its fight with the Associated Press over access.
In a 2-1 order on Friday, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit halted a lower-court judge's order that had restored the wire service's ability to participate in a rotating pool of reporters who cover the president's daily movements.
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Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Sheetz racial discrimination case is on the chopping block as Trump rewrites civil rights
Federal authorities moved Friday to drop a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Sheetz convenience store chain, part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump's administration to halt the use of a key tool for enforcing the country's civil rights laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the top federal agency for enforcing workers rights, filed a motion in a Pennsylvania federal court to dismiss the Sheetz lawsuit, citing Trump's executive order directing federal agencies to deprioritize the use of 'disparate impact liability' in civil rights enforcement. Disparate impact liability holds that policies that are neutral on their face can violate civil rights laws if they impose artificial barriers that disadvantage different demographic groups. The concept has been used to root out practices that close off minorities, women, people with disabilities, older adults or other groups from certain jobs, or keep them from accessing credit or equal pay. Trump's executive order is part of his campaign to upend civil rights enforcement through firings and other steps that have consolidated his power over quasi-independent agencies like the EEOC, redirecting them to implement his priorities, including stamping out diversity and inclusion practices and eroding the rights of transgender people. In the Sheetz case, filed in April 2024 under the Biden administration, the EEOC had claimed that the company's policy of refusing to hire anyone who failed its criminal background checks discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job applicants. The lawsuit could survive even if the EEOC drops it: A Black worker who was let go from his Sheetz job in Pennsylvania filed a motion in federal court Thursday evening to intervene and pursue his own class action lawsuit. In its motion Friday, the EEOC asked the court to delay its dismissal of the lawsuit for 60 days to allow potential claimants to intervene. The Supreme Court recognized the concept of disparate impact in a landmark 1971 case, which held that a North Carolina power plant discriminated against Black employees by requiring high school diplomas and an intelligence test for certain higher paying roles, even though the requirements were irrelevant to the jobs. In 1991, bipartisan majorities in Congress voted to codify disparate impact in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The concept holds that it is illegal to impose barriers to employment if such practices have a discriminatory effect and have no relevance to the requirements of the job. The April 23 order declared that it is 'the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible.' The order argued that disparate impact has become a 'key tool' of a 'pernicious movement' that threatens meritocracy in favor of 'racial balancing' in the workforce. Craig Leen, a former top official at the Labor Department under the first Trump administration, said while the executive order take a more aggressive approach, it reflects long-standing conservative concerns that disparate impact liability encourages the assumption that any racial imbalance in the workforce is a result of discrimination. Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, said the Trump administration would rightfully 'focus on individual discrimination cases," which she said are 'more factually sound, less susceptible to manipulation, and more closely hews to the original intent' of civil rights law. The EEOC filed the original Sheetz lawsuit after an eight-year investigation that arose from complaints filed by two job applicants. But following Trump's disparate impact order, the EEOC filed a motion District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to dismiss the lawsuit. The EEOC had sent letters to potential claimants notifying them of its intention to drop the case and urging them to act quickly if they wished to intervene. U.S. workers can pursue federal discrimination lawsuits on their own if the EEOC declines to take up their complaints but often don't because of the resources required. The EEOC declined to comment further on the case. One of the potential claimants, Kenni Miller, filed a motion to intervene late Thursday. Miller, 32, was hired as a shift supervisor at a Sheetz in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 2020, according to the motion filed by the law firm Outten & Golden, which represents workers in employment disputes, and the Public Interest Law Center. After working there for a month, Miller was told he failed the background check because of a felony drug conviction and was let go, according to the motion. According to the EEOC's lawsuit, Sheetz' policy of denying jobs who anyone who failed a background check resulted in 14.5% Black job applicants being denied employment, compared to 8% of white applicants. For Native American applicants, the rate was 13%, and for multiracial applicants, it was 13.5%. In court filings, Sheetz denied the allegations. Attorneys for the company, which is being represented by the law firm Littler, declined to comment further. The EEOC has not said how many potential claimants have been identified but Outten & Golden estimates the number to likely be in the thousands. Sheetz has more than 20,000 employees and operates at least 700 brand-store locations in Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia, according to court documents. The Sheetz case echoes a 2018 lawsuit against Target claiming that the retailer's hiring process, which automatically rejected people with criminal backgrounds, disproportionately kept Black and Hispanic applicants from getting entry level jobs. Target agreed to pay more than $3.7 million to settle the lawsuit, and revised its policy so fewer applicants with criminal records would be disqualified. In 2020, Walmart agreed to pay $20 million and discontinue a preemployment strength test that the EEOC had claimed in a lawsuit unfairly excluded women from jobs at grocery distribution centers. And in one of the biggest sex discrimination cases in recent years, Sterling Jewelers, the parent company of Jared and Kay Jewelers, agreed in 2022 to pay $175 million to settle a long-fought lawsuit alleging that some 68,000 women had been subjected for years to unfair pay and promotion practices. The Justice Department, EEOC and other federal agencies have moved quickly to quash the use of disparate impact liability. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, for example, has moved to dismiss several Biden-era lawsuits against police departments in Kentucky and Minnesota, saying the cases claimed patterns of unconstitutional policing practices 'by wrongly equating statistical disparities with intentional discrimination.' In a May memo to employers, EEOC Acting Chief Andrea Lucas said the agency would deprioritize disparate impact cases. She also warned companies against using demographic data, which large companies are required gather and submit annually to the EEOC, to justify policies that favor any employees based on race or sex, something Lucas has long argued many well-intentioned DEI policies do in violation of Title VII. In statement Friday, Lucas applauded a Supreme Court ruling Thursday that she said should encourage employees who feel DEI policies have discriminated against them. Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chair now with Outten & Golden, said the pullback on federal enforcement of disparate impact risks dissuading companies from proactively examining hiring and other practices to ensure they do not discriminate. At the same time, Yang and nine other former Democratic EEOC commissioners and counsels have released a letter to employers emphasizing that the Trump's order does not change the law. 'Employers should not expect that they will have a free pass on disparate impact liability simply because the President has instructed federal agencies not to pursue enforcement of the law,' wrote the former EEOC officials. ________ The Associated Press' women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump Reprises One of the Worst Things He Did in His First Term
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Donald Trump won the presidency in part on promises to deport undocumented immigrants with criminal records. But his earliest executive orders—trying to undo birthright citizenship, suspending critical refugee programs—made clear he wants to attack legal immigrants, too. In our new series, we'll track the Trump administration's attempts to exclude an ever-growing number of people from the American experiment. One of President Donald Trump's defining moments during his first term was a travel ban against Muslim-majority countries. Now in his second term he's reprised that policy, introducing a new travel ban on Wednesday night that bars nationals of 12 countries from entering the U.S. starting on Monday. That announcement came on the heels of the administration's assault on international students, banning them from enrolling at Harvard University. The State Department is also looking to revoke Chinese students' visas while also pausing all upcoming interviews for international students scheduled to study here in a few short months. Meanwhile, the government's legal defense has taken a beating in the case of the migrants unlawfully deported to El Salvador—and, separately, a Maryland man who was wrongfully sent there is now headed back to the U.S. Here's the immigration news we're keeping an eye on this week: After ordering the secretary of state to come up with a list of countries that pose national security threats to the U.S., Trump made it official: We have a new travel ban. Starting on Monday, people from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen will be restricted from entering the U.S. Nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela will also be partially restricted from entering the country. The order says that admitting people from these countries would be 'detrimental' to U.S. interests for varying reasons: It claims they have 'deficient' vetting and screening information of their citizens, 'significant' terrorist presence, and a high 'visa-overstay rate,' and they do not cooperate when the U.S. government deports their nationals. On Truth Social, the president shared a video explaining the new travel ban and cited the recent attack in Colorado, where an Egyptian man threw Molotov cocktails at people participating in a march for Israeli hostages. The suspect was an Egyptian national who had overstayed his visa but had applied for asylum. (Egypt is not on the travel ban list). Immigration authorities also arrested his wife and five children with the intention of deporting them—all of them are Egyptian nationals who were part of the same asylum application—but a federal judge has temporarily blocked that move. There are some exceptions, including green card holders, dual citizens, certain athletes traveling to the U.S. for the World Cup and Olympics, Afghans who worked for the U.S. government and are holders of a special immigrant visa, and close relatives of U.S. family members and diplomats. Taken all together, the American Immigration Council estimated the 19 countries listed in the travel ban have populations of over 475 million people. They are predominantly Muslim and African, reminiscent of Trump's 2017 travel ban, which was challenged in court before the Supreme Court ultimately let a revised version stand. 'The latest travel ban will have devastating consequences for tens of thousands of people,' said Elora Mukherjee, clinical law professor at Columbia University and director of the school's Immigrants' Rights Clinic. 'Resulting in family separations, harming refugees and asylum-seekers, and throwing the lives of prospective international students who intended to study in the U.S. into disarray.' It's been more than two months since over 260 immigrants were accused of being members of foreign gangs, forced onto planes and summarily deported to El Salvador, with no notice, evidence, or court hearing. The Trump administration has been defending their deportation in a messy legal battle that took a new turn this week: U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg ordered the federal government to offer each deportee a court hearing. The Trump administration deported these men within roughly 24 hours of the president signing an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act. Though these men are no longer on American soil, Boasberg's most recent order grants them class-action certification so they can still sue the Trump administration over violations of their due process rights. That's significant because throughout this legal battle, the Trump administration has argued the men are completely under the custody of El Salvador now and the U.S. government's hands are tied. Boasberg acknowledged that but affirmed that none of the plaintiffs were granted habeas corpus—a Constitutional right allowing anyone to contest the legality of their detention—before being shuttled on to a plane and deported to El Salvador, so the federal government must 'fix its legal wrongs.' Even the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had violated their due process rights and declared that immigrants are entitled to them under the Fifth Amendment. Boasberg's order will force the Trump administration to come before a judge with any and all evidence they have indicating that each deportee is in fact a member of a foreign gang. (Court documents indicate the evidence is nothing short of thin.) Then on Friday, another big development dropped: ABC News reported that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man the Trump administration admitted was deported in error to El Salvador, was on his way back to the U.S. He's been at the heart of the Trump administration's legal battle over the Alien Enemies Act, with the Supreme Court ordering the federal government to 'facilitate' his release from El Salvador's custody. That hard-fought moment arrived Friday, but at the same time a two-count indictment was also revealed against Abrego Garcia. It alleges that he participated in a conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants through the U.S., though Abrego Garcia has not yet responded to the new charges. The Trump administration has been pulling all the levers it can find to limit entry of international students at college campuses around the country. Harvard has been in the president's crosshairs ever since it refused to accept a list of demands from the administration and sued the federal government. The Trump administration retaliated by announcing it was cutting off Harvard's ability to enroll international students. A federal judge blocked that order and it's currently being hashed out in court. Secretary of State Marco Rubio jumped in to announce he had instructed U.S. embassies and consulates around the world to stop processing any new student visa appointments. In an internal cable viewed by Politico, Rubio said the State Department is taking a closer look at the existing screening process of student visitors and would develop new guidance in the coming days—it's not clear if it's been issued yet or not. Rubio also announced he would be 'aggressively' revoking visas of Chinese students specifically who are currently studying in the U.S., targeting 'those with connections to the Chinese Community Party or studying in critical fields.' The new action prompted over 30 higher education groups to come together and send a letter to Rubio, noting that in the 2023–24 academic year there were over 1 million international students in the U.S., which resulted in $44 billion worth of nationwide economic impact. Over the last few weeks, the Trump administration has deployed a new strategy in pursuit of the president's mass deportation goals. Undocumented immigrants will show up to court hearings in an effort to follow the rules and find a way to remain in the U.S. legally. But as they stand before a judge, they learn that the government has dropped their immigration case. As they go home, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ambush them and promptly arrest them. Historically, ICE has avoided immigration enforcement at and around courthouses, especially over noncriminal proceedings, because they want to encourage people to follow proper immigration procedure. However, under the law, they are technically allowed to make arrests in federal courthouses. And that's exactly what's been happening over and over again around the country, in Chicago, San Francisco, New York City and Phoenix. A similar situation happened to Carol Mayorga, an undocumented immigrant from Hong Kong whose legal name is Ming Li Hui. Mayorga came to the U.S. on a tourist visa 20 years ago, but she's remained here ever since. She became a mother of three children and is a waitress at a local diner in a rural Missouri farming town. During a routine appointment to renew her work authorization, Mayorga was detained for hours, then shackled and transported to a Missouri jail. She remained there for over a month, while her community rallied support to push for her release. The diner where she was employed raised over $20,000 for Mayorga and her children, garnering a story in the New York Times about how the largely Trump-supporting community was questioning his deportation policies in cases like Mayorga's. 'I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,' said a friend of Mayorga's. 'But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.' This week, Mayorga was finally released from jail after ICE determined she was eligible for the Deferred Enforced Departure program, which applies to certain residents of Hong Kong. It's only valid until February 2027, and Mayorga still has a deportation order against her.
New York Post
26 minutes ago
- New York Post
NYC needs a mayoral race centered on the city's needs, NOT Democrats' anti-Trump obsessions
Last week's debate confirmed that the Democrats running for mayor are competing almost exclusively on a near-irrelevant issue: who can fight President Donald Trump the most. The field of nine mentioned Trump more than 80 times in two hours; the only other theme to come close was the eight candidates' pile-on of the clear frontrunner among them, Andrew Cuomo. And even Cuomo has joined the club-Trump club: When he first entered the race, he talked about working with the White House; now he, too, vows to resist. Advertisement Reality check: New York City depends on more than $100 billion a year in federal aid. No, the law doesn't give any president a free hand to mess with most of that, but a Republican president with a Republican Congress is all too able to change the law to slow that flow. Especially when the feds face near-$2 trillion annual deficits, the city votes overwhelmingly Democratic, and New York state's few GOP members of Congress are stretched to cover their own constituents' needs. Advertisement The president is a son of Queens who rose to fame as an NYC developer, a lifelong Post reader still fond of the city even though the likes of state Attorney General Tish James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have done their best to bankrupt and imprison him. With the eager cooperation of hack judges put on the bench by the city's Dem clubhouses. Yes, base Democratic voters despise the president; that's why James, Bragg & Co. waged their scorched-earth (but failed) lawfare against him, and why the mayoral candidates talk so tough. Advertisement Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani bragging he's 'Donald Trump's worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant'; ex-city Comptroller Scott Stringer using his first TV ad to call the prez 'this schmuck' and promise to 'tell Trump where to stick it.' State Sen. Zellnor Myrie is offering a lunatic fantasy of withholding New Yorkers' federal income taxes, pretending 'that gives us the tax base so we can be independent of the White House.' Whaaat? Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announcing her run with trash talk about 'a mayor who will stand up to Trump'; Cuomo telling Politico his plan to stop Trump: 'I would spend eight years in Washington.' Gotham needs its mayor here; mayors have no power to intercept federal income taxes; Trump would like nothing more than to have a nepo baby Muslim socialist as a foil. Advertisement And the Democratic activist base that cheers this idiocy is only a fraction of the city's registered Democrats, let alone of the whole population. New York as a whole is a lot more in tune with Mayor Eric Adams' approach of working with Trump where practical, and fighting him as necessary — not far off his approach to President Joe Biden, by the way, and rightly so. Even if standing up to Biden won him a federal investigation that may well have ended his political career. We can't say where all this leads, only that Trump Derangement Syndrome has produced a Democratic primary where the basic needs and interests of New York City are thisclose to irrelevant. Even candidates that we know know better are painting themselves into corners that will ill-serve the general public if they win. Regular New Yorkers want homes they can afford, schools that teach, safe streets and subways; anti-Trump performative politics loses ground on every front. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will certainly be the favorite to win in November, but it sure feels like this is a race to an idiotic bottom. A race that's setting up New York City to lose, big time.
