DOJ

The U.S. Department of Justice and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have agreed to settle a lawsuit over what federal prosecutors alleged last year was a pattern of delaying applications for permits to carry concealed firearms for “unreasonable” lengths of time.

The Sheriff’s Department will “bring its procedures in line with the Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen decision,” the DOJ said in a statement Thursday, referring to a 2022 high court decision affirming a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.

Excessively delaying applications for concealed carry permits, the DOJ had alleged, effectively violated the applicants’ constitutional rights.

In response to its lawsuit, the DOJ’s statement said, the Sheriff’s Department “drastically cut those waiting times and is now in compliance with statutory deadlines.” The development is “a huge win for the residents of Los Angeles County and for the Second Amendment,” the federal agency added.

“The Justice Department supports our law enforcement partners.” Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in the statement. “The sheriff acknowledged the problem and devoted substantial additional resources, including new processing software and additional personnel, to cutting waiting times dramatically.”

The Sheriff’s Department did not immediately provide comment on the settlement.

In its complaint filed in federal district court in L.A. in September, the DOJ claimed that the Sheriff’s Department had “systematically denied thousands of law-abiding Californians their fundamental Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home — not through outright refusal, but through a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay.”

The complaint stated that between Jan. 2, 2024, and March 31, 2025, the Sheriff’s Department received almost 4,000 applications for new concealed carry licenses, but issued only two. Two others were denied and the rest were either withdrawn or were still pending, according to the DOJ.

The DOJ complaint also cited Sheriff’s Department data that showed that over those 15 months, it took an average of nearly 300 days for the department to advance the more than 8,000 new permit applications and renewals it received.

The Sheriff’s Department said in September that Sheriff Robert Luna, who was also listed by name as a defendant in the original federal complaint, “inherited a dysfunctional system” when he took office in 2022, and that he had only 13 people to manage the avalanche of applications for concealed carry permits filed each year in L.A. County.

The department also said in September that since December 2022, it had reduced “the backlog” of applications for concealed carry licenses from about 10,000 to about 3,200, and that more than 19,000 such applications had been “successfully approved” since 2020.

Aug. 11 (UPI) — A federal judge has approved the Trump administration’s request to dismiss criminal charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani while chastising the Justice Department for its reasoning and methods for abandoning the high-profile case.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed with prejudice three fraud-related charges against Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain, while reserving judgement on two conspiracy charges against five other defendants, asking the Justice Department for more information before deciding their dismissals.

The Justice Department charged Gautam Adani and the seven other defendants, all current or former executives of Adani Group or its subsidiary Adani Green Energy, in November 2024, alleging various defendants participated in schemes to pay $265 million in bribes to Indian government officials to secure lucrative solar energy contracts, lied to U.S. and international investors to raise billions of dollars in financing and impede the investigations of three U.S. government entities.

The three alleged schemes were conducted between 2020 and 2024, according to the indictment.

In May, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter requested that the charges be dismissed, stating “the Department of Justice has reviewed this case and has decided, in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants.”

In response to Garaufis’ demand that the Justice Department explain its motion to dismiss, McCotter said that the case is predominantly foreign, India has investigated the allegations and found no actionable misconduct, investors lost no money, there would be “extraordinary proof problems,” the defendants would likely never appear before U.S. courts and the indictment was unsealed during the final days of the Biden administration in order to drop “a potential quagmire of a case into the lap” of the incoming Trump administration.

In his Monday order, Garaufis called the “irregularities” in McCotter’s decision to dismiss the indictment “concerning” and said the principal associate deputy attorney general “appears to have eschewed the professional opinions of innumerable officials from various federal offices and replaced them with his singular judgment.”

He said McCotter’s decision, reached largely in collaboration with Adani’s defense counsel and seemingly without input from those who investigated and brought the case, “evinces a lack of respect for the judiciary.”

Garaufis also strongly rebuked McCotter for alleging the Biden administration’s Justice Department unsealed the indictment during its final days to hinder the incoming Trump administration, stating he appears to be accusing officials from four different government agencies without providing “a scintilla of evidence” to show that the unsealing of the indictment was politically motivated.

“McCotter’s baseless assertion is unbecoming of his office. It is also inconsistent with this court’s experience,” Garaufis said.

“The court has presided over innumerable cases brought by the SEC, the FBI, the department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office over the last 26 years (and counting) and does not agree with McCotter’s characterization of their integrity and motives.”

His order also recounts several events involving Gautam Adani and President Donald Trump or his inner circle as he was being investigated and prosecuted, including congratulating Trump on Nov. 6, 2024, on winning re-election and announcing a commitment to invest $10 billion in the United States days later. The order also cites reporting that Gautam Adani and Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., held meetings as early as November 2025.

In a social media statement on Monday, Gautam Adani said he welcomed the court’s decision “with humility and deep respect for the judicial process.”

“Throughout this challenging period, our faith in truth, fairness and the rule of law remained unwavering,” he said.

“We will continue doing what matters: building our nation, creating value that outlasts us and serving a purpose larger than ourselves. That is our commitment.”

Aug. 5 (UPI) — The Justice Department announced Wednesday that Connecticut Children’s Medical Center has agreed to stop offering gender-affirming care to minors amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on treatment supported by every major U.S. medical organization.

The Justice Department has been investigating doctors and clinics providing gender-affirming care to minors nationwide since at least July 2025, when it announced that the department had issued more than 20 subpoenas. The investigation followed a President Donald Trump executive order directing the department to prioritize investigations into alleged fraud, consumer deception and federal drug-law violations involving such care.

The order separately directed federal agencies to take steps to ensure that medical institutions receiving federal research or education grants end such care for people under 19.

The Justice Department did not identify the statutes or specify what federal laws Connecticut Children’s allegedly violated, but said Connecticut Children’s denies claims.

The Justice Department added that there was no determination of liability.

In the agreement announced Wednesday, which resolves the Justice Department’s allegations, Connecticut Children’s also agreed to pay an undisclosed monetary penalty and dedicate an additional $500,000 in medical care for individuals “living with the harmful consequences of ‘gender-affirming care,'” the Justice Department said.

UPI has contacted Connecticut Children’s for comment.

Gender-affirming care, including for minors, is supported by every major medical association in the United States. It includes a range of therapies, including psychological, behavioral and medical interventions, with surgeries for minors being exceedingly rare. According to a 2024 Harvard study, cisgender minors and adults were far more likely to undergo analogous gender-affirming surgeries than their transgender counterparts.

Contrary to medical guidance, Republicans over the past few years have sought to restrict and ban gender-affirming care, while spreading misinformation concerning such treatment.

Upon returning to the White House, Trump implemented a series of policies targeting transgender Americans, including issuing an executive order on his first day in office directing government policy to recognize only male and female as sexes and stating that they are “not changeable.”

Eight days later, he signed a second executive order, “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” directing federal agencies to withhold funds from medical providers that offer gender-affirming medical care, such as puberty suppressants and hormones, to anyone under the age of 19.

In December, the Department of Health and Human Services announced proposed rules that would ban hospitals from performing gender-affirming care on minors as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs.

The Connecticut Children’s agreement follows similar agreements reached by Texas Children’s and Cleveland Clinic with the Justice Department to stop providing gender-affirming care to minors.

While FBI poll monitoring is not new, US lawmakers raise alarm amid Trump’s years-long, evidenceless claims of election fraud.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced it has sent federal monitors to polls in four Democratic-leaning cities in Michigan, amid warnings that the administration of United States President Donald Trump could use such monitors for partisan aims.

The DOJ announced the monitors would be present during Michigan’s primary vote on Tuesday as part of an effort to “ensure free and fair elections nationwide”, according to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.

“The Department of Justice is devoting extensive resources to ensure uniform and nondiscriminatory monitoring,” it said.

While the department has for decades overseen an election monitoring programme to ensure compliance with federal civil rights laws, lawmakers and advocates have raised concerns over how such a programme could be used under the current administration.

Trump has for years alleged, without evidence, that US elections have been marred by widespread fraud. He has never acknowledged his 2020 loss to US President Joe Biden.

Michigan has played a major role in those claims.

In a primetime speech delivered in mid-July, Trump re-upped a previously concluded probe into alleged voter fraud in the city of Muskegon as he called on the FBI to reinvestigate the case. Local officials had already determined that several voter registration forms had been fraudulently filled out in the city by employees of a consulting firm attempting to falsely reach their quotas.

No fraudulent ballots were cast in connection with the fake voter registration forms. State officials have highlighted the situation as proof of the efficacy of their election security practices.

The announcement on Tuesday came weeks after the Department of Justice said it planned to monitor 15 jurisdictions across six states: Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia. The DOJ has said it will expand the use of monitors leading into November.

The department did not give a reason for why the four Michigan cities –  Detroit, Hamtramck, Lansing, and East Lansing – were selected.

Detroit, Lansing and East Lansing are all heavily Democratic leaning. Hamtramck, considered the first Muslim-majority city in the US, has historically leaned Democratic, but has shifted increasingly Republican in recent years.

Residents of the state on Tuesday were casting ballots to determine party nominees in local, state and US Congressional races for the midterm election in November.

Key races include a fierce Democratic Senate race, with progressive Abdul El-Sayed hoping to defeat US Representative Haley Stevens, widely viewed as a weathervane for the party’s future.

Voters will also decide the candidates for the gubernatorial race, with Trump-backed US Representative John James facing off with former presidential candidate Perry Johnson on the Republican side, as Democrat Jocelyn Benson, the current Michigan state secretary, is expected to sail to victory in her party’s primary.

Democrats ask for assurances

In a letter to the Department of Justice dated Monday, 10 Democratic senators asked for assurances that FBI monitors deployed across the country will not “target jurisdictions in a partisan manner; discourage voter participation or interfere with the voting process; or pressure, harass, or interfere with state and local election officials as they do their jobs”.

They noted the wider context in which the monitors are being deployed, including efforts by the Trump administration to obtain state voter rolls. On Tuesday, a judge ruled the administration could not access Colorado’s voter data, the latest in a string of similar rulings.

Trump has also called for Republicans to “nationalise” elections. Under the US Constitution, state governments administer elections, in a system of decentralisation that advocates have long argued protects against wholesale interference.

The senators said that the DOJ has characterised the monitors as “routine” and “non-partisan”.

“However, it would be remiss not to acknowledge concerns that monitors are being deployed disproportionately to jurisdictions in states governed by Democratic leaders or with Democratic chief election officials,” they wrote.

“Moreover, election monitors are being deployed in the context of President Trump’s ongoing threats to nationalise, militarise, and otherwise interfere with the conduct of free and fair elections.”

Aug. 1 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has called out District Attorney Jeanine Pirro after her office moved to dismiss charges against an Olympic canoeist for vandalism.

Prosecutors on Friday made the motion to dismiss charges against David Hearn, 67, and admitted that the damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was due to a “botched installation and not vandalism.” Hearn was indicted in early July for purposely ripping up a piece of the blue sealant from the bottom of the pool.

The filing in D.C Superior Court lists documents and evidence showing the contracting work was rushed to finish in time for the America 250 celebrations and was not done properly.

“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday. “I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”

Soon after, he posted again, saying, “Look for yourselves at the VANDALISM that took place at The Reflecting Pool. The material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!”

WASHINGTON — President Trump and the Justice Department are asking the Supreme Court to toss an $83 million defamation verdict won by writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexual assault, saying he can’t be sued for comments he made while he was president.

It’s the second time Trump has asked the justices to nix damages awarded by a jury to Carroll, a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host. The Supreme Court refused in June to hear his appeal of another verdict, for $5 million, that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

The latest case centers on comments Trump made during his first term as president. The Justice Department wants to invoke the Westfall Act, which shields government employees from being sued for doing their jobs.

“Absent this Court’s intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office,” federal attorneys wrote. “That alone deserves this Court’s attention.”

The appeal was filed electronically and is expected to be formally docketed with the court Wednesday.

Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, argued that an appeals court “engaged in procedural contortions” to avoid addressing Trump’s claims that presidential immunity protects him from the $83 million award because he made the statements in question in 2019 while he was president.

The lawyers argued that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled in a manner that “cries out for this Court’s review in this unprecedented case” and called the damages “grossly excessive.”

“This is the first case in our nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a president for his conduct in office,” the lawyers wrote.

Carroll’s lawyers have declined to comment on the latest Trump filing.

Trump has long argued he cannot be sued over comments he made about Carroll during his first term where he disavowed knowing her and attacked her motivations for going public with her story in a recent memoir. He’s also asking the Supreme Court justices to reconsider their rejection of his appeal in the $5 million verdict.

The appeal comes about two years after the Supreme Court granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

Carroll testified twice before New York juries that Trump sexually assaulted her in spring 1996 in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower. She first went public with the claims in a 2019 memoir.

She sued Trump for defamation after he accused her of making up the allegation to help book sales, adding that he’d never met her and “she’s not my type.” He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

A Manhattan jury awarded her $83 million in damages in January 2024. Lower courts have so far rejected Trump’s appeals to overturn the verdict, though the New York-based appeals court split over the decision and agreed to delay that payout until the Supreme Court weighs in.

In 2023, another jury said Carroll was entitled to $5 million after concluding that Trump had subjected her to sexual abuse in the department store encounter and for defamation for remarks he had made after his first term ended. That judgment has been paid.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

Whitehurst and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. Neumeister reported from New York.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice civil rights division was created in 1957 with an initial focus on combating racial inequality and protecting voting rights.

But in the first two years of President Trump’s second term, its mission has been reimagined.

Now, the division is focused on combating diversity initiatives, rolling back pro-transgender policies and rooting out allegations of election fraud.

It had for decades investigated police departments for using excessive force. Now it investigates police departments with excessive delays in approving gun permits.

California has served as the division’s laboratory for all of these changes, or, as one former civil rights staffer put it, its “punching bag.”

The civil rights division has been involved in twice as many cases in California as in any other state, according to a Times analysis of cases brought by the Justice Department.

And an examination of press statements by the civil rights division shows that California has accounted for a higher proportion of actions in the second Trump administration than during the same time period in the Biden administration.

The division is led by Harmeet Dhillon, a Californian and a conservative legal crusader, who made her name bringing legal challenges against many of the state’s institutions and once served as the chair of the San Francisco Republican Party.

More recently, she was a leading legal figure in challenges to COVID-19 mandates and has shown steadfast support for Trump; her firm represented him in his successful 2024 fight to remain on the ballot in Colorado.

The Times spoke with a dozen former attorneys in the division, nearly all of whom said that the division has taken on a more partisan approach under Dhillon’s leadership and that the changes in the second Trump administration are far more dramatic than anything that occurred during Trump’s first term.

“It is an ideological civil rights division in a way that we’ve never seen before,” said Regan Rush, the former chief of the division’s special litigation section, which largely focused on investigations into police departments and prisons.

Rush is now director of the Red Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Forward, a nonprofit group that tracks the division’s activities.

In response to questions from The Times, Dhillon wrote that the division’s actions aren’t political.

“This Department speaks plainly and directly when we identify violations of federal law. Being clear about violations of federal civil rights law isn’t political or combative — it’s transparent,” Dhillon said. “I stand behind the work we’ve done since I took over the Civil Rights Division.”

While California produced President Reagan — a hero on the right who as governor frequently sparred with UC Berkeley, as Dillon does today — the state has now become, in conservative circles, a symbol of everything wrong in America.

“If there’s any state that is the antithesis of the Trump administration, it’s California,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Berkeley.

Dhillon said the division brings cases wherever it sees violations of federal law.

“California is where some of the most significant violations of federal civil rights law have occurred, as our enforcement actions demonstrate,” she said.

Former attorneys in the division said the desire to target California was obvious to them.

As one example, the division has announced more than a dozen actions involving universities in California, largely focused on allegations of antisemitism — the subject of an earlier Trump executive order — at University of California campuses and alleged racial preferences in hiring in the UC system and in the admissions practices at several medical schools in the state.

The division concluded that the medical schools at UC Davis and UCLA racially discriminated against white and Asian applicants and that UCLA failed to adequately respond to complaints of antisemitic harassment of Jewish and Israeli students. Other investigations are ongoing.

A pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA in 2024.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

“We were never explicitly told that California institutions are of a particular interest, but it was something that was very easy to notice,” said Ejaz Baluch, a former Justice Department attorney who worked on the employment litigation team that looked into allegations that antisemitism at UC campuses had created a hostile work environment.

Trump’s priorities

Dhillon told podcast host Michael Malice in May that she was in “constant contact” with the White House on a “daily, sometimes several-times-a-day basis.”

That represents a major shift from how the division previously operated, said her predecessor, Kristen Clarke, who was the assistant attorney general overseeing the division during the Biden administration.

“There was a fairly sturdy and necessary wall between the Justice Department and the White House,” Clarke said. “This is a complete 180.”

Dhillon has said she sees her job as enforcing civil rights law through the lens of Trump’s executive orders, which took aim at diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, immigration and pro-transgender policies, among other conservative priorities.

She said that while the division “operates within the administration’s law enforcement priorities … investigative and prosecutorial decisions, including which matters to pursue and how, are made by the Division based on the law and the facts.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said that the division’s changes under Dhillon represent a stark shift from how it operated in the past.

“It is now very much the anti-civil rights department,” Schiff said. “We’re living in this upside-down world where departments that were set up for one purpose are acting in a way that’s antithetical to the purpose of the department.”

Dhillon said that under her leadership, the division “enforces federal civil rights laws evenhandedly, on behalf of all Americans.

“That includes protecting religious liberty, Second Amendment rights, and women’s and girls’ spaces, standing against illegal race-based policymaking and DEI, and defending parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing and education.”

Her reorientation of the division led to a mass exodus of career staff — nearly three-quarters of the roughly 400 attorneys who were there at the beginning of 2025, by Dhillon’s telling.

That’s far more departures than in the first Trump administration.

“I said, ‘My way or the highway,’ and my way isn’t my way, it’s President Trump’s way,” Dhillon told Malice.

Dhillon told The Times that the division has added 100 new lawyers and staff in the last 15 months and plans to hire 100 more.

Prisons and police

As the division has shifted its focus to align with the priorities laid out in Trump’s executive orders, it has shut down a number of cases brought during prior administrations.

Former attorneys in the division worry that other preexisting cases are languishing.

In March, the division opened an investigation into two women’s prisons in California — California Institution for Women in Chino and the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, 35 miles northwest of Fresno — over whether they had violated the rights of other female inmates by housing transgender women in the facilities.

“There have been allegations of sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism and a pervasive climate of sexual intimidation due to the presence of males in the women’s prison,” the Justice Department said in announcing the investigation, misgendering transgender inmates.

Former attorneys in the division said that leadership also sought to open an investigation into the impact of transgender housing policies on juvenile institutions in California, but didn’t find sufficient evidence to warrant opening an investigation.

The investigation into transgender inmates at the women’s prisons came as a prior investigation into the same two prisons remains unresolved over reports from hundreds of women that they had been sexually abused by guards, even as evidence supporting the allegations mounts.

Separate from the civil rights investigation, one of the former guards at the Chowchilla facility was found guilty in January 2025 of more than 60 counts of sexual abuse of inmates and sentenced to 224 years in prison.

“We haven’t seen any kind of relief,” said Megan Marks, former deputy chief in the division’s special litigation section and the deputy director and managing editor for the Red Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Forward.

Dhillon said both investigations into the two women’s prisons are “being pursued vigorously and simultaneously.”

For the last three decades, the division has investigated allegations of police misconduct, authority it was granted by Congress after the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers.

But in the second Trump administration, the division has closed a number of active police investigations and moved away from what Dhillon characterized to Malice as a “standing order to persecute police departments and impose nonsense restrictions on them.”

Instead, the division has brought actions against law enforcement agencies deemed to have failed to protect the rights of gun owners.

California was the first target.

The division filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in September 2025, alleging that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had systemically denied people their 2nd Amendment rights because of long delays in approving concealed carry permits.

Last month, it filed a second gun rights lawsuit in California, this time against the state and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, over the state’s ban on Glock pistols, which acting U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche characterized as a “blatant trampling of our rights by the California government.”

Changing tone

Former attorneys in the civil rights division say the pugnacious tone in press releases, such as the one announcing the lawsuit opposing the Glock ban, and in numerous social media posts by Dhillon announcing her intent to open investigations, represents a major shift from how the department has operated in the past.

“What really stands out more than any other civil rights division is how much they demonize and personalize,” said Christy Lopez, a former attorney in the division who is now a professor at Georgetown Law. “We tried to build rapport with the jurisdiction.”

Dhillon defended the approach she and the division have taken.

“Our job is to enforce the law and ensure compliance,” Dhillon said. “That includes public messaging to ensure the public is both aware of what the law requires and knows when others violate the law. We’ve designed our messaging strategy with this goal in mind, and we are pleased with the effect it’s had.”

Numerous former lawyers in the division also said that the current leadership has put its thumb on the scale at the outset of investigations.

“We were basically fed an answer before we conducted an investigation, which is the total antithesis of how these investigations are supposed to be conducted,” said one former Justice Department attorney who worked on the investigation into allegations of antisemitism in the UC system and requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Attorneys visited UC Berkeley and UC Davis, but found enough evidence only at UCLA to bring a lawsuit on claims that antisemitism created a hostile work environment.

One of Dhillon’s early top deputies, former Huntington Beach City Atty. Michael Gates, denied that politics played a role in decision-making in his time in the division.

“We evaluated every case on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “There was nothing about politics that influenced any of that.”

Gates, who left the department in November, is now the Republican candidate challenging Bonta to be state attorney general.

Dhillon said to The Times that she is “proud of the record we’ve built” and believes the division has been “active and effective.”

But its former leaders worry that with the exodus of attorneys and the changing nature of the division’s approach, it has lost the ability to fulfill its mission.

“Where does it leave the division today?” said Clarke, its former leader. “It’s a broken agency not able to adequately stand up and defend the civil rights of all Americans.”

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has subpoenaed New York Times journalists after they reported on security concerns involving the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One, marking a dramatic escalation of President Trump’s campaign against the media that has drawn condemnation for eroding a fundamental freedom of American democracy.

The new jet, a present from the U.S. ally on which the administration spent $400 million to retrofit and upgrade, entered service this month. But Trump used an older model Air Force One jet to leave a NATO summit in Turkey and later referenced threats against him made by Iran.

The subpoenas seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan next week, the New York Times said, adding that federal agents delivered some subpoenas to the reporters at their homes.

They were issued after FBI Director Kash Patel and other Justice Department officials met at the White House on Friday to talk about the matter, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The journalists subpoenaed included Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt, the Times reported.

“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, said in a statement.

Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said Trump’s “war on the press is looking for another victim.”

He said in a statement that the subpoenas “break from long-standing Justice Department practice to protect the public interest and press independence by requiring prosecutors to only seek information from reporters as a last resort when all other avenues have been exhausted.”

The department said that “to be clear, reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.”

Its statement said that “we value and appreciate the important role that the press plays in this country, but DOJ also plays an important role to make sure that the people entrusted with our nation’s secrets do what they’re supposed to do with that information, which means not sharing classified information.”

While recognizing “there may always be natural tension there,” the department said, “we are not going to ignore the law and stop investigating the people who work in the administration and think it’s OK to leak classified information impacting national security.”

Pattern of anti-press actions

Issuing subpoenas represents a further ramping up of Trump’s effort to threaten independent new organizations by leveraging the power of the federal government against them. It is also part of a systematic pattern by the Republican president to attempt to undermine press freedom in order to shield him from negative coverage.

Earlier this year, the Justice Department issued subpoenas seeking to compel testimony from reporters at the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. In both cases, the department later withdrew the subpoenas.

In January, FBI agents searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, who has been covering Trump’s transformation of the federal government, as part of a leak investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of taking home classified information.

Adam Steinbaugh, senior attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said Friday’s subpoenas and the prospect of “hauling reporters before grand juries sends a chilling message to journalists and whistleblowers alike: Watch what you say, or expect a knock on the door.”

“These tactics are becoming more common,” Steinbaugh said in a statement. “That doesn’t make them normal.”

During his first term, Trump suggested that the press constituted an “enemy” of the American people. Since returning to the White House, he has waged an aggressive campaign against the media unlike any in modern U.S. history.

Trump’s attacks against news outlets and media figures he believes are overly critical of him has included filing lawsuits against outlets whose coverage he dislikes, threatening to revoke TV broadcast licenses and seeking to bend news organizations and social media companies to his will.

The Justice Department over the years has developed and revised internal policies governing how it will respond to news media leaks.

Though the department across presidential administrations has periodically seized the phone records of individual journalists in hopes of identifying sources for national security stories, it is extremely rare for the government to attempt to compel reporters to reveal their sources before a grand jury.

In April 2025, then-Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi rescinded a Biden administration policy that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations — a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.

Doing so again gave prosecutors the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists.

A memo Bondi issued said members of the press are “presumptively entitled to advance notice of such investigative activities,” and subpoenas are to be “narrowly drawn.” Warrants must also include “protocols designed to limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities,” the memo stated.

Security issues with new Air Force One

The president flew the new Air Force One to Turkey during this week’s visit. But he departed Wednesday on one of the older-model Air Force One jets for Mildenhall, a Royal Air Force base in Suffolk, England.

The newer plane also flew to Mildenhall. Trump then switched to that plane for the flight home to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

The abrupt swap came as a shaky ceasefire with Iran had collapsed, with the U.S. launching airstrikes on Iran and Tehran attacking three gulf Arab states. Iran and Turkey share a border, sparking speculation that the new jet lacked certain sophisticated security and countermeasure systems.

The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that the switch had come at the urging of the Secret Service, and that the newer plane lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities.

Trump denied any security concerns, posting on social media that the stop in Mildenhall was so that service members there could view the new jet. During the flight, Trump denied to the reporters accompanying him that security concerns involving Iran were a factor in flying two planes home.

Still, asked if he was aware of any credible threats against Air Force One by Iran, Trump responded, “I have a threat all the time. I’m No. 1 on their list.”

The White House did not answer messages seeking comment about the subpoenas of the Times journalists.

Weissert and Khalil write for the Associated Press. AP writers Eric Tucker, Alanna Durkin Richer, Michelle L. Price and Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

ATLANTA — The U.S. Department of Justice cannot have the names of and contact information for every person who worked during the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The Justice Department in April obtained a grand jury subpoena seeking the names and personal contact information of county employees and volunteer poll workers. President Trump has long claimed without evidence that widespread voter fraud in Georgia’s most populous county, a Democratic stronghold, cost him victory in the state in 2020.

Fulton County asked a judge to quash the subpoena, arguing it was meant to “target, harass and punish the President’s perceived political opponents” and that it was “grossly over broad and untethered to any reasonable need.”

“Given the low need for the subpoenaed information and the highly burdensome nature of the disclosure of the same, the Subpoena is unreasonable and must be quashed,” U.S. District Judge William Ray wrote in his ruling, calling the scope of the request “staggering.”

Emails seeking comment were sent to both the Justice Department and Fulton County.

Although grand juries often work with federal prosecutors to investigate alleged crimes, “that does not give the DOJ the right to use the Grand Jury to do whatever the DOJ wants,” he wrote.

Even if the records sought by the Justice Department could help find people who worked for the county during the 2020 election who support the theory that the election was unfair, the information couldn’t be used to charge anyone, Ray wrote.

“That is because the statute of limitations for any possible crime arising from the 2020 Election has long expired,” he wrote.

The subpoena came after the FBI in January served a search warrant at the Fulton County election hub and seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents from the 2020 election. A federal judge in May denied the county’s request to force the federal government to return the ballots.

The Justice Department argued in a court filing that the subpoena was the “next step in the normal investigative process” and that it seeks “records identifying persons with relevant knowledge.”

Kamal Ghali, a lawyer for the county, argued that the subpoena “will chill participation by election workers” and that the statute of limitations for any of the alleged misconduct had already lapsed.

Justice Department lawyer William McComb argued the statute of limitations issue is not relevant at the investigative stage. The point of the investigation is to figure out what charges can be brought, he said.

“My point is, as we sit here now, we are not sure what charges can be brought. That’s the whole point of the investigation,” he said.

The request for election workers’ contact information, McComb said, “would simply be a pathway to determine and speak with and interview certain individuals who worked at the polls who may have seen, heard or done something in and of themselves.”

The judge noted that the Justice Department had expressed concern about possible criminal actions in the years that followed the election, including an alleged failure by the county to preserve electronic ballot images. But he pointed out that the subpoena seeks information related to what happened during the 2020 election and its immediate aftermath.

“In these hyper-political times in which we currently live, there are sure to be some who disagree with this decision because they believe the allegations of fraud in the 2020 Election and believe that ‘light’ should be brought to those claims,” Ray wrote.

He added that nothing prevents continued investigation into those allegations by people who believe those claims — such as Congress or even the Justice Department — but the power of the grand jury, “which exists to investigate potential crimes and to bring viable indictments” cannot be used for that purpose. Otherwise, anyone in power could use the grand jury process to subpoena personal information of citizens “with no legitimate law enforcement purpose,” he wrote.

“Thus, everyone, whether you support the President or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 Election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ’s ability to utilize the power of the Grand Jury to appropriate your private information without a legitimate purpose,” Ray wrote.

Brumback writes for the Associated Press.

July 7 (UPI) — A group of more than 1,200 former Justice Department employees signed a letter asking senators to reject the nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general.

Justice Connection, a nonprofit organization that advocates for Justice Department civil servants, sent the letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. Signees argue that Blanche’s only goal as attorney general is to show loyalty to President Donald Trump, displaying political bias in an apolitical department.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to consider Blanche’s nomination is scheduled for July 15 and 16.

“Since his confirmation as Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche has shown time and again that his guiding star is fealty to the president, not the Constitution,” Stacey Young, executive director and founder of Justice Connection, said in a statement.

“That fealty led to the purge of thousands of experienced career employees, a loss that will have a generational impact on the Justice Department’s ability to carry out its mission and maintain credibility with the courts and the American people.”

The letter highlights Blanche’s management of the department, his role in mishandling the congressionally ordered release of the investigation files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and support for Trump’s plan to pay Jan. 6 rioters and other allies.

Under Blanche, more than 16,000 employees have left the Justice Department, Justice Connection says, including more than one quarter of its attorneys. Signatories include civil servants who worked under Republican and Democratic administrations.

Blanche was nominated by Trump to succeed former Attorney General Pam Bondi last month.

“The consequences of Blanche’s attacks on DOJ’s apolitical workforce radiate beyond the halls of Main Justice, affecting the entire country,” the letter reads. “They’ve meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done well — leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable.”

June 30 (UPI) — The Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general filed suit against five egg producers for alleged “unlawful coordinated manipulation of egg prices,” a press release said Tuesday.

The department’s Antitrust Division filed suit against Cal-Maine Foods, Hickman’s Egg Ranch, Centrum Valley Holdings, Versova Holdings and Versova Management Cooperative for unlawful coordinated manipulation of egg prices, the release said.

The department also “filed proposed settlements that will, if approved by the court, prevent these companies from engaging in such coordinated manipulation in the future.”

“No product more quintessentially represents affordability than the price Americans pay for eggs,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement. “These actions prove this department’s continued commitment to protecting competition and providing real relief for everyday Americans’ pocketbooks.”

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, the complaint alleges that Cal-Maine, Hickman’s and Versova coordinated to artificially inflate the daily quotations of Urner Barry Publications, a market reporting company whose publications affect prices that grocery stores, restaurants and others pay for eggs nationwide, the release said.

The complaint also alleges that egg price quotations dropped significantly from their peak after the companies learned of the department’s investigation and were told to save documents in March 2025, the release said.

The attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Wisconsin joined the complaint and proposed settlements.

June 30 (UPI) — The Trump administration has filed lawsuits challenging Massachusetts and Rhode Island laws that offer in-state tuition benefits to certain undocumented immigrants, alleging they unlawfully discriminate against U.S. citizens.

The lawsuits announced Monday are the latest the Justice Department has filed against state laws that offer in-state rates, financial aid or scholarships to certain undocumented immigrants who meet state residency or education requirements, which generally consist of living in the state for a number of years and attending high school there.

Justice Department lawyers allege these laws are illegal because they offer noncitizens benefits denied to U.S. citizens from other states.

“The Department of Justice is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise that illegal aliens will not receive taxpayer benefits or preferential treatment over America’s own citizens,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement.

“As our nation marks 250 years of freedom, we will continue to challenge state laws that place aliens over citizens in clear defiance of Congress’ commands.”

Massachusetts has extended eligibility for in-state tuition benefits, financial aid and scholarships at Massachusetts state schools to qualifying undocumented immigrants since 2023, while Rhode Island has allowed qualifying undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition costs going back to 2011. Rhode Island then codified this law in 2021.

The lawsuits filed Monday ask the courts to enjoin enforcement of these laws, saying they violate a federal statute, enacted in 1996, that specifically bans offering in-state tuition to any noncitizen “unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit … without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”

Proponents of these laws, sometimes referred to as Dream Act laws, argue that without offering in-state tuition rates, post-secondary education will be kept out of reach for undocumented immigrants living in the United States, while such laws can reduce high school dropout rates as well as raise student incomes and tax contributions, among other economic benefits.

The Trump administration has been targeting these laws as part of President Donald Trump‘s aggressive immigration policy that has seen mass roundups and deportations of noncitizens.

In April 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to identify and stop the enforcement of state laws and policies “favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens,” specifically highlighting laws that “provide in-state higher education tuition to aliens but not to out-of-state American citizens.”

Since then, federal prosecutors have challenged laws in 12 states. Four lawsuits, against Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Nebraska, have resulted in orders permanently enjoining the states’ in-state tuition laws, while Kansas last week joined the Justice Department in seeking a proposed consent decree that must be approved by the court.

The remaining challenges are pending against Illinois, Minnesota, Virginia, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, all Democratic-led states.

According to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, about 20 states and Washington, D.C., provide in-state tuition to undocumented students, while 18 and the nation’s capital also provide state financial aid.

June 24 (UPI) — The U.S. Justice Department announced charges Wednesday for 12 people it said used drones in a conspiracy to smuggle drugs, weapons and other items into multiple prisons.

The department said the conspiracy affected 10 federal prisons in eight states, including Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi, WAPT-TV reported.

U.S. Attorney William Keyes said the operation was based at a former daycare in Macon, Ga., and used multiple drones to deliver contraband to prisons by night.

Keyes said the indictment “charges the most sophisticated and sprawling criminal enterprise using drones to introduce contraband into the federal prison system ever charged by the Department of Justice,” CNN reported.

The drone deliveries allegedly took place between September 2023 and May 2026. Charges say the group used six drones to deliver contraband at least 38 times. This contraband included methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine,other illegal drugs, tobacco, blades and cell phones.

The prosecutors said that people inside the prisons used phones to help guide the drone pilots. Prison authorities found some, but not all, of the drops, the indictment said.

“The allegations outlined in this indictment describe a coordinated criminal effort involving heavy payload drones to introduce dangerous contraband into federal prisons across multiple states,” William Marshall III, director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, said Wednesday, CNN reported. “Activity of this nature threatens the safety of everyone who lives and works inside our facilities and will not be tolerated.”

The bureau used drone detection systems to uncover the conspiracy, representatives said. A grand jury in Georgia handed down the indictment on charges including drug and firearms distribution on June 10.

Earlier in 2026, a group of state attorneys general launched a combined effort to combat the use of drones to deliver prison contraband.

June 16 (UPI) — On Tuesday, federal prosecutors announced charges against 15 people in Minnesota they say “conspired to impede or injure federal officers” in connection with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement push in Minneapolis earlier this year.

A Department of Justice press release said the 15 are members or associates of Direct Action Minnesota. The charges included conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, interstate stalking, interstate threats, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, assaults on federal officers and destruction of government property.

The prosecutors and other officials said those charged are left-wing antifa activists. “Antifa” is short for “anti-facist.” Thirteen of those charged are in custody, while two remain at large.

The Trump administration’s ICE surge in Minneapolis drew widespread protests and pushback, including volunteer “rapid response” and “ICE watch” patrols, The Washington Post reported. ICE agents killed two protestors, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during the surge.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Tuesday that those charged “engaged in an unrelenting campaign of harassment and violence targeting local and federal law enforcement.”

Markwayne Mullin, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the people charged were “rioters” and said the charges were “a win for law and order.”

“We have zero tolerance for violence against our law enforcement,” he said. “If you assault or obstruct law enforcement, you will face the consequences.”

Daniel Rosen, U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, was asked during a briefing about the charges how many federal agents were injured through the defendant’s alleged actions, The Post reported. Rosen said the charges were based on their plans.

In the release, Rosen said the direct actions of the activists were “un-American” and “will be met with swift justice.”

The press release said Direct Action Minnesota is, in the group’s own description, “a decentralized coalition of working-class people engaged in various forms of community defense against the (then-current) federal occupation happening within the wider metro area, and against state and a far-right violence more broadly.” It said the group “trains its members in the use of shields against law enforcement, surveillance, event planning, role differentiation and rapid mass mobilization” against ICE actions.

Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis City Council member, said Tuesday on social media that he was concerned investigators were targeting legal observers.

“Alerting our neighbors about ICE activity is not a crime,” he wrote. “Observing is not a crime, and loving your immigrant neighbors is not a crime. To every person who was observing the illegal actions committed by ICE and who supported our immigrant community, please know we have your back.”

As of yet, there are no charges against the ICE agents involved in the deaths of Good and Pretti. Rosen said Tuesday that investigations are ongoing.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday accused the Justice Department of launching — at President Trump’s request — a baseless and politically-motivated investigation into him and his wife, First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

“After calling for my arrest last year, Donald Trump directed his Department of Justice to investigate me,” Newsom said. “And just in the last week, I’ve learned his campaign has reached my own home: to get me, he’s coming after my wife, Jen.”

Newsom adamantly denied any wrongdoing by him or his wife. The White House referred questions to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.

A source familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times that there are two probes underway, one related to Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, and one related to Siebel Newsom’s taxes.

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The source said both investigations have been ongoing for about a year; were launched by prosecutors in Sacramento based on information provided by whistleblowers and other local sources in California; and were not the result of directives out of Washington or the White House.

Newsom said that in recent days, “federal agents have knocked on the doors of family friends and former employees,” and have been “demanding records,” “digging through years and years of random documents” and “abusing the grand jury process” in a quest to find any kind of wrongdoing by him or his wife.

“Not because they found a crime. Because they are simply trying to find one,” he said.

Newsom did not describe the specific nature of the alleged probe, the line of questioning faced by friends and employees or the types of records taken or reviewed by federal investigators. But he alleged that Trump instigated the probe because Newsom is considering running for president in 2028, and because Trump “hates that I’ve consistently called him out — over and over again — for his lies and deceit.”

“He has turned the levers of government into his own personal power ministries to reward cronies and to try to jail his opponents,” Newsom said.

Newsom cited Justice Department investigations of several other of the president’s political opponents, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey, former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and former vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

“One by one, anyone who has challenged Donald Trump has ended up on his hit list,” he said. “And today, I proudly join that list.”

This article will be updated.

President Trump’s administration is suing four states over their refusal to issue undercover license plates to federal agents, the latest front in the wider struggle between the White House and Democratic-led states over the Republican president’s immigration crackdown.

The Department of Justice alleges in separate lawsuits announced Thursday that Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington state are imposing unconstitutional restrictions that it says impede law enforcement and threaten agents’ safety.

“By denying undercover license plates to DHS components, including ICE, while issuing them to their own state agencies, these governors are pursuing discriminatory and obstructionist policies against federal law enforcement,” said acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche in a statement.

“These actions undermine federal immigration enforcement, allow dangerous criminals to escape justice, and terrorize American communities,” Blanche added.

The Justice Department filed the suits on Wednesday in U.S. district courts in the respective states. The four state governments are accused of trying “to obstruct the Federal Government’s immigration enforcement efforts, even though control over immigration and the nation’s borders is an exclusive federal power.”

Additionally, the Justice Department argues in the suits that the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause bars state governments from regulating federal law enforcement.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who oversees her state’s plate program and is also a Democratic candidate for governor, said she’s confident her decisions will hold up in court.

“What ICE did in Maine and continues to do was terrorize our friends and neighbors,” Bellows said in an interview Thursday. “There are no secret police in a democracy and we will always stand up for our Mainers safety and freedom.”

A spokesperson for Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Joy Campbell said the state’s lawyers are “reviewing the complaint and will defend the RMV policy to the greatest extent possible.”

Officials in Washington and Oregon did not respond to a request for comment on the federal action.

Feds say agents are endangered when easily identified

The administration asserts that federal agents “frequently investigate and apprehend violent criminals, including cartel members, gang members, sex offenders, human traffickers, and other violent offenders” and says making those authorities easily identifiable subjects them to increased harassment and potential physical harm.

The lawsuit comes after a back-and-forth between the DOJ and some state officials. The administration previously sent state officials letters demanding they justify their policies.

Maine Atty. Gen. Aaron Frey answered the Justice Department last week, defending his state’s policy and disputing the DOJ’s contention that it has hampered federal enforcement actions.

“Rather, the program reflects a legitimate and constitutional policy choice by the SOS not to allow its resources to be commandeered by the federal government for use in civil immigration enforcement activities that have, in Maine and elsewhere, resulted in multiple incidents of abusive and unconstitutional conduct by DHS officials,” Frey wrote.

Bellows, in her role as secretary of state, announced a pause on confidential license plates in January, after federal authorities ramped up their immigration enforcement activities in the state. Bellows said at the time that the state wanted to be “assured that Maine plates will not be used for lawless purposes.”

The federal suit against Maine argues that the state “has issued confidential license plates to law enforcement agencies for many years” and that “such plates are explicitly authorized under Maine law.” The state’s review this year, the suit argues, resulted in unlawful state regulation of the federal government by requiring federal applicants for state license plates to attest that federal vehicles that obtained confidential plates would not be used for civil immigration enforcement. The suit also states that Maine did not impose commensurate requirements on state or local agencies applying for the plates, making the program discriminatory against the federal government.

Bellows has previously defended her decision.

“When ICE asked for confidential license plates, I said no” because “covert civil immigration enforcement is not something Maine will facilitate,” she said last week.

Arguments are similar to debate over agents’ masks

The Trump administration’s arguments on the license plates are similar to its defense of federal agents wearing masks on their deployments to American cities. That became a flashpoint in an extended government shutdown over Department of Homeland Security funding, as Democrats on Capitol Hill demanded key changes to how Trump’s mass deportation plans were carried out after masked federal agents killed two U.S. citizen protesters in Minnesota.

The White House and DHS have maintained the agency’s mask policy, and the administration already has won a federal court order blocking a California law that barred law enforcement officials from covering their faces in the state.

Additionally, the administration has been at odds with so-called sanctuary cities where local law enforcement does not assist federal authorities with immigration enforcement. And Blanche has instructed the Justice Department’s Civil Division to identify all state and local laws, policies, and practices that could impede what the administration describes as “lawful federal operations.”

Barrow and Whittle write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta. Whittle reported from Scarborough, Maine.

May 27 (UPI) — Federal prosecutors are suing the University of California, alleging civil rights violations were committed in connection with pro-Palestinian campus protests, the latest lawsuit by the Trump administration, which has targeted universities over issues from antisemitism to their hiring practices.

The Trump administration has taken dozens of actions against higher education institutions, including investigations, lawsuits and funding freezes, in what critics describe as an effort to crack down on left-leaning ideology in public and private spaces.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Western District of California, focuses on the encampment erected on the University of California, Los Angeles, campus in April 2024 as pro-Palestinian protests erupted across U.S. universities against Israel’s war in Gaza as students sought to pressure their schools to divest from Israel.

Federal prosecutors allege the school failed to protect its Jewish and Israeli students through its inaction concerning the encampment, which was erected April 25, 2024, and torn down May 2, 2024, when the school permitted police to clear the campus of protesters.

“Universities have an obligation to maintain safe and inclusive campuses for all students,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli of the Central District of California said in a statement.

“Universities that violate our nation’s civil rights laws by repeatedly failing to shield Jewish students from antisemitism will be held accountable.”

The lawsuit is similar to the one federal prosecutors filed against UCLA in February, accusing the institution of creating a hostile work environment for Israeli and Jewish faculty and staff over its inaction with regard to the encampment.

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk on Tuesday rejected the accusations.

“Let me be direct: The suggestion that UCLA has been passive in the face of antisemitism is simply wrong. Combating antisemitism is a moral imperative — one rooted, for me, in personal history that makes indifference unthinkable,” he said in a statement.

Frenk highlighted a series of actions the school has taken over the past year, from recruiting an associate vice chancellor for campus and community safety to reorganizing its civil rights office, as proof of the school’s commitment to stand against antisemitism.

The Justice Department is seeking a court declaration that UCLA unlawfully discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students, an order forcing it to institute a series of changes and a declaration that the federal government does not need to make additional grant payments to the university.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced the results of an investigation into UCLA’s medical school admissions process, saying it discriminated by race to favor Black and Hispanic applicants.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of using the Justice Department to crack down on disfavored speech and ideology.

In April 2025, more than 200 college and university leaders issued a joint statement condemning the actions of the Trump administration targeting higher education institutions as “unprecedented government overreach and political interference.”

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans appeared increasingly unlikely to meet their self-imposed deadline for passing a roughly $70-billion immigration enforcement bill this week as disputes over security funding for the White House and the Trump administration’s $1.8-trillion settlement fund effectively derailed progress.

Republicans were already expected to abandon $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Trump’s ballroom amid backlash from members of their own party. But then questions about the settlement fund added to some of the senator’s concerns. They are questioning who would get the money.

Republican senators met with acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Thursday as they worked to finalize the bill’s text and whether to put parameters on the settlement, which was designed to compensate Trump’s allies who believe they have been politically persecuted. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that senators had questions and wanted to know “how we might make sure that it’s fenced in appropriately.”

But senators who emerged from the meeting were tight-lipped and indicated that lawmakers would not hold a vote on the package before leaving Washington for a Memorial Day break, risking failure to meet Trump’s June 1 deadline.

Asked about a vote this week, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) responded, “I don’t even know.” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) was more blunt: “We’re going home,” he said.

The last-minute scramble comes as Democrats have criticized Republicans for trying to fund Trump’s ballroom when voters are concerned about basic affordability issues — and as some GOP lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump. Several GOP senators have spoken out against the settlement, which was announced this week, and many were upset by the president’s endorsement Tuesday of Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton in the party primary runoff next week against Sen. John Cornyn.

Asked Thursday at the White House if he was losing control of the Senate, Trump replied: “I don’t know, I really don’t know. I can tell you — I only do what’s right.”

Possible parameters on Trump’s settlement fund

The “anti-weaponization” fund, part of a settlement that resolves Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, unexpectedly became one of the main complications in the bill. Democrats said they would force votes to block it or place restrictions on it.

Democrats have an opening because Republicans are trying to pass the immigration enforcement bill through a complicated budget process that requires a long series of amendment votes. Democrats are considering multiple amendments, potentially to block that new fund outright or to ban any payments to Trump supporters who harmed law enforcement officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Presenting a united front, Democrats from both the House and Senate rallied on the Capitol steps Thursday to show their opposition. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the amendment process “will give Republicans countless chances to do the right thing.”

He added that if they declined to make changes, it would show voters that “Ballroom Republicans are not working for you, they are busy fighting for Trump.”

Those amendments, along with others, could pass as a growing number of Republicans have voiced reservations about the fund. So Republicans are now discussing their own last-minute additions to head that off, potentially placing some parameters on the settlement and who could receive compensation, according to two people with knowledge of the private discussions who requested anonymity to discuss them.

It was unclear how any Senate changes would be received in the House. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Wednesday that the House will pass the bill “whatever form it takes.”

Tensions rise between Senate and White House

As Republicans challenged the settlement and parts of his agenda, Trump unloaded on the Senate in a social media post on Wednesday.

He urged Republicans to fire the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who said over the weekend that parts of the $1-billion security proposal cannot remain in the ICE and Border Patrol bill. Trump also renewed his long-standing calls for the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, a Republican bill that would require all voters to prove U.S. citizenship, and to end the Senate filibuster.

Republicans need to “get smart and tough,” Trump said, or “you’ll all be looking for a job much sooner than you thought possible!”

While they have been loyal to Trump on most issues, Senate Republicans have resisted his repeated calls — even in his first term — to kill the filibuster, which triggers a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

Hanging over the growing GOP rift is Trump’s surprise endorsement of Paxton. That intervention has Republican senators privately fuming that it could cost them their majority in November as they view the incumbent, Cornyn, as the better candidate in the November general election.

Secret Service request falters

Under the Secret Service’s request, about $220 million would fund security improvements related to the ballroom. The rest would go for a new screening center for visitors, training and other security measures.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the effort to add the security package to the bill was a “bad idea.” The bill should not have included the other security improvements, he said, “because it’s just giving everybody the ‘billion-dollar ballroom.’”

Several other Republicans in the House and Senate have questioned the request, and senators left a briefing with the director of the Secret Service last week saying they needed a lot more information.

People “can’t afford groceries and gasoline and healthcare, and we’re going to do a billion dollars for a ballroom?” asked Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost reelection in his GOP primary on Saturday after Trump endorsed one of his opponents.

Left in the bill is the money for ICE and Border Patrol, which Democrats have blocked for months in protest of the administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.

Democrats demanded changes for the agencies, but negotiations with the White House yielded little progress. So Republicans are using the complicated budget maneuver called reconciliation — the same process that allowed them to pass Trump’s tax and spending cuts bill last year — to fund the agencies through the end of Trump’s term with a simple majority and no Democratic votes.

Still, passage requires sign-off from the parliamentarian and unity from Republicans.

Jalonick, Freking and Groves write for the Associated Press. AP writers Collin Binkley, Lisa Mascaro and Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

May 19 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Justice announced it will drop criminal fraud charges against billionaire Indian businessman Gautam Adani.

The Justice Department submitted a motion Monday asking a federal judge to drop the indictment from 2024 brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, N.Y. The request said the department “reviewed this case and has decided, in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants,” NBC News reported the court filing said.

Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella signed the filing. Prosecutors assigned to the case were not included.

Separately, the President Donald Trump administration announced it had reached a $275 million settlement with a company founded by Adani over “egregious” apparent violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran, Politico reported.

According to the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control, Adani Enterprises Limited bought $191 million worth of shipments of liquefied petroleum gas from a Dubai-based trader. OFAC alleged the company overlooked indications that the gas originated from Iran, Politico said.

Adani is the founder and chair of the Adani Group, a conglomerate based in Ahmedabad, India. Brooklyn prosecutors charged him and others in a fraud and bribery scheme in November 2024, while President Joe Biden was in office.

Adani’s lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell included two of Trump’s personal attorneys: Robert Giuffra Jr. and James McDonald, Politico reported.

Adani’s worth is estimated at more than $100 billion. He is one of the richest people in Asia, and is an ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Prosecutors alleged that Adani and his co-defendants paid $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials. The bribes were to help Adani Green Energy, a subsidiary, win approval to create India’s largest solar power plant. It was projected to bring $2 billion in profits over 20 years.

They also alleged the defendants defrauded American and international investors by gaining funds “on the basis of false and misleading statements.”

Adani Group denied the allegations and called them “baseless.”