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Former AG Bill Barr blasts judges for 'usurping' Trump's national security authority on deportation flights

Former AG Bill Barr blasts judges for 'usurping' Trump's national security authority on deportation flights

Fox News25-03-2025

Legal battles continue over President Donald Trump's migrant deportation flights, particularly those involving Venezuelan migrants sent to El Salvador. Former Attorney General Bill Barr says the judges blocking these flights are overstepping their authority.
"There's a pattern whereby these district court judges are trying to usurp the responsibility of the president in the national security area," Barr said Tuesday on "America's Newsroom."
"The president is absolutely right to be frustrated and concerned about the way the courts are handling this."
Barr's comments follow U.S. District Judge James Boasberg's decision to halt the deportation of individuals alleged to be gang members, citing due process concerns. Boasberg also ordered the government to return planes carrying migrants who had already been deported.
According to Barr, the ruling goes beyond the judge's authority and interferes with the president's constitutional powers.
"The Constitution gives the president the power to make the judgments about how we deal with foreign nationals when we are animated by national security concerns," said Barr, who served as Trump's attorney general in 2019 and 2020.
"It's his call, not a district court judge's call."
Judge Boasberg has requested further details about the El Salvador flight, including when it landed and who was on board. However, the Trump administration has invoked the state secrets privilege, allowing it to withhold that information from the court.
On Monday, government attorneys asked an appeals court to lift Boasberg's order and allow the deportation flights to resume. The judges on the panel appeared divided, with Judge Patricia Millett comparing the situation to World War II policies.
"Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act than has happened here," she said, arguing that even Nazis had hearing boards before being deported, while the migrants in this case allegedly received no due process.
Barr says this case underscores a broader issue of district court judges issuing nationwide injunctions that impact the entire country.
"Even where it's appropriate for the court to play its traditional role of safeguarding the liberties of American citizens, we have this phenomena of nation-wide injunctions where the lowest level judge, district judges, try to bind the entire nation and bind the president in their initial decision. That is not what we have meant by the judicial power under our Constitution," Barr said.
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan voiced similar concerns in 2022 during a speech at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
"It can't be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through normal process," she said.
Barr is calling on the Supreme Court to intervene and resolve the issue.
"If they [the U.S. Supreme Court] finally stand up and decide a case instead of hanging back from these decisions, I think it'll come out the right way," he said.
"I think most of the justices appreciate how absurd this is."

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time19 minutes ago

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CNET's Tariff Price Tracker: What I've Found Watching 11 Key Products for Changes

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Trump travel ban hits immigrant family coming to U.S. amid bloody civil war in Myanmar
Trump travel ban hits immigrant family coming to U.S. amid bloody civil war in Myanmar

Yahoo

time35 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Trump travel ban hits immigrant family coming to U.S. amid bloody civil war in Myanmar

A Burmese American woman was eager to bring her siblings over to the U.S. from Myanmar amid a more than 15-year wait for visas. She'd been hoping to reunite with them since the 1990s, during military rule in her home country, so her brother's family could start a life in the U.S. But a day after she bought the plane tickets, President Donald Trump ordered a travel ban that included Myanmar. The woman, 51, and her husband, who were granted anonymity due to fear of retaliation, had sponsored her brother and sister-in-law to immigrate to the U.S. The siblings were then were hoping to bring their own adult kids, too, so that they wouldn't have to fulfill mandatory military service in the country's active civil war. 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Under the new travel ban, anyone who obtained a visa prior to the policy is still able to come to the U.S. But there's confusion over how the restrictions will be implemented and enforced. The Burmese American woman and her husband are among those with concerns, particularly as there have been several cases of lawful permanent residents and citizens being swept up in the dragnet of Trump's immigration policies. 'It's terrifying to think that they could be randomly picked up because somebody had a bad day at the office, or somebody didn't do their job or didn't believe that their visa was true,' the woman's husband said. 'It's quite frankly terrifying.' For the woman, reunification with her brother has been a long time coming. She became a citizen in the late 1990s and began the process to help bring her sibling over a few years later. 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'Now, because of some arbitrary decision by the Trump administration to pick a certain number of countries … without consideration of the actual cases, without an exception policy, it hurts them. They've done nothing wrong.' This article was originally published on

Gender gap on abortion rights hit record high: Gallup
Gender gap on abortion rights hit record high: Gallup

Yahoo

time35 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Gender gap on abortion rights hit record high: Gallup

The gender gap between men and women who identify as pro-choice has widened to its largest point on record, according to a new Gallup poll. Sixty-one percent of women view themselves as pro-choice when it comes to abortion while 41 percent of men call themselves pro-choice, the poll released Monday found. The 20-point difference between the genders is the largest gap since Gallup began tracking public opinion on abortion twenty years ago. The numbers are slightly lower than they were last year, knocking down the overall percentage of U.S. adults who consider themselves to be pro-choice to 51 percent. Gallup noticed an immediate increase in support for abortion access among Americans after the Supreme Court's decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had established a constitutional right to abortion. In 2022, the percentage of U.S. adults who considered themselves pro-choice increased to 55 percent, up from 49 percent the previous year. Women's support for abortion access though has significantly outweighed men's since then. In 2022, 61 percent of women called themselves pro-choice, marking a 9-point increase from the year before. Meanwhile, 48 percent of men referred to themselves as pro-choice that same year, representing a 3-point increase from 2021. Women's support for abortion access has since generally increased or remained steady, while men's support has fallen. 'The net result is that the gender and partisan gaps in Americans' views on abortion are at historical highs, and the country as a whole has moved slightly left in its abortion views,' wrote Lydia Saad, director of social research at Gallup. 'Although some of the changes seen in 2022 have eased, the public opinion landscape remains more accepting of abortion than it was prior to Dobbs.' Gallup's poll findings are based on telephone interviews of 1,003 adults across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., conducted May 1-18. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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