department

The U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation Monday into Smith College, an all-women’s institution in Massachusetts, for admitting transgender women.

The probe by the department’s Office of Civil Rights will look at whether the college violated Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding discrimination based on sex in education.

The move is the latest by the Trump administration — whose rhetoric has frequently included attacks on trans people — to limit transgender rights in the U.S. The administration has said that Title IX prevents trans women from participating in women’s sports, suing several states and launching investigations into schools for not complying.

Smith College, a private liberal arts school founded in 1871, has admitted trans women since 2015, along with many other elite women’s colleges.

The school’s admission policies drew attention and sparked on-campus activism in 2013, when a trans high school senior was denied acceptance because her gender identity did not match the one on her financial aid forms.

Its website now says that “any applicants who self-identify as women; cis, trans, and nonbinary women” are eligible to apply to the school. Advocates have supported the shift over the years, saying that women’s colleges were founded to educate those marginalized because of their gender.

The number of women’s colleges in the U.S. has declined from more than 200 to just 30 as of fall of 2023, according to the Women’s College Coalition.

A college spokesperson did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

According to the Department of Education in a news release, Title IX contains an exception that allows colleges to be all-male or all-female, but it only applies “on the basis of biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity.”

The investigation into Smith College stems from a complaint filed with the Office of Civil Rights in June 2025 by the conservative legal group Defending Education.

“DE and its members oppose, among other things, discrimination on the basis of sex in America’s K-12 schools and institutions of higher education,” the organization said in a news release.

During the Biden administration, new Title IX regulations were issued to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. However, those were struck down by a federal judge in January 2025 who decided the rules had legal shortcomings.

Ding writes for the Associated Press.

Sometimes, beauty is a burden.

Such is the case with Burney Falls, a Northern California waterfall whose loveliness became such a siren song to costume-wearing Instagram mermaids, selfie-taking TikTok tour guides and off-the-beaten-track road trippers that crowds grew and grew, until the natural wonder just couldn’t handle it any more.

Crowds in recent years have damaged trails, trampled plants and clogged rural roads.

Now, as part of a pilot program to reduce overcrowding, the California Department of Parks and Recreation will require advance reservations to visit the Shasta County waterfall on many days this summer.

“Burney Falls is a crown jewel of the California State Park System, and we want all visitors to have an enjoyable and memorable experience when visiting this one-of-a-kind destination,” State Parks Director Armando Quintero said in a statement. “By allowing visitors to make a reservation in advance, we can help keep crowds manageable and not push the park’s resources past the breaking point.”

The reservations, which can be purchased online, will be required to visit the falls Fridays through Sundays and on holidays during peak visitation season, from May 15 through Sept. 27.

On those days, McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park will offer 103 parking passes for 8 a.m. to noon, an additional 103 passes for 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and 35 passes for the entire day.

The day use passes will cost $11 per vehicle, according to State Parks, with discounts for seniors and people with disabilities.

California State Parks annual pass holders will pay no additional charge but must make reservations. Visitors with overnight campground or cabin reservations will not need additional passes for day use.

The 129-foot waterfall — a wide curtain of white water cascading from a basalt cliff face — generates its own rainbow and once was dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World” by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Visitors often endure long lines to get a selfie at Burney Falls. Here, Rachel Brussbau poses with her 1-year-old daughter, Sage, and Crysten Michol in July 2023.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

But for much of its history, it “experienced limited visitation due to its rural location … and lack of publicity,” the State Parks department said in a statement.

“For generations of visitors, it had the reputation of a small, family-oriented park and one of California’s best-kept secrets,” the department said. “However, over the past decade, and especially with the growth of social media, that secret is now world-famous.”

Crowds swelled during the COVID-19 pandemic, when indoor public spaces closed.

A State Parks spokesperson told The Times in an email Monday that in 2015, Burney Falls had 121,495 visitors. Numbers “have steadily risen since that time, peaking at 322,192 visitors in 2020 during the pandemic,” the spokesperson said.

Since then, about 220,000 people have visited the park each year.

The spokesperson said the numbers account only for people who come in through the official entrance and not those who park illegally on the side of the road and enter off-trail.

Because so many people have veered off established trails, the park in recent years has experienced increased erosion and damage to sensitive vegetation and sacred tribal land, according to the State Parks department. Heavy traffic and illegal parking also have created unsafe conditions along State Highway 89, one of the heavily forested county’s main thoroughfares and a critical fire evacuation route.

“Campers with reservations are hesitant to leave the park, knowing that it may take up to two hours to re-enter on busy days,” the department statement read.

Because of limited parking, the gates often close for several hours each day.

“If lucky enough to gain entry, visitors inside the park are met with extreme overcrowding, long restroom lines, and overflowing trash cans instead of a peaceful, rejuvenating experience at one of the nation’s most awe-inspiring natural landmarks,” State Parks said.

In the summer of 2024, State Parks closed all access to the waterfall for the season to repair trails and slopes damaged by heavy crowds and storm erosion.

The department said it will evaluate the day use reservation system at the end of the summer and make adjustments if necessary for future peak visitation periods.

State Sen. Megan Dahle (R-Bieber), whose district includes Shasta County, said the pilot program “is likely to disrupt some trips” until word spreads.

“Unfortunately, for several years it has been clear something needs to change at Burney Falls,” Dahle said. “I hope this is an interim measure on the way to longer-term fixes to accommodate visitors.”

WASHINGTON — A federal judge told the U.S. government Monday not to cut down more than 10 trees without first providing notice amid a legal dispute at a historic Washington golf course that President Trump plans to renovate.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said during a remote hearing that she wasn’t going to issue a temporary restraining order just yet in the case brought by the DC Preservation League. She also told the National Park Service that it should first discuss any plans with government lawyers if it was going to cut down more than 10 trees.

Monday’s hearing came after the plaintiff’s emergency petition seeking to stop work at the course, citing news reports that major renovations were to begin Monday.

Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the Park Service, said during the hearing there was no plan to begin such work Monday but added that a safety assessment was underway.

Reyes told the parties she didn’t want to play the role of the “Parks and Rec” department, an allusion to the sitcom, but said she also didn’t want trees being bulldozed.

“I’m no Amy Poehler,” she said referring to the show’s star.

At one point during Monday’s hearing, the judge said she was made aware that closure signs had been put up at the site, which led to Griess’ asking someone to check. He later reported that there were no such signs. Reyes asked that if any such signs were found that the government’s attorney be told.

The complaint filed against the Department of the Interior argues that the Trump administration’s reconstruction of East Potomac Park, including the East Potomac Golf Course, would violate the congressional act that created the park in 1897. The roughly 130-year-old act established the park for the “recreation and the pleasure of the people.” The course itself opened in 1919.

Trump, an avid golfer, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.

When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the president’s mass deportation effort.

Instead, a top Justice Department official insisted the ruling wasn’t binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.

By February, the district court judge, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes, a nominee of President Biden, accused Trump officials in a ruling that month of seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers,” adding that they could “only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist.”

Hardly isolated, the case illustrates a broader pattern of defiance of lower court decisions in President Trump’s second term.

The failure of Trump officials to follow court orders has been highlighted most notably in individual immigration cases. But a review of hundreds of pages of court records by the Associated Press also shows an extraordinary record of violations in lawsuits over policy changes and other moves.

In the administration’s first 15 months in office, district court judges ruled it was violating an order in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including mass layoffs, deportations, spending cuts and immigration practices, the AP’s review of court records found. That’s about 1 out of every 8 lawsuits in which courts have at least temporarily blocked the administration’s actions.

The Trump administration’s power struggle with federal courts — which is testing basic tenets of U.S. democracy — reflects an expansive view of executive authority that has also challenged the independence of federal agencies, a president’s ethical obligations and the U.S. role in the international order.

Widespread noncompliance found

The Trump administration violations in the 31 lawsuits are in addition to more than 250 instances of noncompliance that judges have recently highlighted in individual immigration petitions — including failing to return property and keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.

Legal scholars and former federal judges said they could recall at most a few violations of court rulings over the full four-year terms of other recent presidential administrations, including Trump’s first time in office. They also noted previous administrations were generally apologetic when confronted by judges; the Trump administration’s Justice Department has been combative in some cases.

“What the court system is experiencing in the last year and a half is just qualitatively completely different from anything that’s preceded it,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who studies federal courts and is tracking litigation against the Trump administration.

Though Trump officials eventually backed down in about a third of the 31 lawsuits, legal experts say their treatment of court orders poses serious dangers.

“The federal government should be the institution most devoted to the rule of law in this country,” said David Super, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University. “When it ceases to feel itself bound, respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country.”

The White House’s aggressive policy moves have prompted a barrage of lawsuits — more than 700 and counting.

Higher courts boost Trump efforts

The AP’s review also found that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, overruled the district courts and sided with the White House in nearly half of the 31 cases. Critics say those decisions are emboldening the administration to ignore judges’ orders.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the higher courts had overturned “unlawful district court rulings.” The administration will “continue to comply with lawful court rulings,” she added in a written statement.

“President Trump’s entire Administration is lawfully implementing the America First agenda he was elected to enact,” the statement said.

Among other instances of noncompliance, judges found the White House defied rulings when it deported scores of accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, withheld billions of dollars in foreign aid and failed to restore programming at the Voice of America. The three cases date to the first few months of the new administration, but judges have continued to find violations since then, including in two cases in April.

“The danger is that this gets normalized,” said JoAnna Suriani, counsel at the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, which is tracking noncompliance cases. The group is also involved in litigation against the administration.

‘Ham-handed,’ ‘hallucinating’

In October, U.S. District Judge William Smith took little time to conclude Homeland Security officials were flouting one of his orders. Smith, a nominee of President George W. Bush, had blocked them from making billions of dollars in disaster relief funding to states contingent on cooperation with the president’s immigration priorities.

The Department of Homeland Security responded by keeping the immigration requirement on some grants, but making it contingent on a higher court overriding Smith’s injunction. The judge called the move “ham-handed” and said the agency was trying to “bully the states.”

In a case over the suspension of refugee admissions, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden nominee, accused the Justice Department last May of “hallucinating new text” in an appellate court order and “rewriting” it to achieve the government’s preferred outcome.

In four additional cases the AP reviewed, judges stopped short of a clear written finding of noncompliance but still criticized the administration’s response to their orders.

Of the judges who have confirmed violations, 22 were appointed by Democratic presidents and seven by Republican presidents.

Former federal judges Jeremy Fogel and Liam O’Grady said jurists are losing trust in the integrity of the Department of Justice.

That’s making them “more aggressive in accusing the government of bad faith,” said O’Grady, who along with Fogel is part of the nonpartisan democracy group Keep Our Republic.

Fogel said judges are also getting frustrated.

“They make orders and the orders don’t get complied with, and then they have to inquire why the orders are not being complied with, and that’s where it gets very mushy and very political,” he said.

Education case raises alarms

In Eureka, Calif., school administrator Lisa Claussen is worried about the impact on her students’ mental health if a judge does not find the Education Department in violation of a court order on federal grants.

Grant money allowed the school district in the poor coastal community in Northern California to hire more than a dozen psychologists and social workers to help students struggling with drug use and suicidal thoughts.

Education officials in the Trump administration told schools in California and other states last year that it was discontinuing the grants; the administration opposed diversity considerations in the grant process.

U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson blocked the move permanently in December, but California and 15 other states now say the administration is making an end run around her injunction by imposing new rules, including an initial limit of six months of funding.

Attorneys for the Education Department said they wanted to see whether schools were making progress on performance goals before releasing additional funds. The judge’s order did not block the six-month limit, they added in a court filing.

Evanson, a Biden nominee, has yet to rule.

In the absence of a one-year funding guarantee, Eureka City Schools and other districts say they have already issued layoff notices to mental health providers or eliminated positions.

“We have many kids who don’t trust adults for very good reason, and to be able to just swipe this grant like they’re doing … ,” Claussen said in a phone interview, her voice trailing off. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Justice Department response

In court filings, Justice Department attorneys have generally disputed accusations that the government was not complying. They have argued over the meaning of words, cited favorable appellate court rulings and said they were acting outside the scope of the court’s order, among other legal maneuvering.

Outside of court, Trump and White House officials have railed against federal judges. Vice President JD Vance has even suggested the president could ignore court orders.

Will Chamberlain, senior counsel with the conservative legal advocacy group the Article III Project, said many of the judges who have found violations are ignoring laws that clearly prohibit their rulings.

Trump officials are “generally complying, appealing and winning,” he said. “If they were defying orders left and right, they’d be losing them.”

A justice’s rebuke

In March, a federal appeals court ruled Sykes, the judge in California, had probably exceeded her authority in requiring bond hearings nationwide and blocked her February decision.

The outcome was not unusual.

In 15 of the 31 lawsuits the AP reviewed, an appellate court or the Supreme Court either allowed the administration’s underlying policy, limited the district court’s efforts to correct or punish the noncompliance, or both.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her fellow justices after one such ruling.

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” she wrote in June in a dissent joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. “Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

Thanawala writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.

A request from Los Angeles police officials to boost staffing and purchase new vehicles in time for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games has been met with deep skepticism by City Council members who worry about committing funding amid uncertainty around the plan to secure the venues.

During an hours-long budget hearing Tuesday, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell repeated a warning he has issued in recent months, suggesting that public safety will suffer if the city doesn’t hire more officers to replace the hundreds expected to leave the department in the next two years.

Despite recent recruitment gains, McDonnell said the council needs to fund the new hires now, so the department can staff up in time for the Olympics. Under the current security plan, the LAPD would supply about 2,400 officers, or just under a third of the total officers needed to police the Games.

The LAPD is requesting 520 new police recruits for the next fiscal year, which would grow the 8,600-member department by about 10 officers, with projected attrition at 510 officers.

The department is also requesting nearly $100 million from the city to purchase more than 500 new vehicles, as well as equipment such as an upgraded radio network, new computers and more than 1,600 body cameras, for the Games. LAPD officials said that after the Games, the vehicles would be used to upgrade the department’s aging fleet.

LAPD Cmdr. Mario Mota told council members at the Tuesday hearing that hundreds of the new vehicles would police the eight Olympic venues within city boundaries. The additional patrol cars and other specialized vehicles would also allow police to continue normal operations elsewhere over the 66 days between the July 14 start of the Olympic Games and the end of the Paralympic Games, he said.

LAPD officials said there was a misconception that federal authorities will take the lead on all security operations at Olympic venues. In fact, the federal priority will be safeguarding international delegations and protecting high-security areas, while the LAPD and other state and local agencies will be responsible for securing areas where most Olympic-related events are being held. The LAPD will still respond to 911 calls within city limits.

The U.S. Secret Service has not yet released details on how many federal agents will flood secure zones around venues, which include Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Exposition Park and Crypto.com Arena.

Some L.A. officials have expressed growing fears that taxpayers and the city treasury could be hit with a round of crippling costs if the city doesn’t ink a rigorous deal with LA28, the nonprofit that is organizing the Games, to ensure a “zero-cost” event.

The federal government has set aside $1 billion for Olympics security spending, including for local and state law enforcement, but has given few details about when and how it will distribute those funds, amid concerns that President Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress might not follow through with its funding pledge. The exact costs to L.A. and other local governments remain unknown, as officials wait to hear from federal security agencies about what services will be needed.

Police officials previously told the department’s civilian watchdog that the city has to allocate the money to the LAPD before the federal government can say how much it will reimburse.

That uncertainty didn’t sit well with some council members.

“What is LAPD’s role inside the perimeters of the venues?” Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who heads the budget committee, asked at one point during the meeting. “The fact we haven’t nailed this down and it feels like we’re having two conversations — it’s confusing and frustrating.”

Some council members questioned whether the new vehicles in the budget proposal were necessary — and fiscally responsible.

When asked why the department can’t lease squad cars or repurpose existing vehicles, an LAPD official admitted that those options hadn’t been explored — which drew an exasperated response from Councilmember Tim McOsker.

Some of the concerns raised by the City Council echoed activists and other observers, who point to the LAPD’s increased militarization after the 1984 Summer Olympics — when it acquired new equipment that some say was disproportionately used against communities of color in the years that followed.

Security preparations for the Olympics have been ongoing for years. The LAPD has sent delegations to Italy and France to observe security measures in those host nations. But in other ways, progress has been slow. Several months ago, McDonnell quietly replaced the department’s Olympics czar, Cmdr. Hamed Mohammadi, with Deputy Chief Billy Brockway.

“We’re going in the wrong direction as far as personnel,” McDonnell said. In all, police officials estimated that 30,000 law enforcement employees from various state and local agencies will be involved in the security operations.

Mayor Karen Bass, who is running for reelection, once hoped to bring the LAPD back to 9,500 officers — its size when she took office. But amid a continuing budget crunch, she recently said she is more focused on keeping the department from getting smaller.

Overtime for Los Angeles police officers, and any other major expenses, would be acutely felt by a city government that recently closed a nearly $1-billion budget deficit, in part by slowing police hiring. The police union may try to negotiate for bonus, hazard and standby pay for officers who work the Games when their contract expires next June.

The last U.S. host city, Salt Lake City, had a much smaller police department but benefited from an infusion of federal funding and mutual aid agreements with neighboring agencies. Under California law, LAPD officials said, law enforcement agencies can enter mutual aid agreements only after a state of emergency has been declared, such as after a natural disaster.

Several council members asked whether the department has considered lobbying for changing the state law; LAPD officials admitted that they haven’t.

Some on the council also questioned whether the department should be doing more to reassign sworn officers working administrative jobs that could be handled by civilian employees.

Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth clashed with Democratic lawmakers in Congress for a second day Thursday, rejecting senators’ accusations that the Iran war was launched without evidence of an imminent threat and waged with no coherent strategy.

The three-hour hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee mostly traced the well-worn positions of Republicans and Democrats on the conflict, Hegseth’s leadership and the ways in which President Trump has used the American military.

In his opening statements, Hegseth called Democratic lawmakers “reckless naysayers” and “defeatists from the cheap seats” who have failed to recognize the many successes of the U.S. military against the Islamic Republic.

Hegseth said Trump has had the courage “unlike other presidents to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon and that their nuclear blackmail never succeeds. We have the best negotiator in the world driving a great deal.”

Democrats peppered Hegseth with questions about his efforts to remake military culture, U.S. support for Ukraine and whether Trump would seek congressional approval for the war. The Defense secretary said the ceasefire postpones the deadline for securing such approval.

Hegseth seemed to emerge with solid Republican support, though a few GOP senators asked about the dismissal of a top Army general and sought assurances that the Pentagon is doing everything possible to prevent civilian deaths.

The hearing was convened to discuss the Trump administration’s 2027 military budget proposal, which would boost defense spending to a historic $1.5 trillion. Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, emphasized the need for more drones, missile defense systems and warships.

Top Democrat argues that war has left U.S. in worse position

Sen. Jack Reed, the committee’s ranking Democrat, argued that the war has left the U.S. in a worse strategic position, with 13 American troops killed, more than 400 injured and equipment destroyed.

The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, sending fuel prices skyrocketing, Reed said. Iran still has enriched uranium and retains enough combat effectiveness to keep the conflict locked in an impasse, while Iran’s hard-line government is still in charge.

“I am concerned that you have been telling the president what he wants to hear instead of what he needs to hear,” Reed said. “Bold assurances of success are a disservice to both the commander in chief and the troops who risked their lives based on them.”

Reed also lambasted Hegseth for his firing of top military leaders and suggested the Defense secretary had failed to recognize the accomplishments of women and people of color in the military. Reed noted that 60% of about two dozen officers fired by Hegseth have been female or Black.

Hegseth said that any firing is based on performance and that previous Pentagon leaders “were focused on social engineering, race and gender in ways that we think were unhealthy for the department.”

Republican chairman offers warmer welcome

Hegseth received a warmer welcome from Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the committee, and other GOP lawmakers. Wicker kicked off the hearing by noting that the U.S. is in the most dangerous security environment since World War II.

Through the war against Iran, Trump “has worked to remove the regime’s conventional military capabilities and force it back to the table for a permanent solution,” Wicker said.

He also commended the budget proposal for 2027, saying it “is chock-full of important programs and initiatives that are absolutely necessary to secure American interest in the 21st century.”

Sen. Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska, praised Hegseth’s statement on the need for nuclear deterrence as well as the development of Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense program.

“For years, this committee has known that we must improve our ability to defend our homeland against a wider variety of threats,” Fischer said.

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, asked Hegseth whether he ever lied to Trump, pushing back against Reed’s claim that Hegseth tells the president what he wants to hear.

“I only tell the truth to the president,” Hegseth said.

Questions about civilian deaths

Senators also focused on civilian deaths in the Iran war and the Pentagon decision to hollow out a congressionally mandated office set up specifically to reduce civilian casualties.

The Associated Press has reported that growing evidence points to U.S. culpability for a deadly strike on an Iranian elementary school adjacent to a Revolutionary Guard base that killed more than 165 people, including children.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York asked Hegseth, “What is your response to targeting that has resulted in the destruction of schools, hospitals, civilian places? Why did you cut by 90% the division that’s supposed to help you not target civilians?”

Hegseth responded that the Pentagon has an “ironclad commitment” to do more than other countries to prevent civilian deaths.

A day earlier, he battled with Democrats during a nearly six-hour House Armed Services Committee hearing, where he faced sharp questioning over the war’s costs in dollars, lives and diminishing stockpiles of crucial weapons.

Hegseth said Wednesday that the strike on the Iranian school remains under investigation.

War powers resolutions fail to pass

Democrats have called the conflict a costly war of choice that lacks congressional approval or oversight. But they have failed to pass multiple war powers resolutions that would have required Trump to halt the conflict until Congress authorizes further action.

Under the War Powers Act of 1973, Congress must declare war or authorize use of force within 60 days — a deadline that arrives Friday. The law provides for a potential 30-day extension, but the Republican administration has not indicated publicly whether Trump will seek it.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, asked Hegseth whether Trump will seek congressional authorization or ask for the 30-day extension. The Defense secretary said the clock pauses during a ceasefire. Kaine disagreed based on his reading of the law.

The Trump administration is in “active conversations” with lawmakers on addressing the 60-day timeline, according to a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Finley, Groves and Kinnard write for the Associated Press. Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C. AP writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — After weeks of delay, the House voted Thursday to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security, but not its immigration enforcement operations, and send the bipartisan package to President Trump to sign, ending the longest agency shutdown in history.

The White House had warned that temporary funding Trump had tapped to pay Transportation Security Administration and other agency personnel would “soon run out,” and that sparked new threats of airport disruptions.

DHS has been without routine funds since Feb. 14, causing hardship for workers, though much of Trump’s immigration agenda that is central to the dispute is being funded separately.

“It is about damn time,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, who proposed the bill more than 70 days ago.

The House swiftly voted by voice, without a formal roll call, to pass the measure.

The House’s narrow Republican majority has repeatedly stalled out under House Speaker Mike Johnson, with his own party tangled in internal disputes on a range of pending issues, including the homeland security funding. While the Senate unanimously approved the bipartisan package a month ago, the bill languished in the House.

Democrats refused to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol without changes to those operations after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents during protests against an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Republicans would no go along with a plan pushed by Democrats to fund TSA and the other parts of DHS without the money for ICE and Border Patrol.

To break the impasse, Republicans in both the House and Senate decided to tackle the immigration enforcement funding on their own through what is called budget reconciliation, a cumbersome weekslong process ahead.

By beginning that budget process Johnson, R-La., was able to unlock a broader bipartisan bill for TSA agents and the rest of DHS. House Republicans late Wednesday adopted budget resolution on a largely party-line vote, 215-211, that is focused on eventually providing $70 billion for immigration enforcement and deportations for the remainder of Trump’s time in office and ensure Democrats can no longer block funding. Trump’s term ends in January 2029.

One key Republican, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, said isolating the immigration-related money on a separate track is “offensive to the men and women who serve in ICE and Border Patrol, and are serving this country every single day.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Former FBI Director James Comey appeared in court on Wednesday, kick-starting a criminal case against him that legal experts say presents significant hurdles for the prosecution and will likely be a challenge for the Justice Department to win.

Comey, who didn’t enter a plea, was indicted in North Carolina on Tuesday on charges of making threats against President Trump related to a photograph he posted on social media last year of seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47.” The Justice Department contends those numbers amounted to a threat against Trump, the 47th president. Comey has said he assumed the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence against the Republican president, and removed the post as soon as he saw some people were interpreting it that way.

The indictment is the second against Comey, a longtime adversary of Trump dating back to his time as FBI director, over the past year. The first one, on unrelated false-statement and obstruction charges, was tossed out by a judge last year. Now prosecutors pursuing the threats case face their own challenge of proving that Comey intended to communicate a true threat or at least recklessly discounted the possibility that the statement could be understood as a threat.

The indictment accuses Comey of acting “knowingly and willfully,” but its sparse language offers no support for that assertion. Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche declined to elaborate at a news conference on what evidence of intent the government has. But broad 1st Amendment protections for free speech, Supreme Court precedent and Comey’s public statements indicating that he did not intend to convey a threat will likely impose a tall burden for the government.

“Here, ‘86’ is ambiguous — it doesn’t necessarily threaten violence and the fact that it was the FBI Director posting this openly and notoriously on a public social media site suggests that he didn’t intend to convey a threat of violence,” John Keller, a former senior Justice Department official who led a task force to prosecute violent threats against election workers, wrote in a text message.

The case was charged in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the location of the beach where Comey has said he found the shells. He is set to make his first court appearance Wednesday at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., the state where he lives.

What the law says on threats

The Supreme Court has held that statements are not protected by the 1st Amendment if they meet the legal threshold of a “true threat.”

That requires prosecutors to prove, at a minimum, that a defendant recklessly disregarded the risk that a statement could be perceived as threatening violence. In a 2023 Supreme Court case, the majority held that prosecutors have to show that the “defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.”

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has found that hyperbolic political speech is protected. In a 1969 case, the justices held that a Vietnam War protester did not make a knowing and willful threat against the president when he remarked that “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J,” referring to President Lyndon B. Johnson. The court noted that laughter in the crowd when the protester made the statement, among other things, showed it wasn’t a serious threat of violence.

Regarding the current case, Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by the Associated Press, says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” It notes: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ‘to kill.’ We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

Comey deleted the post shortly after it was made, writing: “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” and “I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

What the government will try to prove

John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney in the Western District of Virginia, said the government will likely try to prove that Comey should have known better as a former FBI director.

“I think they’re going to try to circumstantially say that you were head of the FBI, you knew what these terms meant and you said them out to the whole world as a threat to the president,” Fishwick said, though he noted that such an argument would be challenging in light of Comey’s obvious 1st Amendment defenses.

Comey was voluntarily interviewed by the Secret Service last year, and the fact that he was not charged with making a false statement suggests that prosecutors do not have evidence that he lied to agents, Fishwick said.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, wrote in an opinion piece published Tuesday that “despite being one of Comey’s longest critics, the indictment raises troubling free speech issues. In the end, it must be the Constitution, not Comey, that drives the analysis and this indictment is unlikely to withstand constitutional scrutiny.”

“If it did,” he added, “it would allow the government to criminalize a huge swath of political speech in the United States.”

Tucker, Richer and Kunzelman write for the Associated Press. Kunzelman reported from Alexandria, Va.

WASHINGTON — The White House is warning Congress that funding to pay Department of Homeland Security personnel will “soon run out,” sparking new threats of airport disruptions and national security concerns as the House slow-walks legislation to end what has been the longest-ever lapse in agency funding.

In a memo late Tuesday to lawmakers, the Office of Management and Budget said money that President Trump tapped to pay Transportation Security Administration and other workers through executive actions will be exhausted by May. It called on the House to quickly approve the budget resolution senators approved in an all-night session last week that would pave the way for full funding for the department.

“DHS will soon run out of critical operating funds, placing essential personnel and operations at risk,” the memo said.

The pressure from the Trump administration could help House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose narrow Republican majority has been stalled out, tangled in internal party disputes on a range of pending issues, including the Homeland Security funding. They have left the chamber at a virtual standstill.

The House was expected to vote as soon as Wednesday on the Senate budget resolution that is designed to unlock a multistep process to eventually fund the department. But by midday, House action again screeched to a halt. The administration has warned GOP lawmakers off making changes that could prolong passage.

“Restoring funding for the Department of Homeland Security has never been more urgent, as demonstrated by recent events,” the memo said, a nod to the situation over the weekend when a man armed with guns and knives tried to storm the annual White House correspondents’ dinner that Trump, the vice president and top Cabinet officials were attending.

Homeland Security shutdown is longest ever

Homeland Security has been operating without regular funds for more than two months after Democrats refused to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without changes to those operations after the deaths of Americans protesting Trump’s deportation agenda.

While immigration enforcement workers have largely been paid through the flush of new cash — some $170 billion — that Congress approved as part of Trump’s tax cuts bill last year, others, including TSA, have had to rely on Trump’s intervention through executive action to ensure their paychecks.

But with salaries topping $1.6 billion every two weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said recently, those funds are drying up.

More than 1,000 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began, according to Airlines for America, the U.S. airlines trade group that called Wednesday on Congress to fully fund the agency.

“The urgency to provide predictable and stable funding for TSA is growing stronger by the day,” the group said in a statement. “Time and time again, our nation’s aviation workers and customers have been the victim of Congress’ failure to do their jobs.”

Complicated budget strategy ahead

House and Senate Republicans have embarked on a go-it-alone strategy, attempting to approve funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without Democrats. They want to provide $70 billion for those immigration operations for the remainder of Trump’s term to ensure no further interruptions.

It’s a cumbersome process, the same that was used last year to approve Trump’s tax cuts bill, that will play out over several weeks.

The Senate launched the process last week, and is now waiting on the House to act. Once that budget resolution is approved, both the House and Senate are expected to draft the actual funding bill, a process that can take weeks.

In the meantime, Johnson is next expected to quickly turn this week to legislation that would fund the other parts of Homeland Security, including TSA, the Coast Guard and other agencies.

That bipartisan bill has support from Democrats and already passed the Senate a month ago, when Republicans reluctantly agreed to carve out the immigration-related funds that Democrats had opposed. But it has been stalled out in the House, as Republicans in that chamber disagreed with the Senate’s approach.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday.

The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.

The moves were announced as part of a broader push to step up federal executions after a moratorium under the Biden administration. Only three defendants remain on federal death row after Democratic President Biden converted 37 sentences to life in prison, though the Trump administration has so far authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

The federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.

The pentobarbital protocol was adopted by William Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, to replace a three-drug mix used in the 2000s, the last time federal executions were carried out before Trump’s first term in office.

Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland in the final days of the Biden administration withdrew the pentobarbital lethal injection policy after a government review of scientific and medical research found there remains “significant uncertainty” about whether its use causes unnecessary pain and suffering.”

In 2020, under Barr’s leadership, the Justice Department published a rule in the Federal Register to allow the federal government to conduct executions by lethal injection or use “any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.”

A number of states allow other methods of execution, including electrocution and inhalation of nitrogen gas.

The Trump administration, in a report released Friday, said the Biden administration “got the standard and the science wrong.” The Biden administration’s findings, among other things, “failed to address the overwhelming evidence” that a person injected with pentobarbital “quickly loses consciousness — rendering him unable to experience pain,” the report said.

Currently on death row are are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

The announcement on Friday is expected to clear the path for the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh.

The United States Department of Justice has ended its probe into US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh.

US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X on Friday that her office was ending its probe into the Fed’s extensive building renovations because the Fed’s inspector general would scrutinise them instead.

Pirro, a Trump ally and the top federal prosecutor in Washington, DC, said she had instead asked the Fed’s internal watchdog, the Office of Inspector General, to examine cost overruns in renovations of the central bank’s Washington headquarters.

“The IG has the authority to hold the Federal Reserve accountable to American taxpayers,” Pirro said in a social media post. “I expect a comprehensive report in short order and am confident the outcome will assist in resolving, once and for all, the questions that led this office to issue subpoenas.”

The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom US President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated in January to replace Powell. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15.

Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, had said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.

The leadership transition at the world’s leading central bank could now proceed quickly.

Republicans praised Warsh during a Tuesday hearing even as Democrats questioned his independence from Trump, the lack of transparency around some of his financial holdings, and what they said was his flip-flopping on interest rates. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the committee, questioned if Warsh will be a “sock puppet“.

Still, Trump’s previous appointment to the Fed’s board of governors, Stephen Miran, was approved by the full Senate just 13 days after his nomination.

No evidence

The investigation was among several undertaken by the Department of Justice into Trump’s perceived adversaries. For months, it had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct.

A prosecutor handling the case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government had not yet found any evidence of a crime, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve.

The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg branded prosecutors’ justification for the subpoenas as “thin and unsubstantiated”.

More recently, prosecutors made an unannounced visit to a construction site at the Fed’s headquarters but were turned away, drawing a rebuke from a defence lawyer in the case who called the manoeuvre “not appropriate”.

Warsh said during the Senate hearing on Tuesday that he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls for the central bank to do so.

“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Warsh said during the hearing. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had … I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”

Warsh’s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh did not immediately cut rates and responded, “I would.”

The decision to abandon the investigation represents a rare pullback for a Department of Justice that over the last year has moved aggressively, albeit unsuccessfully, to prosecute public figures the president does not like.

Robert Hur, an lawyer for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, did not immediately respond on Friday to an email seeking comment.

Government spoke out to passengers booked with carriers like Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2 and Wizz Airs amid fears of fuel supply disruption and potential flight cancellations

The Government this afternoon issued a statement to passengers across the UK amid growing concerns over jet fuel shortages and the prospect of flight cancellations. The Department for Transport stepped in to respond following warnings from the European Union.

EU energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen said this week: “Unfortunately, it’s very likely that many people’s holidays will be affected, either by flight cancellations or very, very expensive tickets.”

He added: “Even if we do everything we can do, if the jet fuel is not there, then it’s not there. [Currently] it is primarily a crisis of prices and not yet a crisis of supply, but unfortunately we cannot be sure to prevent a crisis of supply, especially on jet fuel in the future, if the crisis continues.”

Earlier today, President Trump suggested the Iran situation could drag on for weeks, stating he ‘wouldn’t rush’ a deal. The DfT then issued direct guidance to passengers booked with carriers including Jet2, Ryanair, Wizz, easyJet and British Airways.

It said: “There is no current need for passengers to change their travel plans. UK airlines buy jet fuel in advance, and airports maintain stocks to support their resilience. The government is working closely with the aviation industry to monitor risks and minimise disruption to passengers.”

“If your flight is cancelled, you have clear legal rights, including the right to a full refund or re-routing. Read this factsheet for the full picture on the current situation and what it means for you.”

Is there a shortage of jet fuel in the UK?

DtT said: “UK airlines are clear that they are not currently seeing a shortage of jet fuel. It is typically bought in advance, with airports and their suppliers keeping stocks of bunkered fuel to support their resilience.”

Do you need to change your travel plans?

Officials explained: “There is no current need to change upcoming travel plans. Government regularly meets with industry to monitor risks, understand pressures and ensure clear communication with passengers, should circumstances change.

“We recognise that families may be concerned, and that aviation and tourism businesses are operating in challenging global conditions. We are working hand‑in‑hand with industry to help flights keep operating.

“We advise passengers to continue checking with their airlines before they travel, and to check the FCDO travel advice for the latest updates. You should also ensure you have appropriate travel insurance.”

How is the government protecting passengers?

Under UK law, if your flight is cancelled, you are entitled to either a full refund or to be booked onto an alternative flight if you:

• depart from an airport in the UK on any airline
• arrive at an airport in the UK on an EU or UK airline
• arrive at an airport in the EU on a UK airline

For more information about your rights, you can:

What is government doing?

The UK Government said: “Since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, we have been closely monitoring UK jet fuel stocks and working with airlines, airports and fuel suppliers to ensure passengers keep moving and businesses are supported.

“We continue to plan for a range of contingencies, while focusing on securing a long lasting and workable solution to get shipping flowing freely again through the Strait of Hormuz.”

How are airlines being supported?

In terms of carriers the DfT said: “At some UK airports, airlines are given scheduled times known as ‘slots’ in which to take off or land.

“Under normal rules, airlines must use at least 80% of their allocated slots during a season to keep them for the following year. If they fall below this threshold, those slots can be reassigned to another airline. This is known as the ‘use it or lose it’ rule.

“Airport Coordination Limited, the independent body that manages slot allocation at UK airports, has updated its guidance so that airlines will not lose their slots if fuel shortages prevent them from flying. Airlines can now apply for an exemption from the ‘use it or lose it’ rule in these circumstances.

“This means airlines can focus on minimising disruption for passengers, rather than feeling pressure to operate flights purely to protect their slots.”

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has ended its probe into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X that her office was ending its probe into the Fed’s extensive building renovations because the Fed’s Inspector General would scrutinize them instead.

The decision ends an investigation, one of several undertaken by the Justice Department into President Trump’s perceived adversaries, that for months had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct.

A prosecutor handling the case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government hadn’t yet found any evidence of a crime, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve. The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg prosecutors’ justification for the subpoenas as “thin and unsubstantiated.”

More recently, prosecutors made an unannounced visit to a construction site at the Fed’s headquarters but were turned away, drawing a rebuke from a defense attorney in the case who called the maneuver “not appropriate.”

The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom Trump, a Republican, nominated in January to replace Powell, whose term as chair ends May 15. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, has said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.

Warsh said Tuesday that he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls for the central bank to do so.

“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Kevin Warsh, a former top Fed official, said under questioning by the Senate Banking Committee. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. … I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”

Warsh’s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh didn’t immediately cut rates and responded, “I would.”

Riverside County has been ordered to pay $2.25 million to a former sergeant who said he was pressured into early retirement in retaliation for reporting workplace harassment by a superior.

Sgt. Frank Lodes was forced to leave the job he loved in 2022 — penning a resignation letter in a Del Taco parking lot — while a high-ranking department official threatened him with mounting investigations, according to the complaint. On Tuesday a civil jury concluded that Lodes resigned involuntarily due to his reporting of a hostile workplace and was awarded the multimillion-dollar payment as compensation for his emotional damages.

Lodes’ attorney Bijan Darvish said the award was a “significant number” that adequately represents the harm inflicted on Lodes, noting that the period since his forced retirement has been the “darkest four years” of Lodes’ life.

He said that his client did not wish to comment on the verdict as discussing the events remained painful. The Sheriff’s Department and the county did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Being a cop was his life; he lived and breathed it 24/7,” Darvish said. “It was his entire identity, and that’s why it was so difficult for him when it was taken away.”

The jury award comes amid a rare wide-open governor’s race that includes the head of the Sheriff’s Department, Chad Bianco, who is a leading GOP candidate for the seat. Bianco has staked his campaign on his lengthy career in law enforcement, which spans more than three decades, including serving as the elected sheriff of Riverside County since 2019.

Although high-ranking Sheriff’s Department officials were involved in Lodes’ case, Darvish said there was no evidence presented at trial that Bianco had direct knowledge of his client’s mistreatment. Bianco was not a defendant in the lawsuit. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Darvish argues that the case points to a departmental culture of covering up allegations of misconduct.

“When there’s a harassment complaint made against the captain and they never investigated, and they pressure someone to resign and withdraw the complaint,” he said, “then that’s a systemic issue.”

The retaliation began after Lodes, a 25-year veteran of the department, formally reported workplace harassment with human resources in March 2022, according to the complaint.

Lodes had been called mentally ill in front of his peers by a captain during a promotability meeting around October 2021. A few months later, he found degrading posters of his head on a child’s body shoved inside his uniform pockets and gun holster and plastered over the station walls, according to the complaint.

The department responded to his harassment report by launching an investigation into Lodes unlawfully using informants and threatening him with possible criminal prosecution, according to Darvish.

The jury agreed that these allegations were a manufactured excuse to cover up unlawful retaliation.

Within days of filing the workplace harassment complaint, a Internal Affairs sergeant packed Lodes’ personal belongings in a box and drove them to his house, according to the complaint. The sergeant spent hours pressuring Lodes, then 47, to accept early retirement.

The following day, Lodes was told to meet with a high-ranking official in the Sheriff’s Department in a Del Taco parking lot who instructed him to resign immediately and withdraw his harassment complaint.

The $2.25-million award in the civil case will come from the county’s coffers.

The award casts renewed scrutiny on Bianco’s Sheriff’s Department two weeks before primary election ballots land in Californians’ mailboxes.

He was also in the spotlight in March after seizing more than 650,000 ballots from the November election as part of an investigation to determine if they were fraudulently counted. He put the investigation on hold shortly before the California Supreme Court halted it pending further review.

Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.

It has long become clear that those of us who saw a glimmer of hope in President Trump’s appointment of Lori Chavez-DeRemer as secretary of Labor got snowed.

It wasn’t just, or even chiefly, the miasma of sleaze and corruption that seemed to surround her wherever she went. Or her slavish sucking up to Trump in public, notably at a Cabinet meeting in which she pleaded with Trump to send his immigration goons into Portland, Ore., to “crack down.” (“Thank you for what you’re doing with your agents on ICE,” she said at the August 2025 session.) Fun fact: She had represented a Portland suburb as a Republican for a single House term.

No. It was the gulf between the expectations, even among Democrats, that she might be a decent pick for the job, and the reality.

After all, she had been one of only three Republicans in the House to vote in favor of the so-called PRO Act, which would significantly strengthen collective bargaining rights. (The measure passed the House in 2019 and 2021 but hasn’t gotten out of committee in the current Congress.)

As I reported after her nomination, labor activists and pro-labor politicians made encouraging noises about her. Among them was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): “It’s a big deal that one of the few Republican lawmakers who have endorsed the PRO Act could lead the Department of Labor,” Warren said. “If Chavez-DeRemer commits as Labor secretary to strengthen labor unions and promote worker power, she’s a strong candidate for the job.”

She received an explicit endorsement from Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “Her record suggests real support of workers & their right to unionize,” Weingarten tweeted. “I hope it means the Trump admin will actually respect collective bargaining and workers’ voices from Teamsters to teachers.”

The betting was that Chavez-DeRemer would be, at the very least, an upgrade from Trump’s previous appointee as Labor secretary during his first term. That was Eugene Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court justice, who had been a lawyer for big corporations fighting unions and resisting workplace regulations.

The most commonly expressed doubt about Chavez-DeRemer was whether she would have the fortitude to maintain a pro-labor stance in the face of the open hostility to workers displayed by Trump and the rest of his administration.

Within months, the answer was clear, and it was no. In May, she ceased enforcing a Biden administration rule that had discouraged businesses from designating their workers as independent contractors, depriving those workers of the legal protections and wage and hour benefits they would have received as employees.

The budget she submitted to Congress last year would slash her agency’s discretionary funding by more than 35%, to $8.6 billion from $13.2 billion, and cut its workforce by nearly 4,000 full-time workers, or more than 26%. In July she announced a plan to rescind 63 regulations that had been designed to help workers.

With language that sounded cribbed from the MAGA playbook, she said her goal is to “eliminate unnecessary regulations that stifle growth and limit opportunity.” Most of the regulations facing the guillotine related to worker health and safety protections.

Brief as it was, Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure wasn’t the first time that the Department of Labor was ill-served by its management. Republican presidents have displayed a decades-long tendency to fill the top spot with political cronies or pro-business activists masquerading as worker advocates, or worse.

Frances Perkins, Franklin Roosevelt’s Labor secretary, recalled having to clean up the agency — not just morally and ethically, but with broom and bucket, when she took over from William Nuckles Doak, Herbert Hoover’s appointee.

The Labor Department was located in a converted apartment building, its interior dark and foreboding, its shadowy corners occupied by silent, hulking men whom Perkins mentally labeled “cigar in the corner of the mouth types. Stale ashtrays and spittoons were everywhere, along with wastebaskets surrounded by mounds of misaimed and crumpled papers. (Its current Washington quarters are in the Frances Perkins Building.)

Doak didn’t seem inclined to leave the premises. Perkins got rid of him by sending him to lunch and packing up his personal effects while he was out.

Perkins’ first step as secretary was to disband an anti-immigrant squad that shook down foreign-born laborers for cash and helped employers harass labor organizers. She set a high standard for the agency, pushing forward legislation establishing the 40-hour workweek and the National Labor Relations Board — and also creating Social Security.

Many of Perkins’ Democratic successors have watched sadly as their efforts have been undone with a change in administrations. Robert Reich, who served under Bill Clinton (and is now an emeritus professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and an assiduous blogger), wrote Tuesday of having loved the agency’s mission: “to protect and raise the standard of living of working Americans.”

With Reich at Labor, the Clinton administration raised the federal minimum wage in 1997 from $3.35 an hour, where it had been stuck since 1980, to $5.15 (albeit still a cheeseparing $10.69 in today’s buying power). “We fought against sweatshops,” Reich recalled. “We took on big corporations that were cheating their employees. We kept workers safe.”

That the agency has been “treated like crap is an insult to generations of hardworking DOL employees, to American workers, to America,” Reich wrote.

Under Trump, the Department of Labor has become just another pro-business front pretending to advocate for workers. Genuine labor advocates are infuriated by its decline, which has proceeded under Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

The budget for its all-important wage and hour division, which enforces laws governing the minimum wage, overtime and prohibitions on child labor, has shrunk by 26% over a decade, according to David Weil, who headed the division under Obama and whose appointment by Biden to head the division was derailed by opposition from Big Business.

“There were 1,050 investigators working for the agency when I had the honor to lead it in the Obama administration,” Weil, who is a professor of social policy and management at Brandeis University, wrote last year. “It has barely over one-half that number now. The agency had 63 times more investigators per workplace in 1939 than in 2024.”

Trump poses as a pro-worker force, but his policies are atrocious for the laboring class. His Labor Department “walked away from a rule that expanded overtime protections to millions of workers,” Weil observed.

“While Congress’s ‘big beautiful bill’ boasts its worker-friendly removal of taxes on overtime, that provision benefits only a small slice of workers and revoking the overtime regulation further reduces the number of workers eligible for overtime protections when working long hours,” he wrote. “Or take the administration’s attack on low-paid workers whose employers hold federal contracts, by rescinding a $15 minimum wage for contractors covered by a Biden-era executive order, which benefited construction workers, purportedly a key Trump constituency.”

The Labor Department plays a role not only in regulating current workplace conditions but looking ahead at the “long-term prospects of our labor markets,” Weil told me Tuesday. “For example, the discussion of ‘affordability’ is rooted not only in rapidly rising price levels but also the low level of long-term earnings growth. Equally, our beliefs about the future prospects of employment and opportunity for college-educated workers are being upended by the potential impacts of AI.”

He added, “Questions like these require that the Labor Department be led by serious and knowledgeable individuals who place the interests of workers as their focus. So far, this administration has shown contempt for this mission,” as is shown by the decline and fall of Chavez-DeRemer.

Sometimes, the departure of an underperforming executive or official presages improvements ahead. That hasn’t been the pattern under Trump, and sadly, it’s not likely to happen at Labor.

April 22 (UPI) — Federal prosecutors Tuesday evening announced an 11-count indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, accusing the non-profit of defrauding donors by using their money to pay informants within hate groups they were monitoring.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the indictment from a Montgomery, Ala., grand jury during a press conference, alleging that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid more than $3 million to informants in hate groups the organization had vowed to dismantle.

“As the indictment described, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups, but it was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” he said, alongside FBI Director Kash Patel.

The indictment, which was returned by an Alabama grand jury just minutes before the press conference, details payments to informants in groups such as the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the Ku Klux Klan, but does not detail extensive evidence that the money was “used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups.”

Federal prosecutors allege that the SPLC obtained money via donations by making “‘materially false representations and omissions about” what the money would be used for and utilized bank accounts linked to “fictitious entities” to covertly pay their field sources.

One SPLC informant is described in the court document as a member of the online leadership chat group behind the 2017 Unite The Right protest in Charlottesville, Va., where one person was killed when a car rammed counterprotesters.

This informant was paid more than $270,000 between 2015 and 2023, according to the indictment, which alleges that they attended the Unite the Right event “at the direction of the SPLC,” made “racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.

Another SPLC informant described by federal prosecutors as being affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance organization stole 25 boxes of documents from the headquarters of a violent extremist group, copied the materials for the SPLC and returned the originals. The court document alleges that the SPLC paid the informant more than $1 million between 2014 and 2023.

Blanche told reporters during the press conference that the informants were paid via pre-paid cards with funds from donors that were moved from bank accounts that the SPLC created for five fictitious organizations in order to shield the source of the funds.

“They attempted to hide their criminal activity from our financial banking network,” Patel said.

“They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial system that we rely on as everyday Americans were deceived into believing that money is not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme and fraud but rather fictitious entities they stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud.”

The indictment charges the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Ahead of the press conference, SPLC CEO Bryan Fair announced in a video statement that the organization and its employees were the target of a federal investigation focused on its use of informants, though they had yet to know all the details.

He defended the SPLC’s use of informants as necessary to protect themselves and the public after decades of being “engaged in unprecedented litigation to dismantle the Klan and other hate groups.”

Information the SPLC gained from the informants was frequently shared with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI, he said, adding that they did not broadly share their use of informants to protect their identities.

“While we no longer work with paid informants, we continue to take their safety seriously. These individuals risked their lives to infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation’s most radical and violent extremist groups,” he said, vowing to fight the allegations.

“We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve.”

The SPLC has long faced criticism from some Republicans and conservatives, who say the prominent anti-hate nonprofit has drifted from its mission of fighting extremism and White supremacy by labeling several right-wing organizations as hate groups.

In October, Patel announced that the FBI severed ties with the SPLC, accusing it of having “long abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.”

Democrats, SPLC supporters and critics of the Trump administration lambasted the indictment as politically motivated, with the American Civil Liberties Union calling it “another example of the Trump administration’s extreme attempts to silence its critics.”

“Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. This administration is using the full weight of federal prosecution to target an organization whose mission is rooting out violent extremism,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said online.

“This is part and parcel of Trump’s assault on free speech, on nonprofits and on anyone who dares to disagree with him.”

House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called the indictment “baseless and illegitimate.”

“These partisan hacks who continue to weaponize the criminal justice system against perceived opponents will never intimidate us,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Amid growing national security concerns, the FBI said Tuesday that it has launched a broad investigation in the deaths or disappearances of at least 10 scientists and staff connected to highly sensitive research, including four from the Los Angeles area.

“The FBI is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists. We are working with the Department of Energy, Department of War, and with our state and state and local law enforcement partners to find answers,” the agency said in a statement.

The FBI’s announcement comes after the House Oversight Committee announced that it would investigate reports of the disappearance and deaths of the scientists, sending letters seeking information from the agencies involved in the federal inquiry as well as NASA, which owns the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, where three of the missing or dead scientists worked.

“If the reports are accurate, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with access to scientific secrets,” Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the committee, and Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) wrote in the letters.

President Trump told reporters last week that he had been briefed on the missing and dead scientists, which he described as “pretty serious stuff.” He said at the time that he expected answers on whether the deaths were connected “in the next week and a half.”

Michael David Hicks, who studied comets and asteroids at JPL, was the first of the scientists who disappeared or died. He died on July 30, 2023, at the age of 59. No cause of death was disclosed.

A year later, JPL physicist Frank Maiwald died at 61, with no cause of death disclosed.

Two other Los Angeles scientists are part of the string of deaths and disappearances.

On June 22, 2025, Monica Jacinto Reza, a materials scientist at JPL, disappeared while on a hike near Mt. Waterman in the San Gabriel Mountains.

On Feb. 16, Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was fatally shot on the porch of his Llano home. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department arrested Freddy Snyder, 29, in connection with the shooting. Snyder had been arrested in December on suspicion of trespassing on Grillmair’s property.

Snyder has been charged with murder.

There is no evidence at this point that the deaths and disappearances, which occurred over a span of four years, are connected.

A spokesperson for NASA, which owns JPL, said in a statement on X that the agency is “coordinating and cooperating with the relevant agencies in relation to the missing scientists.

“At this time, nothing related to NASA indicates a national security threat,” agency spokesperson Bethany Stevens wrote. “The agency is committed to transparency and will provide more information as able.”

Representatives from Caltech did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

April 21 (UPI) — Retail sales rose by 1.7% in March mostly due to high gas prices from the ongoing conflict with Iran, the Commerce Department announced Tuesday.

It was the fastest monthly change in three years, according to a release.

In February, sales rose 0.7%.

Retail sales are seasonally adjusted but not for inflation. In March inflation rose by 0.9%, which was three times the February rate, according to the latest Consumer Price Index.

The war between the United States, Israel and Iran has caused gas prices to spike. The Strait of Hormuz, a critical transportation route for oil, has been closed to most traffic throughout the fighting. It has dramatically affected the price of gas in the United States and abroad.

Gas station sales jumped in March by 15.5% from February. Without gas station sales, retail rose 0.6% in March, which was at 0.7% in February.

Some categories were stronger. Furniture and home furnishing sales were up 2.2% in March.

Electronics and building materials held up well, too.

Gary Schlossberg, global strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said in commentary to investors on Tuesday: “Pressure on household budgets is being cushioned, for now, by sizable increases in tax refunds tied to last year’s legislation.”

Consumers adjusted their spending in other areas. Apparel sales were flat, and restaurant sales rose only 0.1%.

Gas prices likely caused that, said Dan North, Allianz Trade senior economist for North America.

“Gasoline is a thing you love to hate, because you have to buy it; there’s really no substitute,” North told CNN in an interview.

Eventually, consumers will deplete savings and tax refunds, and for lower-income Americans, it could be a struggle, North said.

“If we can wind this up, so to speak, in the next few months, the damage to the consumer and economy might not be so bad,” North said. “If you start stretching it out for months and months and toward the end of the year, then consumers and the rest of the economy get in trouble.”

April 21 (UPI) — The Southern Poverty Law Center announced via YouTube Tuesday that it is now the target of an investigation by the Department of Justice.

“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” said CEO Bryan Fair in the video. “This use of informants was necessary because we are no stranger to threats of violence. In 1983, our offices were firebombed, and in the years since, there have been countless credible threats against our staff.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a nonprofit advocacy and litigation organization that tracks White supremacist and other hate groups in the United States. Republicans have criticized the nonprofit for acting as a far-left entity that they say targets conservative organizations and people. It was founded in 1971 by Morris Dees, Joseph Levin Jr. and Julian Bond as a civil rights law firm in Montgomery, Ala.

The case is being led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama, CBS News reported.

Fair said the probe is targeting the organization and its employees.

“For decades, we engaged in unprecedented litigation to dismantle the Klan and other hate groups. In light of that work, we sought to protect the safety of our staff and the public,” Fair said in the video. “We frequently shared what we learned from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI. We did not, however, share our use of informants broadly with anyone, to protect the identity and safety of the informants and their families.

“And while we no longer work with paid informants, we continue to take their safety seriously. These individuals risked their lives to infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation’s most radical and violent extremist groups,” Fair said.

Fair said the organization will fight the allegations.

“We stood in the vanguard then, and we stand in the vanguard today,” he said. “We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve.”

WASHINGTON — The Southern Poverty Law Center says it’s the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department and faces possible charges over its past use of paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

The civil rights group made the announcement on Tuesday, saying President Trump’s administration appears to be preparing legal action against it or some of its employees.

“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

The SPLC previously paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities, often sharing it with local and federal law enforcement, Fair said. It was used to monitor threats of violence, he said, adding that the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.

“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”

He said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

The SPLC, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded in 1971 and used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups. The nonprofit has become a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.

The investigation could add to concerns that Trump’s Republican administration is using the Justice Department to go after conservative opponents and his critics. It follows a number of other investigations into Trump foes that have raised questions about whether the law enforcement agency has been turned into a political weapon.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has faced intense criticism from conservatives, who have accused it of unfairly maligning right-wing organizations as extremist groups because of their viewpoints. The SPLC regularly condemns Trump’s rhetoric and policies around voting rights, immigration and other issues.

The SPLC came under fresh scrutiny after the assassination last year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed attention to its characterization of the group that Kirk founded and led. The SPLC included a section on that group, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the agency was severing its relationship with the SPLC, which had long provided law enforcement with research on hate crime and domestic extremism. Patel said the SPLC had been turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the United States.

House Republicans hosted a hearing centered on the SPLC in December, saying it coordinated efforts with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration “to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”

Binkley and Richer write for the Associated Press.

Ruling is latest loss for Trump administration, which has sought access to state voter data ahead of the US midterms.

A federal judge in the United States has dismissed a Department of Justice lawsuit seeking to access voter data from Rhode Island.

The decision on Friday was the latest loss for the administration of President Donald Trump, which has sought to access voter data in dozens of states across the country.

In the ruling, US District Court Judge Mary McElroy sided with election officials and civil rights groups, writing that the Justice Department does not have the authority “to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here”.

Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore praised the ruling in a statement afterwards.

“The executive branch seems to have no problem taking actions that are clear Constitutional overreaches, regularly meddling in responsibilities that are the rights of the states,” Amore wrote.

“But the power of our democratic republic, built on three, coequal branches of government, is clearer than ever before.”

The Justice Department has sued at least 30 states for their voter information, maintaining it needs the information to secure election security. State officials have said that turning over the data raises an array of privacy concerns.

Under the US Constitution, state officials administer elections. Only Congress can pass laws related to how states oversee voting.

But Trump has sought to transform election administration, claiming that voting has been marred by widespread fraud.

In particular, Trump has continued to maintain that the 2020 election, in which he lost to former President Joe Biden, was “stolen”.

No evidence has ever been put forward to support the claims.

Federal judges have rejected attempts in California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon to force the states to hand over voter files to the federal government. At least 12 states, however, have willingly provided or pledged to provide voter information to the Trump administration.

The push for voter information is one of several actions that have raised concerns over how the Trump administration will approach the midterm elections in November, which will decide the makeup of the US Congress.

He is currently calling on Republicans to pass the so-called SAVE America Act, a bill that would create higher documentation standards for voters to prove their citizenship when registering to vote and casting ballots.

The majority of Republican lawmakers have embraced Trump’s claim that the law is needed to prevent non-citizens from registering to vote, despite studies showing that instances of voter fraud are glancingly rare.

Critics say the measure would risk disenfranchising millions of voters, particularly those who have legally changed their names, which is a common practice in US marriages.

The State Department in the United States has announced it is restricting visas for “individuals from countries in our hemisphere who support our adversaries in undermining America’s interests in our region”.

Thursday’s statement underlined that 26 individuals had already seen their visas stripped as part of the policy.

The State Department’s stance comes as President Donald Trump seeks to expand US influence across the Western Hemisphere, as part of a platform he calls the “Donroe Doctrine”, a riff on the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has taken an aggressive stance towards stopping drug trafficking across the Americas, threatening economic penalties and military action for noncompliance.

He has also sought to check China’s growing sway over the region, as an increasing number of Latin American countries tighten their bonds with the Asian superpower.

The State Department explained that the expanded visa restrictions would penalise those who “knowingly direct, authorise, fund, or provide significant support to” US adversaries in the Western Hemisphere.

“Activities include but are not limited to: enabling adversarial powers to acquire or control key assets and strategic resources in our hemisphere; destabilising regional security efforts; undermining American economic interests; and conducting influence operations designed to undermine the sovereignty and stability of nations in our region,” the statement added.

The language was vague, never mentioning China or the campaign against drug-trafficking cartels.

But it continues a trend under the Trump administration to revoke visas from foreign critics and political opponents.

Last year, for instance, the administration sought to revoke visas for pro-Palestine protesters, claiming their presence could have foreign policy consequences for the US.

More recently, the administration has terminated the immigration visas for at least seven individuals with familial ties to the Iranian government or individuals connected to the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Revoking visas

The statement on Thursday did not identify the 26 individuals facing visa restrictions as part of the expanded policy.

But it cited the same authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act that the Trump administration has used to attempt to deport pro-Palestine student protesters last year.

Under the law, the entry of foreign nationals can be restricted when the secretary of state has reason to believe they pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

While the administration has abandoned deportation efforts against some of the targeted individuals, at least two, Mahmoud Khalil and Badar Khan Suri, continue to face expulsion.

More recently, the administration has terminated the immigration visas for at least seven individuals with familial ties to the Iranian government or individuals connected to the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Already, some figures in Latin America have seen their visas revoked over political disagreements with the US.

In July, Brazilian officials involved in the prosecution of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro saw their US visas withdrawn. They included Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a frequent target of right-wing ire.

Then, in September, the Trump administration stripped Colombian President Gustavo Petro of his visa after he made an appearance at the UN General Assembly that was critical of US policy.

The State Department, at the time, denounced Petro for “reckless and incendiary actions”. He was later invited to visit the White House in February, as part of a detente with Trump.

Visa restrictions have been part of Trump’s larger policy to exert pressure on foreign groups and limit immigration into the US.

Earlier this year, the administration enacted immigrant visa bans on dozens of countries, citing both national security and alleged stresses on social services.

Trump has also sought to take a more militaristic approach towards Latin American governments it deems as adversarial, referring to the whole of the Western Hemisphere as the US’s “neighbourhood”.

In January, the US launched an attack on Venezuela that culminated in the abduction and imprisonment of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, and it has also initiated an ongoing fuel blockade against Cuba.

Some of Trump’s actions in the region have been deadly. The Venezuela attack left dozens of Cubans and Venezuelans killed. And since September, the Trump administration has conducted at least 51 lethal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

The death toll in that campaign has reached at least 177 people. Rights groups have decried the attacks as extrajudicial killings.

But the Trump administration has labelled multiple drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations” and has argued they are seeking to destabilise the US through the drug trade.