law

A Gaza-bound aid flotilla is currently sailing toward the enclave, entering a high-risk zone where previous missions have faced attacks and interceptions.

On Wednesday, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan reported that the Israeli military is preparing to “take control” of the flotilla with naval commandos and warships. Israel wont tow all 50 vessels however and will sink some at sea, Kan said.

Israel intends to detain hundreds of activists on naval ships, question them then deport them via the port of Ashdod.

The Global Sumud Flotilla, which set sail from Spain on August 31, is the largest maritime mission to Gaza to date. It brings together more than 50 ships and delegations from at least 44 countries, as part of an international effort to challenge Israel’s naval blockade and deliver aid to Gaza.

The map below shows the latest location:

So, is Israel entitled to board ships that are in international waters? The answer is no, here’s how territorial and international waters work.

Which waters does a country control?

Coastal countries control the waters closest to their shores, called territorial waters, which extend 12 nautical miles (22km) from the coast. In this zone, the state has full sovereignty, just like over its land.

Beyond that, they have rights over up to 200 nautical miles (370 km) of ocean, including the water and seafloor. This area is called the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). In the EEZ, countries can regulate activities such as fishing, mining, drilling, and other energy projects, while still allowing other countries freedom of navigation.

France has the largest EEZ, covering approximately 10.7 million square kilometres (4.2 million sq miles), thanks to its overseas territories. It is followed by the US, Australia, Russia, and the UK.

Where are international waters?

Covering about 64 percent of the ocean, the high seas lie beyond any country’s territorial waters and economic zones and are not controlled by a single state, with their use governed by international agreements.

What are the laws of the high seas?

The laws of the high seas are governed by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It stipulates that all states can enjoy freedom of movement of ships in the high seas and aircraft can fly freely.

It also allows the laying of subsea cables and pipelines, as well as fishing, scientific research and the construction of islands. All three of which are subject to international agreements and laws.

Ships that are on the high seas are subject to the jurisdiction of the flag they fly, except those conducting piracy and other unauthorised activities.

Israel has attacked previous flotillas in international waters

Several Freedom Flotilla vessels have attempted to break the blockade of Gaza since 2010. All were intercepted or attacked by Israel, mostly in international waters where it has no territorial rights.

The most deadly occurred on May 31, 2010, when Israeli commandos raided the Mavi Marmara in international waters. The commandos killed 10 activists, most of them Turkish, and injured dozens more, sparking global outrage and severely straining Israel-Turkiye relations.

The map below shows the approximate locations where prominent flotillas were stopped, some encountering deadly Israeli forces.

In 2024, amid ongoing flotilla missions delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, UN experts stated that: “The Freedom Flotilla has the right of free passage in international waters, and Israel must not interfere with its freedom of navigation, long recognised under international law.”

The Sumud Flotilla had been sailing through international waters and into Palestinian territorial waters, where it has the legal right to navigate and deliver humanitarian aid.

According to Stephen Cotton, the General Secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), representing more than 16.5 million transport workers globally, “The law of the sea is clear: attacking or seizing non-violent, humanitarian vessels in international waters is illegal and unacceptable.”

“Such actions endanger lives and undermine the basic principles that keep the seas safe for all. This is not only about seafarers, it’s about the safety of everyone at sea, whether on a commercial ship, a humanitarian vessel, or a fishing boat. States cannot pick and choose when to respect international law. The seas must not be turned into a theatre of war.”  Cotton told Al Jazeera.

According to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the mission is not only lawful but also protected under a comprehensive set of international legal instruments. Including:

• The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – Guarantees freedom of navigation on the high seas
• San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea – Prohibits blockades that cause starvation or disproportionate suffering and forbids the targeting of neutral humanitarian missions
• UN Security Council Resolutions 2720 and 2728 – These binding instruments demand unimpeded humanitarian access and the removal of all barriers to aid delivery
• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – Includes the prevention of acts deliberately endangering civilians
• Fourth Geneva Convention – Imposes an obligation to permit the free passage of humanitarian aid and prohibit interference with relief operations and the targeting of civilian infrastructure
• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – Criminalises the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and willful obstruction of humanitarian aid.

Responding to the Trump administration‘s hampering of federal regulators, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signed a bill greatly expanding California’s power over workplace disputes and union elections.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 288, gives the state authority to step in and oversee union elections, charges of workplace retaliation and other disputes between private employers and workers in the event the National Labor Relations Board fails to respond.

As Newsom signed the worker rights bill, his office drew a sharp contrast with the gridlock in Washington, D.C., where a government shutdown looms.

“With the federal government not only asleep at the wheel, but driving into incoming traffic, it is more important than ever that states stand up to protect workers,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is a proud labor state — and we will continue standing up for the workers that keep our state running and our economy booming.”

The NLRB, which is tasked with safeguarding the right of private employees to unionize or organize in other ways to improve their working conditions, has been functionally paralyzed since it lost quorum in January, when Trump fired one of its board members.

The Trump administration has also proposed sweeping cuts to the agency’s staff and canceled leases for regional offices in many states, while Amazon, SpaceX and other companies brought lodged challenges to the 90-year-old federal agency’s constitutionality in court.

With this law in place, workers unable to get a timely response at the federal level can petition the California Public Employment Relations Board to enforce their rights.

The law creates a Public Employee Relations Board Enforcement Fund, financed by civil penalties paid by employers cited for labor violations to help pay for the added responsibilities for the state labor board.

“This is the most significant labor law reform in nearly a century,” said Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions. “California workers will no longer be forced to rely on a failing federal agency when they join together to unionize.”

The state’s labor board can choose to take on a case when the NLRB “has expressly or impliedly ceded jurisdiction,” according to language in the law. That includes when charges filed with the agency or an election certification have languished with a regional director for more than six months — or when the federal board doesn’t have a quorum of members or is hampered in other ways.

The law could draw legal challenges over whether the bill infringes on federal law.

It was opposed by the California Chamber of Commerce, which warned that the bill improperly attempts to give California’s labor board authority even as the federal agency’s regional offices continuing to process elections as well as charges filed by workers and employers.

The chamber argued that “courts have repeatedly held that states are prohibited from regulating this space.”

Catherine Fisk, Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law at UC Berkeley Law counters, however, that in the first few decades of the NLRB’s functioning, state labor agencies had much more leeway to enforce federal labor rights.

She said the law “simply proposes going back to the system that existed for three decades.”

The bill’s author, Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Hawthorne) said the bill will ensure California workers can continue to unionize and bargain.

“The current President is attempting to take a wrecking ball to public and private sector employees’ fundamental right to join a union,”McKinnor said in a statement. “This is unacceptable and frankly, un-American. California will not sit idly as its workers are systematically denied the right to organize.”

WASHINGTON — Washington is hours away from another federal government shutdown, with prospects looking bleak for a last-minute compromise in Congress to avoid closures beginning at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.

Republicans have crafted a short-term measure to fund the government through Nov. 21, but Democrats have insisted the measure address their concerns on health care. They want to reverse the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s mega-bill passed this summer and extend tax credits that make health insurance premiums more affordable for millions of people who purchase through the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act. Republicans call the Democratic proposal a nonstarter.

Neither side shows any signs of budging, with the House not even expected to have votes this week.

Here’s a look at how a shutdown would occur:

What happens in a shutdown?

When a lapse in funding occurs, the law requires agencies to cease activity and furlough “non-excepted” employees. Excepted employees include those who work to protect life and property. They stay on the job but don’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.

During the 35-day partial shutdown in Trump’s first term, 340,000 of the 800,000 federal workers at affected agencies were furloughed. The remainder were “excepted” and required to work.

What government work continues during a shutdown?

A great deal, actually.

FBI investigators, CIA officers, air traffic controllers and agents operating airport checkpoints keep working. So do members of the Armed Forces.

Those programs that rely on mandatory spending also generally continue during a shutdown. Social Security payments continue going out. Seniors relying on Medicare coverage can still see their doctors and health care providers and submit claims for payment and be reimbursed.

Veteran health care also continues during a shutdown. Veterans Affairs medical centers and outpatient clinics will be open, and VA benefits will continue to be processed and delivered. Burials will continue at VA national cemeteries.

Will furloughed federal workers get paid?

Yes. In 2019, Congress passed a bill enshrining into law the requirement that furloughed employees get retroactive pay once operations resume.

While they’ll eventually get paid, the furloughed workers and those who remain on the job may have to go without one or more of their regular paychecks, depending upon how long the shutdown lasts, creating financial stress for many families.

Service members would also receive back pay for any missed paychecks once federal funding resumes.

Will I still get mail?

Yes. The U.S. Postal Service is unaffected by a government shutdown. It’s an independent entity funded through the sale of its products and services, not by tax dollars.

What closes during a shutdown?

All administrations get some leeway to choose which services to freeze and which to maintain in a shutdown.

The first Trump administration worked to blunt the impact of what became the country’s longest partial shutdown in 2018 and 2019. But in the selective reopening of offices, experts say they saw a willingness to cut corners, scrap prior plans and wade into legally dubious territory to mitigate the pain.

Each federal agency develops its own shutdown plan. The plans outline which agency workers would stay on the job during a shutdown and which would be furloughed.

In a provocative move, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers in a shutdown. An OMB memo said those programs that didn’t get funding through Trump’s mega-bill this summer would bear the brunt of a shutdown.

Agencies should consider issuing reduction-in-force notices for those programs whose funding expires Wednesday, that don’t have alternative funding sources and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities,” the memo said.

That’d be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when furloughed federal workers returned to their jobs once Congress approved government spending. A reduction in force would not only lay off employees but eliminate their positions, which would trigger another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that’s already faced major rounds of cuts this year due to efforts from the Department of Government Efficiency and elsewhere in Trump’s Republican administration.

Shutdown practices in the past

Some agencies have recently updated plans on their websites. Others still have plans that were last updated months or years ago, providing an indication of past precedent that could guide the Trump administration.

Here are some excerpts from those plans:

— Health and Human Services will furlough about 41% of its staff out of nearly 80,000 employees, according to a contingency plan posted on its website. The remaining employees will keep up activities needed to protect human life and property.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will continue monitoring for disease outbreaks. Direct medical services through the Indian Health Service and the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center will remain available. However, the CDC communications to the public will be hampered and NIH will not admit new patients to the Clinical Center, except those for whom it’s medically necessary.

At the Food and Drug Administration, its “ability to protect and promote public health and safety would be significantly impacted, with many activities delayed or paused.” For example, the agency would not accept new drug applications or medical device submissions that require payment of a user fee.

— The Education Department will furlough about 1,500 of 1,700 employees, excluding federal student aid workers. The department will continue to disburse student aid such as Pell Grants and Federal Direct Student Loans. Student loan borrowers will still be required to make payments on their outstanding debt.

— National Park Service: As a general rule if a facility or area is inaccessible during nonbusiness hours, it’ll be locked for the duration of the lapse in funding, said a March 2024 plan. At parks where it’s impractical or impossible to restrict public access, staffing will vary by park: “Generally, where parks have accessible park areas, including park roads, lookouts, trails, campgrounds, and open-air memorials, these areas will remain physically accessible to the public.”

— Transportation Department: Air traffic controller hiring and field training would cease, as would routine personnel security background checks and air traffic performance analysis, a March 2025 update says.

— Smithsonian Institution: “The Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, like all Smithsonian museums, receives federal funding. Thus, during a government shutdown, the Zoo — and the rest of the Smithsonian museums — must close to the public.”

Impact on the economy

Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said a short shutdown doesn’t have a huge impact on the economy, especially since federal workers, by law, are paid retroactively. But “if a shutdown continues, then that can give rise to uncertainties about what is the role of government in our society, and what’s the financial impact on all the programs that the government funds.”

“The impact is not immediate, but over time, there is a negative impact of a shutdown on the economy,” he added.

Markets haven’t reacted strongly to past shutdowns, according to Goldman Sachs Research. At the close of the three prolonged shutdowns since the early 1990s, equity markets finished flat or up even after dipping initially.

A governmentwide shutdown would directly reduce growth by around 0.15 percentage points for each week it lasted, or about 0.2 percentage points per week once private-sector effects were included, and growth would rise by the same cumulative amount in the quarter following reopening, writes Alec Phillips, chief U.S. political economist at Goldman Sachs.

Freking writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed a new U.S. House map into law Sunday as part of President Trump’s plan to try to hold on to a narrow Republican majority in next year’s midterm elections.

Kehoe’s signature puts the redrawn districts into state law with a goal of helping Republicans win one additional seat. But it may not be the final action. Opponents are pursuing a referendum petition that, if successful, would force a statewide vote on the new map. They also have brought several lawsuits against it.

U.S. House districts were redrawn across the country after the 2020 census to account for population changes. But Missouri is the third state this year — following Texas, which then triggered a response from California — to try to redraw its districts for partisan advantage, a process known as gerrymandering.

Republican lawmakers in Texas passed a new U.S. House map last month aimed at helping their party win five additional seats. Democratic lawmakers in California countered with their own redistricting plan aimed at winning five more seats, though it still needs voter approval. Other states also are considering redistricting.

Each seat could be critical, because Democrats need to gain just three to win control of the House, which would allow them to check Trump’s agenda and carry out oversight investigations. Trump is trying to stave off a historical trend in which a president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections.

Republicans currently hold six of Missouri’s eight U.S. House seats. The new map targets a seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver by shaving off portions of his Kansas City district and stretching the rest of it into Republican-heavy rural areas. It reduces the number of Black and minority residents in Cleaver’s district, which he has represented for two decades after serving as Kansas City’s first Black mayor.

Cleaver has denounced the gerrymandering plan for using Kansas City’s Troost Avenue — a street that has long segregated Black and white residents — as one of the dividing lines for the new districts.

Kehoe has defended the new map as a means of boosting Missouri’s “conservative, common-sense values” in the nation’s capital, ignoring Trump’s unabashedly partisan justification for it.

“Missourians are more alike than we are different, and our values, across both sides of the aisle, are closer to each other than those of the congressional representation of states like New York, California, and Illinois. We believe this map best represents Missourians, and I appreciate the support and efforts of state legislators, our congressional delegation, and President Trump in getting this map to my desk,” Kehoe said in a statement.

Kehoe signed the new law during an event that was closed to the public.

Opponents are gathering petition signatures seeking to force a statewide referendum on the new map. They have until Dec. 11 to submit around 110,000 valid signatures, which would put the map on hold until a public vote can occur sometime next year.

Meanwhile, opponents also are pursuing a variety of legal challenges. Several lawsuits by voters, including a new one announced Sunday by a Democratic-affiliated group, contend that mid-decade redistricting isn’t allowed under Missouri’s Constitution.

“It was not prompted by the law or a court order; it was the result of Republican lawmakers in Missouri following partisan directives from politicians in Washington, D.C.,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

A previously filed lawsuit by the NAACP contends that no “extraordinary occasion” existed for Kehoe to call lawmakers into session for redistricting.

A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union also asserts that the new Kansas City-area districts violate state constitutional requirements to be compact and contain equal populations. It notes that the redistricting legislation lists a “KC 811” voting precinct in both the 4th and 5th congressional districts, which it asserts is grounds to invalidate the new map.

But Kehoe’s office said there is no error. It said other government agencies had assigned the same name to two distinct voting locations.

Lieb writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Juan A. Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Two hundred members of the Oregon National Guard are being placed under federal control and deployed within the state, a move the Trump administration says is needed to protect immigration enforcement officers and government facilities, according to a Defense Department memo received by state leaders on Sunday.

The deployment is being made over the objections of state leaders and is similar to one in June in Los Angeles, where protesters demonstrated against federal immigration raids, though on a much smaller scale.

There was no immediate comment from the White House. Multiple Pentagon officials were contacted, but none would confirm or deny the authenticity of the memo.

President Trump had announced Saturday that he would send troops to Portland. The state’s governor, Democrat Tina Kotek, said Sunday that she objected to the deployment in a conversation with the president.

“Oregon is our home — not a military target,” she said in a statement.

Dan Rayfield, the state attorney general, said he was filing a federal lawsuit arguing that Trump was overstepping his authority.

“What we’re seeing is not about public safety,” he said. “It’s about the president flexing political muscle under the guise of law and order, chasing a media hit at the expense of our community.”

The Pentagon memo provided by Oregon leaders drew a direct comparison between the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles and the proposed deployment to the state, adding, “This memorandum further implements the President’s direction.”

While the memorandum does not specifically cite Portland as the target of the proposed deployment, Trump, in a social media post Saturday, said he directed the Pentagon, at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, “to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”

“I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary,” Trump added.

Unlike in Los Angeles, it does not appear that Trump or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are currently directing the deployment of active-duty troops to the state. The Trump administration deployed about 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles, who were withdrawn about a month later.

The action also would be far less than Trump’s deployment to Washington, D.C., where more than 1,000 National Guard troops, including units from other states, have patrolled the streets for weeks. He also has been suggesting that he will send troops into Chicago, but so far has not done so.

Megerian and Toropin write for the Associated Press.

Sept. 25 (UPI) — Apple released a statement on the effects of the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act saying the law puts Apple users in the European Union at a disadvantage and that it could prevent the company from selling its products there.

Apple’s statement on Wednesday listed in detail why it believes the DMA causes harm to users as well as Apple itself. Chiefly, the DMA requires Apple to make its apps available on other markets and to other devices as well as allow other apps on its App Store, which Apple said causes increased security and privacy issues.

The DMA became law in November 2022. It says that companies must make digital markets more open and fair. The EU called for a review of the legislation that was designed to control the monopolistic power of large tech companies in their search engines, app providers and messaging services.

For example, the DMA requires that Apple users be able to use other brands of headphones besides those made by Apple. Apple said this has delayed the launch of Live Translation in the EU because of a threat to user privacy.

“We designed Live Translation so that our users’ conversations stay private — they’re processed on device and are never accessible to Apple — and our teams are doing additional engineering work to make sure they won’t be exposed to other companies or developers either,” the statement said.

With iPhone mirroring, users can see and interact with their iPhones on their Macs. But “our teams still have not found a secure way to bring this feature to non-Apple devices without putting all the data on a user’s iPhone at risk. And as a result, we have not been able to bring the feature to the EU,” Apple said.

Apple also alleged unfair competition and the ability of other companies to steal its technology.

“Instead of competing by innovating, already successful companies are twisting the law to suit their own agendas — to collect more data from EU citizens, or to get Apple’s technology for free,” it said in the statement.

Apple and the EU have clashed for years. In July, Apple appealed a $580 million fine that the EU levied against the company for DMA violations.

In August, President Donald Trump used tariffs to threaten retaliation for rules that affect American tech companies, though he didn’t specify which countries.

“I will stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies. Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets Regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology. They also, outrageously, give a complete pass to China’s largest Tech Companies. This must end, and end NOW!” he said on Truth Social.

Athens, Greece – Greece has drawn criticism and concern from rights groups and a United Nations office after passing what it considers to be the European Union’s strictest refugee deportation policy earlier this month.

The law was put to use on September 12, when three Turkish citizens were convicted of illegal residence and handed stiff jail sentences. Two men were given two years of imprisonment and fines of 5,000 euros ($5,870), while the third, aged 19, the youngest of the group, was handed a 10-month prison sentence.

Athens plans to test-drive the law through a likely minefield of legal challenges in the coming months. Humanitarian organisations say the measure unfairly includes children and stigmatises refugees and migrants as criminals.

Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum Thanos Plevris told Parliament on September 2 that the law was “the strictest returns policy in the whole EU” and claimed there was “a lot of interest from European countries, especially EU members, to adopt this law as a law that will force an illegal migrant to return”.

Rights groups, which are gearing up to challenge the legislation, say it far outshoots a draft Returns Regulation the European Commission wants to make binding on all member states by June 2026.

The new law has shortened deadlines and raised penalties for unauthorised residence.

For example, rejected asylum applicants will be fitted with ankle monitors and given just two weeks to remove themselves voluntarily. If they do not, they face, like the two Turkish nationals, a 5,000-euro ($5,870) fine and between two and five years of confinement in closed camps.

Children, more than a fifth of arrivals this year, are not exempt. If people wish to appeal, they have to do it in four days.

“We always claim that it’s not legal to put children in detention,” said Federica Toscano from Save the Children. The law is “not aligned with the [UN] Convention on the Rights of the Child”, and is “absolutely challengeable”.

The Greek Ombudsman, an independent authority monitoring public services, also objected to the law’s maximum reprieve of 60 days, down from 120, so children can complete their school year.

The Ombudsman suggested the law sets out to prove the proposition that all undocumented people are criminals.

Ankle monitors, it said, which are not mentioned in the draft Returns Regulation, “deepen the view of migrants as criminals and put their treatment on a par with that reserved for indictees, convicts and prisoners on leave”.

“Refugees are entitled to effective access to international protection without punishment for violating migration policy,” says the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Under the Geneva Convention, “the quest for asylum … is not a criminal offence, but a human right”.

The EU approves about 45 percent of asylum applications on average.

Of the remainder, 90 percent end up staying on European soil because there is no effective policy to return them, say European officials.

“Without a returns policy, no migration policy has any meaning,” said Greece’s then-migration minister, Makis Voridis, presenting the new proposals in Parliament’s European Affairs Committee on May 15.

Irregular entry into the country has been raised to a felony. Anyone arriving without documents can be detained for two years, up from 18 months.

A provision that legalises anyone after seven years of undocumented residence is being abolished.

Greece’s predicament

Plevris has defended the hardened law, arguing that Greece guards external EU borders.

“It’s easy to defend borders when there’s three or four countries people have to cross to get to you. Compare us to other first reception countries,” he said.

Since 2015, Greece has been the arrival point of 46 percent of more than 2.8 million undocumented people entering Europe, according to UNHCR.

Many have moved on to other EU member states, but because of EU rules, rejected asylum seekers or asylum recipients who lose their protected status would be returned to their country of arrival in the EU for deportation.

Greek officials admit they do not expect refugees and migrants to spend five years in detention. The draconian rules, they say, are designed to force them to return voluntarily once they are convicted.

That is because it is legally difficult to deport anyone forcibly.

The law has a second aim – to deter what Greece views as so-called economic migrants travelling to Europe when there are Geneva Convention signatories closer to home.

“It’s a massive programme that costs a lot of money and involves a whole web of private actors. So I think that would be pretty difficult to set up,” said Hope Barker, who works for the Global Strategic Communications Council, a nongovernmental group seeking to influence environmental and migration policy.

Greece’s Union of Administrative Judges objected that the law did not define flight risk, leaving incarceration decisions to the discretion of the police. The law “needs to provide a comprehensive list of criteria, not an indicative one”, it said.

The Council of Bar Associations of Greece also weighed in with objections to tightened deadlines for appeal and the criminalisation of undocumented entry.

“Danger to life and limb vastly outranks whatever law is broken by entering Greece illegally,” it said.

The EU’s guinea pig?

Repeatedly, these bodies pointed out, the new law violates the existing EU Returns Regulation, which dates back to 2008, but observers of EU migration policy say the European Commission is deliberately allowing Greece to push the boundaries.

“Greece has become something of a testing ground for many EU measures, especially on the Greek islands,” Amnesty International’s Olivia Sundberg told Al Jazeera, citing the Closed Controlled Access Centres built to house thousands of asylum seekers.

“In a lot of ways, Greece is a place that has tested things out before they became EU law, and if they worked well, they were carried over into [EU] directives,” she said.

The EU is now looking for ways to implement returns.

“There is this whole push for what they call ‘innovative solutions’,” said Barker. “So one of these is obviously return hubs in third countries, another is getting people to sign up to voluntary returns,” she told Al Jazeera.

Italy has been testing third-country hubs through a deal with Albania, but Italian courts have ordered some of the asylum seekers sent there for processing returned to Italy.

Greece’s law casts a wider net, suggesting returnees should seek protection in any safe country closer to their country of origin.

But Greece’s Ombudsman has objected to this.

Passing the burden “allows a return process to a country the returnee doesn’t come from, or hasn’t passed through and has no connection to, except that it is geographically close to his country of origin. In this case, it’s no longer a ‘returns’ procedure but a ‘displacement’ procedure”, the Ombudsman said.

Some observers say Europe is in danger of falling short of its own human rights charter.

“Migration is becoming a rule of law issue rather than an implementation of law issue,” said Amnesty’s Sundberg.

Others point out that Europe is an ageing continent in need of more workers to sustain its tax base and social security systems in the coming decades.

“How are we going to create an environment of reception of the people we need, when we take this type of measure?” asked Lefteris Papayiannakis, who heads the Greek Council for Refugees, a legal aid charity. “If you can’t attract them, what’s your next move?”

Besides, he said, the measures exude desperation.

“You’re creating an impression now that you’re not in control. But if we compare the situation now with 2015, or the [flight of] Ukrainians in 2022, it’s a completely different situation,” Papayiannakis said.

“How can you justify being up in arms now about a very small number of migrants compared to the number … you’re going to need?”

Sept. 24 (UPI) — The FCC is prohibited from influencing network content but Chairman Brendan Carr and President Donald Trump have used pressure campaigns on ABC and others to test those limits.

The Trump administration’s attempt to push Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air worked, briefly. While consumer backlash convinced Disney and ABC to reverse course, the alarm has been sounded over the weaponization of federal authority to suppress free speech.

Kimmel returned to ABC on Tuesday, lamenting the importance of standing up for free speech in his opening monologue, calling attempts to take shows like his off the air for sharing dissenting opinions “un-American.”

“Ten years ago this sounded crazy: Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, telling an American company ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ and ‘These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,'” Kimmel said. “In addition to being a direct violation of the First Amendment, it is not a particularly intelligent threat to be made in public.”

Section 326 of the Communications Act states that the commission cannot interfere with the right to exercise free speech.

Former FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler, who served during the Obama administration, told UPI Carr is bringing the commission into “uncharted territory.”

“The FCC is approaching 100 years old,” Wheeler said. “Over that period, one of its primary purposes has been to make sure when it comes to broadcasters using the people’s airwaves that there is a diversity of voices and a diversity of ownership.”

“That’s something that has held true until today, when we see the chairman of the FCC attempting to influence what people hear and we hear the president of the United States saying that he wants to consider yanking the broadcast licenses for those who don’t agree with him,” he continued.

One of the FCC’s chief responsibilities is licensing. It is responsible for ensuring that licenses are distributed and used in the public’s interest, convenience and necessity. The statute does not go on to define what public interest means, leaving it up to the heads of the FCC to determine this over the years.

Throughout its history, according to Wheeler, FCC chairmen have taken seriously the importance of fulfilling their duties in a neutral and independent way.

The FCC operations manual refers to Section 326 of the Communications Act and the First Amendment, stating that both “expressly prohibit the commission from censoring broadcast matter. Our role in overseeing program content is very limited.”

“Those are pretty explicit,” Wheeler said of the First Amendment and Section 326. “The public interest definition ought to presumably fall within the four corners of those kinds of descriptions.”

The FCC’s role in overseeing content may be limited, as its manual acknowledges, but it still has influence.

Networks are required to renew their licenses every eight years. This applies to all networks, including major networks like ABC and local companies.

The FCC must also approve the transfer of licenses when companies merge. For example, when Disney bought ABC, the ownership of its licenses needed to reflect this transfer of ownership. This is also true for companies like Sinclair and Nexstar purchasing local networks.

Nexstar has an agreement in place to purchase Tegna for $6.2 billion. If the deal is approved, Nexstar would own 265 stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, including 132 of the top 210 TV markets in the country, expanding its reach to 80% of U.S. households.

The FCC has a 39% cap on how many households a network group can reach. It is called the National Television Ownership rule and its purpose is to maintain diversity, competition and localism by preventing a small number of companies from controlling the airwaves.

In June, the FCC Media Bureau filed a public notice that it seeks new public comments to refresh the record on television network ownership rules. It is looking for input on whether it should retain, modify or eliminate the 39% cap on network ownership. It last did this in 2017.

“The FCC has an economic lever over those that it regulates,” Wheeler said. “There’s economic leverage that Brendan Carr has been very successful in playing up.”

Nexstar owns 32 ABC affiliate networks and Sinclair owns more than 30. Both announced Tuesday that they will not air Jimmy Kimmel Live! despite ABC electing to bring it back.

The licenses held by networks permit them to use the public’s airwaves to broadcast content. It does not give them ownership of those airwaves. They belong to the public.

The licensing renewal process is usually straightforward and without much controversy, Gigi Sohn, Benton Institute senior fellow and public advocate, told UPI.

“Throughout almost the entire history of the FCC there has been one time and one time only that the FCC has denied a license renewal based on the content of programming,” Sohn said. “That was in the ’60s when a Mississippi radio and TV station refused to run any news program or any program of any kind about the Civil Rights movement and instead ran racist programming.”

Sohn added that the FCC, in that instance, did not tell the station it could not run one program and had to run another or had to change how it edited its programs. Instead, it determined the station was not serving the public interest because it was not giving its audience access to all the information related to the stories it was broadcasting.

“That is something that the FCC has the right to do when it looks at the overall programming of a broadcaster,” Sohn said. “What it doesn’t have the right to do is bully a network — into dropping one program because he made a joke about, not even about the president, not about Charlie Kirk, but about the way the president’s followers were reacting to the Kirk murder.”

After Jimmy Kimmel’s comments on his late-night show about the late Charlie Kirk, the FCC chairman threatened to take action against ABC and parent company Disney. Media companies Nexstar and Sinclair quickly followed with statements that were critical of Kimmel’s comments.

Within hours of Carr’s threats, ABC announced Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be preempted indefinitely.

According to Sohn and Wheeler, Carr wielded his regulatory power in this instance to influence ABC to remove Kimmel’s show from the airwaves due to his longtime criticism of the president. They add that it is not the first time Carr has done something like this since becoming chairman earlier this year.

A pending merger between Skydance and Paramount remained under scrutiny by Carr and the FCC for months before being approved in July. During the hold up, Carr investigated CBS News over its editorial decisions.

Trump meanwhile had an open lawsuit against CBS, seeking $20 billion over allegations that 60 Minutes edited an interview with former presidential candidate Kamala Harris in a way that was favorable to her and her candidacy. On July 2, it was reported that Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, settled with Trump for $16 million.

The FCC approved the Skydance-Paramount merger on July 24. As conditions of the merger, Skydance agreed to Carr’s demands that the company will end or not establish any diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

It also agreed to hire an ombudsman to oversee CBS News editorial decisions. The ombudsman, Kenneth Weinstein, is the former president and CEO of conservative think tank the Hudson Institute.

Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge, told UPI a bad precedent is being set by networks like ABC and CBS as they give into pressure from the FCC and the president.

“Not only does it show the administration that these guys are going to cave and therefore we can keep pushing them, but it also means we won’t get coverage when the administration does this to other companies,” Feld said. “If the news has been cowed into submission it means the administration is free to do this to anyone and nobody will find out about it.”

Former FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez issued a statement after the suspension of Kimmel’s program was reinstated.

“As this FCC considers steps that would let the same billion-dollar media conglomerates that caved in to government pressure grow even bigger, we must combat these efforts to stifle free expression,” Gomez said.

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He’s never held public office or donned a judge’s robes, but an arch-conservative Los Angeles County attorney is racing toward confirmation on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, accelerating the once-liberal court’s sharp rightward turn under President Trump.

A competitive target shooter with a background in a cryptocurrency, Eric Tung was approached by the White House Counsel’s Office on March 28 to replace Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta, a Bush appointee and one of the court’s most prominent conservatives, who is taking senior status.

A new father and still a relative unknown in national legal circles, Tung found an ally in pal Mike Davis, a reputed “judge whisperer” in Trump’s orbit. Speaking to the New York Post in mid-March, Davis touted Tung as Ikuta’s likely successor.

The Pasadena lawyer appeared on a Federalist Society panel at the Reagan Library this year, debating legal efforts to restrain “ ‘agents’ of the left.”

“Eric is a Tough Patriot, who will uphold the Rule of Law in the most RADICAL, Leftist States like California, Oregon, and Washington,” Trump wrote on Truth Social when the nomination was announced in July.

The response from California senators was apoplectic.

“Mr. Tung believes in a conception of the Constitution that rejects equality and liberty, and that would turn back the clock and continue to exclude vast sections of the American public from enjoying equal justice under the law,” said Sen. Alex Padilla.

In the past, senators from a potential judge’s home state could block a nomination — a custom Trump exploded when he steamrolled Washington senators to install Eric D. Miller to the 9th Circuit in 2019.

Tung has been tight-lipped about his ascent to the country’s busiest circuit. He did not respond to inquiries from The Times.

A Woodland Hills native and conservative Catholic convert, Tung made a name for himself as a champion of the crypto industry and elegant legal writer, frequently lecturing at California law schools and headlining Federalist Society events.

After graduating from Yale and the University of Chicago Law School, he clerked for Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Neil Gorsuch before joining the white-shoe law firm Jones Day, a feeder to the Trump Justice Department.

Many lauded the nomination when it was first announced, including the National Asian Pacific American Bar Assn.

“Eric is a highly regarded originalist who would follow in the footsteps of Justice Scalia, for whom he clerked,” said Carrie Campbell Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal advocacy group.

Groups on the left, including Alliance for Justice, Demand Justice and the National Council of Jewish Women, have lobbied against putting Tung on the appellate court.

If confirmed, Tung will be Trump’s 11th appointment to the 9th Circuit, a court the president vowed to remake when he first took office in 2017.

During Trump’s first term, Judge Ikuta was part of a tiny conservative minority on the famously lopsided bench, a legacy of President Jimmy Carter’s decision to double the size of the circuit and pack it with liberal appointees.

Many Trump judges ruffled feathers at first, and most have shown themselves to be “pretty conservative and pretty hard nosed,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.

Their ranks include the former Hawaii Atty. Gen. Judge Mark J. Bennett, as well as the circuit’s first openly gay member, Judge Patrick J. Bumatay.

Trump’s appellate appointees helped deliver him several controversial recent decisions, including the finding in June that Trump had broad discretion to deploy the military on American streets. Another 9th Circuit ruling this month found that the administration could all-but eliminate the country’s refugee program via an indefinite “pause.”

But they’ve also clashed sharply with the Justice Department’s attorneys, even in cases where the appellate panel ultimately sided with the administration.

That’s what the president is trying to avoid this time around — particularly with his picks headed in the west, experts said.

“People on the far right are pushing [Trump] to have people who will be ‘courageous’ judges — in other words, do things that are really unpopular that Trump likes,” Tobias said.

Tung may fit the bill. In addition to his crypto chops and avowed support for constitutional originalism, he has been an ardent defender of religious liberty and an opponent of affirmative action. He shoots competitively as part of the International Defensive Pistol Assn.

Both Tung and his wife Emily Lataif have close ties to the anti-abortion movement. Tung worked extensively with the architect of Texas’ heartbeat bill; Lataif interned for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion policy group that seeks to make IUDs and emergency contraception illegal and opposes many forms of in-vitro fertilization.

“Emily is the epitome of grace under pressure, as was evidenced … when she and Eric had to evacuate their home during the California wildfires, only days after welcoming their first child,” Severino said. “She’s worked at the highest levels, from the White House to the executive team at Walmart, and her talent is matched only by her kindness and love for her family.”

When asked by Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware whether he believed IVF was protected by the Constitution, Tung declined to answer.

It wasn’t the only question the nominee ducked. Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee accused Tung of giving only “sham answers” to their inquiries, both in chambers and through written follow-ups.

After pressing him repeatedly for his position on landmark cases including Obergefell vs. Hodges and Lawrence vs. Texas — privacy right precedents Justice Clarence Thomas wrote should be reconsidered after the fall of Roe vs. Wade — Sen. Adam Schiff pushed the nominee for his opinion on Loving vs. Virginia, the 1967 case affirming interracial marriage.

“Was that wrongly decided?” the California lawmaker asked the aspiring judge.

“Senator, my wife and I are an interracial couple, so if that case were wrongly decided I would be in big trouble,” Tung said.

“You’re willing to tell us you believe Loving was correctly decided, but you’re not willing to say the other decisions were correctly decided,” Schiff said. “That seems less originalist and more situational.”

Sept. 23 (UPI) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed legislation banning transgender people from accessing restrooms and other facilities, including domestic violence shelters and prisons, that align with their gender identity.

Abbott, a Republican, signed the legislation Monday, sharing a video of it on X.

“This is just common sense,” he said, while holding up the signed document, showing it to the camera.

Abbott signed Senate Bill 8 after the Texas House passed it 86-45 on Aug. 28.

The bill, which takes effect Dec. 4, requires people to use facilities, such as bathrooms and restrooms, in government-owned buildings, including schools and universities, that align with their gender assigned at birth.

Other facilities affected include family violence shelters, prisons and jails.

Organizations that violate the law can face a $25,000 fine for a first offense and $125,000 for a second.

“Let’s hope more states follow suit,” state Rep. Angelia Orr, a sponsor of SB 8, said in a statement after Abbott announced her bill had been signed. “This is common sense policy to protect the women and girls of Texas!”

Texas passed the bill amid a larger conservative push to pass legislation affecting the rights and healthcare of LGBTQ Americans, though specifically targeting transgender Americans.

The Lone Star State GOP lawmakers have been trying to pass a so-called bathroom ban since 2017, but were unable to get it through the House until this summer.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas was swift in rebuking Abbott fpr signing S.B. 8 into law, saying it will encourage gender policing by those who seek to attack transgender people, or simply those who don’t adhere to stereotypical gender roles.

“This law puts anyone at risk who doesn’t seem masculine or feminine enough to a random stranger, including the cisgender girls and women this bill purports to protect,” Ash Hall, policy and advocacy strategist on LGBTQIA+ rights at the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement.

“This bill is bad for trans and intersex people, bad for cisgender people, bad for business, bad for public health and safety and bad for Texas,” they added. “Transgender people have always been here and always will be.”

According to Every Texan, a nonprofit that researches equitable policy solutions, there are an estimated 122,700 transgender people in Texas, including nearly 30,000 youth.

The Movement Advancement Project states there are 19 states with some form of bathroom ban, including two states that make it a criminal offense.

Another pair of influencers might be joining President Trump’s effort to preserve TikTok in the U.S.: Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch.

The Trump administration has been working on a deal that would keep the wildly popular social video service operational for millions of Americans. Under a law signed by President Biden, TikTok’s U.S. service must separate from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or face going dark.

Congress passed the law out of security concerns over TikTok’s ties to China and worries that the app would give the communist government access to sensitive user data, which TikTok has denied doing.

Trump revealed more details about the plan over the weekend. The president on Sunday told Fox News that people involved in the deal include Oracle Corp. cofounder Larry Ellison, Dell Technologies Chief Executive Michael Dell and, probably, Rupert Murdoch and his eldest son, Lachlan.

“I think they’re going to be in the group, a couple of others, really great people, very prominent people,” Trump said on “The Sunday Briefing” on Fox News. “They’re also American patriots. They love this country, so I think they’re going to do a really good job.”

If the Murdochs were to be involved, it could be through their media company Fox Corp. investing in the deal, according to a source familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly. Fox Corp. owns Fox News, Fox Business and the Fox broadcast network. Fox News’ opinion hosts are vocally supportive of Trump.

The pending agreement would hand over TikTok’s U.S. operations to a majority-American investor group, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Saturday. The app’s data and privacy in the U.S. would be led by Texas-based cloud computing company Oracle, she added.

Oracle’s cofounder and chief technology officer Ellison is a Trump ally who is the world’s second-richest person, according to Forbes. TikTok already works with Oracle. Since October 2022, “all new protected U.S. user data has been stored in the secure Oracle infrastructure, not on TikTok or ByteDance servers,” TikTok says on its website.

Leavitt told Fox News that six out of the seven board seats controlling the TikTok app in the U.S. would be held by Americans and that the app’s algorithm would be controlled by America.

“We are 100% confident that a deal is done,” Leavitt said.

In a Monday news briefing, Leavitt said Trump expected to sign the deal later this week.

ByteDance would retain a less than 20% stake in TikTok U.S. The investor group is still being sorted out, reported CNN, citing a White House official.

The White House, Dell Technologies and Oracle did not immediately return a request for comment. Fox Corp. declined to comment.

TikTok’s future has been uncertain for months since the law was signed. After Biden had signed the 2024 law, ByteDance was initially given a deadline of Jan. 19, which has since been extended several times by Trump. The current deadline is Dec. 16.

Any deal would also need the approval of the Chinese government.

On Friday, Trump suggested on his social media platform Truth Social that China’s president, Xi Jinping, had approved the pact during a call between the two leaders.

Reports cited Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, which quoted Xi as saying the Chinese government “respects the wishes of companies and welcomes them to conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules and reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and balance interests.”

ByteDance in a statement on Friday thanked President Xi and President Trump “for their efforts to preserve TikTok in the United States.”

“ByteDance will work in accordance with applicable laws to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok U.S.,” the company said.

Trump has said he believes TikTok played a key role in helping him reach younger voters and win the 2024 presidential election. During his first term, he was a prominent voice calling for TikTok to be banned during his broader campaign against China over trade and COVID-19.

Sonny Curtis, a vintage rock ‘n’ roller who wrote the raw classic “I Fought the Law” and posed the enduring question “Who can turn the world on with her smile?” as the writer-crooner of the theme song to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” has died at 88.

Curtis, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Crickets in 2012, died Friday, his wife of more than a half-century, Louise Curtis, confirmed to The Associated Press. His daughter, Sarah Curtis, wrote on his Facebook page that he had been suddenly ill.

Curtis wrote or co-wrote hundreds of songs, from Keith Whitley’s country smash “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” to the Everly Brothers’ “Walk Right Back,” a personal favorite Curtis completed while in Army basic training. Bing Crosby, Glen Campbell, Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead were among other artists who covered his work.

Born during the Great Depression to cotton farmers outside of Meadow, Texas, Curtis was a childhood friend of Buddy Holly’s and an active musician in the formative years of rock, whether jamming on guitar with Holly in the mid-1950s or opening for Elvis Presley when Elvis was still a regional act. Curtis’ songwriting touch also soon emerged: Before he turned 20, he had written the hit “Someday” for Webb Pierce and “Rock Around With Ollie Vee” for Holly.

Curtis had left Holly’s group, the Crickets, before Holly became a major star. But he returned after Holly died in a plane crash in 1959 and he was featured the following year on the album “In Style with the Crickets,” which included “I Fought the Law” (dashed off in a single afternoon, according to Curtis, who would say he had no direct inspiration for the song) and the Jerry Allison collaboration “More Than I Can Say,” a hit for Bobby Vee, and later for Leo Sayer.

Meanwhile, it took until 1966 for “I Fought the Law” and its now-immortal refrain “I fought the law — and the law won” to catch on: The Texas-based Bobby Fuller Four made it a Top 10 song. Over the following decades, it was covered by dozens of artists, from punk (the Clash) to country (Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith) to Springsteen, Tom Petty and other mainstream rock stars.

“It’s my most important copyright,” Curtis told The Tennessean in 2014.

Curtis’ other signature song was as uplifting as “I Fought the Law” was resigned. In 1970, he was writing commercial jingles when he came up with the theme for a new CBS sitcom starring Moore as a single woman hired as a TV producer in Minneapolis. He called the song “Love is All Around,” and used a smooth melody to eventually serve up lyrics as indelible as any in television history:

“Who can turn the world on with her smile? / Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? / Well it’s you girl, and you should know it / With each glance and every little movement you show it.”

The song’s endurance was sealed by the images it was heard over, especially Moore’s triumphant toss of her hat as Curtis proclaims, “You’re going to make it after all.” In tribute, other artists began recording it, including Sammy Davis Jr., Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and Minnesota’s Hüsker Dü. A commercial release featuring Curtis came out in 1980 and was a modest success, peaking at No. 29 on Billboard’s country chart.

Curtis would recall being commissioned by his friend Doug Gilmore, a music industry road manager who had heard the sitcom’s developers were looking for an opening song.

“Naturally I said yes, and later that morning, he dropped off a four-page format — you know ‘Girl from the Midwest, moves to Minneapolis, gets a job in a newsroom, can’t afford her apartment etc.,’ which gave me the flavor of what it was all about,” said Curtis, who soon met with show co-creator (and later Oscar-winning filmmaker) James L. Brooks.

“[He] came into this huge empty room, no furniture apart from a phone lying on the floor, and at first, I thought he was rather cold and sort of distant, and he said ‘We’re not at the stage of picking a song yet, but I’ll listen anyway,’” Curtis recalled. “So I played the song, just me and my guitar, and next thing, he started phoning people, and the room filled up, and then he sent out for a tape recorder.”

Curtis would eventually write two versions: the first used in Season 1, the second and better known for the remaining six seasons. The original words were more tentative, opening with “How will you make it on your own?” and ending with “You might just make it after all.” By Season 2, the show was a hit and the lyrics were reworked. The producers had wanted Andy Williams to sing the theme song, but he turned it down and Curtis’ easygoing baritone was heard instead.

Curtis made a handful of solo albums, including “Sonny Curtis” and “Spectrum,” and hit the country Top 20 with the 1981 single “Good Ol’ Girls.” In later years, he continued to play with Allison and other members of the Crickets. The band released several albums, among them “The Crickets and Their Buddies,” featuring appearances by Eric Clapton, Graham Nash and Phil Everly. One of Curtis’ more notable songs was “The Real Buddy Holly Story,” a rebuke to the 1978 biopic “The Buddy Holly Story,” which starred Gary Busey.

Curtis settled in Nashville in the mid-1970s and lived there with his wife, Louise. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991 and, as part of the Crickets, into Nashville’s Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007. Five years later, he and the Crickets were inducted into the Rock Hall, praised as “the blueprint for rock and roll bands (that) inspired thousands of kids to start up garage bands around the world.”

Italie writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press journalist Mallika Sen contributed reporting.

President Trump said Friday that he has reached a deal with China to keep the popular social video app TikTok running in the U.S.

Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social that he had a “very productive call” Friday morning with China’s President Xi Jinping. TikTok is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, a fact that prompted national security concerns over data protection from U.S. politicians.

He suggested that Xi had approved the planned takeover of TikTok in the U.S., but did not provide details on what the leader’s sign-off entailed.

“We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” Trump wrote on Friday.

He added: “The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!”

Trump had signaled earlier this week that an agreement was coming. For months, TikTok’s future had been uncertain in the U.S., due to national security worries about the app’s ties to China. Trump in his social media post did not reveal much detail about the deal, but said earlier this week that TikTok’s operations would be owned by American investors.

“TikTok has tremendous value,” Trump said at a news conference on Thursday, adding the U.S. will be getting a “fee-plus” for making the deal. “I’d rather reap the benefits. The kind of money we are talking about is very substantial. It will be owned by all American investors.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that under terms of the deal, TikTok’s U.S. users would migrate to a new version of the app with technology licensed from ByteDance. U.S. user data would be managed in Texas by cloud computing company Oracle, the Journal reported, adding that details of the deal could change as it was still being discussed.

About 80% of a new company running TikTok’s U.S. operations would be owned by American investors, with the remaining amount owned by Chinese shareholders, according to the Journal.

Oracle’s Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison is a Trump ally and the world’s second richest person with an estimated net worth of more than $360 billion, according to Forbes. Ellison is also preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the media company that owns HBO, TNT and CNN, after already completing a takeover of Paramount, one of Hollywood’s original studios.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on the terms of the agreement.

Reports cited a Chinese news agency, which quoted Xi as saying the Chinese government “respects the wishes of companies and welcomes them to conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules and reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and balance interests.”

The deal paves a path for TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. after President Joe Biden signed a law that would require ByteDance to divest ownership in the U.S. operations of the app or have TikTok banned in the nation due to security concerns. TikTok denies sharing user data with the Chinese government and says it has not been asked by Beijing to provide such sensitive information.

ByteDance on Friday thanked Xi and Trump “for their efforts to preserve TikTok in the United States.”

“ByteDance will work in accordance with applicable laws to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok U.S.,” the company said.

The law had initially gave ByteDance a deadline of Jan. 19, but Trump has extended that deadline several times, most recently to Dec. 16.

TikTok has more than 170 million users in the U.S. and is a home for video content creators and businesses. Fans of the app enjoy scrolling through feeds of entertaining short videos.

Some industry observers were skeptical over whether the deal will adequately address Congress’ security concerns.

“There’s just too many loose ends and too many things that could go awry,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.

The TikTok agreement comes as the U.S. and China have been dealing with trade talks amid a tariff war.

On Thursday, Trump credited TikTok with helping him win the 2024 presidential election. He had campaigned to try to keep TikTok operational in an appeal to younger voters. He reversed his stance from his first term, in which the Trump administration made moves that could ban the app.

Daniel Keum, an associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, said he doesn’t think much will change after a deal is made. Many creators have already posted their content in other places such as Instagram and YouTube in light of TikTok’s uncertain future, Keum said.

“Even before, as there was so much uncertainty around the fate of TikTok, a lot of other platforms like YouTube and Facebook were co-opting the short reel format, so creators were distributing their content across other platforms,” he said.

WASHINGTON — President Trump appealed to the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook from the independent board that can raise or lower interest rates.

The appeal “involves yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s removal authority — here, interference with the President’s authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for cause,” wrote Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer.

The appeal is the second this month asking the court to give Trump broad new power over the economy.

The first, to be heard in November, will decide if the president to free to impose large import taxes on products coming into this country.

The new case could determine if he is free to remake the Federal Reserve Board by removing a Democratic appointee who he says may have broken the law.

Trump’s lawyers argue that a Fed governor has no legal right to challenge the president’s decision to fire her.

“Put simply, the President may reasonably determine that interest rates paid by the American people should not be set by a Governor who appears to have lied about facts material to the interest rates she secured for herself—and refuses to explain the apparent misrepresentations,” Trump’s lawyer said.

Trump has chafed at the Federal Reserve board for keeping interest rates high to fight inflation, and he threatened to fire board chairman Jay Powell, even though he appointed him to that post in 2018.

But last month, Trump turned his attention to Cook and said he had cause to fire her.

Congress wrote the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 intending to give the central bank board some independence from politics and the current president.

Its seven members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and they serve staggered terms of 14 years, unless “removed for cause by the president.”

The law does not define what amounts to cause.

President Biden appointed Cook in 2023 and she was confirmed to a full term.

In August, however, Bill Pulte, Trump’s director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, alleged Cook committed mortgage fraud when she took out two housing loans in 2021. One was for $203,000 for a house in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the second was for $540,000 for a condo in Atlanta. In both instances, she signed a loan document saying the property would be her primary residence.

Typically, borrowers obtain a better interest rate for a primary residence. But lawyers say charges of mortgage fraud are extremely rare if the borrower makes the required regular payments on the loan.

About 30 minutes after Pulte posted his allegations, Trump posted on his social media site: “Cook must resign. Now!!!”

Cook has not responded directly to the allegations, but her attorneys pointed to news reports which said she told the lender her Atlanta condo would be a vacation home.

Trump, however, sent Cook a letter on Aug. 25. “You may be removed, at my discretion, for cause,” citing the law and Pulte’s referrral. “I have determined that there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position,” he wrote.

Cook filed a suit to challenge the decision. She argued the allegations did not amount to cause under the law, and she had not been given a hearing to contest the charges.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, agreed she made a “strong showing” the firing was illegal and blocked her removal.

She said Congress wrote the “for cause” provision to punish “malfeasance in office,” not conduct that pre-dated her appointment. She also said Cook had been denied “due process of law” because she was not given a hearing.

The U.S. appeals court in Washington, by a 2-1 vote, refused to lift her order on Monday.

Judges Bradley Garcia and J. Michelle Childs, both Biden appointees, said Cook had been denied “even minimal process — that is, notice of the allegation against her and a meaningful opportunity to respond — before she was purportedly removed.”

Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, dissented. He said “for cause” removal provision was broader than misconduct in office. It means the president may remove an officer for “some cause relating to” their “ability, fitness, or competence” to hold the office, he said.

And because a government position is not the property of office holders, they do not have a “due process” right to contest their firing, he said.

THE Hillsborough Law will leave a legacy for future generations, one of the campaigners at the heart of the battle for justice said after meeting the Prime Minister in Downing Street.

The new Public Office (Accountability) Bill is intended to make sure the authorities will face criminal sanctions if they attempt to cover up the facts behind disasters such as the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy or the Grenfell Tower fire.

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Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had previously pledged to bring in the law by the 36th anniversary of the tragedy, which was on April 15, but Downing Street then said more time was needed to redraft it.

At a meeting with some of the families of those killed at Hillsborough, Sir Keir acknowledged it had been a battle, with “frank” discussions continuing as his deadline passed.

Margaret Aspinall, whose son James, 18, died at Hillsborough, said she is hopeful the new law “will mean no one will ever have to suffer like we did”.

Speaking alongside Sir Keir in No 10, she said: “I thought this is a day that was not going to happen.”

“This is not just about a legacy for the 97,” she said, in reference to the number of Liverpool fans who died in the tragedy.

“This is a legacy for the people of this country and I think that is the most important thing.”

Some campaigners raised fears the Bill’s contents had been diluted and would not include a legal duty of candour.

But the Government has confirmed a new professional and legal duty of candour will be part of the Bill, meaning public officials must act with honesty and integrity at all times and could face criminal sanctions if they breach it.

The Hillsborough disaster led to the deaths of 97 football fans during the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at the football ground in Sheffield.

The Government said the new legislation will “end the culture of cover-ups” and learn lessons from wider disasters including the Grenfell Tower fire and the Post Office Horizon and infected blood scandals.

Sir Keir said the new legislation can change “the balance of power in Britain” to ensure the state “can never hide from the people it is supposed to serve”.

He added: “Make no mistake, this a law for the 97, but it is also a law for the subpostmasters who suffered because of the Horizon scandal, the victims of infected blood, and those who died in the terrible Grenfell Tower fire. This is change only this Government can deliver.”

Sue Roberts, whose brother Graham was unlawfully killed at Hillsborough, described the Bill’s introduction as “a huge step in the right direction” but said the families will be “watching closely to ensure this Bill is passed in its entirety and enacted in full”.

She added: “The Government must resist any pressure from those who don’t believe the public deserves to know the truth about when the state fails.”

Among what the Government has described as the “seismic changes” as part of the Bill are the biggest expansion of legal aid in a decade for bereaved families, with non-means tested help and support for inquests.

There will also be a new offence for misleading the public, which the Government said will mean criminal sanctions for the most serious breaches.

2

Donald Trump says crime in Democratic cities is “out of control”. And after deployments to Los Angeles and Washington, DC, he’s now planning to send in the National Guard to other Democratic cities, like Memphis, in the Republican-run state of Tennessee. But FBI stats show crime is falling nationwide. So why the crackdown? Jillian Wolf takes a look at the evidence in this Fact Check.

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NEW YORK — In the days since the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, workers in a variety of industries have been fired for their comments on his death.

It’s hardly the first time workers have lost their jobs over things they say publicly — including in social media posts. In the U.S., laws can vary across states, but overall, there’s very few legal protections for employees who are punished for speech made in or out of private workplaces.

“Most people think they have a right to free speech … but that doesn’t necessarily apply in the workplace,” said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, associate general counsel and vice president of HR Services for Engage PEO. “Most employees in the private sector do not have any protections for that type of speech at work.”

Add to that the prevalence of social media, which has made it increasingly common to track employees’ conduct outside of work or for internet users to publish information about them with the intent of harming or harassing them.

Employers have leeway

Protections for workers vary from one state to the next. In New York, if an employee is participating in a weekend political protest, but not associating themselves with the organization that employs them, their employer cannot fire them for that activity when they return to work. But if that same employee is at a company event on a weekend and talks about their political viewpoints in a way that makes others feel unsafe or the target of discrimination or harassment, then they could face consequences at work, Matsis-McCready said.

Most of the U.S. defaults to “at-will” employment law — which essentially means employers can choose to hire and fire as they see fit, including over employees’ speech.

“The 1st Amendment does not apply in private workplaces to protect employees’ speech,” said Andrew Kragie, an attorney who specializes in employment and labor law at Maynard Nexsen. “It actually does protect employers’ right to make decisions about employees, based on employees’ speech.”

Kragie said there are “pockets of protection” around the U.S. under various state laws, such as statutes that forbid punishing workers for their political views. But the interpretation of how that gets enforced changes, he notes, making the waters murky.

Steven T. Collis, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and faculty director of the school’s Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center, also points to some state laws that say employers can’t fire their workers for “legal off-duty conduct.” But there’s often an exception for conduct seen as disruptive to an employer’s business or reputation, which could be grounds to fire someone over public comments or social media posts.

“In this scenario, if somebody feels like one of their employees has done something that suggests they are glorifying or celebrating a murder, an employer might still be able to fire them even with one of those laws on the books,” Collis said.

For public employees, including school teachers, postal workers and elected officials, the process is a bit different. That’s because the 1st Amendment plays a unique role when the government is the employer, Collis explains — and the Supreme Court has ruled that if an employee is acting in a private capacity but speaking on a matter of public concern, they’re protected.

However, that has yet to stop the public sector from restricting speech in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. For instance, leaders at the Pentagon unveiled a “zero tolerance” policy for any posts or comments from troops deemed to be making light of or celebrating the killing of Kirk.

The policy, announced by the Defense Department’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, on social media Thursday, came hours after numerous conservative military influencers and activists began forwarding posts they considered problematic to Parnell and his boss, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“It is unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American,” Parnell wrote Thursday, referring to the Department of Defense by the name adopted recently by President Trump.

A surge of political debate

The ubiquity of social media is making it easier than ever to share opinions about politics and major news events as they’re unfolding. But posting on social media leaves a record, and in times of escalating political polarization, those declarations can be seen as damaging to the reputation of an individual or their employer.

“People don’t realize when they’re on social media, it is the town square,” said Amy Dufrane, chief executive of the Human Resource Certification Institute. “They’re not having a private conversation with the neighbor over the fence. They’re really broadcasting their views.”

Political debates are certainly not limited to social media and are increasingly making their way into the workplace as well.

“The gamification of the way we communicate in the workplace — Slack and Teams, chat and all these things — they’re very similar to how you might interact on Instagram or other social media, so I do think that makes it feel a little less formal and somebody might be more inclined to take a step and say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe this happened,’” Matsis-McCready said.

Many employers unprepared

In the tense, divided climate in the United States at the moment, many human resource professionals have expressed that they’re unprepared to address politically charged discussions in the workplace, according to the Human Resource Certification Institute. But those conversations are going to happen, so employers need to set policies about what is acceptable or unacceptable workplace conduct, Dufrane said.

“HR has got to really drill down and make sure that they’re super clear on their policies and practices and communicating to their employees on what are their responsibilities as an employee of the organization,” Dufrane said.

Many employers are reviewing their policies on political speech and providing training about what appropriate conduct looks like, both inside and outside the organization, she said. And the brutal nature of Kirk’s killing may have led some of them to react more strongly in the days since his death.

“Because of the violent nature of what some political discussion is now about, I think there is a real concern from employers that they want to keep the workplace safe and that they’re being extra vigilant about anything that could be viewed as a threat, which is their duty,” Matsis-McCreedy said.

Employees can also be seen as ambassadors of a company’s brand, and their political speech can dilute that brand and hurt its reputation, depending on what is being said and how it is being received. That is leading more companies to act on what employees are saying online, she said.

“Some of the individuals that had posted and their posts went viral, all of a sudden the phone lines of their employers were just nonstop calls complaining,” Matsis-McCready said.

Still, experts such as Collis don’t anticipate a significant change in how employers monitor their workers’ speech — noting that online activity has been in the spotlight for at least the last 15 years.

“Employers are already — and have been for a very long time — vetting employees based on what they’re posting on social media,” he said.

Bussewitz and Grantham-Philips write for the Associated Press. AP writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels, was hit with a personal judgment of $4.85 million Monday for his failure to pay a debt to a former colleague at his longtime Newport Beach firm.

Less than an hour after his defeat in the Los Angeles lawsuit, Avenatti suffered another setback at a trial in Orange County: The Irvine Co. won a court order evicting him and his staff from their offices because the firm, Eagan Avenatti, skipped the last four months of rent.

The twin blows came as Avenatti was heading to New Hampshire for his third visit to the state that kicks off the 2020 presidential primaries. The celebrity lawyer is exploring a run for the Democratic nomination. His troubled financial history could emerge as a significant campaign issue if he joins the race.

The personal judgment against Avenatti by Judge Dennis J. Landin in Superior Court in Los Angeles was his latest in a series of courtroom losses in a protracted dispute with Jason Frank, the former colleague.

Eagan Avenatti emerged from federal bankruptcy protection in March after Avenatti promised that it would pay millions of dollars to Frank and other creditors, including the Internal Revenue Service. It has defaulted on nearly every payment that was due.

No one has pursued Avenatti more relentlessly than Frank, who has been fighting in federal court to collect on a $10-million judgment that he won against the firm in May.

“My client has had an awful lot of money owed to him for a lengthy period of time,” said Frank’s attorney, Eric George, “and it has been delayed through one tactic or another. Today, finally, the right thing happened.”

Avenatti has been the managing partner of Eagan Avenatti since its founding in 2007.

He recently told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge that his other firm, Avenatti & Associates, wholly owned by Avenatti, had acquired 100% of the equity in Eagan Avenatti, buying out his minority partner, Michael Eagan of San Francisco.

But Avenatti told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that he hadn’t owned Eagan Avenatti for months. He refused to identify the new owner.

“Any judgment issued against me will be deducted from the over $12 million that Jason Frank owes me and my law firm Avenatti & Associates as a result of his fraud,” Avenatti said by email.

No court has found Frank engaged in fraud, and Avenatti is not pursuing any court case alleging that he did. When Frank and two others left Eagan Avenatti to form their own firm, some clients went with them, angering Avenatti.

Frank alleges that Eagan Avenatti cheated him out of millions of dollars in compensation.

As part of its bankruptcy settlement, Eagan Avenatti agreed to pay Frank $4.85 million. Avenatti guaranteed that if the firm missed the deadlines for making the payment, which it did, he would personally be required to pay Frank.

To enforce the personal guarantee, Frank sued Avenatti, and on Monday he won the case.

Daniels, the adult film star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is represented by Avenatti & Associates, which operates out of the same offices as Eagan Avenatti and uses the same attorneys. Daniels is trying to void a nondisclosure agreement that bars her from discussing her alleged sexual affair in 2006 with Donald Trump.

Last week, a judge dismissed the defamation suit that Avenatti filed on Daniels’ behalf against Trump, finding the president was exercising his right to free speech when he attacked her credibility on Twitter.

Avenatti had another reversal last month at the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. The Senate Judiciary Committee refused to interview an Avenatti client, Julie Swetnick, who alleged that Kavanaugh attended a 1982 party where where she said she was gang-raped.

In the Santa Ana trial, 520 Newport Center Drive LLC, an arm of the Irvine Co., alleged that Eagan Avenatti missed $213,254 in rent payments over the last four months for its ocean-view suite on the 14th floor of an office building at Fashion Island.

Nobody from Eagan Avenatti showed up for the trial.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Moss ordered the firm to vacate the premises and pay the landlord the full amount of overdue rent. He also canceled the remaining three months of the lease. If the firm fails to move out, it could take a few weeks for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to enforce the eviction.

In court papers filed by Avenatti, the firm claimed it deducted the cost of needed repairs from its rent payments but did not receive proper credit.

The Irvine Co. denied that the offices needed any serious repairs. And the lease, signed by Avenatti, says the tenant “understands that it shall not make repairs at landlord’s expense or by rental offset.”

At the short morning trial, Mark A. Kompa, an Irvine Co. attorney, called just three witnesses. He asked one of them, Irvine Co. assistant manager Abigail Yocam, what happened to the last rent payments received from Eagan Avenatti in July.

She testified: “The checks bounced.”

[email protected]

Twitter: @finneganLAT

UPDATES:

3:55 p.m.: The article was updated with the testimony of Irvine Co.’s Abigail Yocam and background on Stormy Daniels and the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

1:45 p.m.: The article was updated with additional details on the court cases.

11:50 a.m.: The article was updated with background on Michael Avenatti exploring a run for president and the Stormy Daniels litigation against President Trump.

11:15 a.m.: The article was updated with a comment from Michael Avenatti, background on Eagan Avenatti and the eviction judgment.

The article was originally published at 10:15 a.m.

The California Legislature on Thursday passed a pair of bills to prohibit on-duty law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, from masking their faces and to require them to identify themselves.

Senate Bill 627, written by Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley), includes exceptions for SWAT teams and others. The measure was introduced after the Trump administration ordered immigration raids throughout the Los Angeles area earlier this year.

Federal officers in army-green neck gaiters or other face coverings have jumped out of vans and cars to detain individuals across California this summer as part of President Trump’s mass deportation program, prompting a wave of criticism from Democratic leaders.

Representatives for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security defend the face coverings, arguing that identifying officers subjects to them to retaliation and violence.

If supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the law would apply to local and federal officers, but not state officers such as California Highway Patrol officers. Wiener, when asked about that exemption on the Senate floor, declined to elaborate.

Leaders in Los Angeles County are exploring a similar measure to ban masks despite some legal experts’ view that the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law takes precedence over state law.

The bill’s backers argue that permitting officers to disguise themselves creates scenarios where impostors may stop and detain migrants, which undermines public trust and ultimately hinders legitimate law enforcement operations.

“The idea that in California we would have law enforcement officers running around with ski masks is terrifying,” Wiener said in a brief interview. “It destroys confidence in law enforcement.”

Wiener’s bill allows exceptions for masks, including for undercover officers. Medical coverings are also allowed. .

Senate Bill 805, a measure by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra) that targets immigration officers who are in plainclothes but don’t identify themselves, also passed the state Legislature on Thursday.

Her bill requires law enforcement officers in plain clothes to display their agency, as well as either a badge number or name, with some exemptions.