Crystal Palace have said “sporting merit is rendered meaningless” after losing their appeal against demotion from the Europa League to the Conference League.
After winning the FA Cup last season, Palace qualified for Europe’s secondary competition but were punished by Uefa for breaching multi-club ownership rules.
In a strongly worded statement, Palace said it was ” almost impossible to receive a fair hearing.”
“The decision by Uefa and followed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport shows that sporting merit is rendered meaningless,” Palace said.
“It appears that certain clubs, organisations and individuals have a unique privilege and power.
“This growing and unhealthy influence has shattered the hopes and dreams of Crystal Palace supporters, and does not bode well for aspirational teams all over Europe competing to progress when rules and sanctions are unevenly applied in the most flagrant way.”
Palace added they will “continue to take legal advice on the next steps” as they prepare to compete in the Conference League.
In their appeal Palace have requested an annulment of the decision by Uefa’s financial control body and readmission to the Europa League in place of either Forest or Lyon.
A decision is expected on or before 11 August, with the Europa League group stage beginning on 24 September.
The rules of European football’s governing body state that clubs owned, to a certain threshold of influence, by the same person or entity cannot compete in the same European competition.
Uefa’s rules set a deadline of 1 March 2025 to show proof of multi-club ownership restructuring – a deadline Palace missed.
Palace argued Textor does not hold any decisive influence at the club, but Uefa did not accept the Premier League club’s defence.
Speaking to The Rest is Football, external podcast last week, Palace chairman Steve Parish said he was “very hopeful” the decision would be overturned.
“We don’t think this is the right decision by any means. We know, unequivocally, that John [Textor] didn’t have decisive influence over the club,” he said.
“We know we proved that beyond all reasonable doubt because it’s a fact.”
A coalition of civil rights groups and private attorneys sued the federal government, challenging the cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens swept up in chaotic arrests that have sparked widespread protests since early June.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, temporarily blocked federal agents in the Southland from using racial profiling to carry out immigration arrests after she found sufficient evidence that agents were using race, a person’s job or their location, and their language to form “reasonable suspicion” — the legal standard needed to detain an individual.
Frimpong ruled that using race, ethnicity, language, accent, location or employment as a pretext for immigration enforcement is forbidden by the 4th Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
The order covers Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
The judge also ordered that all those in custody at a downtown detention facility known as B-18 must be given 24-hour access to lawyers and a confidential phone line.
On Monday, the administration asked a federal appeals court to stay the judge’s order blocking the roving patrols, allowing it to resume raids across the seven California counties.
“It is untenable for a district judge to single-handedly ‘restructure the operations’ of federal immigration enforcement,” the appeal argued. “This judicial takeover cannot be allowed to stand.”
What experts are saying
Legal experts say it’s hard to say just how successful the federal government will be in getting a stay on the temporary order, given the current political climate.
“This is different from a lot of the other kinds of Trump litigation because the law is so clear in the fact finding by the district court,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “So if you follow basic legal principles, this is a very weak case for the government on appeal, but it’s so hard to predict what will happen because everything is so ideological.”
In the past, legal scholars say, it would be extremely uncommon for an appeals court to weigh in on such an order. But recent events suggest it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
Courts have backed Trump’s immigration policies in other cases.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing the federal government to deport convicted criminals to “third countries” even if they lack a prior connection to those countries.
That same month, it also ruled 6 to 3 to limit the ability of federal district judges to issue nationwide orders blocking the president’s policies, which was frequently a check on executive power.
In June, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to leave troops in Los Angeles in the hands of the Trump administration while California’s objections are litigated in federal court, finding the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — authority to deploy the military in American cities. California had sued against the deployment.
It’s not an easy case for the government, said Ahilan Arulanantham, professor of practice and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.
“I think one thing which makes this case maybe a little bit harder for the government than some of the other shadow docket cases is it really does affect citizens in an important way,” he said. “Obviously the immigration agent doesn’t know in advance when they come up to somebody whether they’re a citizen or a noncitizen or if they’re lawfully present or not.”
What is next?
The Frimpong ruling is now on appeal.
The plaintiffs argued in their complaint that immigration agents cornered brown-skinned people in Home Depot parking lots, at car washes and at bus stops across Southern California in a show of force without establishing reasonable suspicion that they had violated immigration laws. They allege agents didn’t identify themselves, as required under federal law, and made unlawful arrests without warrants.
Government lawyers argued in their motion that “ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances — for instance, if agents are acting on a tip that identifies that ethnicity — even if it would not be relevant in other circumstances,” lawyers stated in their motion.
Attorneys said in the motion that speaking Spanish, being at a particular location or one’s job “can contribute to reasonable suspicion in at least some circumstances.”
Government lawyers said Frimpong’s injunction was a first step to placing immigration enforcement under judicial monitorship and was “indefensible on every level.” They asked the higher court to pause the order while the appeal is heard.
The government is also appealing another injunction imposed by a federal judge in the Eastern District of California after Border Patrol agents stopped and arrested dozens of farmworkers and laborers — including a U.S. citizen — during a days-long operation in the Central Valley in January.
The Trump administration asked a federal appeals court Monday to allow immigration agents to resume unfettered raids across Southern California, seeking to overturn a federal judge’s order in Los Angeles that barred “roving patrols” in seven counties.
The order “is inflicting irreparable harm by preventing the Executive from ensuring that immigration laws are enforced, severely infringing on the President’s Article II authority,” Department of Justice lawyers wrote in a motion asking for an emergency stay on Monday. “These harms will be compounded the longer that injunction is in place.”
After weeks of aggressive sweeps by masked and heavily armed federal agents, the operations seemingly ceased in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties following a temporary restraining order granted Friday night by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong.
A coalition of civil rights groups and private attorneys sued the federal government, challenging the cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens swept up in chaotic arrests that have sown terror and sparked widespread protest since June 6.
“It should tell you everything you need to know that the federal government is rushing to appeal an order that instructs them only to follow the Constitution,” said Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with ACLU of Southern California, who argued the case. “We look forward to defending the temporary restraining order and ensuring that communities across Southern California are safe from the federal government’s violence.”
Despite arguments from the Trump administration that its tactics are valid, Frimpong ruled that using race, ethnicity, language, accent, location or employment as a pretext for immigration enforcement is forbidden by the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. The judge found that preventing detainees from meeting with lawyers violates the right to due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
“What the federal government would have this court believe — in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening,” she wrote.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem incorrectly referred to Frimpong as a man when responding to the order during a news conference Saturday, saying of the judge’s order: “He’s an idiot.”
“We have all the right in the world to go out on the streets and to uphold the law and to do what we’re going to do. So none of our operations are going to change,” Noem said. “We’re going to appeal it and we’re going to win.”
In addition to blocking roving patrols, the judge also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to open part of its detention facility in Downtown Los Angeles to attorneys and legal aid groups.
“While the district court injunction is a significant victory for immigrants, the whiplash of court orders and appeals breeds uncertainty,” said Ming Hsu Chen, a professor at UC Law San Francisco. “That form of real-world insecurity weakens communities and undermines democratic values in places like LA.”
The Trump administration did not immediately contest the 5th Amendment portion of the ruling. Instead, its attacked the 4th Amendment claim, seeking a stay that would immediately restore the status quo for immigration agents across Southern California while the case is heard by judges from the higher court.
“It is untenable for a district judge to single-handedly ‘restructure the operations’ of federal immigration enforcement,” the appeal argued. “This judicial takeover cannot be allowed to stand.”
But some experts say that’s unlikely.
“Their argument [is] the sky’s falling,” said professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond. “They make very extreme arguments, and that doesn’t necessarily help their case in the 9th Circuit.”
The appeal escalates an already fierce and sprawling legal battle over Trump’s promised mass deportations and the means used to achieve it.
After the president deployed troops to quell anti-ICE protests in June, California sued and won a temporary restraining order that would have stripped the president of command.
The appellate panel swiftly blocked that decision, before overturning it in mid-June, leaving thousands of soldiers in Trump’s hands.
But the Trump appointee who authored the June 19 ruling, Judge Mark J. Bennett of Honolulu, also bristled at the government’s argument that the president’s actions in the case were “unreviewable.”
“Some of the things they say are unorthodox, arguments we don’t usually hear in court,” Chen said. “Instead of framing this as executive overreach, they’re saying the judiciary’s efforts to put limits on executive power is judicial overreach.”
Last week, another 9th Circuit judge challenged that June decision, petitioning the court to rehear the issue with a larger “en banc” panel — a move that could nudge the case to the Supreme Court.
“Before [courts] became so politicized, many judges would often defer to the 3-judge panels that first heard appeals, because they trusted their colleagues,” Tobias said. “Increasing politicization of most appeals courts and somewhat decreased collegiality complicate efforts to predict how the Ninth’s judges will vote in this case.”
Meanwhile, California is gathering evidence to bolster its claim that Marines and National Guard forces participating in immigration enforcement run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids using soldiers to enforce civilian laws.
Compared to those questions, the legal issues in the L.A. appeal are simple, experts said.
“What makes this case different is how much it’s based on facts,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “It’s much harder for an appellate court to overturn a trial court finding of fact then it is with regard to legal conclusions.”
US President Donald Trump during a meeting with African leaders at the White House, Washington, DC, on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. On Thursday, an appeals court ruled against his challenge to a jury’s unanimous decision that he sexually abused a writer in the 1990s. Photo by Will Oliver/UPI | License Photo
July 11 (UPI) — A federal appeals court has sided with the jury that found President Donald Trump liable of sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and of lying about the assault.
The three-judge Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued its mandate Thursday, affirming the May 2023 Manhattan jury’s unanimous decision that Trump had sexually abused Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman department stor in 1996 and awarded her $5 million in compensatory damages.
“So long, Old Man!” Carroll celebrated on X. “The United States Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, bids thee farewell.”
Trump maintains he didn’t sexually abuse her, and filed an appeal.
He argued the Manhattan district court had erred when it allowed testimony from two other women who alleged Trump had sexually assaulted them in the past and a notorious 2005 recording in which the president is heard on a hot mic telling another man how he forcibly kissed and grabbed women by their genitals.
In its ruling rejecting Trump’s appeal, the court found the district court did not err by including both women’s testimonies as well as the so-called Access Hollywood tape as evidence of the president’s alleged history of committing such acts.
“We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” it said. “Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”
In January 2024, another civil jury found Trump liable for defamatory statements and ordered him to pay the writer $83.3 million in damages.
After Carroll went public with her accusations against Trump in 2019, Trump claimed to have never met her and accused her of making up the allegation to sell books.
FLORENCE, S.C. — After nearly six months of President Trump in the White House, California Gov. Gavin Newsom descended on a coffee shop in this small South Carolina city to preach his gospel of resistance.
Suddenly, Democrats here felt they were witnessing a spiritual and political revival: After all the pain and trauma of the 2024 election, they seemed in the presence of an uplifting leader with the savvy to awaken the Democratic grass roots.
“I’ve been so depressed,” Marion Wagner, a retired postal worker, said as she waited for Newsom at his first stop in LilJazZi’s cafe Tuesday. “This is a ray of hope.”
“Thank you for suing Trump!” Suzanne La Rochelle, the executive director of the Florence County Democratic Party, told the tall, svelte 57-year-old West Coast politician after he delivered his political sermon.
“This is just the jolt that South Carolina needs,” said Joyce Black, a 63-year-old grant writer, pumping her fist.
Newsom promoted his more than 2,000-mile jaunt from California to South Carolina as a bid to help the party win back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026 and connect directly with rural Deep South communities that had been overlooked by Republicans.
But most people believed the governor, who is mulling over a White House bid in 2028, was in the Palmetto State to forge connections in a crucial election state that traditionally hosts the South’s first presidential primary. There are a dozen competitive House districts right now in California, but not a single one in South Carolina.
The state’s Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and renowned Democratic kingmaker who rescued former President Biden’s 2020 campaign, addressed the elephant in the room when he joined Newsom in Camden, S.C.
“As we go around welcoming these candidates who are running for president, let’s not forget about school boards,” Clyburn said.
Newsom grinned awkwardly and the crowd roared with laughter. Jokingly, Newsom turned around as if looking for another, unidentified, politician behind him.
Clyburn stopped short of endorsing Newsom, but he told The Times “he’d be a hell of a candidate.”
“He’s demonstrated that over and over again,” Clyburn said. “I feel good about his chances.”
Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor who was first elected governor in 2018, would face steep hurdles if he threw his hat into the race for president.
Just being a Californian, some argue, is a liability.
The Golden State boasts the world’s fourth-largest economy and is a high-tech powerhouse. But as income inequality soars along with the cost of living, Republicans paint the state as the poster child of elite “woke” activism and rail against its high taxes, rampant homelessness and crime.
The signs Republican activists waved outside Newsom’s meet and greet in Pickens, a staunchly red county that voted 76% for Trump, distilled the GOP narrative:
“Newsom, your state is a MESS & you want to run this country. NO WAY!”
“Keep your socialist junk in CA!”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to visitors at Awaken Coffee in Mullins, S.C.
(Sam Wolfe / For The Times)
Tamra Misseijer, a Pickens County middle school teacher, said she and her husband moved from Woodland Hills to South Carolina in 2021 because they could no longer afford to raise their eight children there. Compounding their frustration, she said, homeless people threw needles and sex toys over her fence into their yard. She also lashed out at the restrictions Newsom imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We traded … unconstitutional lockdowns and masks for freedom and fresh air,” the registered Republican’s placard said. “High crime, looting & destruction for peace and order.”
Even some Democrats worry that Newsom is too progressive, too rich and too slick to win over working-class and swing voters in Republican and closely divided states.
Richard Harpootlian, a South Carolina attorney, former state senator and former chairman of the state Democratic Party, predicted Newsom would find it hard to find a foothold in many places in South Carolina.
“He’s a very, very handsome man,” Harpootlian conceded. “But the party is searching for a left-of-moderate candidate who can articulate blue-collar hopes and desires. I’m not sure that’s him.”
Dismissing Newsom as “just another rich guy” who became wealthy because of his connections with heirs to the Getty oil fortune, Harpootlian said he did not think Newsom was attuned to winning back blue-collar voters.
“If he had a track record of solving huge problems like homelessness, or the social safety net, he’d be a more palatable candidate,” he said. “I just think he’s going to have a tough time explaining why there’s so many failures in California.”
Newsom’s tour was organized last week by the South Carolina Democratic Party to energize the grass roots and raise money.
Party Chair Christale Spain said that she invited a bunch of prominent national Democratic leaders to tour the state, but that Newsom was the only one to immediately agree to jump on a plane.
After an email and a few text messages, a Newsom advisor said, Newsom raised $160,000 for South Carolina’s Democratic Party — nearly two-thirds of what the Democratic National Committee gives the party for its annual budget.
Newsom — who traveled to Georgia in 2023 for a much-hyped debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and South Carolina in 2024 to stump for Biden — said national Democratic leaders have abandoned people in the rural South.
“I’ve got a little gripe with my party,” Newsom said at a packed gathering in Fisher Hill Community Baptist Church in Chesterfield. “We let you down for decades and decades.”
Newsom sidestepped the question of whether he would run for president, arguing that Democrats couldn’t afford to wait three and a half years for a savior.
“I think one of the big mistakes for any party, but particularly the Democratic Party, is looking for the guy or gal on the white horse to come save the day,” he said.
But Newsom offered a glimpse of what a potential presidential campaign might look like: He touted his record of filing 122 lawsuits against Trump during his first time in office, he celebrated California as the “most un-Trump state in America,” and he railed against Trump’s recent immigration raids in MacArthur Park as a display of “cruelty and vulgarity.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks with Mullins, S.C., Mayor Miko Pickett, right, as they walk downtown on Tuesday.
(Sam Wolfe / For The Times)
Even though Newsom sought to focus on the damage wrought by Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — or as he called it, the “Big Beautiful Betrayal” — Newsom did not go into detail on how this would hurt Americans in their healthcare or pocketbooks. Instead, he talked about “restoring the soul of this country” and dwelt largely on culture war issues.
“What we’re experiencing is America in reverse,” Newsom told supporters in Camden. “They’re trying to bring us back to a pre-1960s world on voting rights. You know it well: civil rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and not just access to abortion, but also access to simple reproductive contraception. It’s a moment that few of us could have imagined.“
But even as Newsom warned about book bans and immigration raids as fundamental assaults on democracy, he resisted the idea that America is a nation neatly divided by east and west, rural and urban, Democrat and Republican.
“Don’t forget California is a large red state,” he said, noting he represented 6 million Trump voters, more than the entire population of South Carolina.
After the 2024 election, Newsom said he, like many other Democrats, turned off the cable news.
“I just, I tapped out,” he told the crowd at the church. “I never thought that would happen. All those years of self-medicating, watching Rachel Maddow with a glass of white wine or a beer. I thought I would never give it up. … The election, you know, it’s a body blow.”
He said Democrats across the country, from California to South Carolina, bore a responsibility to take action.
“We’re not bystanders in this world,” he said. “We can shape the future, we have agency. … You could have dialed it in to stay home. You could have given in, given up. You could have fallen right on the cynicism, the negativity, all the anxiety that I’m sure you’re all feeling about this moment.”
Many in the crowd were clearly awed by Newsom. Some swooned over his “beautiful hair” and “charisma.” Others marveled at his ability to stand up to Trump with clarity and compassion.
One woman informed Newsom her friend was “in love with you, by the way.” Another told friends she blanked out when she met him, so starstruck that she could not come up with words.
“He’s a cool dude,” Carol Abraham, wife of the mayor of Bennettsville, said after Newsom spoke at a meet and greet on Main Street. “He has swag.”
After Newsom wrapped up his talk at Fisher Hill Community Baptist Church, Bryanna Velazquez, a 31-year-old business owner wearing a “Jesús era un immigrante” T-shirt, waited in a long line to thank Newsom for speaking out against the immigration raids.
“I’m married to a Mexican, so it means a lot,” she told him.
Her husband was a citizen, Valazquez said, but still, she was afraid.
“The fact that he is brown makes him a target.”
Since Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, Newsom has taken on the role of the president’s most outspoken Democratic critic while taking steps to defy left-wing orthodoxies and broaden his national appeal in a country that, politically, is far different from California.
In March, he infuriated the progressive wing of his party by hosting conservatives such as MAGA loyalists Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast and breaking away from many Democrats on the issue of transgender athletes in women’s sports.
“My position is I don’t think it’s fair,” he told reporters Tuesday. “But I also think it’s demeaning to talk down to people and to belittle the trans community. … These people just want to survive and so I hold both things in my hand.”
It is too early to say how many Americans will get on board with Newsom as he experiments with how to balance competing ideas of common sense and sensitivity in the hyperpartisan culture wars.
As the California leader of the Trump resistance stressed the importance of standing tall and firm and pushing back, he also called for more grace and humility, invoking the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“We’re all, as Dr. King said, bound together by a web of mutuality,” he said in Florence, playing to his Deep South audience. “We’re many parts, as the Bible said, but one body. One part suffers, we all suffer.”
“Let’s not talk down to people,” he told the crowd in Chesterfield. “Let’s not talk past people, good people who disagree with us.”
“Amen,” a man said. “That’s right,” a woman murmured.
July 8 (UPI) — A Georgia judge ordered a mental evaluation for Jose Ibarra, the man convicted in the 2024 murder of 22-year-old university student Laken Riley.
It will determine if Ibarra, a native of Venezuela, was mentally competent at the time of the crime and later at trial, including whether he understood the legal consequences of waiving a trial by jury and if he is mentally equipped to assist in his own appeal.
In November, Ibarra was convicted of malice murder and other related charges in the February 2024 attack that left Riley, a nursing student, dead near a wooded trail on the campus of the University of Georgia.
It was the impetus behind the Laken Riley Act, decried as a political move by opponents and which passed the Senate and was signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on January 29.
The decision to call for the mental evaluation was issued last week by Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who sentenced Ibarra to life in prison with no chance of parole.
Haggard’s order filed on Thursday instructs officials to figure out if the undocumented migrant was “capable of understanding the nature and object of pretrial proceedings, including waiver of jury trial rights.”
Ibarra, 27, is hoping to vacate his guilty sentence or secure a new court trial after his attorneys filed a new-trial motion only weeks after his conviction late last year.
His legal team argued that the guilty verdict was “contrary to law” and evidence.
Ibarra, who speaks Spanish as a first language and possibly faced a language barrier, was characterized as “a slow learner” last month during a virtual hearing by defense attorney David Dodds.
The state, for its part, did not oppose the evaluation request but filed a separate motion to seek public money to retain expert witnesses for a possible court appeal.
Eight migrants in United States custody have lost a last-ditch attempt to avoid deportation to South Sudan, a country facing ongoing criticism for human rights abuses.
On Friday, Judge Brian Murphy of Boston denied the eleventh-hour appeal, which has been the subject of a flurry of legal activity throughout the day.
The appeal argued that repeated efforts under President Donald Trump to deport the men to South Sudan was “impermissibly punitive”. It pointed out that the US Constitution bars “cruel and unusual punishment”.
In the past, the US Department of State has accused South Sudan of “extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture and cases of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment”. It advises no American citizen to travel there due to an ongoing armed conflict.
But the US Supreme Court has twice ruled that the Trump administration could indeed deport the men to countries outside of their homelands. Its latest decision was issued on Thursday.
The US Department of Justice indicated that the eight men were set to be flown to South Sudan by 7pm US Eastern Time (23:00 GMT) on Friday. They hailed from countries like Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan and Vietnam.
The last-ditch appeal was filed on Thursday night, shortly after the Supreme Court rendered its decision.
Initially, the case was assigned to US District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, DC, who signalled he was sympathetic to the deportees’ request.
He briefly ordered the deportation to be paused until 4:30pm Eastern Time (20:30 GMT), but ultimately, he decided to transfer the case back to Murphy, the judge whose decisions helped precipitate the Supreme Court’s rulings.
Murphy had previously issued injunctions against the deportations to South Sudan, leading to successful appeals from the Trump administration. The eight men, meanwhile, had been held at a military base in Djibouti while the courts decided their fate.
Before he transferred the case back to Murphy, however, Judge Moss said it was possible the deportees could prove their case that the Trump administration intended to subject them to abuse.
“It seems to me almost self-evident that the United States government cannot take human beings and send them to circumstances in which their physical wellbeing is at risk simply either to punish them or send a signal to others,” Moss said during the hearing.
Lawyers for the Trump administration, meanwhile, argued that the deportation’s continued delay would strain relations with countries willing to accept migrants from other countries.
Murphy, who denied Friday’s request, had previously ruled in favour of the deportees, issuing an injunction against their removal to South Sudan and saying they had a right to contest the deportation based on fears for their safety.
The Supreme Court first lifted the injunction on June 23 and clarified its ruling again on Thursday, giving a subtle rebuke to Judge Murphy.
The Trump administration has been pushing for rapid removals as part of its campaign of mass deportation, one of President Trump’s signature priorities.
Opponents have accused the administration of steamrolling the human rights of undocumented people in order to achieve its aims, including the right to due process under the law.
But the Trump administration has framed undocumented migration as an “invasion” that constitutes a national security crisis, and it argued that its strong-armed efforts are needed to expel criminals.
The eight migrants slated to be sent to South Sudan, it said, were “barbaric, violent criminal illegal aliens”. It added that they had been found guilty of crimes, including first-degree murder, robbery and sexual assault.
“These sickos will be in South Sudan by Independence Day,” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a news release on Thursday.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Thursday to weigh in on the growing controversy over transgender athletes and decide if federal law bars transgender girls from women’s school sports teams.
“Biological boys should not compete on girls’ athletics teams,” West Virginia Atty. Gen. JB McCusky said in an appeal the court voted to hear.
The appeal had the backing of 26 other Republican-led states as well as President Trump.
Four years ago, West Virginia adopted its Save Women’s Sports Act but the measure has been blocked as discriminatory by the 4th Circuit Court in 2-1 decision.
Idaho filed a similar appeal after its law was blocked by the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco. The court said it would hear that case together with the West Virginia case.
At issue is the meaning of Title IX, the federal education law that has been credited with opening the door for the vast expansion of women’s sports. Schools and colleges were told they must give girls equal opportunities in athletics by providing them with separate sports teams.
In the past decade, however, states and their schools divided on the question of who can participate on the girls team. Is it only those who were girls at birth or can it also include those whose gender identity is female?
West Virginia told the court its “legislature concluded that biological boys should compete on boys’ and co-ed teams but not girls’ teams. This separation made sense, the legislature found, because of the ‘inherent physical differences between biological males and biological females’.”
California and most Democratic states allow transgender girls to compete in sports competitions for women.
In 2013, the Legislature said a student “shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions…consistent with his or her gender identity.”
The Supreme Court had put off a decision on this issue while the divide among the states grew.
McCusky, West Virginia’s attorney general, said he was confident the court would uphold the state’s law. “It is time to return girls’ sports to the girls and stop this misguided gender ideology once and for all,” he said in a statement.
Lawyers for Lambda Legal and the ACLU said the court should not uphold exclusionary laws.
“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Sasha Buchert, director of Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project at Lambda Legal.
“Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”
Becky Pepper-Jackson and her mother sued after the school principal said she was barred by the state’s law from competing on the girls’ teams at her middle school in Bridgeport, W. Va.
She “has lived as a girl in all aspects of her life for years and receives puberty-delaying treatment and estrogen hormone therapy, so has not experienced (and will not experience) endogenous puberty,” her mother said in support of their lawsuit.
ACLU lawyers said then the court should stand aside. They said B.P.J. was eager to participate in sports but was “too slow to compete in the track events” on the girls team.
Last year, West Virginia tried again and urged the Supreme Court to review the 4th Circuit’s decision and uphold its restrictions on transgender athletes.
The state attorneys also claimed the would-be middle school athlete had become a track star.
“This spring, B.P.J. placed top three in every track event B.P.J. competed in, winning most. B.P.J. beat over 100 girls, displacing them over 250 times while denying multiple girls spots and medals in the conference championship. B.P.J. won the shot put by more than three feet while placing second in discus,” they told the court.
Last year, the court opted to rule first in a Tennessee case to decide if states may prohibit puberty blockers, hormones and other medical treatments for young teens who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
On June 18, the court’s conservative majority said state lawmakers had the authority to restrict medical treatments for adolescents who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, noting the ongoing debate over the long-term risks and benefits. The ruling turned aside the contention that law reflected unconstitutional sex discrimination.
On Thursday, the justices released their final orders list before their summer recess granting review of new cases to be heard in the fall. Included were the cases of West Virginia vs. BJP and Little vs. Hecox.
In response to the appeals, ACLU lawyers accused the state of seeking to “create a false sense of national emergency” based on a legal “challenge by one transgender girl.”
The lawsuit said the state measure was “part of a concerted nationwide effort to target transgender youth for unequal treatment.” The suit contended the law violated Title IX and was unconstitutional because it discriminated against student athletes based on their gender identity.
West Virginia’s lawyers saw a threat to Title IX and women’s sports.
They said the rulings upholding transgender rights “took a law designed to ensure meaningful competitive opportunities for women and girls—based on biological differences — and fashioned it into a lever for males to force their way onto girls’ sports teams based on identity, destroying the very opportunities Title IX was meant to protect.”
WASHINGTON — With two conservatives in dissent, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down a property-rights claim from Los Angeles landlords who say they lost millions from unpaid rent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Without comment, the justices said they would not hear an appeal from a coalition of apartment owners who said they rent “over 4,800 units” in “luxury apartment communities” to “predominantly high-income tenants.”
They sued the city seeking $20 million in damages from tenants who did not pay their rent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They contended the city’s strict limits on evictions during that time had the effect of taking their private property in violation of the Constitution.
In the past, the court has repeatedly turned down claims that rent control laws are unconstitutional, even though they limit how much landlords can collect in rent.
But the L.A. landlords said their claim was different because the city had effectively taken use of their property, at least for a time. They cited the 5th Amendment’s clause that says “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.”
“In March 2020, the city of Los Angeles adopted one of the most onerous eviction moratoria in the country, stripping property owners … of their right to exclude nonpaying tenants,” they told the court in GHP Management Corporation vs. Los Angeles. “The city pressed private property into public service, foisting the cost of its coronavirus response onto housing providers.”
“By August 2021, when [they] sued the City seeking just compensation for that physical taking, back rents owed by their unremovable tenants had ballooned to over $20 million,” they wrote.
A federal judge in Los Angeles and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 3-0 decision dismissed the landlords’ suit. Those judges cited the decades of precedent that allowed regulation of property.
The court had considered the appeal since February, but only Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch voted to hear the case of GHP Management Corp. vs. City of Los Angeles.
“I would grant review of the question whether a policy barring landlords from evicting tenants for the nonpayment of rent effects a physical taking under the Taking Clause,” Thomas said. “This case meets all of our usual criteria. … The Court nevertheless denies certiorari, leaving in place confusion on a significant issue, and leaving petitioners without a chance to obtain the relief to which they are likely entitled.”
The Los Angeles landlords asked the court to decide “whether an eviction moratorium depriving property owners of the fundamental right to exclude nonpaying tenants effects a physical taking.”
In February, the city attorney’s office urged the court to turn down the appeal.
“As a once-in-a-century pandemic shuttered its businesses and schools, the city of Los Angeles employed temporary, emergency measures to protect residential renters against eviction,” they wrote. The measure protected only those who could “prove COVID-19 related economic hardship,” and it “did not excuse any rent debt that an affected tenant accrued.”
The city argued the landlords are seeking a “radical departure from precedent” in the area of property regulation.
“If a government takes property, it must pay for it,” the city attorneys said. “For more than a century, though, this court has recognized that governments do not appropriate property rights solely by virtue of regulating them.”
The city said the COVID emergency and the restriction on evictions ended in January 2023.
In reply, lawyers for the landlords said bans on evictions are becoming the “new normal.” They cited a Los Angeles County measure they said would “preclude evictions for non-paying tenants purportedly affected by the recent wildfires.”
Ex-Spanish football chief Luis Rubiales will appeal at the Supreme Court after fine for forcibly kissing Jenni Hermoso is upheld.
Disgraced former Spanish Football Federation chief Luis Rubiales will appeal to the Supreme Court the confirmation of his $12,600 (10,800-euro) fine for forcibly kissing Jenni Hermoso, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
After a keenly awaited trial that gripped the country, Spain’s top criminal court in February found Rubiales guilty of sexual assault for the kiss at the 2023 Women’s World Cup, which generated global outrage.
The Audiencia Nacional also cleared him of a separate accusation of coercion for allegedly forcing Hermoso to downplay the incident afterwards.
Both parties contested the sentence, which fell short of the two-and-a-half-year prison term sought by prosecutors and infuriated feminist groups that condemned the punishment as too lenient.
Rubiales maintained that the kiss was a consensual “peck” between friends celebrating during a medal ceremony after star forward Hermoso had just helped Spain beat England in the final in Sydney, denying any coercion.
The court said in a statement on Wednesday that it had rejected the appeals of the defence team and prosecutors, maintaining the conviction and the fine.
“The kiss was not consensual”, and Hermoso “expressed her displeasure with what happened, as she herself confirmed in the trial, as well as her teammates”, the court wrote.
“It cannot be said that a kiss in those circumstances was frequent or common or usual.”
The court also confirmed that Rubiales, former women’s national team manager Jorge Vilda and two former senior federation officials, Albert Luque and Ruben Rivera, were cleared of the coercion charge.
Rubiales’s lawyer, Olga Tubau, told the AFP news agency that he would appeal the verdict at the Supreme Court.
A separate request by the prosecutors to rerun the trial, notably due to doubts over the judge’s impartiality, was dismissed.
The court also maintained a ban on Rubiales from going within a 200-metre (656-foot) radius of Hermoso and from communicating with her for one year.
The kiss led to a global uproar that forced Rubiales to relinquish his post, saw him banned from all football-related activity for three years and plunged the federation into a prolonged period of turmoil.
The affair made Hermoso, the all-time top scorer for the national women’s team, an icon of the fight against sexism and macho culture in sport.
Rubiales is also embroiled in an investigation into alleged financial irregularities totalling millions of euros related to the Spanish Super Cup’s relocation to Saudi Arabia, which involved a company owned by Barcelona great Gerard Pique.
Rubiales has dismissed the allegations as “falsehoods”.
Uefa advanced its assessment date to 1 March rather than June, but the Cas panel found that this change had been properly communicated by Uefa and that Drogheda ought to have known about it.
A majority of the panel also rejected Drogheda’s submissions on alleged unequal treatment by Uefa.
Drogheda, who are currently third in the League of Ireland Premier Division and face Shamrock Rovers on Monday night, also called the decision “unjust”.
“Rules should protect opportunity, not prevent it,” their statement added.
“Especially for community-driven clubs like ours who fight every day to punch above their weight.
“Nevertheless, we accept responsibility. And we’re sorry. But while we are saddened, we are also emboldened.
“We will not let this setback define us. Instead, we will use it as fuel. Our club has never been handed anything and we’ve earned every inch through grit, resilience, and unity. And we will continue to do so.”
Derry City, who Drogheda beat in the FAI Cup final, are unable to join Shamrock Rovers and St Patrick’s Athletic in the competition as the deadline for a Uefa licence has passed.
It is the only time the Premier League club has qualified for European football in their 120-year history, but Uefa is set to decide whether they breached its rules on teams under one multi-club ownership structure competing in that competition.
Uefa’s final ruling will centre on American businessman John Textor, owner of Eagle Football – which holds a 43% stake in Palace.
Eagle Football also owns a 77% stake in French side Lyon, who – like Palace – have qualified for next season’s Europa League.
In recent seasons, Aston Villa, Manchester City and Manchester United have all been admitted into European competition despite initial concerns over multi-club ownership.
CBS has notched another small victory in its legal battle with Sony Pictures Television, winning an appellate court ruling that allows the network to continue to distribute “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” as its court case continues.
Sony owns the shows and produces them on its Culver City lot.
On Wednesday, the judges wrote that they had reviewed filings from both sides. In a one-page order, the panel granted CBS’ request to keep the stay in place, allowing the network to continue its distribution duties during the appeal .
CBS maintains Sony lacks the legal right to unilaterally severe ties.
Sony terminated its distribution deal with CBS in August and later filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit that claimed CBS entered into unauthorized licensing deals for the shows and then paid itself a commission. Sony also maintained that rounds of budget cuts within CBS had hobbled the network’s efforts to support the two shows.
CBS has said Sony’s claims “are rooted in the fact they simply don’t like the deal the parties agreed to decades ago.”
CBS takes in up to 40% of the fees that TV stations pay to carry the shows. The company took over the distribution of the program when it acquired syndication company King World Productions in 1999.
King World struck deals with the original producer, Merv Griffin Enterprises, in the early 1980s to distribute “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel.” Sony later acquired Griffin’s company, but those early agreements remain in effect.
As viewing of traditional TV has declined due to competition for streaming in recent years, the two daily game shows have continued to thrive and are among the most-watched programs in television.
A Sony representative was not immediately available for comment.
Decorated veteran Ben Roberts-Smith failed to have reports that he ‘murdered four Afghan men’ quashed.
Australia’s most decorated living war veteran has lost an appeal against a civil court ruling that implicated him in war crimes while serving in Afghanistan.
Australia’s Federal Court dismissed the appeal lodged by Ben Roberts-Smith on Friday, in the latest setback for the 46-year-old’s fight to salvage a reputation tattered by reports that he took part in the murder of four unarmed Afghan prisoners.
Three federal court judges unanimously rejected his appeal of a judge’s ruling in 2023, which said Roberts-Smith was not defamed by newspaper articles published in 2018 that accused him of a range of war crimes.
In the earlier ruling, a judge had found that the accusations were substantially true to a civil standard and Roberts-Smith was responsible for four of the six unlawful deaths of noncombatants he had been accused of.
Delivering the appeal court’s verdict, Justice Nye Perram explained that the reasons for the decision are being withheld due to national security implications that the government must consider.
The marathon 110-day trial is estimated to have cost 25 million Australian dollars ($16m) in legal fees that Roberts-Smith will likely be liable to pay.
He has however said he will fight to clear his name in Australia’s High Court, his last avenue of legal appeal.
“I continue to maintain my innocence and deny these egregious spiteful allegations,” Roberts-Smith said in a statement. “We will immediately seek to challenge this judgement in the High Court of Australia.”
Tory Maguire, an executive of Nine Entertainment that published the articles Roberts-Smith claimed were untrue, welcomed the ruling as an “emphatic win”.
“Today is also a great day for investigative journalism and underscores why it remains highly valued by the Australian people,” Maguire said.
Australia deployed 39,000 troops to Afghanistan over two decades as part of United States and NATO-led operations against the Taliban and other armed groups.
Perth-born Roberts-Smith, a former SAS corporal, had won the Victoria Cross – Australia’s highest military honour – for “conspicuous gallantry” in Afghanistan while on the hunt for a senior Taliban commander.
An Australian military report released in 2020 found evidence that Australian troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners and civilians. The report recommended 19 current and former soldiers face criminal investigation.
It’s not clear whether Roberts-Smith was one of them.
Police have been working with the Office of the Special Investigator, an Australian investigation agency established in 2021, to build cases against elite SAS and Commando Regiments troops who served in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times said in a series of reports in 2018 that Roberts-Smith had kicked an unarmed Afghan civilian off a cliff and ordered subordinates to shoot him.
He was also said to have taken part in the machine-gunning of a man with a prosthetic leg, which was later brought back to an army bar and used as a drinking vessel.
Police are hoping to identify two teenagers caught on CCTV near West Ruislip Tube station
CCTV footage has been released by police trying to track down two teenagers after the “mutilated” remains of two kittens were found in a field in west London.
Sgt Babs Rock of the Met Police said that the kittens – discovered in Ickenham at about midday on Saturday 3 May – had been “tortured and dismembered”.
“This is an incredibly distressing incident which I know has caused concern in the local community,” she said, adding that the force was taking the “horrific incident” extremely seriously.
Police hope that by releasing the CCTV footage of the teens fleeing the scene, and an image of a duffel bag thought to have been used to carry the kittens, they will be able to identify those involved.
Met Police
This black duffel bag is thought to have been used to transport the kittens
A dog walker, who posted online anonymously, said they had been in the field when they interrupted two teenagers “stooping over something on the floor”, who quickly ran off when disturbed.
“To my horror, I saw two dead mutilated kittens, along with an array of weaponry,” the witness recounted. They added: “The poor cats had clearly suffered.”
Sgt Rock told BBC News that the dead kittens were found not far from West Ruislip Tube station, near Ruislip Golf Course, in Hillingdon.
She said: “We are working to help try and identify who the pair are so that we can firstly ensure that justice is brought to them, but also to safeguard them and make sure that it doesn’t lead to any future offences.”
Met Police
Police hope a letter sent to parents via local schools informing them of recent animal cruelty incidents will help to prevent further incidents
Police say there have been other recent attacks on local wildlife – including on ducks and swans targeted with catapults – although they believe these are isolated and not connected to what happened to the kittens.
The Met says it has taken the “rare” step of writing to parents, via local schools, to raise awareness of animal cruelty issues and to ask parents to speak to their children about what has happened.
Sgt Rock said: “We’ve put out an appeal to schools and parents in order to educate their children into making sure that they understand how important it is to look after wildlife and pets.”
The sergeant explained that causing unnecessary suffering to animals could result in fines, disqualification from keeping animals and up to five years’ imprisonment.
“If you do see any animals being harmed, or any children acting in a suspicious way, it’s really important to feed that information through to us,” she said.
“Even if there isn’t necessarily a crime taking place, it’s not a wasted phone call.”
The force urged anyone with information, or footage from house or car cameras, to come forward, or report what they know anonymously via CrimeStoppers.
