Latest news with #NateRaymond
Hindustan Times
01-08-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Second US appeals court open to blocking Trump's birthright citizenship order
By Nate Raymond Second US appeals court open to blocking Trump's birthright citizenship order -U.S. President Donald Trump's order restricting birthright citizenship appeared on Friday to be headed toward being declared unconstitutional by a second federal appeals court, as judges expressed deep skepticism about a key piece of his hardline immigration agenda. A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sharply questioned a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice as to why they should overturn two lower-court judges who blocked the order from taking effect. Those lower-court judges include one in Boston who last week reaffirmed his prior decision to block the order's enforcement nationally, even after the U.S. Supreme Court in June curbed the power of judges to broadly enjoin that and other policies. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week became the first federal appeals court to hold Trump's order is unconstitutional. Its ultimate fate will likely be determined by the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Department attorney Eric McArthur said on Friday that the citizenship clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 after the U.S. Civil War, rightly extended citizenship to the children of newly-freed enslaved Black people. "It did not extend birthright citizenship as a matter of constitutional right to the children of aliens who are present in the country temporarily or unlawfully," he said. But the judges questioned how that argument was consistent with the Supreme Court's 1898 ruling interpreting the clause in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, long understood as guaranteeing American citizenship to children born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents. "We have an opinion by the Supreme Court that we aren't free to disregard," said Chief U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron, who like his two colleagues was appointed by a Democratic president. Trump's executive order, issued on his first day back in office on January 20, directs agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also known as a "green card" holder. Every court to consider the order's merits has declared it unconstitutional, including the three judges who halted the order's enforcement nationally. Those judges included U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston, who ruled in favor of 18 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, who had swiftly challenged Trump's policy in court. "The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized children born to individuals who are here unlawfully or who are here on a temporary basis are nonetheless birthright citizens," Shankar Duraiswamy, a lawyer for New Jersey, argued on Friday. The 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court on June 27 sided with the administration in the litigation by restricting the ability of judges to issue so-called universal injunctions and directing lower courts that had blocked Trump's policy nationally to reconsider the scope of their orders. But the ruling contained exceptions, allowing federal judges in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and the 9th Circuit to issue new decisions stopping Trump's order from taking effect nationally. The rulings on appeal to the 1st Circuit were issued by Sorokin and the New Hampshire judge, who originally issued a narrow injunction but more recently issued a new decision in a recently-filed class action blocking Trump's order nationwide. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Japan Today
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Japan Today
Trump administration threatens Harvard's accreditation, seeks records on foreign students
By Nate Raymond and Brendan O'Brien U.S. President Donald Trump's administration escalated its feud with Harvard University on Wednesday, declaring the Ivy League school may no longer meet the standards for accreditation and that it would subpoena it for records about its international students. The move is the latest in a series of actions the administration has taken against Harvard, which sued the federal government after officials terminated billions of dollars in grants awarded to the school and moved to bar it from admitting international students. The administration has said it is trying to force change at Harvard and other top-level universities across the U.S., contending they have become bastions of leftist "woke" thought and antisemitism. Trump on June 20 said that talks with Harvard were under way that could soon produce a settlement. But as of Wednesday, when the latest actions by the administration were announced, talks had stalled, and the parties were "far from an agreement," a person familiar with the matter said. "Harvard remains unwavering in its efforts to protect its community and its core principles against unfounded retribution by the federal government," Harvard said in a statement. The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said on Wednesday that they formally notified Harvard's accreditor, the New England Commission of Higher Education, that Harvard had violated a federal antidiscrimination law by failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students on campus. The agencies said there was "strong evidence to suggest the school may no longer meet the commission's accreditation standards," after the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights last month concluded that Harvard had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a statement said her agency expects the commission to "keep the department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards." The commission, a nonprofit accreditor, is not slated to comprehensively evaluate Harvard again until mid-2027. It confirmed it received a letter from the departments and said the federal government cannot direct it to revoke a school's accreditation and that a university found to run afoul of its standards can have up to four years to come into compliance. The departments' announcement came shortly after the Homeland Security Department said it would issue administrative subpoenas seeking records concerning the "criminality and misconduct" of student visa holders on Harvard's campus. Harvard argues the Trump administration is retaliating against it and trampling on its free-speech rights under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment after it refused to meet the Trump administration's demands to cede control over the school's curriculum and admissions. It also says it has been unfairly targeted based on what officials view as the university's left-leaning orientation. A federal judge last month blocked the administration from implementing a proclamation Trump signed that sought to bar foreign nationals from entering the United States to study at Harvard University. The administration has appealed that ruling, and the Homeland Security Department is pursuing through an administrative process a possible revocation of Harvard's ability to enroll international students. Such an action would significantly hit Harvard's tuition base. Almost 6,800 international students attended the 388-year-old university in its most recent school year, making up about 27% of its student population. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, the same judge as in the case involving international students, is set to hear arguments on July 21 in a separate lawsuit Harvard has filed, which seeks to unfreeze around $2.5 billion in grant funding that has been blocked by the Trump administration. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Rare trial to begin in challenge to Trump-backed deportations of pro-Palestinian campus activists
By Nate Raymond BOSTON (Reuters) -Groups representing U.S. university professors seeking to protect international students and faculty who engage in pro-Palestinian advocacy from being deported are set to do what no other litigants challenging the Trump administration's hardline immigration agenda have done so far: Take it to trial. A two-week non-jury trial in the professors' case scheduled to kick off on Monday in Boston marks a rarity in the hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed nationally challenging Republican President Donald Trump's efforts to carry out mass deportations, slash spending and reshape the federal government. In many of those cases, judges have issued quick rulings early on in the proceedings without any witnesses being called to testify. But U.S. District Judge William Young in keeping with his long-standing practice instead ordered a trial in the professors' case, saying it was the "best way to get at truth." The lawsuit was filed in March after immigration authorities arrested recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, the first target of Trump's effort to deport non-citizen students with pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel views. Since then, the administration has canceled the visas of hundreds of other students and scholars and ordered the arrest of some, including Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was taken into custody by masked and plainclothes agents after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school's response to Israel's war in Gaza. In their cases and others, judges have ordered the release of students detained by immigration authorities after they argued the administration retaliated against them for their pro-Palestinian advocacy in violation of the free speech guarantees of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. Their arrests form the basis of the case before Young, which was filed by the American Association of University Professors and its chapters at Harvard, Rutgers and New York University, and the Middle East Studies Association. They allege the State Department and Department of Homeland Security adopted a policy of revoking visas for non-citizen students and faculty who engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy and arresting, detaining and deporting them as well. That policy, they say, was adopted after Trump signed executive orders in January directing the agencies to protect Americans from non-citizens who 'espouse hateful ideology' and to "vigorously" combat anti-Semitism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in late March said he had revoked more than 300 visas and warned that the Trump administration was looking every day for "these lunatics." The goal, the plaintiffs say, has been to suppress the types of protests that have roiled college campuses after Israel launched its war in Gaza following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Trump administration officials have frequently spoken about the efforts to target student protesters for visa revocations. Yet in court, the administration has defended itself by arguing the plaintiffs are challenging a deportation policy that does not exist and cannot point to any statute, rule, regulation or directive codifying it. "We don't deport people based on ideology," Homeland Security Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism - think again. You are not welcome here," McLaughlin said. The trial will determine whether the administration has violated the plaintiffs' First Amendment free speech rights. If Young concludes it has, he will determine a remedy in a second phase of the case. Young has described the lawsuit as "an important free speech case" and said that as alleged in the plaintiffs' complaint, "it is hard to imagine a policy more focused on intimidating its targets from practicing protected political speech." The case is the second Trump-era legal challenge so far that has gone to trial before Young, an 84-year-old appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan. While other Trump-era cases have been resolved through motions and arguments in court, the veteran jurist has long espoused the value of trials and in a recent order lamented the "virtual abandonment by the federal judiciary of any sense that its fact-finding processes are exceptional. Young last month after another non-jury trial delivered civil rights advocates and Democratic-led states a win by ordering the reinstatement of hundreds of National Institutes of Health research grants that were unlawfully terminated because of their perceived promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Hindustan Times
26-06-2025
- Hindustan Times
Harvard scientist accused of smuggling frog embryos indicted on new charges
By Nate Raymond Harvard scientist accused of smuggling frog embryos indicted on new charges BOSTON, - A Russian-born scientist at Harvard University accused of smuggling frog embryos into the United States was indicted on Wednesday on additional charges nearly two weeks after her lawyers secured her release from U.S. custody. Federal prosecutors in Boston said a grand jury returned an indictment charging Kseniia Petrova, 30, with one count of concealment of a material fact, one count of false statement and one count of smuggling goods into the United States. Prosecutors had charged her in May only with smuggling. The two new charges add to her criminal exposure and were filed after her lawyers last week urged a magistrate judge to dismiss the initial criminal complaint. Petrova's lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors secured the indictment after Petrova was granted bail on June 12. She had been detained for months after U.S. immigration authorities took her into custody on February 16 at the airport in Boston upon her return from a trip to France. Her supporters said she was detained as part of the practice by President Donald Trump's administration of targeting international students and academics for visa revocations and detention as part of his hardline immigration agenda. Prosecutors said U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents stopped Petrova, who works at Harvard Medical School, after her checked duffle bag was flagged for inspection, revealing the frog embryos. Petrova has said her boss asked her to bring back frog embryo samples for experiments. But prosecutors said the embryos constituted biological material that should have been declared to customs officials at the port of first arrival. Prosecutors said that when she was approached by law enforcement, Petrova initially denied carrying any biological material in her baggage, and later claimed to be unsure she was required to declare the embryos when entering the United States. But prosecutors said one of Petrova's colleagues had texted saying that she needed to make sure she got permission to bring samples back. Petrova's visa was then canceled and immigration officials took her into custody with the intent of deporting her back to Russia, a prospect Petrova has said she feared after protesting Russia's war in Ukraine. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Democratic-led states challenge Trump's ability to slash grant funding
(Corrects number of states suing in paragraph 2) By Nate Raymond BOSTON (Reuters) -Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit on Tuesday asking a judge to declare that a key tool Republican President Donald Trump's administration has relied on to cancel federal grants is being used unlawfully to slash billions of dollars in funding. In a lawsuit filed in Boston federal court, attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia joined with Pennsylvania's governor to take aim at the administration's reliance on a regulation the White House budget office adopted during Trump's first term that strengthened the ability of agencies to cancel grant awards. That regulation, which the White House Office of Management and Budget adopted in 2020, says federal agencies can terminate a grant if it "no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities." The Trump administration has relied on that language to cancel billions of dollars in funding to states and nonprofits as part of its efforts to roll back federal backing for various projects, including those it sees as supporting diversity, equity and inclusion and climate change preparation. It did so with the aide of the Department of Government Efficiency, a key player in Trump's drive to slash federal spending that was the brainchild of billionaire Elon Musk. States, nonprofits and others have filed a myriad of lawsuits challenging those grant terminations. Just last week, a judge in Boston sided with Democratic-led states by declaring that the National Institutes of Health's termination of hundreds of grants because of their perceived link to diversity-related topics was void and illegal. The administration in court has argued it acted within its authority to freeze and cancel grant awards that did not reflect revised agency priorities following Trump's return to office in January. But the state attorneys general argue the Trump administration cannot rely on the OMB regulation to overrule laws Congress passes appropriating grant funding. "Congress has the power of the purse, and the president cannot cut billions of dollars of essential resources simply because he doesn't like the programs being funded," New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. They said that under the regulation, agencies may only terminate grants where additional evidence reveals it was ineffective at achieving program goals. They asked a judge to declare the rule does not allow grants to be terminated based on new agency priorities identified after the grant is awarded. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
