thousand

The Trump administration’s historic move to reclassify state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug was cheered by some advocates but for others, it fell far short for the thousands still incarcerated on federal cannabis-related convictions.

The executive order, which acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche signed Thursday, does not address current penalties for possessing and selling marijuana or those jailed with yearslong sentences.

“While this is a victory, the fight is far from over,” said Jason Ortiz, director of strategic initiatives for the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit focused on cannabis criminal justice reform.

Proponents of legalizing marijuana as well as overhauling prison sentencing say this order, which does not completely decriminalize the drug, benefits only cannabis researchers, growers and others in Big Weed. Meanwhile, thousands — many of whom are people of color — are stuck serving harsh sentences for marijuana-related offenses. Or they have served their time but having a conviction on their record has made life difficult.

Now, advocates are calling on Congress and state lawmakers to take concrete steps to ensure those with marijuana-related convictions receive fair treatment or be forgiven altogether.

Prisoners and their families look for hope

Blanche’s order reclassifies state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug. The major policy shift, which both Presidents Obama and Joe Biden had considered, means cannabis won’t be grouped with drugs like heroin.

But it does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use. It shifts licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — reserved for drugs without medical use and with high potential for abuse — to the less strictly regulated Schedule III. This will likely give licensed medical marijuana operators and cannabis researchers a major tax break and less stringent barriers to doing normal business.

Virtually no one imprisoned at the federal level is there solely for marijuana possession. But many are there for large-scale possession, trafficking offenses or both.

Hector Ruben McGurk, 66, has been serving life without the possibility of parole since 2007 for transporting thousands of pounds of marijuana and money laundering. He is currently imprisoned in Beaumont, Texas, over 800 miles from his son’s El Paso home. His incarceration has been hard on his son, said McGurk’s daughter-in-law, Ferna Anguiano. And the distance makes visits logistically difficult.

So it’s tempting to see this order as a glimmer of hope, given that the family believes McGurk’s punishment far outweighs his crimes. But Anguiano has no idea how to navigate lobbying for his release.

“His release date is death,” Anguiano said. “I mean, we see all this stuff on the news — bigger cases, fatal cases — and people are going in and out of prison and coming out to their families.”

They try to keep in touch through phone calls and a prison texting service. They’re concerned about McGurk’s health and his diabetes management. It would be a dream come true for him to come home.

“He deserves a second chance,” Anguiano said. “Yes, it was a poor decision he did in his lifetime. He was younger. But he is not a bad person. I think it’s fair to say he has served enough time for it.”

It’s not clear whether punishments would be different had marijuana always been scheduled differently, drug policy experts say.

“In addition to schedule-specific penalties, there are marijuana-specific penalties that have nothing to do with the schedule,” said Cat Packer, director of drug markets and legal regulation at the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. “Even if marijuana were to be moved to Schedule V, those criminal penalties would still exist and there are mandatory minimums for simple possession.”

Racial disparities exist in convictions and Big Weed

Destigmatizing marijuana has long been an issue for both political parties. Obama commuted the sentences of about 1,900 federal prisoners, almost all of whom were incarcerated for nonviolent drug crimes. Biden pardoned 6,500 people convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia. President Trump’s administration has taken far fewer drug clemency actions and does not have an overarching policy directing such actions.

“What many people on the right and the left would like is to move marijuana from this ‘just as bad as heroin’ category and to just sort of de-schedule it entirely,” said Marta Nelson, director of sentencing reform at the Vera Institute of Justice. “Regulate it like you do alcohol or tobacco.”

Studies show Black Americans are roughly 3.7 to 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white Americans, despite usage rates being roughly the same across racial groups. Federal-level marijuana cases are pretty small today, but those serving sentences for federal drug offenses are overwhelmingly Hispanic and Black, according to Justice Department and Bureau of Justice Statistics data.

The racial disparity with drug convictions is reminiscent of 2010 legislation Obama signed reducing the gap between mandatory sentences for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. In 2018, Trump made it apply retroactively.

Because business owners with state medical marijuana licenses are predominantly white, the tax relief created by the rescheduling will also likely give a leg up to mostly white businesses, Packer said. A lot of equity programs won’t apply.

“This is going to, in my mind, widen the gap, the financial disparities, the business disparities that currently exist between Black and brown, Latino and white owners in the cannabis industry because licenses were not distributed equitably,” Packer said.

Possible next steps for marijuana convictions

In theory, Trump could issue a blanket pardon like he did for Jan. 6 rioters. But Nelson thinks that is highly doubtful.

“Having marijuana convictions on the record for things like mass immigration enforcement is helpful to the administration,” Nelson said.

An impactful next step would be for Congress to outline very comprehensive legislation addressing existing marijuana-related convictions, expungements and industry regulations, she added.

The Last Prisoner Project and other organizations are planning to renew a dialogue with federal lawmakers, including the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, which includes Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Republican Rep. David Joyce of Ohio. They will also continue to lobby for Trump to conduct a large-scale act of commutation and clemency.

Advocates are also hoping Trump’s order will prompt every state to rethink their marijuana classification and penalties.

“It is imperative that every state review their situation, as a lot of their controlled substances at the state level are tied to the federal government,” Ortiz said. “We’re gonna see other states that are going to need a little help from the public to remind them what the right thing to do is.”

Tang writes for the Associated Press.

In the aftermath of a recent data breach that saw hackers make off with a vast trove of confidential police records, Los Angeles leaders have sought an explanation from the city’s top lawyer, whose office was targeted.

What they have gotten so far, according to Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, are answers that only leave more questions.

In an interview, Jurado said she had expected City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to appear before the Government Operations committee this week, but instead had received an internal report offering a “high level view” of the breach that left many key details unaddressed.

“When did the city attorney’s office become aware, what actions were taken, and why were city officials not notified promptly?” Jurado said. “Right now, we’re still left to question and trying to assemble the information.”

The Times reported the existence of the hack last week, prompting further scrutiny by public officials — some of whom, like Jurado, said they hadn’t previously been informed. Since then, The Times has reviewed an inventory of 337,000 files that were compromised.

The documents amount to millions of pages, and appear to mostly come from civil lawsuits against the city that have been resolved in court. They range in nature from trip-and-fall cases to police excessive force.

During a brief discussion at the council committee Tuesday morning, Jurado said she had received information that an internal link used by the city attorney’s office to access the files had been clicked at least 5,000 times on the first day of the breach, which is thought to have occurred sometime in March.

The files were not secured by a password, according to sources who spoke previously with The Times and requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation. A senior police official last week assured the department’s civilian bosses, the Police Commission, that none of the department’s own systems had been compromised.

Jurado said she wanted answers for why and how the city had managed to leave exposed sensitive records, such as medical reports, autopsy photos and witness names.

“It’s just horrific to think that that was out there,” Jurado said.

The city attorney’s office responded to questions from The Times by referring to a public report issued April 17, which said a preliminary investigation indicated that “the incident was contained to that third-party environment, and that no other City applications, systems, or department records were accessed or affected.”

The report noted that the hackers teased “small samples” of the data on its dark web site over a week starting March 20, before publishing the whole thing on March 27. The data were taken down after about eight hours, and then reappeared again twice in early April, the report said.

In a separate letter to the police union, the office said it would begin notifying people whose information was compromised “without unreasonable delay.”

The inventory reviewed by The Times shows personnel files for LAPD officers who were accused of using excessive force against a Black military veteran during a traffic stop in 2021. Another file included the identities of witnesses who saw a man die after LAPD officers knelt on him during an arrest, the records reviewed by The Times showed.

Thousands of hours of uncut body camera footage were released. There were also medical records from thousands of cases in which police and other city employees were accused of misconduct. At least 1,060 of the files are labeled as confidential, the inventory says.

The city attorney’s office has said that it alerted senior LAPD officials and the city’s IT department as soon as they discovered the leak, and has in the weeks since been in regular contact with other city departments to assess the scope of the leak. The FBI has begun investigating the matter.

The situation has already cost Feldstein Soto, who is up for reelection, the endorsement of the powerful union for the LAPD’s rank-and-file officers, which withdrew its support after accusing the city attorney of failing to disclose the full extent of the breach.

The leak follows Feldstein Soto’s efforts to weaken the state’s public records law after the release of many police officer photos and other materials, which she demanded be returned.

Several attorneys whose cases were included in the list of compromised files told The Times they have not yet heard from city officials. Some said they could foresee the records leaked being used as justification to reopen old cases — or initiate new ones.

“I’m curious to know what exactly it is that the city attorney’s office had that they may not have disclosed to us in discovery,” Arnoldo Casillas, an attorney for the family of Eric Rivera, a 20-year-old man whose family sued after he was killed by police in Wilmington in 2017 and whose files are among those included in the leak, according to the inventory reviewed by The Times.

The case was later dismissed, but the family has filed an appeal.

Other attorneys whose lawsuits against the city and LAPD were listed among the hacked materials said they wanted to know exactly what was included in the files.

Robert Glassman, who successfully sued for $18 million last year on behalf of two elderly brothers who were badly injured when a speeding LAPD squad car broadsided their vehicle, said he also hadn’t heard from the city attorney’s office.

“You’d think that they would notify [the affected parties] and tell them that they’re working to get their information back,” he said.

Experts said similar cyberattacks on government offices across the country have shown it can take months or years for the dust to fully settle and the full scope of the damage to emerge.

James E. Lee, president of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit organization that provides advice and assistance related to identity theft, said last year alone the center documented an all-time high of 3,322 hacks.

That’s almost certainly an undercount, given the number of cases that go undetected or unreported, Lee said. Of the recorded incidents, roughly 165 targeted government agencies — up from 47 in 2020, he said.

In the past, according to Lee, many attacks of government entities were carried out by state-sponsored actors, but the emergence of AI-powered hacking tools have allowed everyday people to carry off such incursions.

“They want data that they can repurpose: anything that’s going to have financial information, anything that’s going to have driver’s license information is going to be very valuable to them,” he said.

Matthew McNicholas, a lawyer who has represented many officers in their lawsuits against the city, said he has fielded numerous calls from clients worried their personnel and medical records were exposed.

The leaked records, the inventory shows, include a case in which McNicholas sued the city on behalf of a victim who said they’d been sexually molested as a minor by an employee at a city-run recreational center.

McNicholas said he is worried that the leak will expose the private information of police whistleblowers who came forward to reveal discrimination and other misconduct.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

On the first Sunday night of Coachella, headliner Karol G told her American fans, and her global audience, to keep fighting.

“This is for my Latinos that have been struggling in this country lately,” the Colombian superstar told the tens of thousands watching her in person, and many more on the fest’s livestream. She’d recently criticized ICE in a Playboy interview, but this set was about her fans’ resolve. “We want everyone to feel welcome to our culture, so I want everyone to feel proud of where you come from. Don’t feel fear — feel pride!” she said.

Any artist would be proud to play that caliber of headline slot. But right now, many foreign acts also feel fear — or at least wariness — about booking substantial tours in the United States. A year of brutal ICE raids, tensions at border crossings and policed political speech, coupled with sky-high prices for expedited visas, fuel and other touring logistics, could push international acts away from the U.S.

“The fears that ICE would raid shows didn’t really materialize, but there is a chilling effect,” said Andy Gensler, editor of the touring-biz trade bible Pollstar. “Trump’s only been back in office a year, so we haven’t fully seen the effects, but it does send a message that if you’re a political artist you won’t get a visa. With the economic shock of gas prices and tourism way down, the signifiers are out there.”

The music economy is still thriving in SoCal. Coachella sold out with record spending from fans, and fears that ICE might show up for a prominent Latin headliner proved unfounded. (The agency did not respond to a request for comment on Coachella, and Lt. Deirdre Vickers of the Riverside County Sheriff’s office said that their office “does not participate in immigration enforcement operations.”)

But in smaller venues featuring emerging and mid-tier global acts, some see trouble ahead.

Pollstar’s Gensler estimates that the total number of concerts in the U.S. they tracked for the first quarter of 2026 was down about 17% from last year. That could be due to many economic factors — but slower international touring could be contributing.

“The U.S. is still incredibly lucrative market, the arena and stadium level buildings are vast and you can make more money here than any market in the world,” Gensler said. “But I’ve heard anecdotally that fewer people are going to South by Southwest, and tourism from Canada is way down, and that includes music tourism to California. As barriers go up, and the economic shock of gas prices impacts touring, it’s hard to know how that will all shake out.”

Talent firms who specialize in bringing young acts to the U.S. began noticing pullback before this year’s festival season. Adam Lewis is the head of Planetary Group, a marketing agency that produces and promoting musician showcases in the U.S., with a significant roster of artists from abroad. He said that performers who ordinarily would leap at the chance to play U.S. festivals are taking hard looks at the payoffs and risks.

“Artists are thinking twice, based on what the government is doing right now,” Lewis said. “You can look at the economics — the fees are cost prohibitive to get a visa. People are scared, at the bottom line. Artists and industry people are afraid to come to the U.S. for any music event. The money is going elsewhere.”

South by Southwest, the March Texas confab for music, film and tech, was among the first festivals to feel a pinch this year. Several sources said they saw fewer foreign showcases and acts amid a broader culling of music. In 2025, Canada canceled its popular annual showcase, after deciding that hostile policies made the risks not worth the rewards. Many still pulled off successful events, but acknowledged the mood has shifted.

“The perception of how hard it’s gotten has taken root, and that has meant that not as many acts will take the chance on the threat of being turned away or risking future entry,” said Angela Dorgan, the director of Music From Ireland, the Irish Music Export office (which is funded by Culture Ireland). That organization has helped break acts like CMAT (a hit at Coachella this year) and Fontaines DC in the U.S.

“Artists want to continue to come here in spite of the trouble and not stay away because of it. There’s a unique pull to America for all Irish people, so we don’t want to see you hurting,” Dorgan said. ”Irish artists feel that their U.S. fans need music more than ever now and want to continue to connect with and support their fans.”

Takafumi Sugahara, the organizer of “Tokyo Calling X Inspired By Tokyo,” a Japanese showcase at South by Southwest, agreed: “Bringing artists to the United States has always been challenging when it comes to obtaining visas, but it feels like the process has become even more difficult than before — perhaps due to the current political climate under the current administration.”

Fans watch Karol G perform at the Coachella stage last weekend. “We want everyone to feel welcome to our culture, so I want everyone to feel proud of where you come from. Don’t feel fear — feel pride!” the Colombian superstar said.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

After high-profile incidents of tourist detainments and fear of reprisals for political speech, those worries and long-dreaded expenses may shift their priorities. “From my point of view, the impact of global conflicts or wars does not seem to be affecting artists’ decisions very strongly for now,” they said. “However, if the current situation were to worsen, it’s possible that we could begin to see that change.”

Coachella usually hits a few visa snafus every year (this year, the English electronic artist Tourist had to cancel. Last year, it was FKA Twigs). Yet the Grammy-winning Malian Algerian group Tinariwen had to cancel a major tour this year, after the Trump administration placed severe new travel restrictions on 19 countries, including Mali. Folk legend Cat Stevens scotched a book tour after visa problems. Outspoken acts like the U.K.’s Bob Vylan have been denied U.S. visas for criticizing Israel, and the Irish rap group Kneecap faced hurdles after their visa sponsor, Independent Artist Group, dropped them for similar reasons last year.

The Times spoke to one European band (who asked not to be named, for fear of reprisals from the U.S. government) who had a substantial tour of U.S. theaters booked last year, before their visas were denied just days before the tour was due to begin. They were forced to cancel those dates and reschedule for spring 2026, losing tens of thousands of dollars in up-front costs and non-refundable fees. (A performance visa routinely costs $6,000 with now-necessary expedited processing.)

“Our manager said, ‘This has never happened before, but even though you paid lot of money and the check cleared, you won’t have visas,’” the band said. They wondered if their pro-Palestinian advocacy might have played a role, but now believe it was due to changes in their application forms.

That small discrepancy “meant we lost tens of thousands of [dollars], which for a mid-tier band with a loyal cult following, was quite ruinous,” they said. “We had to put on fundraising shows to get to zero, then re-apply for visas, and paid four grand extra to expedite them. We took out a loan to pay it. We felt relentlessly fleeced,” they said. “We love the U.S., but now there is a reality in which we have to cut our losses and stop coming. A lot of bands are giving up on the U.S., for sure.”

“It’s a different feeling now where the U.S. government can do anything to us, and we just have to take it,” they added. “They’re moving the goalposts the whole time. It’s scary.”

That fate can befall even major acts, particularly those from Latin America.

Last year, superstar Mexican singer Julión Álvarez canceled his concert for a planned 50,000 fans in Arlington, Texas, when his touring visa was revoked. Grupo Firme faced a similar fate at the La Onda festival in Napa Valley. Los Alegres del Barranco saw their visas canceled after they projected an image of drug kingpin “El Mencho” during a concert.

“That was a moment where people realize how serious or scary it can get for promoters with this administration when comes to the visa situation, how quickly things can change and you can lose millions,” said Oscar Aréliz, a Latin music expert at Pollstar.

An act the caliber of Karol G might not face quite the same risks, though she told Playboy that “If you say the thing, maybe the next day you’ll get a call: ‘Hey, we are taking your visa away.’ You become bait, because some people want to show their power.”

If it can happen to a stadium-filler like Álvarez, it can happen to anyone. That might make some Latin acts prioritize other regions.

Bad Bunny demurred on touring the continental U.S. for fear of ICE raids at his shows, opting for a lengthy residence in his home territory of Puerto Rico instead.

Local Latin music hubs like Santa Fe Springs and Pico Rivera have suffered greatly under recent ICE raids and have seen fans retreat in fear. Las Vegas is a major touring destination for acts during Mexican independence celebrations in September, but now “it feels different,” Aréliz said. He expects the city — typically boisterous with Latin acts then — to lose a big chunk of music tourism from the north and south.

“Vegas’ top tourist countries are Canada and Mexico, so we’re going to see other countries benefit from this. If acts struggle to tour here because of the visa situation, they’re going to tour Mexico and Latin America instead,” he added.

Tours typically book a year in advance, so the full effects of the visa issues and ICE fears may not be felt until later in 2026 or 2027. The results of the midterm elections may change global perception of America’s safety. The country is still an incredibly valuable touring market for acts that can make it work.

But the world’s music community now looks at the U.S. like an old friend going through a rough patch: They’ll be happy to see us once we pull it together.

“Certainly over the last number of years in the U.S., we have been thinking of where we could find these new audiences for Irish music,” Dorgan said. “The unofficial theme of our at home showcase Ireland Music Week was, ‘America. We are not breaking up with you, but we are seeing other people.’”

A constellation of stars are lining up against Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, expressing fears the blockbuster merger would devastate the industry and shrink production jobs.

The letter was signed by nearly 1,000 artists and movie creators, including such big names as Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston, Noah Wyle, Joaquin Phoenix, Kristen Stewart and Jane Fonda, whose group the Committee for the First Amendment, helped organize the campaign.

“This transaction would further consolidate an already concentrated media landscape, reducing competition at a moment when our industries—and the audiences we serve—can least afford it,” according to the letter. “The result will be fewer opportunities for creators, fewer jobs across the production ecosystem, higher costs, and less choice for audiences in the United States and around the world.”

The Hollywood workforce has shrunk by more than 42,000 jobs between 2022 and 2024, according to a recent study. The economy has not bounced back following shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by the twin labor strikes three years ago.

Thousands of film workers have been searching for work — but many of the big opportunities have moved abroad.

The strikes prompted studio executives to reset their output after previously spending big to build streaming services to compete with Netflix.

Two other consolidations led to widespread cutbacks: Walt Disney Co.’s acquisition of Fox entertainment assets in 2019, and Discovery’s takeover of AT&T’s WarnerMedia four years ago.

The resulting entity — Warner Bros. Discovery, led by David Zaslav — instituted deep cost cuts and thousands of layoffs to cut expenses because the firm was nearly drowning in deal debt — $43 billion — from the day Zaslav took the helm.

Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. would result in a significantly higher debt load, $79 billion in debt, prompting concerns from the group and others about further cuts.

Tech scion David Ellison, son of billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is leading the effort to buy Warner Bros. Discovery to prop up Paramount, which the family acquired in August. Ellison’s Paramount Skydance prevailed in a nearly six month bidding war in late February after Netflix bowed out when the elder Ellison agreed to financially back his son’s $111-billion deal.

Warner shareholders will be asked to approve the merger April 23.

Ellison is pushing to wrap the deal up this summer.

“We are deeply concerned by indications of support for this merger that prioritize the interests of a small group of powerful stakeholders over the broader public good,” the letter said. “The integrity, independence, and diversity of our industry would be grievously compromised. Competition is essential for a healthy economy and a healthy democracy. So is thoughtful regulation and enforcement.”

The group urged California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and his fellow state attorneys general to sue to block the transaction.

Bonta has told The Times that his office is reviewing the transaction to see if it violates anti-trust rules. Two historic movie studios, several streaming services and dozens of cable channels would be brought under one roof.

“Media consolidation has already weakened one of America’s most vital global industries,” the group said, “one that has long shaped culture and connected people around the world.”

Bonta’s office is leading the charge against another merger, TV station giant Nexstar Media Group’s $6.2-billion takeover Virginia-based Tegna. Eight state attorneys general, including Bonta, have sued to block that deal. A judge is expected to rule on whether to issue a preliminary injunction later this week.

WASHINGTON — President Trump spent much of last week railing against the courts. The courts, in turn, spent it ruling against him.

While Trump made history as the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court, where he stared down justices as they questioned his bid to end birthright citizenship, quieter courtrooms across the country were challenging his agenda.

The challenges came in on immigration, on his White House ballroom project, on his own liability in the run-up to Jan. 6.

“Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

By Friday, judges had served him loss after loss, each finding the administration had taken executive authority too far, too fast.

Immigration rulings

On immigration, the keystone of Trump’s policy platform, he faced a number of setbacks.

On Monday, a federal judge in California took a step that would allow a class-action lawsuit against the administration’s handling of certain asylum claims. The case concerns thousands of asylum seekers who had made appointments with immigration officials by using a Biden administration phone app called CBP One.

In many cases, migrants from around the world had waited months in Mexico for their turn to speak with border agents after securing appointments through the app.

Those appointments were suddenly canceled after Trump took office. The judge certified those asylum seekers as a class that can challenge the administration’s action in court.

In a similar case, a federal judge in Boston ruled Tuesday that the administration had unlawfully terminated the temporary legal status of as many as 900,000 immigrants who entered the country after using the phone app. Tens of thousands of those told by the administration to leave the U.S. “immediately” have since left or been deported.

The judge ordered the administration to reinstate the legal status and work authorization of those remaining.

“Today’s ruling is a clear rejection of an administration that has tried to erase lawful status for hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a legal organization that represented the migrants.

Sanctuary laws

Also Tuesday, a federal judge threw out a Justice Department lawsuit that accused Denver and Colorado of interfering with immigration enforcement and claimed that the city and state’s “sanctuary” laws violated the Constitution.

The ruling found that the federal government had not shown it could override state and local decisions about how to use their own resources. The Constitution, the judge said, does not let Washington commandeer local governments.

“Colorado gets to make a choice: How will our law enforcement operate in Colorado. The federal government, they don’t get to make that choice for us,” Colorado Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser said.

Birthright citizenship

The next day, the Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of Trump’s claim that birthright citizenship doesn’t apply to babies born in the U.S. to parents who are here unlawfully or temporarily.

Conservative and liberal judges alike questioned the arguments of Solicitor Gen. John Sauer, who represented the administration, saying he relied on “some pretty obscure sources,” including precedents that dated back to Roman law.

Trump, sitting feet from the proceedings, left the Supreme Court building halfway through.

“We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” he wrote shortly after departing.

Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University professor who studies immigration enforcement, wrote on Substack after the Supreme Court hearing that, on immigration policy, there is always a gap between what an administration says it will do and what the government can actually deliver. That gap, he argued, is particularly evident in the second Trump administration.

“The White House has built its political identity around the promise of mass deportation, and the rhetoric has been relentless: record arrests, expanded detention, military flights, the spectacle of enforcement as governance,” Kocher wrote.

“But over the past several days,” he added, “developments from multiple fronts suggests that the operational foundations of the mass deportation campaign are more fragile than the administration would like anyone to believe.”

Defying judicial orders

In some cases, the Trump administration has been undeterred by judicial orders to stop certain practices. In a March ruling unsealed Thursday, a federal judge found that Border Patrol agents had continued making illegal arrests in California’s Central Valley without reasonable suspicion.

The government’s explanations for the arrests, wrote Judge Jennifer Thurston in Fresno, “rely on unsupported assumptions, hunches and generalizations about the relationship between a person’s apparent status as a day laborer and their immigration status.”

White House ballroom

Trump had kicked the week off March 29 by touting his 90,000-square-foot ballroom project, showing designs to reporters on Air Force One.

“I think it’ll be the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world,” he said. Two days later, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered a temporary halt to construction.

Leon stated that the president is the “steward” of the White House, not its “owner,” and ruled that he cannot proceed with such a massive structural change without express authorization from Congress.

In response, Trump raged on Truth Social: “In the Ballroom case, the Judge said we have to get Congressional approval. He is WRONG! Congressional approval has never been given on anything, in these circumstances, big or small, having to do with construction at the White House.”

His administration filed a motion Friday to block the judge’s ruling.

Jan 6. liability

On the same day, a judge ruled that Trump remains personally liable in a civil lawsuit tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, allowing those claims to move forward.

It is among the most consequential legal threats he faces.

Trump entered the presidency on the heels of a major Supreme Court win that found former presidents have criminal and civil immunity for official acts during their term.

But Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta deemed Trump’s Jan. 6 speech — in which he directed supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” — was a political act, not a presidential one, and therefore not shielded by immunity.

“President Trump has not shown that the speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his Presidential duties. The content of the ellipse speech confirms that it is not covered by official-acts immunity,” Mehta wrote.

The week ended with yet another setback for Trump when a federal judge on Friday blocked the administration from forcing universities to submit extensive data on applicants and students to prove they don’t illegally consider race in admissions.

Reading the losses

For Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA who has tracked the administration’s legal battles closely, the losing streak had a clear through line.

“It was an awful week for Donald Trump,” he said. “It’s not that the courts are anti-Trump. In fact, he wins a lot. It’s really that he takes such an aggressive approach to policy making that he runs afoul of existing precedents.”

Taken together, last week’s rulings signaled that the courts are insisting that the president is as accountable for his actions as anyone, and that states have constitutional powers he alone cannot override.

“The Trump administration’s recent court losses illustrate that there is still much that the other branches of government can do — in connection with civil society — to uphold the rule of law and mitigate the harms of the administration’s destructive agenda,” said Monika Langarica, deputy legal director at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

“They are one more reminder,” she added, “that the administration will not always have the last word with respect to its unlawful and unconstitutional actions.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court made it harder for music and movie makers to sue for online piracy, ruling Wednesday that internet providers are usually not liable for copyright infringement even if they know their users are downloading copyrighted works.

In a 9-0 decision, the justices threw out Sony’s lawsuit and a $1-billion verdict against Cox Cable for copyright infringement.

Lower courts upheld a jury’s verdict against Cox’s internet service for contributing to music piracy, which the company did little to stop.

Sony’s lawyers pointed to hundreds of thousands of instances of Cox customers sharing copyrighted works. Put on notice, Cox did little stop it, they said.

But the high court said that is not enough to establish liability for copyright infringement.

“Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.

Two decades ago, the court sided with the music and motion picture producers and ruled against Grokster and Napster on the grounds their software was intended to share copyrighted music and movies.

But on Wednesday, the court said “contributory” copyright infringement did not extend to internet service providers based on the actions of some of their users

“Cox provided Internet service to its subscribers, but it did not intend for that service to be used to commit copyright infringement,” Thomas said. “Cox neither induced its users’ infringement nor provided a service tailored to infringement.”

In its defense, Cox argued that internet service providers could be bankrupted by huge lawsuits for copyright infringement, which they said they did not cause and could not prevent.

JUNEAU, Alaska — The tiny Alaska Native village of Beaver is about 40 minutes — by plane — from the nearest city. Its roughly 50 residents rely on weekday flights for mail and many of their basic supplies, including groceries and Amazon deliveries of everyday household items.

Air service plays an outsize role in the nation’s most expansive state, where most communities rely on flights for year-round access. Planes also play a crucial role in elections, getting voting materials and ballots to and from rural precincts such as Beaver and delivering ballots for thousands of Alaskans who vote by mail — some in places where in-person voting is not available.

The vast distances and relative isolation of so many communities make Alaska unique and are why its residents have a significant interest in arguments taking place Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Many here worry that a case from Mississippi challenging whether ballots received after election day can be counted in federal elections could end Alaska’s practice of accepting late-arriving ballots. Alaska counts ballots if they are postmarked by election day and received within 10 days, or 15 days for overseas voters in general elections.

“These processes have been in place for a long time just to ensure that our ballots are counted,” said Rhonda Pitka, a poll worker and first chief in Beaver, which sits along the Yukon River 110 miles north of Fairbanks.

If the court decides ballots in all states must be received by election day, she said, “they’ll be disenfranchising thousands of people — thousands of people in these rural communities. It’s just basically saying that their votes don’t count, and that’s a real shame.”

The Supreme Court will hear arguments as the U.S. Senate is debating legislation being pushed by President Trump that would require people to show proof of citizenship to register to vote — an onerous burden for many — and a photo ID to cast a ballot.

Most Republicans argue that the bill is necessary to shore up voting integrity, but Democrats and voting rights advocates — and Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski — contend that it amounts to voter suppression. Studies have consistently shown that voting fraud is exceedingly rare in the U.S., and courts have struck down similar measures after finding they prevented eligible voters from casting ballots.

Some ballots already arrive late

Alaska is one of 14 states that allow all mailed ballots postmarked by election day to arrive days or weeks later and be counted, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Voting Rights Lab. An additional 15 provide grace periods for military and overseas ballots.

But Alaska’s geography, weather and great distances between communities — Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas, the nation’s second-largest state — raise the stakes for voters. The unusual way the state counts its votes also makes a grace period important, advocates say.

Under Alaska’s ranked-choice system for general elections, workers in small rural precincts call in voters’ first choices to a regional election office. All ballots, however, ultimately are flown to the state Division of Elections in the capital, Juneau. There, the races not won outright are tabulated to determine a winner.

Even with Alaska’s current 10-day grace period, ballots from some villages in 2022 were not fully counted because of mail delays. They arrived too late for tabulations in Juneau, 15 days after election day.

If the Supreme Court rules that ballots cannot be counted if they arrive at election offices after election day, many Alaska voters could be affected. About 50,000 Alaskans voted by mail in the 2024 presidential election.

“I think there’s probably no other state where this ruling could have a more detrimental impact than ours,” Murkowski, her state’s senior senator, said in an interview.

Murkowski sees the case — a challenge by the Republican National Committee and others to Mississippi’s allowance of late-arriving ballots — as an effort to end voting by mail nationwide.

‘Seeing a level of voter intimidation’

The RNC argues that such grace periods improperly extend elections for federal office, but Mississippi responded that no voting occurs after election day — only the delivery and counting of already completed ballots.

Taken together, Murkowski said, the Trump-backed voting bill and the Supreme Court case could discourage people from voting.

“I think we’re seeing a level of voter intimidation, I’ll just say it,” she said. “I feel very, very strongly that the effort that we should be making at the federal level is to do all that we can to make our elections accessible, fair and transparent for every lawful voter out there.”

Alaska’s other congressional members, Rep. Nick Begich and Sen. Dan Sullivan, both Republican allies of Trump who are seeking reelection this year, support the SAVE America Act now before the Senate. But they also said they want to ensure that ballots properly cast on or before election day get counted.

“We’ll see what the courts choose to do on that issue, but I do think that we need to allow for time for ballots to come in from the rural parts of our state,” Begich said during a recent visit to Juneau.

Alaska officials highlight challenges to the court

A court filing in the Mississippi case by Alaska Atty. Gen. Stephen Cox and Solicitor Gen. Jenna Lorence did not take sides but outlined geographic and logistical challenges to holding elections in Alaska.

In Atqasuk, on Alaska’s North Slope, poll workers counted votes on election night in 2024, tallies they would normally relay by phone to election division officials. But the filing said they could not get through and “chose what they saw as the next best solution — they placed the ballots and tally sheets into a secure package and mailed them to the Division, who did not receive them until nine days later.”

The filing seeks clarity from the Supreme Court, particularly around what it means for ballots to be received by election day.

While it is clear when a ballot is cast, “when certain ballots are actually ‘received’ is open to different interpretations, especially given the connectivity challenges for Alaska’s far-flung boroughs,” Cox and Lorence wrote.

Effect on Alaska Native voters

Lawyers with the Native American Rights Fund and Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center said in filings with the court that limited postal service in rural areas means that some ballots might not be postmarked until they reach Anchorage or Juneau, which can take days.

In the 2022 general election, between 55% and 78% of absentee ballots from the state House districts spanning from the Aleutian Islands up the western coast to the vast North Slope arrived at an election office after election day, they wrote. Statewide, about 20% of all absentee ballots in that election were received after election day.

Requiring ballots to be received by election day, they warned, would “disproportionately disenfranchise” Alaska Native voters. The lawyers represent the National Congress of American Indians, Native Vote Washington and the Alaska Federation of Natives.

Michelle Sparck, director of Get Out the Native Vote, a nonpartisan voting rights advocacy group affiliated with the Alaska Federation of Natives, worries about creating confusion and fear among voters.

She sees the case before the Supreme Court and the Republican SAVE Act as “a multipronged attempt to take control or wrest control of elections away from states.” Alaska, she said, already has enough inherent barriers for many voters.

“There is a minute record of election fraud — not at the rate that requires this heavy-handed response through the legislature and the Supreme Court,” she said.

Bohrer writes for the Associated Press.