5 things to know for May 22: Embassy shooting, Budget cuts, Trump-Ramaphosa meeting, Qatar jet, Police reform
Should the Department of Government Efficiency be required to release public records under the Freedom of Information Act, or can it keep such files hidden due to executive privilege? That's the question the Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to decide. What is known is that in the past four months, DOGE has fired more than 120,000 federal workers, slashed agency budgets, accessed sensitive computer systems and cut billions in research grants, prompting a wave of federal lawsuits.
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Two Israeli Embassy staff members were shot and killed while standing outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, last night. Authorities say the suspected gunman was observed pacing back and forth outside the museum before opening fire on a group of people. He then entered the building and waited to be detained. Police said the 30-year-old man showed officers where to find the weapon and chanted 'Free Free Palestine' while in custody. The victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were a young couple who soon planned to get engaged, according to Israel's ambassador to the US. 'I am devastated by the scenes in Washington D.C.,' Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a statement on X. 'This is a despicable act of hatred, of antisemitism, which has claimed the lives of two young employees of the Israeli embassy.'
The House voted early this morning to pass President Donald Trump's sweeping tax and spending cuts package, a major victory for the president and Speaker Mike Johnson after GOP leaders won over key holdouts. The legislation still faces major challenges ahead. It will next go to the Senate, where Republicans in the chamber have signaled they plan to make their own changes to it. Although all of the details about the massive legislative package have not yet been released, it does include:
Nearly $1 trillion in cuts from Medicaid and food stamps
Work requirements for Medicaid starting at the end of 2026
Raising the debt ceiling by $4 trillion
Spending $150 billion on defense programs
Limiting judges' power to hold the Trump administration in contempt
Phasing out Biden-era energy tax credits sooner than planned
Increasing the state and local tax deduction
Making trillions of dollars of income tax breaks permanent
Allocating $45 billion to build new immigration detention facilities
Allowing certain taxpayers to deduct income from tips on tax returns
The Congressional Budget Office said the bill will increase the budget deficit by $3.8 trillion between 2026-2034.
Fans of President Trump's reality TV show 'The Apprentice' will likely not be surprised by how he's been treating world leaders in televised Oval Office meetings. In a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump and his staffers berated him for not wearing a suit and for not thanking Trump enough for the money the US has given to the war effort. When Trump met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, he went on a tirade about defending Canada militarily and then told the press to leave before Carney could respond. In his latest Oval Office event this week, Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa — who once served as Nelson Mandela's chief negotiator during talks to end White minority rule — with false claims about White South African farmers being victims of genocide. For his part, Ramaphosa pushed back gently whenever he could, but he didn't raise his voice or show anger, displaying his decades of negotiation experience.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar that President Trump plans to use as the next Air Force One. The controversial transfer has sparked a political furor, with both Democrats and Republicans opposing the luxury jet on ethical grounds. While details about its transfer have not yet been released, Trump told reporters on Wednesday that Qatar was 'giving the United States Air Force a jet, okay, and it's a great thing.' Earlier this week, sources said it was the Trump administration that had first approached Qatar about acquiring the Boeing 747. It's also unknown how much it'll cost to strip down the entire aircraft for surveillance and safety checks and then retrofit it to the required security specifications.
The Trump administration is moving to dismiss federal oversight agreements with several major US police departments. The agreements, called consent decrees, are used as a monitoring system at police departments where the Justice Department has found a pattern of misconduct. In court filings on Wednesday, the DOJ asked judges in Minnesota and Kentucky to dismiss the consent decrees reached with the police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis. They were approved by a federal judge and enacted following the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor and the police killing of George Floyd.
Double-checking the calendarMemorial Day weekend may mark the unofficial start of summer, but the Northeast and parts of the mid-Atlantic will be experiencing a rare May nor'easter. Some areas of New Hampshire and Vermont may even see snow.
Rare side effect to be highlighted on vaccine packagingThe FDA is now requiring some Covid-19 vaccines to use expanded warning labels detailing a small risk for myocarditis. The vaccines' old labels already provided a warning about the heart condition.
No NFL ban for controversial 'tush push'The nearly unstoppable running play was used to great success by the Philadelphia Eagles last year.
Manny Pacquiao: I'm backThe Filipino will come out of retirement this summer to face Mario Barrios for the WBC welterweight championship. In 2019, Pacquiao became the oldest welterweight world champion in history at the age of 40.
She knew him whenPeruvian TikToker Luciana Marquez traveled to Rome last year to meet a family friend. They recorded a TikTok video. Now, he's Pope Leo XIV.
10That's how many minutes a Lufthansa flight carrying 205 people went without a pilot last year after the co-pilot fainted while he was alone in the cockpit.
'These staff cuts and the potential budget cuts make the United States more at risk for a tsunami and earthquake, and they will have devastating impacts for coastal populations and the US economy.'
— Corina Allen, who, like thousands of other probationary federal employees, was recently fired from her job as a manager at NOAA's National Weather Service Tsunami Program.
Check your local forecast here>>>
Oh baby, baby! Britney Spears' album, 'Oops! … I Did It Again,' turns 25 this year. To celebrate, Sony Music will release an expanded edition.
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CNN
36 minutes ago
- CNN
How a Supreme Court decision backing the NRA is thwarting Trump's retribution campaign
As Harvard University, elite law firms and perceived political enemies of President Donald Trump fight back against his efforts to use government power to punish them, they're winning thanks in part to the National Rifle Association. Last May, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with the gun rights group in a First Amendment case concerning a New York official's alleged efforts to pressure insurance companies in the state to sever ties with the group following the deadly 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. A government official, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the nine, 'cannot … use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.' A year later, the court's decision in National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo has been cited repeatedly by federal judges in rulings striking down a series of executive orders that targeted law firms. Lawyers representing Harvard, faculty at Columbia University and others are also leaning on the decision in cases challenging Trump's attacks on them. 'Going into court with a decision that is freshly minted, that clearly reflects the unanimous views of the currently sitting Supreme Court justices, is a very powerful tool,' said Eugene Volokh, a conservative First Amendment expert who represented the NRA in the 2024 case. For free speech advocates, the application of the NRA decision in cases pushing back against Trump's retribution campaign is a welcome sign that lower courts are applying key First Amendment principles equally, particularly in politically fraught disputes. In the NRA case, the group claimed that Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, had threatened enforcement actions against the insurance firms if they failed to comply with her demands to help with the campaign against gun groups. The NRA's claims centered around a meeting Vullo had with an insurance market in 2018 in which the group says she offered to not prosecute other violations as long as the company helped with her campaign. 'The great hope of a principled application of the First Amendment is that it protects everybody,' said Alex Abdo, the litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute. 'Some people have criticized free speech advocates as being naive for hoping that'll be the case, but hopefully that's what we're seeing now,' he added. 'We're seeing courts apply that principle where the politics are very different than the NRA case.' The impact of Vullo can be seen most clearly in the cases challenging Trump's attempts to use executive power to exact revenge on law firms that have employed his perceived political enemies or represented clients who have challenged his initiatives. A central pillar of Trump's retribution crusade has been to pressure firms to bend to his political will, including through issuing executive orders targeting four major law firms: Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey. Among other things, the orders denied the firms' attorneys access to federal buildings, retaliated against their clients with government contracts and suspended security clearances for lawyers at the firms. (Other firms were hit with similar executive orders but they haven't taken Trump to court over them.) The organizations individually sued the administration over the orders and the three judges overseeing the Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block suits have all issued rulings permanently blocking enforcement of the edicts. (The Susman case is still pending.) Across more than 200-pages of writing, the judges – all sitting at the federal trial-level court in Washington, DC – cited Vullo 30 times to conclude that the orders were unconstitutional because they sought to punish the firms over their legal work. The judges all lifted Sotomayor's line about using 'the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,' while also seizing on other language in her opinion to buttress their own decisions. Two of them – US district judges Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Richard Leon, who was named to the bench by former President George W. Bush – incorporated Sotomayor's statement that government discrimination based on a speaker's viewpoint 'is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.' The third judge, John Bates, said Vullo and an earlier Supreme Court case dealing with impermissible government coercion 'govern – and defeat' the administration's arguments in defense of a section of the Jenner & Block order that sought to end all contractual relationships that might have allowed taxpayer dollars to flow to the firm. 'Executive Order 14246 does precisely what the Supreme Court said just last year is forbidden: it engages in 'coercion against a third party to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech,'' wrote Bates, who was also appointed by Bush, in his May 23 ruling. For its part, the Justice Department has tried to draw a distinction between what the executive orders called for and the conduct rejected by the high court in Vullo. They told the three judges in written arguments that the orders at issue did not carry the 'force of the powers exhibited in Vullo' by the New York official. Will Creeley, the legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said the rulings underscore how 'Vullo has proved its utility almost immediately.' 'It is extremely useful to remind judges and government actors alike that just last year, the court warned against the kind of shakedowns and turns of the screw that we're now seeing from the administration,' he said. Justice Department lawyers have not yet appealed any of the three rulings issued last month. CNN has reached out to the department for comment. In separate cases brought in the DC courthouse and elsewhere, Trump's foes have leaned on Vullo as they've pressed judges to intervene in high-stakes disputes with the president. Among them is Mark Zaid, a prominent national security lawyer who has drawn Trump's ire for his representation of whistleblowers. Earlier this year, Trump yanked Zaid's security clearance, a decision, the attorney said in a lawsuit, that undermines his ability to 'zealously advocate on (his clients') behalf in the national security arena.' In court papers, Zaid's attorneys argued that the president's decision was a 'retaliatory directive,' invoking language from the Vullo decision to argue that the move violated his First Amendment rights. ''Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors,'' they wrote, quoting from the 2024 ruling. 'And yet that is exactly what Defendants do here.' Timothy Zick, a constitutional law professor at William & Mary Law School, said the executive orders targeting private entities or individuals 'have relied heavily on pressure, intimidation, and the threat of adverse action to punish or suppress speakers' views and discourage others from engaging with regulated targets.' 'The unanimous holding in Vullo is tailor-made for litigants seeking to push back against the administration's coercive strategy,' Zick added. That notion was not lost on lawyers representing Harvard and faculty at Columbia University in several cases challenging Trump's attacks on the elite schools, including one brought by Harvard challenging Trump's efforts to ban the school from hosting international students. A federal judge has so far halted those efforts. In a separate case brought by Harvard over the administration's decision to freeze billions of dollars in federal funding for the nation's oldest university, the school's attorneys on Monday told a judge that Trump's decision to target it because of 'alleged antisemitism and ideological bias at Harvard' clearly ran afoul of the high court's decision last year. 'Although any governmental retaliation based on protected speech is an affront to the First Amendment, the retaliation here was especially unconstitutional because it was based on Harvard's 'particular views' – the balance of speech on its campus and its refusal to accede to the Government's unlawful demands,' the attorneys wrote.
Bloomberg
42 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
We Now Know the Meaning of 'Religious Enough'
Back in 1959, the chief administrative officer of the United Presbyterian Church warned that churches wielded too much 'economic power' due to their tax-exempt status. Unless religious groups were taxed like everyone else, the nation might soon face 'revolutionary expropriations of church property.' Well, the revolution hasn't yet come for the churches. But regulatory creep has nevertheless nibbled at the margins of religious freedom, with states finding one activity or another to deem not truly religious and therefore subject to tax.
Fox News
42 minutes ago
- Fox News
17 illegal migrants discovered crammed in RV, sedan in sweltering Arizona heat
A man has been arrested and charged with human smuggling after 17 illegal migrants were found crammed inside an RV and a nearby sedan in the sweltering Arizona heat Wednesday. The majority of the illegal migrants, who are all from Mexico, were found packed inside the cramped RV which was parked on a property in Nogales as temperatures inside soared under the summer sun, according to Sean L. McGoffin, chief patrol agent of Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. Those inside the RV, including a minor, had limited space and ventilation with no access to running water, McGoffin said. The rest of the migrants were wedged into a small sedan that was discovered during a vehicle stop. "This rescue likely prevented a tragedy," McGoffin said. "With summer temperatures already climbing, packing people into trailers and vehicles without proper ventilation or water is a recipe for disaster. Human lives should never be treated as cargo." All the migrants are now safe, in custody and will be processed accordingly, McCoffin said. The rescued individuals are being processed for expedited removal in accordance with U.S. immigration law. The man who was arrested is a U.S. citizen and initially attempted to flee the scene on foot but was apprehended by agents shortly after. Investigators are working to determine whether others were involved. The operation was carried out by Nogales Border Patrol, Nogales Police and Homeland Security Investigations. "No recreation happening in this vehicle, instead it was used by smugglers forcing people to hide out in inhumane conditions in sweltering heat," McGoffin said. "Although no one was injured, the situation shows the danger illegal aliens face in the hands of smugglers."
