Government

Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, says 80% of the buildings that collapsed in back-to-back earthquakes were privately developed. She also confirmed that more than 2,500 people are dead and that search and rescue operations still continue.

On June 25, the United States Supreme Court decision allowed President Donald Trump and his administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians, paving the way for their legal immigration status to be removed.

Trump has pushed to end TPS for several groups, as part of his efforts to restrict immigration into the US.

But lawmakers from both political parties have argued that stripping Haitians of their TPS status could create a caregiving crisis, given their presence in key industries like healthcare.

“Of the 350,000+ lawful Haitian TPS holders, roughly 1/3 work in our healthcare system. Immediately shutting off TPS will create a crisis in our hospitals, nursing homes, and in the [intellectual disabilities] community,” Republican Representative Mike Lawler wrote on the social media platform X.

Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley echoed that sentiment in a statement.

“Seniors will lose their caregivers when we already have a caregiving crisis, and seniors will lose their ability to age in community with much-needed assistance,” she wrote.

The Temporary Protected Status programme allows nationals from countries experiencing crises, such as natural disasters or armed conflict, to live in the United States for up to 18 months. The federal government had previously renewed the designations, making them effectively permanent, before President Trump took office for a second term in 2025.

Lawler’s estimates about how many Haitians with TPS work in the US healthcare system are within the range of what the data show.

The Trump administration decision — and Supreme Court ruling — affect about 330,000 Haitians whose TPS-related work authorisations expire on July 10. They face deportation unless they qualify for another status. The ruling also applies to Syrians and Venezuelans.

About 158,000 Haitians in Florida have TPS, the majority of whom are in South Florida. The Sunshine State has the largest population of TPS recipients in the US: nearly 404,000 people. More than half are from Venezuela and about one-third are from Haiti, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

With an ageing population and an existing caregiver shortage, healthcare experts say the end of TPS for Haitians will have a significant effect on the US healthcare industry.

Of the 330,000 Haitian TPS holders, about 13,000 work daily as nursing assistants, caring for 65,000 patients, The Boston Globe found. Another 8,000 Haitian caregivers serve 12,000 children and ageing people, according to Americans for Immigrant Justice, a Miami-based nonprofit law firm that provides free representation to low-income immigrants.

Experts said the TPS healthcare workforce exodus will be felt most acutely in New York, Massachusetts and Florida.

With its high populations of older people and immigrants, Florida is expected to be particularly hard-hit.

David Grabowski, a Harvard Medical School healthcare policy professor, said the decision will “have a major impact on nursing homes, assisted living facilities and home care agencies”.

What will happen if most Haitians with TPS are deported?

Healthcare researchers say deporting Haitian recipients of Temporary Protected Status will add pressure on a strained system.

Immigrants who have TPS are more likely to work in healthcare, with one 2025 study finding that recipients represent 15 percent of all noncitizen healthcare workers. (TPS recipients make up about 2.1 percent of the total immigrant population.)

Immigrants make up a large share of direct care workers — people who are home health aides, personal care aides and nursing assistants.

There is already a national shortage of home health aides, personal care aides, nursing assistants and other long-term care and eldercare workers, but the US will need even more in the future. The US 65-and-up population is expected to rise from 58 million to 82 million by 2050 — a 42 percent increase.

Nearly half of US nursing homes report limiting admissions due to staffing shortages, and 19 percent recently met the minimum staffing levels set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. In 2023, shortages of nurses and other employees caused about two-thirds of US hospitals to operate below capacity.

“People who run nursing homes, chronic care hospitals and home care agencies – they are all saying this is a crisis,” said Dr Steffie Woolhandler, a distinguished professor of public health at City University of New York’s Hunter College. “There has long been a shortage of folks who are willing to do direct care work as nursing aides, and there’s still a shortage now, so, of course, if the US deports them all, it’s just going to make it worse.”

Drishti Pillai, the director of immigrant health policy at the research nonprofit KFF, said, “The long-term care industry is already facing shortages prior to these immigration policy changes, so I think it’s accurate to say that this is going to further exacerbate the situation.”

Why do so many Haitians with TPS work in caregiving?

Healthcare experts pointed to several reasons for TPS holders’ high numbers in direct care, including job availability, an easier certification process compared with other healthcare jobs, and prior experience caring for family members.

“We do not have sufficient native-born workers to fill all the caregiving jobs,” Grabowski, the healthcare policy professor, said.

These positions also typically have lower barriers to entry for licensure, or no English language requirements, experts said. Refugee settlement organisations often recommend the work to immigrants for those reasons.

The positions are “extremely difficult to fill” because they’re physically and emotionally demanding, with low pay and with little or no employee benefits, said Priya Chidambaram, senior policy manager with KFF’s programme on Medicaid and the uninsured.

Some Haitians also have experience caring for sick family members in their homes, given the lack of nursing home infrastructure in their home country.

In the end, experts said there will be many more people who need this care than people who will be able to provide it.

“This was true before the ruling,” Chidambaram said. “Now, the impact will only be worse.”

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced felony charges against a former Olympic athlete for allegedly harming the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC.

At a news conference on Thursday, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro accused professional canoeist David Hearn, 67, of deliberately vandalising the pool.

“Today, a grand jury has returned a felony indictment against a defendant, David Hearn, for felony destruction of property, for which he faces 10 years in prison,” Pirro, a Trump appointee, said.

She proceeded to call the destruction of national monuments “one of the most offensive images” she has ever seen.

“This unchecked vandalism and civil disorder turns into criminal behaviour, and that’s why we’re here today,” Pirro said. “They are an affront to the dignity of our shared history.”

But in media interviews, Hearn has denied any vandalism, saying that, like many Americans, he was simply curious about the Reflecting Pool when he visited on June 19.

The Reflecting Pool had been the subject of a renovation effort Trump began in April, as part of a wider initiative to reshape Washington, DC, through controversial construction and maintenance projects.

Trump awarded a no-bid contract to a firm to seal and resurface the granite pool in a colour he dubbed “American flag blue”. But observers noted that, as soon as the pool reopened in early June, it suffered an algae bloom, and blue paint began to peel from its bottom.

Faced with criticism about the $13.1m renovation contract, Trump countered that vandals had sabotaged the Reflecting Pool.

At least seven people, including Hearn, have been arrested on allegations they may have harmed the pool’s blue-painted bottom.

Hearn has maintained his innocence. He says he was cycling by the Reflecting Pool when he stopped to look at the peeling paint, and he reached in the water to feel it. He denies removing any part of the pool.

Pirro, however, described a different scene. She said National Park Service employees observed Hearn “forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner with both hands”, damaging roughly 2 square feet — or around 0.18 square meters — of pool sealant.

“A parks employee actually told Hearn to stop his behaviour and stop what he was doing. Hearn reacted by shouting at that parks employee,” Pirro alleged.

Reporters confronted Pirro with questions about whether charging Hearn with a felony was disproportionately punitive, since similar cases have been considered misdemeanour offences.

One journalist asked Pirro if her decision to seek a felony indictment was influenced by Trump, who wrote on Truth Social that a 10-year prison sentence should “be fully enforced” for any attempted damage to the Reflecting Pool.

“I didn’t charge anything harshly. I charge according to the evidence,” Pirro replied. She argued that Hearn caused damage exceeding $1,000, thereby necessitating a felony charge.

She also dismissed comparisons with the millions of dollars in damage caused by Trump supporters during the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Nearly all of those defendants were pardoned on the first day of Trump’s second term.

“Are you really talking about January 6th? I’m not,” Pirro told one reporter. A hearing in Hearn’s case is scheduled for July 9.

On Thursday, preparations for the July 4 fireworks show began at the Reflecting Pool, with large nets spread across the entire structure.

According to a police officer on the site, the nets are intended to catch the debris that could fall into the pool during the show. The site remains fenced off to visitors.

Still, many have come to look at the pool and see the controversial renovations firsthand.

Brian Williams, a 31-year-old from Roscoe, Georgia, praised Trump for his efforts to beautify the city. He said that algae was normal for a pool full of still water in the heat of summertime.

“I don’t think people have any business vandalising anything,” Williams added. “If you have something that you dislike about the president, don’t take it out on the people’s pool.”

But others were more sceptical of Trump’s claims. Jon Delgado, a 40-year-old Navy veteran from Collierville, Tennessee, expressed frustration at seeing the Reflecting Pool in its current state.

“I came here with my wife and my family to show them the beauty of America, the spirit of what we fought for,” he said. “To see it trashed like this, it just makes me angry.”

Delgado called Trump’s accusations about vandalism at the site “really crazy”.

“We have just got to ask ourselves: Is this where we’re at, in the state of America, that we’re believing something like this? You can look for yourself: This thing has pond scum all in it, and it stinks. There’s no vandalism,” he said.

Story and pictures by Erick Franco

A short drive along the Playa Grande coastal boulevard provides a glimpse of the scale of the disaster, 100 hours after the June 24 earthquakes. Businesses burned due to gas leaks, while the limited police presence began to give way to theft and looting throughout La Guaira’s commercial district. Along the 8.8-kilometer stretch between the Playa Grande Caribe Hotel and Calle Real de Mare, vacation and residential buildings from the mountainside collapsed onto the roadway, blocking much of the route and making access to Playa Verde extremely difficult. Once there, the damage to the smaller beachfront buildings becomes immediately apparent. As night falls, makeshift shelters appear along the coastline, high-voltage power lines lie across the roads, and damaged buildings continue to shed debris.

By 8:00 am of June 26, after the first 36 hours following the tragedy, the upper areas of Playa Grande and Playa Verde reveal an even more devastating reality. Daylight exposes nearly three kilometers of destruction, from Playa Grande’s Main Avenue to South CV Avenue, now reduced to ruins. Near the César Nieves Stadium, one resident helps distribute water throughout the community while telling us that he lost his three daughters, ages 7, 11, and 14. Despite his unimaginable loss, he says he must keep going because his mother is still alive.

Local residents report that about 40 people were inside the Chipi’s Beach Hotel when the building collapsed, but only two managed to escape alive. Using only their own resources, community members worked to rescue 10 people whose cries could still be heard beneath the rubble. Finally, after more than 30 hours without assistance, firefighters arrived following an appeal made by volunteer students from the Central University of Venezuela.

Next to Chipi’s Beach is the home of Mary, who has spent the past two days beside the body of her mother. As they attempted to flee during the earthquake, her mother became trapped in the narrow passage between the hotel’s exterior wall and the wall of their home. Mary explained that a forensic team determined her mother died instantly and without suffering after a structural column fell across her torso. University volunteers spent two hours attempting to recover her body, but were unsuccessful.

The same scene repeats itself on Fifth Street in Playa Grande, where residents and volunteers at the Residencias Malecón buildings recover three bodies from the rubble. At the same time, paramedics and rescue teams from El Salvador gradually arrive to assist in rescuing a children’s dance group trapped inside the Aguja Azul building.

Venezuelan military personnel, volunteer rescue teams from El Salvador, Venezuelan firefighters, and police officers began to experience the physical toll caused by the odors, dust, and debris in the La Páez area of Catia La Mar. Cases of diarrhea, nasal allergies, and back pain were treated by volunteer medical personnel. Family members gathered at Block 3 of La Páez, where 13 people had been rescued alive, while search teams used probe technology in an effort to locate additional survivors.

These first 100 hours after the earthquake revealed the complete collapse of an entire sector and the social abandonment of the affected communities by government institutions. Residents remained outside hospitals hoping to receive medication, surviving through donations, supplies, and the generosity of others while conducting physically demanding rescue efforts with little training and driven only by the hope of finding their loved ones.

One week after the tragedy, access to water remains limited, the smell of decomposition permeates the entire Catia La Mar area, the businesses that could provide food and essential supplies remain closed, telephone coverage is still incomplete, and power service is being restored only gradually.

A man has been rescued from a collapsed building eight days after twin earthquakes devastated Venezuela.

The rescue on Thursday came as attention has begun to shift from finding survivors under the rubble to addressing the humanitarian needs of the thousands of residents displaced.

An estimated 60,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed in last week’s earthquakes, which hit magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, respectively. An estimated 13,000 people have been left homeless.

In its last official update, Venezuela’s government said that at least 2,295 people have been confirmed killed, with 11,000 injured. The death toll was expected to rise, with about 50,000 people reported missing.

But in a rare ray of hope, rescue workers were able to reach 43-year-old security guard Hernan Gil on Thursday, after days of trying to retrieve him from a collapsed seven-storey building where he worked in the hard-hit coastal area of Catia La Mar.

Gil had been located three days earlier. Rescue teams from seven countries, including Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Mexico, worked to free him.

“This is truly a miracle,” Gil’s wife, Gusbimar Gonzalez, told the news agency AFP.

Cristian Vera, the leader of the Chilean rescue team, told AFP that rescuers eventually were able to dig a three-metre (9.8-foot) tunnel to extract Gil. They had been able to provide him water via a hose and oxygen tube in recent days.

“It wasn’t easy to reach the exact spot where the victim was located,” he said.

Reporting from the state of La Guaira, Al Jazeera correspondent Zein Basravi said that, while Gil’s recovery has given some families hope, countless rescue attempts across the country have ended in tragedy.

Many of the collapsed buildings in La Guaira, located north of Caracas, have already been marked with the letter D for “deceased”, signalling no signs of life could be detected.

“One search-and-rescue expert we spoke to on the ground said the footprint of this disaster is so big, there are 58,000 buildings that have been destroyed or damaged, there’s so much area to search, and so many days into the aftermath of this earthquake, it is less and less likely that anyone can be found alive,” Basravi said.

He added that the emergency response is set to “move away from rescue and recovery into a very different phase of this disaster, which will see more relief work, more humanitarian work needed on the ground”.

Risks of health crisis

Humanitarian workers have warned that the aftermath of the earthquake could lead to a health crisis, as understaffed medical centres are likely to face cases of untreated injuries and infectious disease.

For years, the country’s health system has been strained by shortages of critical medical equipment, highly trained staff and electrical power.

The World Food Programme has appealed for $50m to feed some 500,000 people for three months. The United Nations Development Programme has put the estimated cost for the physical damage at $6.7bn, based on satellite imagery.

Several countries and regional blocs have pledged funding to help with relief efforts.

That has included $300m from the US, according to the Department of State. The administration of US President Donald Trump, who abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro earlier this year, has continued to support the country’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez despite criticism over a lack of preparedness.

Reporting for Al Jazeera from Caracas, journalist Noris Soto said that international aid will be “more than necessary” in the months and weeks ahead.

“Venezuela has been struggling with economic hardships for the past two decades. So, if you add this disaster to that economic crisis that Venezuelans were already suffering, they will need help for years to come,” she said.

Research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has found that a United Kingdom-United States pharmaceutical deal could cause 229,000 excess deaths as a result of the diversion of billions of pounds away from Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

In December, the UK and US signed a pharmaceutical trade deal, under which the US government agreed not to impose tariffs on UK pharmaceutical and medical technology exports for the next three years.

In return, the British government committed to increasing NHS spending on new US medicines from 0.3 percent in 2026 to at least 0.6 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 2036. This means that medicine spending overall should increase from 10 percent to 12 percent of the NHS budget.

UK politicians defended the deal with Science Minister Patrick Vallance saying in April that the arrangement gives patients across the NHS access to “life-changing new medicines that they previously would have been denied”.

“Not only this, but as the first country in the world to benefit from a zero percent tariff on pharmaceuticals to the US, Britain’s life sciences sector will be further boosted,” Vallance argued.

But the research published in the BMJ found that the commitment to spend so much more on new branded medicines over the next decade without any increase in NHS funding will “create substantial opportunity costs elsewhere, having a direct effect on population health”.

Samuel Cross, a professor in the department of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Liverpool, who coauthored the report, said the agreement “benefits pharmaceutical companies and comes at a cost of NHS patients”.

“There’s really no way to sugar-coat that. The numbers speak for themselves,” Cross told Al Jazeera.

Here’s what we know about the report:

What is in the US-UK deal?

The agreement signed on December 1 was hailed as a landmark deal between British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump on pharmaceutical trade and pricing.

The US agreed not to impose tariffs on UK pharmaceutical and medical exports for the following three years – until January 19, 2029.

According to a policy paper published by the British government, the preliminary understanding of the agreement recognised that the US and UK shared a “mutual interest in developing a global medicines system that supports development and commercialisation of new innovations”.

 What did the research find?

In February, Vallance disclosed that funding for the increased spending on medicines would come from the Department of Health and Social Care, which funds the NHS in England, rather than the Treasury.

The study in the BMJ forecast that if spending targets are met and the economy grows as forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the NHS would need to spend an extra 1.3 billion pounds ($1.73bn) a year by 2028 – about 25 million pounds ($33.4m) a week. By 2036, this would rise to an extra 8.8 billion pounds ($11.74bn) a year – about 170 million pounds ($227m) a week). Over the course of the agreement, that would add up to about 44.7 billion pounds ($59.7bn) by the end of 2036.

“Costs are even higher if the impact on publicly funded adult social care is also considered – modelling of English local authority data indicates that every £1bn [$1.33bn] the NHS must find to fund this deal will increase the costs of adult social care by £118m [$157.5m] because of increases in morbidity and mortality,” the report found.

Ultimately, the study predicted, excess deaths are likely as a result.

“Even if we restrict attention to the direct effect of reductions in available NHS expenditure, by 2036 this deal is likely to result in roughly 229,000 excess deaths – more than during the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and June 2022 (137,000). If the indirect effect on adult social care is also included, the increase in excess deaths is even greater (291,000),” the report stated.

The report added that the findings are “unsurprising” given the existing pressures on the NHS and the “large burden of unmet need in highly cost-effective areas of care”.

It also referred to shortfalls in NHS funding and pharmaceutical pricing as “opportunity costs”.

Cross said that in health economics, opportunity costs are the “key to all of this”.

“In the NHS, we have a finite budget – we’re not made of money – and if you take money away to pay for, in this case, more medicines. then that comes at an opportunity cost of the places that the money has been diverted away from,” he explained.

Which health sectors will be worst affected?

The research predicted that the greatest number of deaths would occur in cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and cancer patients.

It added that there will also be broader harm caused to quality of life for patients in those sectors as well as “neurological, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and mental health problems”.

“Despite this evidence and reassurances that ‘frontline services’ will be protected, the NHS will need to fund this deal from allocations made six months before the deal was agreed. The evidence suggests that if additional public expenditure was available, it could be more effectively deployed within the NHS itself,” it added.

The report also called the government’s claims that the US-UK agreement would encourage pharmaceutical innovation in the country “uncertain”.

“Pharmaceutical research and development operate within a global market, of which the UK represents a relatively small share. As such, there is limited evidence that UK domestic pricing materially influences global investment decisions,” the report stated.

“Even so, evidence suggests in most cases the UK is already paying more than 100 percent of the long-term value of new medicines; incentivising production of new medicines under this deal will do long-term harm to the public health objective of the NHS,” it added.

Cross added that because money has in effect been diverted away from the NHS, there is no way for the government to offset the impact on the service.

“If the funds are used to pay for new medicines, we will lose positive health outcomes elsewhere, and that is as simple as that,” he said.

He called for the government to release an impact assessment to trigger a public discussion about how good the US-UK deal really is for Britain.

President Donald Trump has sought to limit mail-in voting and has ordered his administration to impose limits on the practice.

A federal judge in the United States has blocked proposed restrictions on mail-in voting that were championed by President Donald Trump.

On Wednesday in Washington, DC, District Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with the NAACP, a civil rights organisation, in its case against the US Postal Service (USPS).

Sullivan found that the restrictions would likely violate a 2021 settlement requiring expedited handling for mail-in ballots.

He therefore granted the NAACP’s motion to enforce compliance with the settlement, dealing another setback to the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the US voting landscape.

“NAACP has plausibly suggested — and the Postal Service has not disputed — that the Proposed Rule is already having a ‘real impact on present day affairs’,” Sullivan wrote in his ruling.

The case revolves around a rule the Postal Service put forward in May that would require states to provide lists of absentee and mail-in voters. Ballots that do not conform to the list would be returned.

The proposed rule would also require a new envelope design for mail-in ballots, governing logos and barcode placements. Failure to comply would result in the Postal Service refusing to deliver the ballots.

The NAACP argued that the proposal would run afoul of a 2021 legal settlement that forces Postal Service officials to take “extraordinary measures” to ensure timely delivery of ballot mail.

The settlement “stipulated that the Postal Service agreed ‘to prioritize monitoring and timely delivery of election mail’”, Sullivan wrote in Wednesday’s ruling.

The decision comes less than five months before the November 3 midterm elections, which will decide whether Trump’s Republican Party retains control over both chambers of Congress.

Trump has expressed fears that he may be subject to a third impeachment if Democrats flip the legislature.

He has also spread unfounded theories that US elections are vulnerable to “vote rigging”, pointing to commonplace election tools like mail-in voting and electronic voting machines.

Elections are administered by state and local election officials, as established in the US Constitution. But the Postal Service’s proposed rule came as the result of efforts under the Trump administration to impose new limits on voting.

In March, Trump issued an executive order called “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”. In it, he directed the Department of Justice to take action against states that “fail to comply” with certain standards for mail-in ballots.

He also accused states that accepted absentee or mail-in ballots after Election Day of violating the law.

But in another blow to Trump, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a state law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted even if they were received after Election Day, so long as they were postmarked on or before that date. The president’s executive order has also been blocked by lower courts.

Civil rights advocates applauded the court’s Wednesday decision and warned against Trump’s efforts to limit mail-in voting.

“The court today correctly recognized that USPS’s plan to create roadblocks to mail-in voting was inconsistent with its commitment to timely deliver election mail,” said Allison Zieve, director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which argued on behalf of the NAACP.

“USPS’s plan was unwise, unlawful, and a threat to the millions of voters who rely on mailed ballots to participate in our democracy.”

Sam Spital, the associate director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, which also argued for the NAACP, called the Postal Service’s proposed plan “a blatant attempt” to disenfranchise voters who rely on mailed ballots.

“Today’s decision recognizes that USPS cannot disregard its legal obligation to timely deliver mail-in ballots to all voters,” Spital said.

The US and Israel have signed a deal allocating land for a permanent US embassy in West Jerusalem, years after a temporary one was established during Trump’s first term in office. The move is yet another blow to the hopes of a future Palestinian capital.

Catia la Mar, Venezuela – Andreina Velasquez looks up at her multistorey apartment block overlooking Catia la Mar, a coastal city in the Venezuelan state of La Guaira. The concrete slabs that once separated each floor are now stacked on top of each other.

“They fell like a pack of cards,” she said, pointing to where she used to live on the sixth floor.

Velasquez feels lucky. She left her apartment a couple of hours before a pair of deadly earthquakes shook Venezuela on June 24, reaching magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, respectively.

She had gone to get a new key cut and was at the beach when the first quake struck.

Her neighbours did not make it. She remembers one as a gentle, retired man, another as a woman with a young daughter who had just moved in. They had been overjoyed with their view of the sea.

Velasquez is still struggling to process what she has lost. Her state was among the hardest hit by the earthquakes.

But despite her grief, she has started to hand out face masks to passersby, hoping to shield them from the gusts of dust drifting from the collapsed buildings and the stench rising from the rubble.

“I’ve been here every day. Other people came to help, but they don’t have helmets, they don’t have gloves, they don’t have masks. That’s why I’m helping,” she said.

More than 2,295 people have been killed and 11,000 injured in the twin earthquakes, according to Venezuela’s National Assembly. The United Nations has warned the death toll could rise to 10,000.

As Venezuela continues to confront the destruction, experts say recovery efforts have been driven largely by volunteers and neighbours like Velasquez.

Hospitals are overwhelmed, and government aid has been slow to reach some of the worst-affected areas.

Carolina Jimenez, the president of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a research and advocacy group, told Al Jazeera that the result has been growing anger towards the state.

“In a government in any other country, the first responder should be the state,” she said. “In the case of Venezuela, the state has been the last responder.”

In places like Catia la Mar, north of Caracas, authorities still haven’t arrived or are lacking.

Velasquez and other locals say that help from the federal government only arrived on Sunday — three days after the earthquakes hit the country. In some parts of La Guaira, such assistance has yet to arrive at all.

“[The] response has come from citizens, from civil society, from humanitarian workers, from volunteers — but not from the government,” Jimenez said.

June 30 (UPI) — The Trump administration has lifted export restrictions on artificia lintelligence company Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, the company said Tuesday evening.

“We’ve received notice that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5,” Anthropic said in a statement, CNN reported. “We’ll begin restoring access tomorrow, and will share an update soon.”

The statement came not long after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted on social media about Anthropic, saying “we have worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the U.S. government and strengthen America’s leadership in AI.”

Anthropic disabled customer access to Fable, a consumer version of its Mythos AI model with more safeguards, and Mythos itself several weeks ago after the export ban June 12. The ban required the company to suspend all use by foreign nationals inside or outside the United States, including Anthropic employees.

In a statement then, Anthropic said its understanding was that “the government it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking,’ Fable 5.”

“We reviewed a demonstration of this specific technique being used to identify a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities,” the company said. “These vulnerabilities all appear relatively simple, and we have found that other publicly available models are able to discover them as well without requiring a bypass.”

The government loosened some of the restrictions on Mythos on Friday, Politico reported.

Anthropic and the U.S. government have had a rocky relationship. Anthropic leaders’ concerns about military and intelligence usage of its products caused issues with the Department of Defense.

President Donald Trump called it a “radical left, woke company” and ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products, while Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, called the company a supply chain risk to national security.

Anthropic has sued the Trump administration to reverse the blacklisting, and that lawsuit is ongoing.

Trump has launched a slate of crypto-friendly policies since returning to the White House for a second term.

A new government report has shown that United States President Donald Trump made millions from cryptocurrency and settlements with media companies last year, raising questions about possible conflicts of interest.

On Tuesday, the US Office of Government Ethics released annual financial disclosure forms for both Trump and his vice president, JD Vance.

One 927-page document itemises all of Trump’s reported assets and income for 2025. They include more than $1.4bn from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.

Trump received more than $500m from World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture he and his sons co-founded. The president also reported another $635m from the sale of his $TRUMP meme coins.

The report suggests that investments in digital assets now generate one of the largest tranches of Trump’s income, overtaking even the real estate empire he inherited from his father.

The revelation is likely to intensify scrutiny of Trump’s policies.

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has launched a slate of crypto-friendly policies as he seeks to make the US the “crypto capital of the world”.

Early in his second term, for instance, the president announced that his government would create a national strategic cryptocurrency reserve to help ensure the stability of certain digital assets.

He also hosted the first-ever White House cryptocurrency summit.

The forum included several technology leaders that had been under investigation during the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.

But Trump reversed those actions. In February 2025, for instance, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced it would drop charges against Coinbase, the largest US-based cryptocurrency exchange, after it was accused of acting as an unregistered broker.

Other digital currency firms came under suspicion for fraudulent transactions.

Trump has coupled the shift away from government oversight with efforts to champion new legislation, including the GENIUS Act.

The law, passed in Congress in July 2025, created a general regulatory framework that required stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency, to be backed one-to-one by US dollars. Advocates said the law would help to make cryptocurrency more mainstream.

“The entire crypto community: For years, you were mocked and dismissed and counted out,” Trump said during the law’s signing ceremony. “You were counted out as little as a year and a half ago, but this signing is a massive validation.”

But Trump’s increasingly close ties to the cryptocurrency industry have drawn criticism for its potential for corruption.

Last week, five Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, called on their Republican colleagues to join them in forcing Trump administration officials to testify under oath about their cryptocurrency dealings.

They pointed to investments from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in World Liberty Financial, the company the Trump family co-owns with government envoy Steve Witkoff’s sons.

Those investments, they argued, “raise questions about what more the UAE may receive — or may have already received – at the expense of U.S. national security after investing in the Trump family crypto company”.

The five Democrats urged immediate hearings on the matter.

Plan includes more than 5 billion pounds for drones and autonomous systems over four years, Ministry of Defence says.

Outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that Britain will spend almost 300 billion pounds ($397bn) over the next four years to modernise its armed forces amid rising threats.

Starmer, expected to leave office next month after losing the support of Labour MPs, announced on Tuesday that the overall defence budget would increase by 15 billion pounds ($20bn) over the next four years to almost 300 billion pounds as he launched his long-awaited defence investment plan.

“Last year I made the decision in the national interest to reprioritise aid spending towards defence and achieved the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the Cold War,” Starmer said.

“That was the right choice because the world has changed. National security is economic security.

“Today we uplift defence spending further – an additional 15 billion pounds worth of funding – by … reprioritising spending across government.”

The plan includes more than 5 billion pounds ($6.6bn) for drones and autonomous systems over the next four years, the Ministry of Defence said in a news release.

The announcement followed months of wrangling within Starmer’s Labour government over the resources required to modernise the United Kingdom’s armed forces in the face of rising threats, including from Russia.

Two defence ministers quit this month in a row over the spending proposals, including Defence Secretary John Healey, who said the plans risked making Britain “less safe”.

Starmer’s pledge came as United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged NATO allies to spend more on defence and become less reliant on Washington for security.

Starmer will take the plan, which foresees spending nearly 80 billion pounds ($105.7bn) a year by 2029, to Ankara for a NATO summit on July 7-8. He wants to signal Britain is on track to spend 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product on defence by 2035.

With likely successor Andy Burnham due to take power as early as July 20, Starmer acknowledged new governments could “build” on his blueprint.

Critics said the plan, delayed for more than nine months, was too little, too late.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court on Monday gave President Trump new power to fire the heads of most independent agencies created by Congress — but not the Federal Reserve.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced two opinions, one of which bolstered the president’s power as the chief executive and a second which said this authority did not extend to the Federal Reserve board.

The first was a 6-3 decision that had the support of five conservatives, while the second had a 5-4 majority that included the three liberals.

Roberts, a former White House lawyer, has long been skeptical of independent agencies whose officials may wield regulatory power in conflict with the views of the president.

Since the 1880s, however, Congress has at times created independent agencies led by a bipartisan board of experts. In 1935, a unanimous Supreme Court had upheld these multi-member boards and commissions.

But Roberts and the court overturned that precedent and declared it conflicts with the executive power of the president.

“Our Constitution creates three branches, but only one President,” he wrote. “To discharg[e] the duties of his trust, the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust. … Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”

The decision upholds Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, one of two Democratic appointees on the five-member Federal Trade Commission.

The Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic appointee to the Federal Trade Commission.

(Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg / Getty Images)

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the ruling “distorts the structure of government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control. The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before. It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him.”

Under what has been dubbed the “unitary executive” theory, the court’s conservatives believe the president’s executive power in Article II of the Constitution overrides Congress’power in Article I to write the laws and structure the government.

The departments and agencies of the federal government exist only because Congress created them by law.

But in the second opinion, the court blocked Trump’s bid to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, an appointee of President Biden.

Roberts said the central bank dates back to the nation’s founding, and Congress created the Federal Reserve Board in line with “our Nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference.”

Trump tried to fire Lisa Cook in a social media post, he said.

But “the Federal Reserve’s Governors do not serve at the President’s pleasure — they instead serve staggered 14-year terms, and may be removed only ‘for cause’,” he wrote.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cast a crucial vote to support the Fed’s independence. He said he joined the majority because it “confirms the longstanding historical practice and understanding that the Federal Reserve is an independent agency whose Governors enjoy for-cause removal protection consistent with Article II of the Constitution.”

The court did not finally decide on Cook’s case, except to say she deserved due process of law. She could not be fired without a hearing and evidence, the court said.

The setback for independent agencies came as no surprise, however.

Even prior to Trump’s election, Roberts has insisted agency officials must be accountable and under the control of the president.

Last year, the justices blocked lower court rulings that would have reinstated agency officials who were fired by Trump.

For most of American history, however, it had been understood that Congress had the power to structure the government and to create semi-independent agencies to carry out specific tasks like regulating railroad rates or the money supply.

These agencies and commissions were led by a bipartisan board of experts who were appointed with a fixed term. They could be fired only for cause, not because of a political disagreement with the president.

The Supreme Court upheld these multi-member commissions in 1935 on the grounds their work was more legislative and judicial than simply enforcing the law.

But the court’s current conservative majority has contended these commissions and boards wield executive authority and are therefore, subject to direct control by the president.

In creating such bodies, Congress often was responding to the problems of a new era.

The Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887 to regulate railroad rates. The FTC, the focus of the court case, was created in 1914 to investigate corporate monopolies.

The year before, the Federal Reserve Board was established to supervise banks, prevent panics and regulate the money supply.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock market and the National Labor Relations Board to resolve labor disputes.

Decades later, Congress focused on safety. The National Transportation Safety Board was created to investigate aviation accidents, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission investigates products that may pose a danger. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission protects the public from nuclear hazards.

Typically, Congress gave the appointees, a mix of Republicans and Democrats, a fixed term and said they could be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

Slaughter was first appointed by Trump to a Democratic seat and was reappointed by Biden in 2023 for a seven-year term.

For more than two decades, corruption has been a serious issue in Iraq.

The oil-rich nation has consistently been ranked as one of the most corrupt in the world.

But this week, its new government has embarked on an unprecedented anti-corruption crackdown.

It’s targeting many high-profile politicians and other senior figures accused of making illicit wealth and abuse of office.

Iraqis have repeatedly protested against what they say is rampant corruption in their nation.

Now, they hope the new government keeps this promise to eradicate what they call a ‘pandemic of fraudulent activities’ at the highest echelons of power.

But what are the challenges ahead in this battle?

Presenter: Imran Khan

Guests:

Ahmed Rushdi – President of the think-tank, House of Iraqi Expertise Foundation.

Renad Mansour – Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.

Manuel Pirino – Regional Advisor for Middle East and North Africa at Transparency International.

Anthropic teamed up with California to get more state workers to use its artificial intelligence assistant Claude as part of an effort to leverage technology to make the government more efficient.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who announced the partnership on Monday, said state agencies will be able to access Claude at a 50% discount. Free training and other assistance will also be available to the workers. California’s local governments will also get the same discount under the agreement.

Government workers can use Claude to draft and summarize documents, analyze information and do other tasks.

Anthropic, an AI company based in San Francisco, has a version of its AI assistant for government clients that provides more security than what it provides other consumers.

The new partnership shows how AI is playing a bigger role at work as tech companies market their tools as ways to complete tasks more quickly. Last year, San Francisco made Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, which is powered by OpenAI’s model, available to nearly 30,000 city employees.

Still, the rise of automation at work has heightened concerns that people will lose their jobs. There are also worries that there are not yet adequate guardrails in place to mitigate data privacy and security risks.

Anthropic and the governor said that they’re focused on the responsible use of AI.

“AI should not replace the human work of government; it should help our workers move faster, solve problems more effectively, and deliver better results for Californians,” Newsom said in a statement.

The remarks didn’t appear to comfort union leaders.

“Wow. Look local government, the Gov is giving you a 50% off coupon to give up your residents’ private data, outsource your jobs to big tech. Isn’t that cool? Because California basically invented AI slop!” said Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, in a post on X.

Anthropic has faced political hurdles as it pushes to get more companies and government agencies to use its products.

Most notable, it’s sparred publicly with the Trump administration, which ordered the company to cut off foreign access to its most powerful AI systems this month.

The Trump administration cited potential national security risks, but Anthropic disagreed with the findings. Last week, tensions decreased after the U.S. government gave Anthropic permission to restore access to its AI model Mythos to certain clients.

Valued at nearly $1 trillion, Anthropic has also signaled it plans to become a publicly traded company.

California has already started using Claude more in state government to develop tools to get the public to engage more in AI policy discussions and assist state workers, the governor’s office said in its news release.

State agencies, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, are also using AI to reduce wait times and improve customer service.

“As state employees, our goal is to provide our fellow Californians with the best possible service,” Government Operations Agency Secretary Nick Maduros said in a statement. “To do that, we need to make sure our teams have access to the best modern tools, including Claude and other emerging technologies.”

It’s no joke: John Oliver of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” is checking into “General Hospital,” the ABC soap opera.

The host of the weekly series that takes sharply comedic aim at government and institutions announced during his June 28 episode that he will appear on the daytime soap “General Hospital” on July 2, 3 and 6. No details about his role were revealed except that it will be a “substantial guest role.”

And that’s not the only soap he’ll be in this summer. He will also have a role on “Days of Our Lives,” streaming on Peacock, on Aug. 11, 12 and 14.

The appearances are the culmination of Oliver’s pleas to soap opera producers during the March 8 installment of his show that they consider him for a part. An unapologetic devotee of the outrageous antics and high melodrama which characterize the genre, Oliver said, “Write me a role and I will be on your set so fast it will make your head swim.”

In a statement, Oliver celebrated the realization of his dream: “‘General Hospital’ was everything I hoped it would be. It’s a true honor to be a small stain on the history of this illustrious show.”

The series’ executive producer Frank Valentini said in a separate statement that Oliver made an offer they could not refuse.

“When John Oliver publicly threw down the gauntlet and said he wanted to appear on a soap, we didn’t hesitate for a second,” he said. “He was everything you’d hope he’d be: prepared, professional, funny, and genuinely kind to everyone on set. He plays an integral character in the story, and I can’t wait for fans to see who he crosses paths within Port Charles.”

“General Hospital,” which airs weekdays on ABC and streams on Hulu, is in its 64th year and stands as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production.

On the March 8 episode, Oliver said he was jealous of celebrities such as Katy Perry, Snoop Dogg and Smokey Robinson who would pop up on various soaps. He was particularly envious of sports pundit Stephen A. Smith who has had a recurring role on “General Hospital,” playing a shady figure known only as “Brick.”

Oliver made it clear that he was not interested in a brief walk-on playing himself. He wanted to play a character, and have a “juicy role” that involved murder or “slapping.” He also required that there be a close-up of his face.

Four days after twin quakes left 1,450 dead and nearly 69,000 missing in Venezuela, residents and volunteers say they feel abandoned by the government as they race to save lives from the rubble.

June 28 (UPI) — The Israeli government on Sunday voted unanimously to recognize the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as a genocide.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar proposed the vote during a cabinet meeting.

“Despite the extensive and unambiguous historical documentation, the Armenian genocide remains to this day the subject of an institutionalized campaign of denial and minimization, including manipulative rewriting of history, mainly by the Turkish government,” Sa’ar said during the meeting.

“It is widely believed that the Ottoman Empire committed crimes amounting to genocide in a systematic manner, with the aim of destroying the Armenian people.”

The fact that the Armenian genocide happened beginning in 1915 is well-accepted within academic circles. However, the Turkish government has continued to deny the culpability of its predecessor — the Ottoman Empire. More than 1.5 million Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1923.

Ahead of the vote, Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz described the Israeli resolution as “an attempt to cover up their own crimes.”

In 2024, the Armenian government officially recognized an independent Palestinian state, months after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that sparked the Gaza war. Armenia said a two-state solution, which is backed by other nations including the United States, is the best option to bring peace to the region.

In response, Israel summoned the Armenian ambassador for a “harsh reprimand conversation.”

Israel joins more than 30 countries across the globe that have acknowledged the Armenian massacres, using the term “genocide,” Politico reported. Among them are France, Germany, Lebanon, Syria and the United States.

President Donald Trump, however, has repeatedly declined to use the term and rejected a 2016 congressional vote to formally and symbolically recognize the genocide.

The last U.S. president to publicly acknowledge the massacres as a genocide was Joe Biden, who, in 2021, marked the 106th anniversary of the atrocities on April 24, Armenian Remembrance Day.

“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden said.

“We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history,” he said, using the Armenian term for the genocide. “And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.”

Elite security personnel carry out a large-scale operation at dawn in the Green Zone and several neighbourhoods in Baghdad, security source says.

Several Iraqi politicians, lawmakers and officials have been arrested on corruption charges, Iraqi state-run media report.

Several people, including members of parliament “whose immunity had been lifted and officials whose names appeared in … confessions”, were arrested early on Sunday in the capital, Baghdad, the Iraqi News Agency reported, quoting a security source.

It was not immediately clear who had been arrested. There was no immediate official statement on the arrests from the Iraqi government or security forces.

A security source told Al Jazeera that elite Iraqi security forces carried out a large-scale arrest operation at dawn in the fortified International Zone (Green Zone) and several neighbourhoods in Baghdad.

The source said the arrests were carried out by the Counter Terrorism Service and were based on statements provided by Adnan al-Jumaili, deputy oil minister, after his arrest last month on corruption charges.

Iraq’s new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, has pledged to fight corruption and mismanagement that have plagued Iraq for decades.

Authorities seized about $86m in cash this month that was allegedly part of the corruption case against al-Jumaili.

The Associated Press news agency reported that seven people were arrested on Sunday, including five members of parliament. It cited a security agency report it obtained. The AP said some of those arrested were from the political bloc of former Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

During November’s parliamentary elections, al-Sudani’s bloc won the largest share of seats, but he did not return as prime minister. He stepped aside amid a deadlock in the Coordination Framework, a group of Shia parties allied with Iran that brought al-Sudani to power. They disagreed for months over their preferred candidate for the post.

Canberra says tech platforms are still letting too many children bypass its under-16 social media ban.

Australia says it will double fines on social media companies that fail to keep children off their platforms, accusing Big Tech of dodging the spirit of its under-16 ban.

The government said on Saturday that new legislation would raise the maximum penalty for systemic breaches from 49.5 million to 99 million Australian dollars ($31m to $68m) and give the eSafety Commissioner stronger powers to force platforms to comply.

The regulator is investigating possible breaches by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

“It’s clear Big Tech are not doing enough to comply with the law – there are still too many children on social media,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

“These changes reflect the seriousness with which we take any failure by social media companies to comply.”

The ban, which came into force on December 10, made Australia a global test case for countries trying to curb children’s access to social media. The United Kingdom, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and New Zealand are among those watching or considering similar restrictions.

But children have continued to evade the rules by using accounts registered to older people, creating fake profiles or logging in through private browsers.

A peer-reviewed evaluation published this month in the British Medical Journal found “insufficient evidence” that the ban had sharply reduced social media use among young people. Researchers surveyed more than 400 children before the measure took effect and again three months later, finding “substantial circumvention” of the rules.

The government says more than five million accounts held by under-16s have been blocked, but Communications Minister Anika Wells said platforms were still falling short.

“Based on the regular updates I receive from the eSafety Commissioner, it is clear to me that social media platforms are adopting tricks straight out of the Big Tech playbook and doing the bare minimum to get by,” Wells said.

“Social media platforms are some of the richest and most powerful companies in the world, and we’re serious about holding them to account,” she added.

The new powers would allow the eSafety Commissioner to demand documents and evidence from platforms, age-checking companies and app stores.

Platforms must show they have taken “reasonable steps” to keep under-16s out. Some use artificial intelligence to estimate ages, while users can also verify their age with a government ID.

For as long as I’ve been a journalist, which is a really long time, public entities have hated public records requests, even while claiming they don’t.

Ask your typical elected or hired official, from the governor to the animal control folks, and they’ll tell you transparency is vital and sunshine in government a key value.

Then turn in the most benign of public records requests — access to a calendar, for example — and prepare for weeks of delays and excuses. Want emails or financial records or, heaven forbid, anything from the police? Months or even years may pass before a single page is delivered, no joke.

That’s why I am deeply concerned about a bill winding its way through the California Legislature that would definitely slow down public records requests and likely make them more difficult and expensive. At its worst, it could push people into costly court battles just for having the audacity to ask for information.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 1821, is authored by Democratic Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco, whose district includes Norwalk, Downey and Bell, where legendary scandals are Example 1 of why public records matter.

Pacheco’s office told me Wednesday that the troubles with the bill are far from what Pacheco set out to do.

“It was never the author’s intention to take away people’s rights to a [Public Records Act] request,” said her chief of staff, Nikki Johnson.

Johnson said the bill was meant to curtail malicious records requests, which do happen, where a citizen goes after copious amounts of records just to be a jerk and cost the government time and money.

It was also meant to address the growing problem of artificial intelligence and other for-profit businesses requesting thousands of records with the intent of using the information to create money-making products — think of sites that already sell publicly available personal information as “background checks.”

I believe Johnson on the good intentions of the bill in addressing those real if nebulous difficulties, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans.

The bill passed through the Assembly recently with ease, largely because most of its problematic portions (I’ll get to those in a minute) were removed — though not all. Even in a watered-down form, which basically gave government more time to answer requests, I found myself in the unlikely position of agreeing with conservative Republican Assemblymember and Trump supporter Carl DeMaio of San Diego, who offered some of the only opposition from elected leaders during the Assembly vote.

“We cannot police the public’s right to know, and we want to err on the side of transparency in how government agencies operate,” DeMaio said.

Amen, brother.

But the Democratic-controlled Assembly erred on the side of secrecy and slowdown instead, and the measure sailed to the Senate, where seemingly out of the blue, a bunch of new provisions were added that fill it with loopholes, vague language and tons of room for abuse.

David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the bill as written now was “comprehensively bad for transparency and therefore for government accountability.”

Sean McMorris, transparency, ethics and accountability program manager for the advocacy organization California Common Cause, put it even more forcefully. He pointed out that “public records are the public’s records.”

“They’re not owned by the government,” he said. But this bill would shift that paradigm and make the public “prove why you need them.”

“It’s going to chill people who want to make requests, and it’s going to complicate the process, and it’s just wrong,” McMorris said.

In its new form, the bill basically allows government entities to decide if they feel a public records request is malicious or for commercial gain. If they do, they can petition a court to intervene — potentially sparking both legal costs and new fees associated with fulfilling the request.

It would also, Snyder said, force a requester to explain why they wanted the records — something California law has repeatedly avoided because it gives power to government to treat those it perceives as enemies differently.

In this age of fairness and reason, it’s hard to imagine a government official misusing power to keep secrets, but I’m told it happens. That makes it all the more crucial that people not be forced to explain why they want information, or if they will use it to, say, expose corruption — be it wrongdoing by a single individual or the entire system.

Faced with unintended consequences, Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco (D-Downey), shown in 2023, will seek to scale back the bill to its original form, according to her chief of staff.

(Rich Polk / Getty Images for Equality California)

“I have little doubt that some agencies will use that provision to overburden requesters that they view as political opponents, requesters that they view as just a hassle, requesters that ask for things the government doesn’t want to disclose,” Snyder said. “They can bring the requester into court, and at a minimum, slow down the process, and probably more likely get the requester to simply withdraw.”

As written, the bill also gives a shoddy carve-out meant to protect journalists, but which in reality could be used to curtail requests from freelancers, student journalists and more.

McMorris said access to public records is a “moral issue,” and fixing any problems with the current law requires “a scalpel, not a meat ax.”

This bill, he warned, is a meat ax.

“I don’t discount that there are abusive requests, and that there are requests that really are a burden on government agencies, but the law right now has ways for government agencies to address that,” he pointed out. “Once these laws go into place, they’re going to be hard to roll back.”

It could “fundamentally change” our access to public records, he said.

Johnson, Pacheco’s chief of staff, told me that faced with all these unintended consequences, the Assembly member is going to ask for the amendments to be removed, and for the bill to progress as it was written when it passed the Assembly. That could happen as early as next week, when the bill with the new provisions is scheduled to come up again in a Senate committee for debate.

Reverting to the bill the Assembly voted on would be better, but slowing down public records is in government’s best interests, not the people’s. The bill does nothing to address the problems it seeks to fix, but stretches out the time officials have to simply tell a requester if any records do exist — never mind delivering them.

So even back to its watered-down form, the bill remains a meat ax for a scalpel problem, chopping up transparency with good intentions.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration may end the Temporary Protected Status granted to more than 350,000 Haitians and Syrians whose home countries remain unsafe.

In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority said Congress gave the administration, not judges, the power to cancel or renew this temporary protection for non-citizens who are living and working here.

In a second win Thursday for the Trump administration, the court also upheld the administration’s policy of blocking asylum seekers at the southern border.

By the same 6-3 vote, the court said migrants do not have a right to apply for asylum if they are not already in the United States.

The decision on Temporary Protected Status could affect up to 1.3 million non-citizens who are in the country.

In 1990, Congress authorized this emergency humanitarian relief for non-citizens whose home countries were wracked by armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary disruptions.

Under the law, the Department of Homeland Security may grant this protection for 6, 12 or 18 months and either renew or extend it for a similar period.

But this legal authority has been under dispute since Trump returned to the White House last year and targeted the 1.3 million people with TPS from 17 countries who were living in the United States.

Trump’s lawyers said the law made clear there was “no judicial review” of the government’s decision to cancel the grant of temporary protection.

However, immigrant rights lawyers argued the government failed in its duty to consult the State Department and assess whether it was safe for migrants to return home.

Repeatedly, U.S. district judges agreed with the challengers and ruled the administration’s decisions were “arbitrary” and unreasonable. But in nearly every case, the Supreme Court granted emergency appeals from the administration and set aside those orders.

Since TPS was created, the government has ended the protected designation for citizens of 18 countries.

DHS under then-Secretary Kristi Noem ended TPS for Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Venezuela. A spokesperson for the agency previously said the Haiti designation became “a de facto amnesty program” and that allowing Syrians to remain is contrary to national interest.

Advocates for the immigrants argue that the administration failed to conduct the required process to properly evaluate each country’s conditions and instead acted on political grounds driven by racial animus.

State Department travel advisories for both countries warn people against traveling to either because of the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and widespread violence. But Federal Register notices announcing the terminations said country conditions had improved enough.

Recently released internal documents show that DHS decided to terminate protections for Haitians without any input from the State Department.

Citing the documents, which were obtained by the National TPS Alliance in a separate lawsuit, lawyers for the Haitians asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the case and send it back to lower courts. They argued that the justices should first consider the communications before issuing a decision.

Internal emails show that homeland security officials sought a recommendation from the State Department in May 2025, ahead of Noem’s early June deadline on whether to extend protections for Haiti. But by the time Noem signed what appears to be a final decision memo, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had not received input from the State Department, the emails show.

“State recommendation for Haiti TPS has not come in despite of many outreach,” a homeland security deputy assistant secretary wrote in a June 2, 2025, email. A recommendation “would be helpful to have,” the person added.

Eleven days later, a USCIS project manager wrote in an email that Noem “recently elected to terminate Haiti without country conditions from DOS.”

USCIS initially recommended automatically extending protections before Homeland Security decided to terminate them, earlier versions of the memo indicate.

The June decision was blocked by a federal judge. In November, DHS issued another notice terminating TPS protections for Haitians.

That time, according a previously publicized email, a homeland security senior counselor asked a State Department official for the agency’s views on the country conditions in Haiti. The official, Spencer Chretien, didn’t address the country conditions but responded that “there would be no foreign policy concerns.”

Lawyers for the Haitians argued that response didn’t meet the legal standard for a sufficient consultation, though the Trump administration disagreed.