Law and Crime

April 26 (UPI) — The Trump administration asked the National Trust for Historic Preservation on Sunday to end its legal challenge to President Donald Trump‘s ballroom following Saturday’s arrest at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, saying its lawsuit “puts the lives of the president, his family and staff at grave risk.”

“Enough is enough. Your client should voluntarily dismiss this frivolous lawsuit today in light of last night’s assassination attempt on President Trump,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said in a letter to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s lawyers.

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., was arrested Saturday night at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner hosted at the Washington Hilton Hotel with Trump, his family, members of his Cabinet and many others in attendance.

U.S. Secret Service agents apprehended the suspect — armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives — who allegedly rushed a Secret Service checkpoint in the hotel’s lobby, authorities said.

Law enforcement and the suspect exchanged gunfire, resulting in an agent sustaining an injury when shot in the bullet-resistant vest. The injured agent and the suspect, who was not struck by gunfire, were transported to a local hospital for treatment.

Trump has been locked in a monthslong legal battle with the preservation organization over his plans to construct a $400 million donor-paid ballroom where the East Wing of the White House once stood.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argues that the Trump administration needs congressional approval for the project and its financing mechanism, while the Justice Department argues the project is legally authorized and that, now that construction has begun, completing it is necessary for the security and the safety of the president.

A federal judge has sided with the preservation organization, ruling that Trump needs congressional approval for the plan to proceed. After the judge earlier this month permitted only below-ground construction for security purposes, the D.C. Circuit issued an administrative stay allowing the project to continue while the government’s appeal proceeds, with oral arguments scheduled for June 5.

Calls of support from the White House and Republicans have increased following Saturday’s incident, with Trump stating in a press conference that night, “We need the ballroom.”

In his letter on Sunday, Shumate said the ballroom would mean the president would no longer need to leave the White House to attend large gatherings.

He said the National Trust for Historic Preservation has until 9 a.m. Monday to dismiss the lawsuit or the Justice Department will move to dismiss the case “in light of last night’s extraordinary events” and state that the preservation organization opposes the motion.

UPI has asked the National Trust for Historic Preservation for comment.

April 25 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said Sunday a suspect arrested in connection with a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, D.C., had written an anti-administration “manifesto.”

Other reports indicated the suspect, identified as Cole Thomas Allen, 31, of Torrence, Calif., had sent a communication to family members minutes before the late Saturday incident at the Washington Hilton Hotel

In the note, he reportedly said he was targeting members of the Trump administration in his attack.

Trump told Fox News Allen’s “manifesto” indicated he “is a sick guy.

“When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians. That’s one thing for sure. He hates Christians, a hatred. And I think his sister or his brother actually was complaining about it. You know, they were even complaining to law enforcement. So he was, he was a very troubled guy.”

Security camera footage supplied by the White House showed a man charging through a security checkpoint outside the hotel ballroom where the correspondents’ dinner was being held.

The Washington Metropolitan Police Department said one person was in custody in connection with the incident and it is believed he acted alone. Two firearms and multiple knives were recovered at the scene and a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer was injured and hospitalized with “non-life threatening injuries,” they added.

The White House told Fox Sunday Allen’s family members had notified the New London, Conn., police department on Saturday when they received the communication. Administration officials also claimed Cole Allen’s sister, Avriana Allen, told the Secret Service her brother had been making “radical” statements and was in possession of weapons.

Meanwhile, NBC News reported the communication shows Allen apologized to his parents, colleagues, students, bystanders and others for what he was about to do.

“I don’t expect forgiveness,” Allen reportedly wrote. “Again, my sincere apologies.”

He also reportedly criticized the president without specifically mentioning him and noted that security precautions at the hotel were not as stringent as he had expected them to be.

Administration officials “are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” he wrote, according to NBC News, adding, “I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.”

The New York Times reported federal authorities in Los Angeles served a search warrant on Allen’s house in Torrance but refused to comment on Trump’s assertion that Allen had penned a “manifesto” before correspondents’ dinner attack.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said a preliminary investigation had determined the suspect “traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago, and then Chicago to Washington, D.C., where he checked into the hotel where the correspondent’s dinner was at in the last day or two.”

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Blanche said authorities believe that the two firearms the suspect carried during the attack had been purchased “within the past couple of years,” adding, “We believe that he was targeting administration officials in this attack, attempted attack. But that’s, again, quite preliminary as law enforcement continues to go through all the evidence.”

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro told reporters Allen is expected to be arraigned Monday. He is facing two preliminary charges including using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.

Media analyses of Allen’s social media accounts portray him as self-described independent computer game developer, including a game called “Bohrdom” that was released in 2018. He reportedly earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

At a press briefing after returning to the White House following the incident, Trump said he believed that this was a “lone wolf” attack as he praised the response of Secret Service and law enforcement after recognizing the threat.

Trump said there was no indication of a motive, political or otherwise, but that “we’ll find out very quickly” about this “very sick person.”

Allen has been taken to the hospital, as has the Secret Service agent who was injured, The Washington Post reported.

Dinner was being served at the annual gathering of the Washington press organization when shots could be heard from the ballroom, causing many in the room to freeze.

President Trump, Melania Trump and other members of the administration on the dais and in the ballroom were evacuated within minutes of shots being heard over C-SPAN and other networks broadcasts.

As the officials were cleared from the room, Secret Service agents swarmed it and ordered other guests to stay in their seats.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he wanted to return to the dinner and for the “SHOW TO GO ON,” but security insisted that they leave the hotel and return to the White House.

Most of the other guests remained in the ballroom after organizers made an announcement that the show would continue shortly.

There was also speculation whether Trump would return to the dinner after the announcement the show would continue and the Presidential Seal was not immediately removed from the podium on the dais.

“Law Enforcement has requested that we leave the premises, consistent with protocol, which we will do immediately,” Trump posted about an hour after the incident.

“The First Lady, plus the Vice President, and all Cabinet members, are in perfect condition,” Trump posted. “I have spoken with all the representatives in charge of the event, and we will be rescheduling within 30 days.”

An announcement in the ballroom mirrored Trump’s announcement about rescheduling the dinner for next month.

C-SPAN reported that waiters started to clear the salad portion of dinner as guests started to open wine while waiting for more information about the situation before the announcement that the dinner is going to be rescheduled.

April 26 (UPI) — Police in Northern Ireland said Sunday morning that the New IRA is believed to have been involved in a car bombing near a police station in Belfast.

Detectives are treating a car bombing outside a police station in the Dunmurry area of outer Belfast as an attempted murder, and said called it a miracle that nobody was injured, The Guardian and the Belfast Telegraph reported.

A delivery car was hijacked late Saturday night in West Belfast, an explosive device was placed in the car’s boot and the delivery driver was told to drive to the police station and abandon it there, police said.

Bobby Singleton, deputy chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, told reporters that the attack was nearly identical to an attack earlier this year.

“As a consequence of that, our early working hypothesis is that this may well be the work of the New IRA, who claimed responsibility for the attack in Lurgen,” Singleton said.

“Thanks to the swift actions of police, no one has been injured, which is nothing short of miraculous,” he said.

The attempt on a Lurgen police station in March was unsuccessful because the device did not detonate, but the method — hijacking a car and forcing the driver to abandon the bomb on wheels somewhere — was nearly the same, Singleton said.

April 26 (UPI) — U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said on Sunday that he will end his blockade of Kevin Warsh’s confirmation as Federal Reserve chair after the Department of Justice ended its investigation into current chair Jerome Powell.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro on Friday said the Justice Department was ending its investigation into Powell over the Fed’s budget for renovations to its headquarters and has threatened him with criminal charges over testimony he gave about the costs.

Tillis made the announcement during an interview on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” because the department assured him that it has “completely and fully ended” the investigation.

He had previously said he would block all Trump nominees until the probe was dropped.

“We worked a lot over the weekend to make sure that we were very clear that we have assurances from the Department of Justice that I needed to feel like they were not using the department as a weapon to threaten the independence of the Fed,” Tillis told NBC News.

The Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into Powell in January after President Donald Trump questioned the Fed being over budget on renovations to its headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The investigation was condemned by several members of Congress as improper, including Tillis, because it was seen as politically motivated punishment from Trump for not setting interest rates at levels he preferred.

Pirro said Friday that she has asked the Federal Reserve’s inspector general to investigate the renovation costs, which she said is “billions of dollars” over budget, and that she expects a “comprehensive report” on the matter.

She noted, however, that she “will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.”

April 26 (UPI) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog decided to hold off on a pardon for the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on charges of corruption, opting instead to attempt to negotiate a plea deal.

Netanyahu has been on trial for six years on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust across three separate cases but denies he has violated any laws, calling the charges a “witch hunt.”

Herzog has been under pressure from Netanyahu, his allies and U.S. President Donald Trump to issue the prime minister a pardon, though he has held off as opinions in Israel are relatively split on the trials, The New York Times and The Times of Israel reported.

“President Isaac Herzog sees reaching an agreement between the parties in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cases as a proper and correct solution,” Herzog’s office said in a statement.

“The president believes that it is right to first, before discussing the pardon request itself, exhaust a process that could lead to the formation of an agreement between the parties, outside the walls of the court,” his office said.

Netanyahu became the first active Israeli prime minister to be put on trial in 2020, when he was charged with allegedly accepting cigars and champagne in exchange for political favors.

In the second case, he allegedly boosted circulation of an Israeli newspaper that offered him positive coverage and, in the third case, he allegedly promoted regulatory changes to benefit an telecommunications company in exchange for positive coverage by an online news organization.

Netanyahu in November requested the pardon from Herzog, whose office said at the time that it would consider the request and review it with justice officials because of the “significant implications” a pardon for such charges could have.

A plea agreement would require an admission of guilt, in addition to likely requiring Netanyahu to resign from office, which he has said is unacceptable and part of why he calls the trials an effort to drive him from office.

The trial “stirs divisions and deepens rifts,” he said in the request for a pardon, and said that “to repeal the threats [to Israel] and realize the opportunities, national unity is required.

April 25 (UPI) — An attraction planned for Central Florida called Sloth World Orlando will not open after at least 31 of its sloths died during the last two years in a facility that had not been properly permitted.

Sloth World Orlando had imported at least 69 wild-caught sloths that it planned to put on display in an educational “slotharium,” but an investigation by The Sloth Conservation Foundation, The Sloth Institute and investigative reporters found the animals were being mistreated and dying, the organizations said.

Orange County, Fla., building inspectors had posted a stop-work order at a warehouse that Sloth World Orlando was storing its sloths because of alterations made to the building with permits, and because the last use permit issued for the building was for vehicle storage, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Ben Agresta, who owns Sloth World Orlando, told Fox35Orlando, that he has ended plans for the slotharium and plans to file for bankruptcy after it was forced to give up its 13 surviving sloths in the wake of the reports.

The 13 sloths will live at the Central Florida Zoo until the Association of Zoos and Aquariums can help find long-term homes for them.

The two Costa Rica-based non-profits have been running a campaign about the facility and “following the initial press release, we received reports from former employees raising concerns about the welfare of the animals,” they said in a press release.

The organization’s report, published by Inside Climate News, found that at least 31 of Sloth World Orlando’s sloths died between December 2024 and February 2025 when they started importing the animals, and that another 24 slots remain unaccounted for.

A separate report from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission last year performed unannounced routine inspection of the storage facility that resulted in warnings about the sloths living conditions and improper records being kept on all of them.

Among the issues raised about the facility was the lack of power, heat or air conditioning and no water.

The state report also noted that in one shipment of 10 sloths wild-caught sloths, two arrived deceased, and the other eight appeared to be in poor health and later died as well.

Agresta said in a statement that allegations the animals were poorly treated are “false and inaccurate,” claiming instead that the company “lost sloths that had a virus with showed barely any symptoms and was undetectable even after necropsy.”

April 25 (UPI) — An Egyptian family of six that was released from custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement days ago was rearrested on Saturday and may be headed for a quick deportation, their lawyer said.

After an emergency appeal earlier in the day, U.S. District Court Judge Fred Biery said the family’s immediate deportation should be paused, The Guardian and The Texas Tribune reported.

Hayam El Gamal and her five children had been held in the Dilley detention center outside San Antonio, Texas, which has been criticized for lack of medical care and food, for ten months.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Chestney on Thursday ruled that the family, which came to the United States in 2022 on a tourist visa and applied for asylum, should be freed while they wait for a decision on their case.

After the family was arrested again on Saturday morning, El Gamal’s attorney, Eric Lee, posted on X that the family had already been put on a flight to Michigan, where they are expected to be deported to Egypt.

Calling the agency’s actions “an absolutely brazen violation of separation of powers,” Lee said the flight “constitutionally” should not be permitted to take off, posting “stop this travesty of justice from taking place.”

The family was arrested in June after El Gamal’s husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, allegedly threw Molotov cocktails into a crowd rallying in support of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.

A judge already had temporarily halted their deportation in June after their arrest.

April 25 (UPI) — Two police officers were wounded in a shooting Saturday at a Chicago hospital, leaving one of them in critical condition, officials said.

The two officers were shot at Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital on the north side of Chicago at around 11 a.m., the hospital’s parent company said on Facebook. Endeavor said the shooter was brought to the Emergency Department for treatment around 9 a.m. CDT Saturday in the custody of the officers. He was wanded and escorted by the officers at all times, Endeavor said. At around 11 a.m. he shot the officers and left the building. He was caught and is in police custody.

Law enforcement sources told the Chicago Sun Times that the shooter disarmed one of the officers before opening fire.

No patients or hospital staff were injured.

“The safety of our patients and team members remains our top priority,” Endeavor said. “We are cooperating with law enforcement during their investigation and our deepest compassion remains with the officers and their families.”

The condition of the other officer isn’t clear.

The hospital was locked down Saturday afternoon, but there is no ongoing threat.

April 24 (UPI) — Hundreds of rallies are planned nationwide on Saturday as part of a “Communities Not Cages” action aimed at protesting the number of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The protests come amid ICE’s plans to construct eight new detection centers and 16 processing centers, adding at least 116,000 beds to the number the agency has available for detaining people who are allegedly in the country illegally, Axios reported.

At the end of March, No Kings held its third protest — which saw more than 3,000 simultaneous demonstrations across the United States — since President Donald Trump retook office and engaged in a crackdown on immigration.

Detention Watch Network, the organization behind this Saturday’s rallies, called the scouting, purchasing and retrofitting of warehouses to detain between 1,500 and 10,000 people each “particularly horrifying.”

“Shockingly, ICE’s budget now exceeds many militaries around the world,” the organization said on its website.

“In the face of the administration’s unrelenting expansion of immigration detention, communities across the country are demanding to shut down detention centers and halt detention expansion,” it said.

One local group that is coordinating with Detention Watch Network’s “Communities Not Cages National Day of Action” is Shut Down Etowah, a group that previously protested the Biden administration until it stopped detaining people there, AL.com reported.

The Etowah County, Ala., facility is “too broken to be fixed,” the group said this week in a press release, noting that its’ “atrocious” conditions include bed bugs, 23-hour lockdowns and light fixtures that have not been fixed.

ICE earlier this year said it was launching a program under section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act after lauding its 2025 record of motivating 2.5 million alleged illegal immigrants to leave the country, more than 600,000 of whom were arrested and deported.

April 24 (UPI) — A bill to legalize assisted-dying in England and Wales was Friday set to run out of time to complete all the necessary stages for it to become law in the current session of parliament, 10 months after MPs passed the legislation.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has been stalled in its committee stage in the House of Lords since June but with Friday set to be the final debate in the upper chamber before the 2024-2026 session ends in early May, it has run out of road.

“Detailed line-by-line scrutiny of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill continues,” The Lords said Friday in its order of business for the day.

Members have used up all 14 committee-stage days allotted for the bill as they attempted to grapple with more than 1,000 amendments covering everything from blocking overseas patients from accessing the treatment and the inclusion of people injured serving in the military or in industrial accidents to making patients aware of non-lethal treatment options.

Only around halfway through the stages required before it can receive “Royal Assent” from King Charles and finally become law, the bill can no longer proceed and cannot be carried over to the 2026-2027 session.

Supporters vowed not to give up on the bill, which would give terminally ill adults with less than six months to live the legal right to end their lives with the help of medical professionals, saying they would try to reintroduce it when the new parliament convenes on May 13.

The bill’s sponsor, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, said she had a group of backers who had agreed to try to bring back the bill immediately following the state opening of parliament.

To do so, they need to prevail in a ballot in which MPs compete for 25 slots to introduce legislation they have authored to the House of Commons, so-called private members’ bills.

The next private members’ bill ballot is scheduled for May 21.

Leadbeater said she was disappointed, upset and angry at the outcome.

She said that terminally ill patients and their families she had been speaking with felt “a real sense of feeling let down by our democratic system.”

“This is not over. The issue is not going to go away just because of an undemocratic filibuster in the Lords. We will keep pushing for a safer, more compassionate law until parliament reaches a final decision.”

Opponents were concerned over the watering down of key safeguards in the original bill introduced in the House of Commons in November 2024, including dropping the requirement for a High Court judge to review every case.

“If we’re going to do this, we have to have safeguards and I really don’t think there are anywhere near enough safeguards in it,” said Baroness Grey-Thompson, adding that it was the job of peers to go through every line in legislation.

She told the BBC that when bills failed it because it was usually because they were poorly drafted, rather than because of the number of amendments tabled.

“It was written in haste and there are so many gaps in it that a number of peers are really uncomfortable with this particular bill, even though they may be in favor of the principle,” she said.

Leadbeater said she hoped the Commons would pass the bill again and an accommodation could be agreed with members of the upper house over amendments.

She did not rule out invoking a very rarely used procedural maneuver, a theoretical nuclear option that dates back more than a century in which the Lords is rendered powerless to stop a bill that the House of Commons has passed more than once from becoming law — but said she hoped that would not be necessary.

April 23 (UPI) — A U.S. Army special forces soldier who participated in capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has been charged with using classified information about the operation to make bets on Polymarket, a decentralized prediction platform, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke, stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., is alleged to have profited by more than $400,000 through wagers he made on Polymarket concerning the future of Venezuela, Maduro and U.S. military intervention.

“Our men and women in uniform are trusted with classified information in order to accomplish their mission as safely and effectively as possible, and are prohibited from using this highly sensitive information for personal financial gain,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

Polymarket is one of several crypto-based prediction markets that grew in popularity during the 2024 general election, allowing users to make wagers on seemingly anything, from who will be drafted first overall in the NFL Draft to when President Donald Trump will announce the war in Iran is over.

In the indictment unsealed Thursday, federal prosecutors alleged that starting from around Dec. 8, Van Dyke participated in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve.

On Dec. 26, Van Dyke allegedly created a Polymarket account, which he used to make 13 bets from Dec. 27, wagering a combined $33,034 on contracts concerning U.S. military involvement in Venezuela.

Before dawn on Jan. 3, U.S. military forces conducted a clandestine operation in Venezuela, resulting in the capture of Maduro and his wife, who were brought back to the United States to face narco-trafficking charges.

After Trump announced the operation that night, Van Dyke allegedly made $409,881 off his bets, which he withdrew to a foreign cryptocurrency vault before depositing them into a newly created online brokerage account, federal prosecutors said.

After the operation, news broke that one user had wagered $32,000 that Maduro would be ousted by the end of January, netting the multi-hundred-thousand-dollar payout.

Prosecutors alleged that as reports of the unusual wager spread, Van Dyke asked the platform on Jan. 6 to delete his account and he allegedly changed the email address registered to his cryptocurrency exchange account.

The indictment charges him with use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction.

If convicted, Van Dyke faces up to 10 years in prison for each of the three Commodity Exchange Act counts, 20 years for the one wire fraud count and 10 years for the unlawful monetary transaction charge.

The charges come amid concern about such decentralized markets that allow for betting on real-world events and calls for them to be regulated

In late March, dozens of lawmakers called on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Office of Government Ethics to address illegal insider trading on these platforms by federal employees following the Polymarket payout on the capture of Maduro and other suspicious trades.

Asked about the development and if he is concerned about bets being placed on the Iran war, Trump told reporters at the White House that he will look into it.

“The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino. And you look at what’s going on all over the world, in Europe and every place, they’re doing these betting things,” he said.

“I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it, conceptually, but it is what it is.”

April 23 (UPI) — Senate Republicans were up all night voting, eventually adopting a budget reconciliation package Thursday morning to prepare to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

The Senate plans to fund the department without Democrats’ help. The resolution was adopted at around 3:30 a.m. EDT Thursday by a vote of 50-48 after about six hours.

The only Republicans to vote against the resolution were Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rand Paul, R-Ky. The bill now goes to the House. If the House adopts the resolution, the final funding bill can be written and voted on by Congress.

They are following a deadline of June 1 set by President Donald Trump.

“We have a multistep process ahead of us, but at the end Republicans will have helped ensure that America’s borders are secure and prevented Democrats from defunding these important agencies,” said Senate Republican Leader John Thune, R-N.D.

Thune told fellow senators to keep the package narrow to ensure speedy passage.

Since the January deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, both shot and killed by DHS officers, Democrats have refused to support funding the department without reforms. The department has been shut down since Feb, 14, though Trump told the department to use emergency funds to pay essential workers.

Just before the Easter recess, the Senate passed a bill that would fund most of DHS but not ICE and Border Patrol. But the House rejected it.

Republicans are hoping to fund the department through 2029 at a cost of between $70 and $80 billion.

The late-night vote-a-rama included votes about amendments that could be added to the resolution. Two Republican Senators who are vulnerable in the November elections — Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska — broke ranks on some amendments.

Collins and Sullivan voted for amendments to lower health care costs, to reverse last year’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts and to tackle insurance companies that delay or deny medical care. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., joined with Collins and Sullivan on the latter.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., also sponsored an amendment that would tell the budget committee chair to help cut prescription drug prices by half. Hawley, Collins and Sullivan supported Sanders on it. Sanders said his amendment would codify ensuring that Americans wouldn’t pay more for prescriptions than Canadians or Europeans.

The amendments wouldn’t have the power to force Republicans’ hands, but they would make Republicans go on record about their views of these items.

“This reconciliation, or this budget act, will show who’s on whose side, and clearly if Republicans vote against our amendments, they’re not on the side of the American people,” Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox and Friends on Tuesday that the department will run out of money for salaries next month.

“I’ve got one payroll left, and there is no more emergency funds so the president can’t do another executive order because there’s no more money there,” The Hill reported he said.

The resolution does not include the SAVE America Act, the voter security bill that Trump and other Republicans have pushed for. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., sponsored an amendment to add similar restrictions, but it failed 48-50. Collins, Murkowski, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-S.C., and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voted against it.

A woman who brutally beat her four-month-old son and left him to die in a bathtub was sentenced Thursday to life imprisonment in a child abuse case that stunned the nation.

The Suncheon branch of the Gwangju District Court ruled that the mother, in her 30s, had “cruelly” abused her child for half of his short life before ending it.

The woman was indicted for indiscriminately beating her son and leaving him in a running bathtub at their home in Yeosu, about 310 kilometers south of Seoul, on Oct. 22. The infant died of multiple fractures and internal bleeding.

The court also sentenced the child’s father to four years and six months in prison on charges of neglecting the abuse and threatening a witness in the case.

“Despite the defendants having the infinite responsibility of raising their child safely as parents, the child died 133 days after being born due to the abuse from his own parents, who should have been the world to him,” the court said.

Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for the mother and a 10-year term for her husband.

Investigators earlier determined that the woman had abused her child on 19 separate occasions since Aug. 24, and found multiple bruises and signs of internal bleeding on the infant’s body.

The case drew nationwide attention after footage of the abuse was aired by local broadcaster SBS’ investigative series “Unanswered Questions.”

A group of protestors staged a rally outside the court earlier in the day calling for heavy punishment.

Copyright (c) Yonhap News Agency prohibits its content from being redistributed or reprinted without consent, and forbids the content from being learned and used by artificial intelligence systems.

April 23 (UPI) — A chemical leak at a decommissioning plant in West Virginia has killed two people and left a third in critical condition, according to officials.

More than 30 people required medical treatment because of the leak Wednesday at Catalyst Refiners, a silver recovery plant in Institute, an unincorporated community west of Charleston.

Kanawha County Commissioners President Ben Salango told reporters at a press conference that workers were cleaning and decontaminating the site ahead of its shutdown when at about 9:31 a.m. EDT Wednesday a chemical reaction occurred, creating hydrogen sulfide, a flammable, colorless gas that can be fatal to those who breathe it, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Twenty-one people at the site were initially reported by county officials to have either been transported to the hospital or sought medical attention, a number that West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey told reporters during a second press conference held Wednesday night had increased to more than 30.

“To the families we lost today, our hearts are with you and our state grieves with you,” Morrisey said.

“We stand ready to support you in every possible way.”

Among the injured were seven emergency ambulance employees who had responded to the scene, Kanawha County Emergency Management Agency Director C.W. Sigman said.

“When I got there, firefighters and EMS were doing CPR on two of the patients, trying to revive them,” he said.

He said the hydrogen sulfide was the product of nitric acid and M2000A mixing while workers were decommissioning a tank on the site. Sigman explained he was told by the plant manager that it’s “not uncommon” for workers to mix the two together as part of the decommissioning work.

“But there was something going on that was different,” he said. “But that will be for the investigators to determine.”

Officials said an investigation is ongoing and will involve local, state and federal agencies.

A one-mile-radius shelter-in-place order around the plant that was issued has since been lifted and several roads that were closed have been reopened, officials said.

April 22 (UPI) — Amnesty International said Venezuela has not dismantled its “repressive apparatus” nearly four months after former President Nicolás Maduro was arrested in a U.S. military operation.

During the presentation of its annual report in Bogotá, the organization said the country’s system of repression remains fully operational under the interim government led by Delcy Rodríguez.

Valentina Ballesta, research director for the Americas at Amnesty International, said Tuesday that Venezuela’s repressive structure continues to operate despite the political transition, according to reports by Infobae.

According to the report, Maduro’s government maintained a policy of systematic repression throughout 2025, with all branches of the state acting in coordination.

Amnesty International said authorities continue to use arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances and torture as tools of social control.

“These are not isolated incidents, but rather a pattern that amounts to crimes against humanity,” the report said.

The organization documented hundreds of cases in which detainees faced judicial proceedings without basic legal guarantees, including ineffective public defenders, the use of special anti-terrorism courts, lack of access to charges and repeated violations of due process rights.

Amnesty International also criticized the implementation of the Amnesty Law approved in February, saying its enforcement has been arbitrary and selective.

Many requests for relief were rejected without explanation, while some people initially granted benefits later had those measures reversed, according to Venezuelan news outlet Efecto Cocuyo.

While the nongovernmental organization Foro Penal and other groups confirmed the release of 673 political prisoners between Maduro’s capture and mid-April, Rodríguez’s government has reported much higher figures as part of what it described as “peace and reconciliation” measures.

In March 2026, government spokespeople said as many as 7,000 people had been granted full release or alternative legal measures. That figure, however, includes common criminals and people already serving conditional release.

Foro Penal said nearly 500 political prisoners remain in detention.

The Amnesty International report said impunity remains the driving force behind Venezuela’s repressive system and warned that the lack of an independent judiciary prevents victims from obtaining justice inside the country.

Analist also pointed to the recent restructuring of the Attorney General’s Office as an example of political control. The move replaced an official close to Maduro with another figure aligned with the Rodríguez political faction, which currently controls both the interim presidency and the National Assembly.

About 7.9 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015. Nearly 2 million people depend on international humanitarian aid, while severe shortages in basic services such as water, electricity and food persist, the report said.

Amnesty International further warned about the growing use of new technologies and artificial intelligence for population surveillance, along with continued harassment of journalists and human rights advocates.

Without a genuine dismantling of coercive state structures, Amnesty International said, Venezuela will not be able to restore fundamental freedoms.

BUENOS AIRES, April 22 (UPI) — President Javier Milei said he will send Congress a bill Wednesday to overhaul Argentina’s electoral system, including eliminating primary elections and changing the way political parties are financed.

The proposal revives one of Milei’s campaign promises and places renewed focus on a contentious issue in Argentina: how candidates are selected and how political campaigns are funded.

Milei announced the initiative on X, where he defended the reforms and intensified his criticism of the country’s traditional political establishment.

“We are eliminating the PASO: enough of forcing Argentines to pay for the internal elections of the political caste,” Milei wrote.

PASO, the Spanish acronym for Open, Simultaneous and Mandatory Primaries, is a nationwide system used in Argentina to determine candidates ahead of general elections. Under the current model, all political parties participate in a unified primary election to select candidates for national offices.

The government proposal would eliminate the mandatory national primary process and allow each political party to choose its candidates through its own internal mechanisms.

The PASO system has been in place since the 2011 elections and applies to national offices. The primaries are held every two years in August and determine party lists for congressional races, as well as presidential tickets that compete in the October general elections.

If approved, the reform would mark a significant change to Argentina’s electoral structure. Since its implementation, the PASO system has served both as a mechanism to organize internal party disputes and as an early measure of political strength before general elections.

The government also proposes changes to political financing, an issue that has long generated controversy in Argentina amid concerns over campaign funding sources and the use of public resources. A bill seeks to reduce public financing for political parties and strengthen oversight mechanisms.

Another central component of the proposal is the so-called “Clean Record” initiative, which would bar individuals with final corruption convictions from running for elected office.

In his post, Milei sharpened his confrontational rhetoric.

“Impunity is over. The party is over. Long live liberty, damn it,” he wrote.

According to Argentine newspaper La Nación, the bill also includes broader disqualifications for candidates. Those barred from the electoral registry under existing laws would be ineligible to run, as would people charged with serious crimes that include genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and human rights violations.

The proposal also would prohibit members of the armed forces and security services, judges, judicial officials and executives or representatives of companies holding public service concessions or linked to gambling operations from seeking elected office.

The measure further provides that people affected by these restrictions could not hold key executive branch positions, diplomatic posts or leadership roles in state-owned companies.

With the proposal, Milei adds another measure to his broader reform agenda and shifts the debate to Congress, where lawmakers are expected to face intense negotiations in a politically divided environment.

April 22 (UPI) — A U.S. appeals court has ruled that Texas can require schools to display a copy of the Ten Commandments, finding the legislation that mandates the Decalogue in classrooms does not require students to believe in the religious teachings.

The Tuesday ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is a victory for Texas conservatives and Christians who have fought to further include religion in public spaces. The decision is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

“This is a major victory for Texas and our moral values,” the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, said in a statement.

“The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and it’s important that students learn from them every single day.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 10 into law June 10, directing every classroom in all Texas public schools to display the Ten Commandments starting Sept. 1, but has been tied up in litigation since.

While proponents argue the Decalogue is foundational to American life, opponents state that mandating it in schools is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented multi-faith Texas families in the case, said it was “extremely disappointed” by the decision and expects the Supreme Court to reverse it.

“The court’s ruling goes against fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority,” the ACLU of Texas said in a statement.

“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction. This decision tramples those rights.”

The appeals court on Tuesday ruled 9-7 to overturn a lower court’s preliminary injunction that found S.B. 10 likely unconstitutional.

In its ruling, the appeals court found S.B. 10 “looks nothing like a historical religious establishment.”

“S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’). No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them or affirm their divine origin,” the court said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WASHINGTON, April 22 (UPI) — The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday whether immigration officers can place permanent residents charged with a crime on parole if they leave and then re-enter the country.

In immigration, parole is a temporary, discretionary permission granted by the Department of Homeland Security that allows a person to enter or remain in the United States, even though they are not formally admitted.

Parole does not cancel a person’s green card, but essentially gives the Department of Homeland Security time to decide whether the person should be admitted or deported based on how the issue is resolved.

The court is poised to hear oral arguments in Blanche vs. Lau, which would determine when immigration officers can demote a permanent resident’s status to parole, a temporary status that can be revoked and result in deportation.

Lau is Chinese immigrant Muk Lau, a permanent resident with a green card. Blanche is Todd Blanche, the acting U.S. attorney general and named defendant in the case.

Typically, permanent residents are allowed to leave and re-enter the United States as they wish, with a few exceptions. If these immigrants have committed certain kinds of crimes, for example, officers can have them placed on parole when they return to the country after going abroad.

The case stems from an event on June 15, 2012, when 69-year-old Lau, who had gained permanent residency five years earlier, landed in a New York-area airport after traveling to China.

He presented his green card and passport to border control. His entry triggered an FBI match because a month earlier, Lau was charged with third-degree trademark counterfeiting for selling nearly $300,000 of fake designer shorts.

“I was arrested at a warehouse that contained some merchandise I had stored there,” Lau told the Customs and Border Protection agent, according to court documents. “I went to the warehouse to retrieve the merchandise because I had not paid rent, and when I got there, the cops were there and arrested me.”

The agent declared Lau inadmissible as a returning permanent resident due to the crime exception, and decided to let him in on parole, instead. A year later, Lau pled guilty to the counterfeiting, and in 2014, the Department of Homeland Security began deportation proceedings against him.

At the time, the Customs and Border Patrol agent did not know whether Lau was guilty — just that he had been charged with a crime. The crux of Lau’s case is whether the CBP agent needed “clear and convincing” evidence of a crime when placing him on parole or whether just charges were enough without such evidence.

Immigrant advocates argue the agent erred.

“Mr. Lau was absolutely, unequivocally, at that time, admissible,” said Jonathan Weinberg, who worked on the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s brief to the court. “He just was. He hadn’t been convicted of a crime. There was nothing else that would render him inadmissible.”

After an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals sided with the government, Lau appealed to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate court, agreeing with Weinberg’s reasoning, granted Lau’s petition in March 2025.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit advocating for lower immigration rates, also submitted a brief to the court. It argued that the border patrol officer did the right thing by paroling Lau into the country, and that the clear and convincing standard was too high.

“If you’re going to say that the officer in an airport is supposed to have all this information, you’re assigning that individual with an impossible task,” FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman said. “You have thousands of people coming through the airports every day, and these are decisions that have to be made on the spot.”

Mehlman also said that the decision “shouldn’t be a problem” for green-card holders without any criminal history.

“When you come to the United States as a non-citizen, you are here on a conditional basis,” Mehlman said. “Even if you’re a green card holder, you’re subject to removal if you violate the terms of your presence here in the United States.”

There are nearly 13 million legal permanent residents in the United States. Legal immigrants, including green card holders, commit crimes at lower rates than natural-born citizens, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute. However, Weinberg said the ultimate decision would impact all legal permanent residents, including those who have not been convicted of any crime.

“If the government can admit Lau on parole, then the government can basically admit any returning green card holder on parole if it chooses to,” Weinberg said.

Lau’s case joins several immigration-related issues, including birthright citizenship and temporary protected status, which have made their way to the Supreme Court this spring.

“The immigrant advocacy community is, I think, fighting an uphill battle,” Weinberg said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t give it your best shot.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fair said the organization will fight the allegations.

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

April 20 (UPI) — Two people were killed Monday in a shooting near a North Carolina middle school where two children agreed to meet for a fight, police said.

Law enforcement officials were alerted to a fight at Leinbach Park on Robinhood Road near Jefferson Middle School in Winston-Salem, N.C., at 9:52 a.m. EST. As officers were on the way to the scene, the call was upgraded to a shooting.

The Winston-Salem Police Department posted on Facebook that “two young individuals” met at Leinbach Park for a “planned fight.” When those individuals arrived, “the situation escalated significantly, leading to multiple people exchanging gunfire.”

The police department didn’t say how many people were injured in the shooting, but used a hashtag for “mass shooting” in its post on X.

“Several individuals — both victims and suspects — have been identified and located,” the Winston-Salem Police Department posted on social media. “Due to the number of people involved, efforts are ongoing to account for everyone. At this time, some of those involved in the incident are juveniles.”

Police advised that nearby schools were operating on a normal schedule, but community members were urged to avoid the area to allow emergency responders to operate safely at the scene. The park and two nearby roads were closed as officers processed the scene.

“This is an isolated incident and remains under active investigation,” the police department said.

April 20 (UPI) — British police overnight arrested two teens in connection with an attempted arson of a London synagogue, authorities said Monday as they investigate a rash of recent attacks targeting the Jewish community as possible terrorism.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson told UPI in an emailed statement Monday that a 17-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man were arrested overnight in the London area for the weekend arson attack targeting Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow, northwest London.

The suspects, who were not identified, remained in police custody on Monday when authorities were expected to announce additional details.

The synagogue was attacked overnight Saturday, suffering only minor smoke damage to an internal room, according to Community Security Trust, a British charity with the mission to protect Britain’s Jewish community. It said in a statement that no injuries or significant structural damage were reported.

There have been at least five separate arson attacks in London since four ambulances used by the Jewish community in Golders Green were set ablaze March 23.

Police said there were three attacks over the weekend: the one targeting Kenton United, another targeting a communal block in Barnet and a third late Friday, targeting a row of shops in Hendon.

Several people have been arrested in connection with the various attacks, including a fourth person detained related to the Golders Green arson attack on Thursday.

The Met’s Counter Terrorism Policing unit is leading an investigation into all of these incidents, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans told reporters outside Kenton United in a Sunday press conference, stating that the “nature” of all the crimes has been similar — “arson attacks targeting Israeli- and Jewish-linked premises in London.”

Most of the attacks have been claimed online by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, which translates to the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, Evans said.

“This same group has claimed several incidents over recent months at places of worship, business and financial institutions across Europe. These locations all appear to be linked to Jewish or Israeli interests,” she said.

The attacks were committed amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

The Met said that, as the conflict continues, its Counter Terrorism Policing unit is aware the threat Iran poses to Britain and is investigating whether those who committed these arson attacks in London had been recruited by the group to carry out its crimes.

Those recruited often have no allegiance to Iran’s cause but are paid with “quick cash,” she said.

“To anyone even considering getting involved — my message to you would be this — the stakes are high — and it is absolutely not worth the risk for a small reward,” she said.

“Those asking you will not be there when you are arrested and face court. You will be used once and thrown away without a second thought.”

Ashab al-Yamin, a front group with suspected links to Iran, has claimed responsibility for several attacks in Europe targeting Jewish and Western institutions since March 9, according to a report published earlier this month by the Washington-based nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies research institute.

No deaths have been reported in the attacks that have spanned Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Britain, it said.