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WASHINGTON — Lindsey Halligan, who, as a hastily appointed Justice Department prosecutor, pursued indictments against a pair of President Trump’s adversaries, is leaving her position as her months-long tenure has now concluded, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said Tuesday night.

Halligan’s departure from the role of interim United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia came as multiple judges were casting doubt on her ability to legally remain in the job after a court ruling two months ago that declared her appointment illegal. She was appointed in September to a 120-day stint, which concluded Tuesday.

“The circumstances that led to this outcome are deeply misguided,” Bondi said in a social media post on X announcing Halligan’s exit. “We are living in a time when a democratically elected President’s ability to staff key law enforcement positions faces serious obstacles. The Department of Justice will continue to seek review of decisions like this that hinder our ability to keep the American people safe.”

The move brings an end to a brief but tumultuous tenure. Trump tapped Halligan, a White House aide who had served as his personal lawyer but had no prior experience as a federal prosecutor, to lead one of the Justice Department’s most important and prestigious offices. She quickly secured indictments at Trump’s urging against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James. But a judge later concluded that her appointment was unlawful and that the two indictments must therefore be dismissed.

The Trump administration had kept Halligan in place despite that ruling, but on Tuesday, two judges made clear that they believed it was time for her tenure to end. Hours later, Halligan became the latest Trump ally to give up her title amid scrutiny from judges about the administration’s maneuvering to install the president’s loyalists in key posts. Last month, for instance, another of Trump’s former personal attorneys, Alina Habba, resigned after an appeals court said she, too, had been serving in her position unlawfully.

It was not immediately clear who would now lead the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, which has been buffeted by resignations and leadership turnover since last September when the Trump administration effectively forced out the veteran prosecutor who had been leading the office, Erik Siebert, and replaced him with Halligan.

Halligan’s departure followed orders Tuesday from separate judges that marked a dramatic new front in an ongoing clash between the Trump administration and the federal court over the legitimacy of her appointment.

In one order, M. Hannah Lauck, the chief judge of the Eastern District of Virginia and a nominee of President Obama, directed a clerk to publish a vacancy announcement on the court’s website and said she was “soliciting expressions of interest in serving in that position.”

In a separate order, U.S. District Judge David Novak said he was striking the words “United States Attorney” from the signature block of an indictment in a case that was before him as well as barring Halligan from continuing to present herself with that title. He said he would initiate disciplinary proceedings against Halligan if she violated his order and persisted in identifying herself in court filings as a U.S. attorney, and said other signatories could be subject to discipline as well.

“No matter all of her machinations, Ms. Halligan has no legal basis to represent to this Court that she holds the position. And any such representation going forward can only be described as a false statement made in direct defiance of valid court orders,” Novak wrote. “In short, this charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States Attorney for this District in direct defiance of binding court orders must come to an end.”

Novak, who was appointed to the bench by Trump during the Republican president’s first term in office, chided Justice Department leadership for what he suggested was an improperly antagonistic defense of Halligan by Bondi and Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche in an earlier court filing.

“Ms. Halligan’s response, in which she was joined by both the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, contains a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show and falls far beneath the level of advocacy expected from litigants in this Court, particularly the Department of Justice,” Novak wrote.

“The Court will not engage in a similar tit-for-tat and will instead analyze the few points that Ms. Halligan offers to justify her continued identification of her position as United States Attorney before the Court,” he added.

Halligan was thrust into the position amid pressure by Trump to charge Comey and James, two of his longtime perceived adversaries. Trump made his desire for indictments clear in a Truth Social post in which he implored Bondi to act swiftly.

Halligan secured the indictments, but the win was short-lived. In November, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that Halligan had been illegally appointed and dismissed both cases. The Justice Department has appealed that ruling.

In her own statement, Halligan acknowledged that her 120-day tenure had come to an end on Tuesday. She also lamented the legal limbo she said she had been left in by Currie’s opinion, noting that judges in the district over the last two months had “repeatedly treated my appointment as disqualifying” without actually removing her from the role.

“The court’s remedy did not match its rhetoric. It treated me as though I had been removed from office — declaring my appointment unlawful and striking my name from filings — while never taking the single step Judge Currie identified as the consequence of that conclusion: appointing a replacement U.S. attorney,” she said.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

Army chief hits out at foreign ‘rhetoric’ targeting Iran, threatens decisive action to ‘cut off hand of any aggressor’.

Iran’s top judge warned protesters who have taken to the streets during a spiralling economic crisis there will be “no leniency for those who help the enemy against the Islamic Republic”, accusing the US and Israel of sowing chaos.

“Following announcements by Israel and the US president, there is no excuse for those coming to the streets for riots and unrest,” said Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei on Wednesday in comments on the deadly protests carried by Fars news agency.

Amid growing unrest, Iran is under international pressure after US President Donald Trump threatened last week that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue”.

His threat – accompanied by an assertion that the US is “locked and loaded and ready to go” – came seven months after Israeli and US forces bombed Iranian nuclear sites in a 12-day war.

Additionally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the protesters on Sunday, telling ministers, “It is quite possible that we are at a moment when the Iranian people are taking their fate into their own hands.”

Following Ejei’s warning, Iran’s army chief threatened preemptive military action over the “rhetoric” targeting Iran.

Speaking to military academy students, Major-General Amir Hatami – who took over as commander-in-chief of Iran’s army after a slew of top military commanders were killed in Israel’s 12-day war – said the country would “cut off the hand of any aggressor”.

“I can say with confidence that today the readiness of Iran’s armed forces is far greater than before the war. If the enemy commits an error, it will face a more decisive response,” said Hatami.

‘Longstanding anger’

The nationwide demonstrations, which have seen dozens of people killed so far, ignited at the end of last month when shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar shuttered their businesses in anger over the collapse of Iran’s rial currency, against a backdrop of deepening economic woes driven by mismanagement and punishing Western sanctions.

The Iranian state has not announced casualty figures. HRANA, a network of human rights activists, reported a death toll of at least 36 people as well as the arrest of at least 2,076 people. Al Jazeera has been unable to verify any figures.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised not to “yield to the enemy” following Trump’s comments, which acquired added significance after the US military raid that seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran, over the weekend.

Seeking to halt the anger, Iran’s government began on Wednesday paying the equivalent of $7 a month to subsidise rising costs for dinner-table essentials such as rice, meat and pasta – a measure widely deemed to be a meagre response.

“More than a week of protests in Iran reflects not only worsening economic conditions, but longstanding anger at government repression and regime policies that have led to Iran’s global isolation,” the New York-based Soufan Center think tank said.

WASHINGTON — Venezuela risks “a second strike” if its interim government doesn’t acquiesce to U.S. demands. Cuba is “ready to fall,” and Colombia is “very sick, too.”

Iran may get “hit very hard” if its government cracks down on protesters. And Denmark risks U.S. intervention, as well, because “we need Greenland,” President Trump said.

In just 37 minutes while speaking with reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One, Trump threatened to attack five countries, both allies and adversaries, with the might of the U.S. military — an extraordinary turn for a president who built his political career rejecting traditional conservative views on the exercise of American power and vowing to put America first.

The president’s threats come as a third of the U.S. naval fleet remains stationed in the Caribbean, after Trump launched a daring attack on Venezuela that seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife over the weekend.

The goal, U.S. officials said, was to show the Venezuelan government and the wider world what the American military is capable of — and to compel partners and foes alike to adhere to Trump’s demands through intimidation, rather than commit the U.S. military to more complex, conventional, long-term engagements.

It is the deployment of overwhelming and spectacular force in surgical military operations — Maduro’s capture, last year’s strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, assassinations of Islamic State leadership and Iran’s top general in Iraq — that demonstrate Trump as a brazen leader willing to risk war, thereby effectively avoiding it, one Trump administration official said, explaining the president’s strategic thinking.

Yet experts and former Trump aides warn the president’s approach risks miscalculation, alienating vital allies and emboldening U.S. competitors.

At a Security Council meeting Monday at the United Nations in New York — called by Colombia, a long-standing and major non-North Atlantic Treaty Oranization ally to the United States — Trump’s moves were widely condemned. “Violations of the U.N. Charter,” a French diplomat told the council, “chips away at the very foundation of international order.”

Even the envoy from Russia, which has cultivated historically strong ties with the Trump administration, said the White House operation was an act of “banditry,” marking “a return to the era of illegality and American dominance through force, chaos and lawlessness.”

Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark with vast natural resources, drew particular concern across Europe on Monday, with leaders across the continent warning the United States against an attack that would violate the sovereignty of a NATO ally and European Union member state.

“That’s enough now,” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said after Trump told reporters that his attention would turn to the world’s largest island in a matter of weeks.

“If the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, told local press. “That includes NATO, and therefore, post-World War II security.”

Trump also threatened to strike Iran, where anti-government protests have spread throughout the country in recent days. Trump had previously said the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” if Iranian security forces begin firing on protesters, “which is their custom.”

“The United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote on social media on Jan. 2, hours before launching the Venezuela mission. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

In Colombia, there was widespread outrage after Trump threatened military action against leftist President Gustavo Petro, whom Trump accused, without evidence, of running “cocaine mills and cocaine factories.”

Petro is a frequent critic of the American president and has slammed as illegal a series of lethal U.S. airstrikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

“Stop slandering me,” Petro wrote on X, warning that any U.S. attempts against his presidency “will unleash the people’s fury.”

Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, said he would go to war to defend Colombia.

“I swore not to touch a weapon again,” he said. “But for the homeland, I will take up arms.”

Trump’s threats have strained relations with Colombia, a devoted U.S. ally. For decades, the countries have shared military intelligence, a robust trade relationship and a multibillion-dollar fight against drug trafficking.

Even some of Petro’s domestic critics have comes to his defense. Presidential candidate Juan Manuel Galán, who opposes Petro’s rule, said Colombia’s sovereignty “must be defended.”

“Colombia is not Venezuela,” Galán wrote on X. “It is not a failed state, and we will not allow it to be treated as such. Here we have institutions, democracy and sovereignty that must be defended.”

The president of Mexico, another longtime U.S. ally and its largest trading partner, has also spoken out forcefully against the American operation in Caracas, and said the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America threatens the stability of the region.

“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said in her daily news conference Monday. “The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, has never generated well-being or lasting stability.”

She addressed Trump’s comments over the weekend that drugs were “pouring” through Mexico, and that the United States was “going to have to do something.”

Trump has been threatening action against cartels for months, with some members of his administration suggesting that the United States may soon carry out drone strikes on drug laboratories and other targets inside Mexican territory. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said such strikes would be a clear violation of Mexican sovereignty.

“Sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples are non-negotiable,” she said. “They are fundamental principles of international law and must always be respected without exception.”

Cuba also rejected Trump’s threat of a military intervention there, after Trump’s secretary of State, Marco Rubio, himself the descendant of Cuban immigrants, suggested that Havana may be next in Washington’s crosshairs.

“We call on the international community to stop this dangerous, aggressive escalation and to preserve peace,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel posted on social media.

The U.S. attacks on Venezuela, and Trump’s threats of additional military ventures, have caused deep unease in a relatively peaceful region that has seen fewer interstate wars in recent decades than Europe, Asia or Africa.

It also caused unease among some Trump supporters, who remembered his pledge to get the United States out of “endless” military conflicts for good.

“I was the first president in modern times,” Trump said, accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, “to start no new wars.”

Wilner reported from Washington and Linthicum from Mexico City.

Helen Dalton often winces when she opens the water and power bill for her lushly landscaped home on half an acre in Sherman Oaks. The charge for the latest two-month period was $300.

Hotter months have sent her bill into the $500 neighborhood.

Dalton, a retiree on a fixed income, plans to vote against San Fernando Valley secession–in part because she worries that a municipal split would bring higher and higher utility rates. “It’s a concern,” she said.

As the debate over carving up Los Angeles enters its final month, the anti-secession campaign led by Mayor James K. Hahn is intent on making water and power rates a breakout pocketbook issue. Secessionists are just as determined to paint Hahn as a fear-monger who distorts the facts on utility rates to distract attention from City Hall’s broader shortcomings.

Both sides know that water and power pack a punch with voters still jittery from the state’s electricity crisis and forever sweating the next drought.

The message of the Hahn forces is stark: If the Valley and Hollywood cityhood proposals win at the polls on Nov. 5, residents of the new municipalities could lose the relatively stable rates and plentiful supplies offered by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Sprinkling the lawn and cranking up the air conditioner would soon become expensive luxuries.

Secessionists contend that Hahn has grossly misrepresented the state-mandated terms of a breakup. They note that the Local Agency Formation Commission, which approved both cityhood measures for the ballot, has directed the DWP to continue serving an independent Valley or Hollywood at rates no higher than those charged in Los Angeles.

Under LAFCO’s formula, the DWP would become a contractor for the new cities, unless they chose to buy their water and power from other providers.

“I see no chance that we would not get water on the same terms and conditions as the rest of the city,” said Richard Close, an attorney who heads the secession group Valley VOTE.

Question of Authority

The anti-secession camp, however, insists that LAFCO overstepped its authority by including that utility-rate provision in the secession proposals. Hahn and other Los Angeles officials say the state Constitution and the City Charter give the DWP sole power to set rates. And opponents argue that the laws require the DWP to provide the cheapest possible service to its Los Angeles customers, even if that means higher costs for Valley and Hollywood cities.

They say it already costs more to serve the Valley, which has generally larger home lots and higher temperatures than the rest of the city, placing more demand on the DWP.

Legal challenges over utility rates are considered likely if secession prevails. LAFCO itself has suggested the courts might have to resolve the matter.

“It’s absolutely inevitable that it will end up in court,” said Steve Erie, a water expert and political science professor at UC San Diego.

Water originally brought the Valley and Los Angeles together. In 1915, the Valley agreed to be annexed by Los Angeles in exchange for access to the then-2-year-old Los Angeles Aqueduct. The aqueduct piped snowmelt from the eastern Sierra to the parched Valley floor, irrigating farms and later making possible the explosion in home building.

Secession leaders say that the Valley is now entitled to future DWP service at reasonable rates because the region has paid its share of building the utility’s infrastructure for 87 years. The secessionists initially demanded that an independent Valley get an ownership stake in the DWP, but LAFCO rejected that arrangement as unworkable.

The agency determined that, unlike streets and parks and city buildings, the DWP’s massive generation and delivery systems are too complex to divide up between Los Angeles and the Valley, not to mention Hollywood.

LAFCO decided that Los Angeles would continue to own the system, but could not jack up rates for the Valley or Hollywood if secession passes.

The DWP already provides water by contract to other cities and communities, including West Hollywood and Universal City, but charges them higher rates. That’s because the DWP acts as a middle agent for those cities, buying supplies from the Metropolitan Water District and delivering them on Los Angeles-owned pipelines. MWD water costs as much as 25% more than water from the L.A. Aqueduct, and the DWP passes those higher rates along.

Contract Arrangement

Anti-secessionists say the DWP could demand a similar arrangement with a new Valley or Hollywood city. That would mean steeper bills in the breakaway areas.

“I can’t see the DWP violating the City Charter and selling its cheapest water to an outside agency, such as a Valley city,” said Larry Levine, who heads the anti-secession organization One Los Angeles.

Hahn echoed that view. “We don’t think LAFCO has the ability to supersede water law or the City Charter,” the mayor said.

“We think if our cost goes up, we ought to be able to recover the cost…. There is a risk. Why take the chance of higher water and higher power rates?”

The City Charter says Los Angeles’ water rights cannot be sold, leased or disposed of without the approval of two-thirds of the voters, according to a former DWP attorney, Kenneth Downey. He said a simple majority vote on secession does not supersede that requirement.

Former DWP General Manager S. David Freeman, now the state’s power czar, said Los Angeles is also unlikely to give the Valley or Hollywood the cheapest electricity the utility generates, which comes from its hydroelectric plants. Instead, the DWP would probably sell the secession areas more expensive power from inefficient, gas-fired plants, Freeman said.

“It’s against human nature” to do otherwise, he said.

Fight for Business

Competition could play a role in stabilizing water prices. A Valley or Hollywood city could look elsewhere for water and power–to private utilities, for example–if the rate ceilings the commission imposed on the DWP were thrown out by the courts.

Secessionists say that would give Los Angeles a financial incentive not to raise rates for the breakaway cities.

“The city of Los Angeles needs the Valley as customers,” Close said. “It’s like Ralphs saying they don’t need 40% of their customers. They would be shutting down stores if they said that.”

Hahn concedes that Los Angeles would be hurt if the secession regions ditched the DWP. But he adds that such a scenario is another argument against a breakup, because rates would rise for DWP customers in a smaller Los Angeles.

“Clearly there are economies of scale, so if a significant customer base was removed somehow, those costs would have to be absorbed, and the only way I can see that is if we pass higher rates for the remaining customers,” Hahn said.

In the state’s recent energy crisis, the DWP was able to supply relatively cheap power and avoid the market gyrations and blackouts that afflicted other parts of California.

Citing that experience, Hahn said it is unlikely that Valley and Hollywood residents would want to turn to private utilities, such as Southern California Edison, because the deregulated rates of those utilities are much higher than the DWP’s.

Secessionists, though, say the new cities would be free to negotiate lower electricity rates.

And some cities in Los Angeles County already get better water prices than those charged by the DWP. A 2001 survey by the engineering firm Black & Veatch Corp. found that DWP’s residential customers were billed an average of $29.88 a month. In comparison, Long Beach averaged $27.28; Redondo Beach, $23.68; Santa Monica, $23.64; and Pasadena, $13.73.

Santa Monica got 82% of its water from MWD and Pasadena received 60%.

Phyllis Currie, a former DWP official who heads the Pasadena utility, said its low maintenance costs have kept prices low. Los Angeles ratepayers must subsidize costly DWP improvements.

Gerald Gewe, who oversees the water side of the DWP, said other cities can charge less because they have access to cheaper groundwater supplies. He said the groundwater under the Valley is owned by Los Angeles, and a Valley city would have to build a water collection and distribution system if it went somewhere other than to the DWP for water. That would increase rates, Gewe said.

Hahn and DWP General Manager David Wiggs said they have no plans to raise water and power rates as a knee-jerk reaction to secession. But they predicted that major rate-paying institutions, such as large businesses and colleges, might force the issue.

“If rates go up for customers because of secession, I think it would be very likely that customers who believe their rights are jeopardized will seek their legal remedies in court,” Hahn said.

One factor that could trigger a court fight, city officials say, is that the current rate structure allows Valley properties to use more water before they exceed the threshold for basic rates and are charged higher prices. A decade ago, the DWP adjusted rates to allow more water use by customers who live in areas with higher temperatures, including the Valley.

Wiggs says that rate-relief formula might be challenged if the Valley becomes a separate city. “I certainly think that is an issue that can be and probably would be raised by customers,” Wiggs said.

The result, he added, could be higher rates in the Valley.

Another wild card is whether the new cities would move to charge the DWP a franchise fee for providing them water. Wiggs said Los Angeles would have to determine if such a fee should be paid by ratepayers only in the secession areas or in the remainder of Los Angeles.

Lawsuit Doubted

But Richard Katz, co-chairman of the Valley Independence Committee, said secessionists have no plans to impose a franchise fee. He also expressed doubts that major DWP customers would sue over rate equity.

“That would only happen if the DWP was out there stirring things up,” said Katz, who serves on the state Water Resources Control Board.

He dismissed the anti-secession rhetoric on utility rates as “scare tactics.”

“Aside from all the lawyers arguing about everything,” Katz said, “once the city is created, a lot of this rhetoric goes away. Because the bottom line is the cities will cooperate more than fight.”