Latest news with #CarlNichols
NBC News
14-04-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Trump gives campaign-style speech at Justice Department; Senate passes bill to avert government shutdown
Judge Carl Nichols today denied a temporary restraining order that would have stopped USAID from destroying vital documents. Nichols says, in his order, the documents that were being destroyed were either old, or existed somewhere else. 'USAID is only destroying duplicated, aged documents that are preserved either by other agencies or in an electronic format, in a manner that USAID represents is consistent with the Federal Records Act,' Nichols writes, citing a declaration from a USAID official. 'Permitting that process to continue will not harm the PSCA or the public, but interfering with it could hinder the agency's decommissioning process.' USAID's acting executive secretary, Erica Carr, earlier this week ordered staff to shred or burn classified and personnel documents remaining in USAID's offices in the Ronald Reagan building. Another group of plaintiffs who are already in USAID-related litigation also asked for a temporary restraining order to prevent the destruction of pertinent records. But those plaintiffs withdrew their motion yesterday, citing representations made by Carr.
Washington Post
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
How the campaign to impeach judges took off among Trump allies
Weeks before President Donald Trump called for the impeachment of a federal judge who ruled against his agenda, his supporters around the nation seeded the ground to turn public opinion against the institution that has been the leading check on his administration. In early February, after Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols temporarily blocked the administration from placing thousands of employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on paid leave, the conservative social media account Catturd weighed in on the issue to his 3.6 million followers. 'The judge is not the president. Ignore. Fire them all. Keep going,' the influencer posted on X.
New York Times
20-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Administration Sends a New Group of Migrants to Guantánamo Bay
The Trump administration sent a new group of migrants to the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday to await deportation, claiming that they may have ties to a Venezuelan gang, according to officials with knowledge of the operation. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight from El Paso transported about 20 people, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. The transfer put migrants on the base for the first time since March 11, when the administration brought 40 men it had temporarily held there back to the United States. That transfer occurred a few days before a court hearing in a pair of lawsuits challenging the legality of President Trump's policy of holding immigration detainees there. At the hearing, Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declined to issue an order barring further transfers to the base and expressed doubt that the plaintiffs would succeed in the cases because at the time no migrants remained at Guantánamo. The administration also emptied the base of migrant detainees on Feb. 20, when it flew 177 Venezuelans it had brought there to Honduras and handed them off to the Venezuelan government. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Administration officials have generally portrayed the migrants sent to Guantánamo as dangerous, accusing some of being members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. They have not offered evidence to support those suspicions, and most of the migrants whose identities have become public did not have criminal records in the United States. The administration has sent 290 men, a majority of them Venezuelans, to two detention sites on the base since Jan. 29 as part of Mr. Trump's broader crackdown on illegal immigration. One of the sites, known as Camp 6, is a military prison that was built two decades ago to house suspected members of Al Qaeda. The other is a medium-security dormitory building that is part of a migrant operations center. The Trump administration has deployed about 1,000 U.S. government workers to the migrant operation. Nine hundred of them are members of the U.S. military, and 100 are civilian employees, including 70 contractors from the Department of Homeland Security. On March 15, the Trump administration also flew 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador and handed them off to the Salvadoran government, which has placed them in a high-security prison. The administration has portrayed all of those men as members of Tren de Aragua. Many of them were transferred without individual immigration hearings after Mr. Trump claimed he had the power to do so under a wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. A judge has temporarily ordered the administration not to deport migrants under that law, and the Trump administration is appealing that order.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Prince Harry's Immigration Records Unsealed, but Are Heavily Redacted Over Harassment Fears
Per a judge's order, Prince Harry's immigration records were unsealed yesterday—but were heavily redacted due to fears of unwanted media attention for the Duke of Sussex. The paperwork was made public around 4 p.m. EST on March 18, as Judge Carl Nichols ruled over the weekend that the records must be released by the end of the day on Tuesday. Judge Nichols ruled in favor of the Heritage Foundation's Freedom of Information (FOIA) request and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to release the documents, according to court filings released March 15. This overturned a September 2024 decision by the same judge, who ruled at that time that there wasn't strong enough public interest to disclose Harry's immigration records. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based group, was prompted by Harry's disclosure in his 2023 memoir Spare that he had taken drugs (including marijuana, cocaine, and psychedelic mushrooms) to question why he was allowed in the U.S. in 2020, when Harry and wife Meghan Markle moved to her home country from the U.K. with son Prince Archie (daughter Princess Lilibet was born in California in 2021). Per The Telegraph, the 'heavily redacted files' outlined why there was not a strong enough public interest argument to disclose the records in full. 'To release his exact status could subject him to reasonably foreseeable harm in the form of harassment as well as unwanted contact by the media and others,' the documents read. 'There is the potential of harm in the form of harassment if his exact [REDACTED] is revealed. Thus, there is significant privacy interest involved in the records.' The matter in question seems to center around whether Harry lied on his 2020 application about past drug use, which he later disclosed in the pages of Spare. Because of redactions, what Harry wrote in his application five years ago remains unclear, multiple outlets report. Application forms for U.S. visas specifically ask about current and past drug use, per the BBC, and 'admissions of drug use can lead to non-immigrant and immigrant visa applications being rejected, although immigration officers have discretion to make a final decision based on different factors.' Harry's visa itself was not released on Tuesday, and instead the 82 pages of unsealed documents are supporting declarations and court transcripts that pertain to the Heritage Foundation's case, according to the BBC. Sam Dewey from the Heritage Foundation told the network that he believed the Department of Homeland Security has not provided all of its papers, adding that he is 'frustrated' and that this is 'not the end of the road.' Among his complaints were that Harry was given preferential treatment, alleging that the Duke of Sussex has benefited from his 'wealth and status' by being allowed to live in the United States. In a 2024 interview with Good Morning America, Harry said he has 'considered' becoming a U.S. citizen, but that doing so wasn't a 'high priority' for him. Speaking with Will Reeve, Harry said of living in California, 'It's amazing. I love every single day.' When Reeve pressed Harry and asked if he felt American, Harry laughed and responded, per People, 'Do I feel American? Um, no. I don't know how I feel.' Read the original article on InStyle
The Guardian
19-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Prince Harry US visa documents released in redacted form over harassment fears
Heavily redacted court documents related to Prince Harry's US visa have been released in the US, with his 'exact status' remaining confidential over fears he could be subjected to harassment. Judge Carl Nichols ordered the release of the documents after a freedom of information (FoI) request by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative US thinktank. The Heritage Foundation argued that the Duke might have concealed past illegal drug use – discussed in his memoir Spare – which should have disqualified him from obtaining a US visa. Applicants for US visas are asked about current and past drug use and admissions can lead to applications being rejected, but immigration officers have discretion to make a final decision based on a number of factors. The prince's visa form has not been released, with the redacted documents released on Tuesday as it was argued that there was not a strong enough public interest argument to disclose the Duke's immigration records in full. The documents read: 'To release his exact status could subject him to reasonably foreseeable harm in the form of harassment as well as unwanted contact by the media and others.' It continued: 'There is the potential of harm in the form of harassment if his exact [REDACTED] is revealed. Thus, there is significant privacy interests involved in the records. 'Plaintiffs have not established public interest, as defined by the FOIA, in disclosure of the records.' 'While the plaintiffs had argued the records should be disclosed to establish whether the Duke was granted preferential treatment when applying for a US visa, the speculation by plaintiffs does not point to any evidence of government misconduct,' it added. Prince Harry admitted to using drugs in his bestselling memoir, Spare. He wrote that he had first tried cocaine at the age of 17. 'At someone's house, during a shooting weekend, I was offered a line, and I'd done a few more since. It wasn't much fun, and it didn't make me particularly happy, as it seemed to make everyone around me, but it did make me feel different, and that was the main goal. Feel. Different. I was a deeply unhappy 17-year-old boy willing to try almost anything that would alter the status quo.' Marijuana, he wrote, was different. 'That actually really did help me.' He described smoking it at Eton, along with others, in a tiny bathroom. 'You'd take a hit or two, blow the smoke out of the window … Then we'd all head to one of our rooms and giggle ourselves sick over an episode or two of a new show. Family Guy.' In another extract, he described, while high, looking out of the window at a fox. 'Maybe it was the weed – undoubtedly it was the weed – but I felt a piercing and powerful kinship with that fox.' Harry has also revealed he once had a 'delightful trip' on magic mushrooms at a party at the Friends star Courteney Cox's Los Angeles house. After spotting a 'huge box of black diamond mushroom chocolates' and consuming some, he went to the bathroom and hallucinated that the pedal bin was a head. 'I stepped on the pedal and the head opened its mouth,' he wrote. 'A huge open grin. I laughed.' Harry and his wife, Meghan, moved to California in 2020 having briefly lived in Canada at the start of the year after their decision to step down as working royals and leave the UK.
