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Feb. 1 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1790, the U.S. Supreme Court convened in New York City for its first session. Only three of the six justices were present so there was no quorum.

In 1861, Texas seceded from the United States.

In 1865, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

In 1896, Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Boheme premiered in Turin, Italy.

In 1946, Norwegian Trygve Lie was selected to be the first U.N. secretary-general.

In 1947, members of the Jewish underground launched pamphlet bombs throughout Tel Aviv, warning British military authorities to expect further retaliation against its drive to suppress violence in the Holy Land.

In 1951, the Defense Department, responding to needs to effectively execute its Korean War strategy, ordered drafting of 80,000 men during April for assignment to the U.S. Army.

File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI

In 1960, four Black students, later known as the Greensboro Four, staged the first of a series of non-violent protests at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, NC.

In 1968, the communist Viet Cong began a major offensive in the Vietnam War with a fierce attack on the South Vietnamese city of Hue.

In 1978, famed director Roman Polanski escaped to France after pleading guilty to charges of having sex with an underage girl.

In 1991, South African President F.W. De Klerk announced he would seek repeal of key laws on which the apartheid system was based.

File Photo by Brian Kersey/UPI

In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart during its descent over the southwestern United States. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.

In 2004, Janet Jackson had a “wardrobe malfunction” in her appearance with Justin Timberlake during the halftime of Super Bowl XXXVIII.

In 2009, Iceland swore in its first female prime minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir.

In 2011, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, with hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding his departure after a reign of nearly 30 years, announced he wouldn’t seek re-election.

In 2012, at least 73 people were killed and 200 hurt in a fight between fans and players at a soccer match in Port Said, Egypt.

In 2021, the Myanmar military took control of the government and announced a nationwide state of emergency hours after detaining leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other high-ranking elected government officials in a coup.

In 2023, seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady announced his re-retirement from the NFL after 23 seasons in the league.

File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI

Jan. 31 (UPI) — Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul lost their bid to have a federal court order the Department of Homeland Security to end its immigration enforcement effort in the state.

U.S. District Court of Minnesota Judge Katherine Menendez on Saturday denied a motion to enjoin the federal government from continuing its immigration law enforcement surge in the Twin Cities.

“Even if the likelihood of success on the merits and the balance of harms each weighed more clearly in favor of plaintiffs, the court would still likely be unable to grant the relief requested: An injunction suspending Operation Metro Surge,” Menendez wrote in her 30-page ruling.

She cited a recent federal appellate court ruling that affirmed the federal government has the right to enforce federal laws over the objections of others.

“The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals recently vacated a much more circumscribed injunction, which limited one aspect of the ongoing operation, namely the way immigration officers interacted with protesters and observers,” Menedez said.

“The injunction in that case was not only much narrower than the one proposed here, but it was based on more settled precedent than that which underlies the claims now before the court,” she explained.

“Nonetheless, the court of appeals determined that the injunction would cause irreparable harm to the government because it would hamper their efforts to enforce federal law,” Menendez continued.

“If that injunction went too far, then the one at issue here — halting the entire operation — certainly would,” she concluded.

Menendez said her ruling does not address the merits of the case filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on behalf of the state and two cities, which are named as the lawsuit’s three plaintiffs.

Those claims remain to be argued and largely focus on Ellison’s claim that the federal government is undertaking an illegal operation that is intended to force state and local officials to cooperate with federal law enforcement.

Menendez said Ellison has not proven his claim, which largely relies on a 2013 ruling by the Supreme Court in a case brought by Shelby County, Ala., officials who challenged the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The act placed additional restrictions on some states based on “their histories of racially discriminatory election administration,” Menendez said.

The Supreme Court ruled a “departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” requires the federal government to show that geographically driven laws are “sufficiently related to the problem that it targets” to be lawful, she wrote.

Ellison says that the ruling “teaches that the federal government cannot single out states for disparate treatment without strong and narrowly tailored justification,” according to Menendez.

But he does not show any other examples of a legal authority applying the “equal sovereignty ‘test'” and does not show how it would apply to a presidential administration’s decision on where to deploy federal law enforcement to “enforce duly enacted federal laws,” she said.

“There is no precedent for a court to micromanage such decisions,” and she can ‘readily imagine scenarios where the federal executive must legitimately vary its use of law enforcement resources from one state to the next,” Menendez explained.

Because there is no likelihood of success in claims based on equal sovereignty, she said Ellison did not show there is a likelihood that plaintiffs will succeed in their federal lawsuit, so the motion to preliminarily enjoin the federal government from continuing Operation Metro Surge is denied.

Former President Joe Biden appointed Menendez to the federal bench in 2021.

Jan. 31 (UPI) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials must release Adrian Arias and his 5-year-old son, Liam, from detention, a federal district court judge ruled on Saturday.

U.S. District Court of Western Texas Judge Fred Biery Jr. on Saturday granted a writ of habeas corpus petition naming the father and son.

Biery likened his strongly worded ruling to placing a “judicial finger in the constitutional dike.”

The petitioners “seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law,” Biery wrote.

“The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently, even if it requires traumatizing children,” he said.

“This court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures,” Biery added.

He accused the federal officers of violating the Fourth Amendment via an unlawful search-and-seizure and said only judicial warrants enable them to arrest or detain people when there is no probable cause to do so.

“Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster,” he said.

“That is called the fox guarding the henhouse,” Biery said. “The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.”

He ordered the federal government to release both from custody no later than Tuesday.

Former President Bill Clinton appointed Biery to the federal bench in 1993.

Federal officers arrested Adrian Arias and detained Liam while enforcing an administrative warrant for the father on Jan. 20 in the Greater Minneapolis area.

The two were transferred to a detention center in Texas, while awaiting deportation.

Liam’s mother, Erika Ramos, told media that she watched from a window as ICE officers detained her son and partner.

She said they led her son to the door and knocked while her son asked her to open the door, but she wouldn’t because she feared she would be arrested.

“When I didn’t open the door, they took Liam to the ICE van,” Ramos said, adding that she thought the officers were using her son as “bait.”

Ramos said she is pregnant and has another child, whom she feared leaving alone if she had opened the door and was arrested.

Homeland Security officials on Jan. 22 said the ICE officers wanted Ramos to open the door so that they could leave her son with her.

“Our officers made multiple attempts to get the mother inside the house to take custody of her child. Officers even assured her that they would NOT take her into custody.

“She refused to accept custody of the child. The father told officers he wanted the child to remain with him.”

They said the officers’ primary concern was the child’s safety and welfare and that the father is from Ecuador and subject to deportation.

Jan. 31 (UPI) — A northeasterly storm has created blizzard conditions in the Carolinas and triggered state of emergency declarations in North and South Carolina and Georgia on Saturday.

The intensifying storm system is centered over the Atlantic Ocean and near the Carolinas and Georgia coastline after its central pressure dropped by up to 40 millibars over the past 24 hours.

Hurricane-force wind gusts of between 60 mph and 80 mph are contributing to blizzard conditions along the Outer Banks coastal plains areas, and more than 10,000 flights have been canceled through the weekend.

The Hampton Roads area of Virginia also is getting pummeled with wintry weather from the storm system, and the National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning through 7 p.m. EST on Sunday for the commonwealth’s coastal areas and parts of North Carolina.

The winter storm is delivering the most snow in two decades to areas that rarely see significant amounts of snowfall.

Icy road conditions caused hundreds of collisions as of Saturday afternoon, and wave action from the storm’s strong winds and a high tide is threatening to damage or destroy homes along the coast.

The National Weather Service is forecasting between 5 and 9 inches of snowfall and sustained winds of between 33 and 41 mph, with gusts up to 50 mph, along the coastal areas of the Carolinas and into neighboring areas in Virginia and northern Georgia.

The snowfall likely will end during the overnight hours, but northwest winds will remain strong, with sustained wind speeds of between 28 and 33 mph and gusts of up to 50 mph into Sunday afternoon.

Although windy, the clouds are predicted to clear during the afternoon hours.

Jan. 30 (UPI) — Frigid temperatures have delayed NASA’s preparations for its wet dress rehearsal for the Artemis II launch, the space agency announced Friday.

NASA was expected to begin the tanking operation Saturday night in preparation for a possible Feb. 6 or Feb. 7 launch date, but those “are no longer viable opportunities,” a release said.

The agency now expects to set Monday as the tanking day with an earliest possible launch set for Feb. 8 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Tanking operations involve loading propellants into a fuel tank near the launch pad. The outdoor temperature plays a crucial role in that process — it can’t be below 40 degrees Fahrenheit for more than 30 consecutive minutes. The overall average temperature must be above 41 degrees for the rehearsal and launch, WESH-TV in Orlando, Fla., reported.

AccuWeather forecasters said temperatures were expected to plummet this weekend to levels not seen since 1966 in some areas. Temperatures between 20 degrees to 30 degrees were expected Sunday morning in Cape Canaveral.

“Adjusting the timeline for the rest will position NASA for success during the rehearsal, as the expected weather this weekend would violate launch conditions,” a release from NASA said.

In the meantime, the Artemis II crew members are expected to stay in quarantine in Houston. The crew includes Reid Wiseman, commander; Victor Glover, pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist.

Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed mission aboard its deep space rocket, the Space Launch System, and Orion spacecraft. It’s the second flight of the SLS and the first crewed mission near the moon since 1972.

Over 10 days, Artemis II will travel around the moon and back to Earth as the crew tests whether the spacecraft operates as it should in deep space. The long-term goal of the Artemis program is reestablish a human presence on the moon in preparation for the ultimate aim of putting a human on Mars.

NASA has shared a live stream of the launch pad on YouTube as it prepares for the wet dress rehearsal launch.

Jan. 30 (UPI) — The federal government mostly will go unfunded at least through Monday after the Senate on Friday approved a bill package to fully fund all but the Department of Homeland Security.

Five budget bills would fund the majority of the federal government through the 2026 fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, but Homeland Security only is funded through Feb. 13 in a sixth bill.

The two-week extension enables lawmakers to debate proposed changes regarding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection enforcement activities.

The six measures must be approved by the House of Representatives, which will take them up on Monday and send them to President Donald Trump for signing if House members concur with the changes made in the Senate.

The Senate voted 71-29 to approve House Resolution 7148 early Friday evening.

While the measure awaits approval in the House and eventual signing by the president, the federal government mostly will shut down at 12:01 a.m. EST on Saturday, but lawmakers expect that lull to be short and over by Tuesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Friday told media that he expects to fast-track the voting by suspending the House floor rules and immediately approve the budget measures, which only require a simple majority in the House versus at least 60 votes in the Senate.

The vote to suspend the rules, though, requires a two-thirds vote of House members.

The Homeland Security budget still would need to be debated and could lapse if it is not approved and signed into law by the end of the day on Feb. 13.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told media he does not expect Homeland Security to be funded by Feb. 13.

“I believe this is a horrible bill,” he said on Friday. “I can’t believe we’re not funding ICE.”

He said he doesn’t believe it will be funded in two weeks, either.

Congressional Democrats are demanding an end to sweeps through targeted cities, want ICE and CBP officers unmasked and wearing body cameras, and want judicial warrants instead of administrative warrants issued to target and arrest individuals.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was unhappy that the Senate removed a provision approved by the House that would have enabled him and others to sue the Department of Justice for seizing his phone records during the Biden administration’s Operation Arctic Frost.

Graham was among eight Republican senators whose phone records were accessed by the DOJ, which he called illegal.

“Every Senator should make sure this never happens again,” he told media on Thursday.

Congressional Democrats generally were happy that the Homeland Security funding was separated from a six-bill package to fund the entire government.

They also successfully rejected an effort to reduce the maximum Pell Grant amount by $1,000 and blocked the president’s proposal to lower rental assistance funding and reduce the National Institutes of Health budget.

Democrats were especially pleased that measures approved by the Senate give the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program $20 million more in funding, while the Child Care and Development Block Grant and Head Start each get another $85 million.

Jan. 30 (UPI) — The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday said the Producer Price Index rose by a half percent in December, which raises concern that inflation could rise as a result.

The index measures the cost businesses pay for wholesale goods and is among the factors that potentially affect inflation and unemployment rates.

The nation’s inflation rate currently is 2.7%, while unemployment was 4.4% in December.

“On an over-year-ago basis, core final demand PPI goods rose 3.7%, which points to ongoing pipeline pressures for consumer inflation that appears to be bolstered in part by tariffs,” JPMorgan analysts said in a statement.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC that the higher Producer Price Index is not matched by the Consumer Price Index, which decreased in December.

“The CPI over the last three months, the annual rate, was lower than 2,” Hassett said.

“I think that right now we’re seeing materials prices like gold and so on are up quite a bit, in part because of all the investment that’s happening for artificial intelligence and data centers and so on,” he added.

December’s half-percent rise in the Producer Price Index was more than double its 0.2% rise in November and 0.1% increase in October, the BLS said.

For the year, wholesale prices, not including foods, energy and trade services, rose by 3.5%, which is slightly less than the 3.6% increase in 2024.

“Over 40 percent of the December increase in prices for final demand services can be traced to a 4.5-percent rise in margins for machinery and equipment wholesaling,” the BLS reported.

The cost of nonferrous metals also rose by 4.5% in December.

Also posting cost increases were the “indexes for guestroom rental; food and alcohol retailing; health, beauty and optical goods retailing; portfolio management; and airline passenger services also advanced,” the bureau said.

“Prices for residential natural gas, motor vehicles, soft drinks and aircraft and aircraft equipment also increased.”

While such costs rose, others declined by significant margins, including the cost for bundled wired telecommunications access services, which declined by 4.4%.

Jan. 30 (UPI) — Two Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers about why National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard was at an FBI raid at a Georgia election facility.

Gabbard was photographed outside the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center, just outside of Atlanta, when the FBI executed a “a court authorized law enforcement action” on Wednesday. FBI spokesperson Jenna Sellitto told The Hill that boxes loaded on trucks contained ballots.

Agents sought 2020 election records, Fulton County spokesperson Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez said.

“We don’t know why they took them, and we don’t know where they’re taking them to,” county board of commissioners Chair Robb Pitts told The Hill.

“Director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure,” a senior administration official told NBC News.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., released a statement about Gabbard’s presence at the raid.

“There are only two explanations for why the Director of National Intelligence would show up at a federal raid tied to Donald Trump‘s obsession with losing the 2020 election,” he said. “Either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus — in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns — or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for the office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”

He said it shows she is unfit for the job.

“Either is a serious breach of trust that further underscores why she is totally unqualified to hold a position that demands sound judgment, apolitical independence, and a singular focus on keeping Americans safe,” he said.

Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., who both serve on their chambers’ intelligence committees, penned a letter to Gabbard expressing concern about her appearance in Georgia and demanding that she “appear before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence immediately.”

The letter said it is “deeply concerning that you participated in this domestic law enforcement action. The Intelligence Community should be focused on foreign threats and, as you yourself have testified, when those intelligence authorities are turned inwards the results can be devastating for Americans’ privacy and civil liberties.”

They said they want her to address her reasoning and role in attending the FBI operation in Fulton County, under what legal authority she or any other IC employee were involved, and an update on any intelligence she has concerning foreign interference in U.S. elections, including the 2020 election.

“Given the politically fraught nature of elections for federal office, any federal efforts associated with combatting foreign election threats necessitate public transparency, prompt updating of Congressional intelligence committees, and clear commitment to non-partisan conduct,” the letter said.

“Your recent actions raise foundational questions about the current mission of your office, and it is critical that you brief the Committees immediately as part of your obligation to keep Congress fully and currently informed.”

Two unnamed senior officials with knowledge of the matter told NBC that Gabbard’s presence in Fulton County was not requested by the Justice Department. They said Gabbard was only observing, and her presence wasn’t illegal.

“It seems to be an attempt to make herself relevant,” one official told NBC. “It’s so strange.”

On Thursday, Trump responded to a reporter’s question about her presence in Georgia.

“She’s working very hard on trying to keep the elections safe, and she’s done a very good job,” Trump said at the Kennedy Center. “You got a signed judge’s order in Georgia, and you’re going to see some interesting things happening. They’ve been trying to get there for a long time.”

If she took part in the search, her involvement would be “wrong and potentially even illegal,” said Kevin Carrol, a former CIA officer and national security lawyer, to NBC.

“It is also inappropriate for a Cabinet-level official to take part in a law enforcement operation. Among other things, the director is now potentially a fact witness in any suppression hearing or trial related to the evidence seized by the bureau,” Carroll said.

ST. PAUL, Minn., Jan. 30 (UPI) — One of the longest-running searches for extraterrestrial life is coming to end this year as U.S. scientists wrap up a popular program that enlisted millions of home computer users to analyze radio signals received from space.

After years poring through immense amounts of generated data, the program’s co-founders at the University of California at Berkeley told UPI this week they are probing 100 detected signals deemed to be the best candidates for messages from “ET” before the effort is wrapped up for good, 27 years after it was launched.

But even though the “SETI@home” project has so far failed to record a “first contact” from an alien civilization, its leaders say valuable lessons have been learned that can be applied to the continuing hunt for beyond Earth.

SETI@home, short for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, was launched in 1999 by scientists at UC Berkeley who over the course of two-plus decades enlisted more than 5 million “crowdsourced” volunteers willing to donate their home computers’ processing capacity to analyze data generated by momentary energy blips picked up by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

It was one of the pioneering efforts at distributed computing in an era before supercomputers and high-speed Internet connections. Under the project, home users downloaded and installed free software that could pick out signals deemed to be “ET” candidates from raw data supplied by the 1,000-foot radio telescope at Arecibo, which collapsed in 2020

The observatory was damaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and rebuilt, but it met its end a little more than three years later because filled spelter sockets that anchored the massive support cables had been undergoing long-term chemical and mechanical degradation.

The data was collected over a period of 14 years and covered almost the entire sky visible to the telescope as its operators performed other tasks, such as mapping solar system bodies and discovering pulsars.

From its data, the home computer users ultimately produced 12 billion detections. The vast majority turned out to be radio frequency interference from man-made sources, such as satellites and earthbound radio and television broadcasts, but researchers for years continued to doggedly plow through the possibilities.

Billions of “candidate” radio signals narrowed to final 100

Project co-founder David Anderson of UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory said he and his team spent a decade narrowing down that massive list to 1 million candidates and then to a final 100, which are now being investigated using China’s 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, also known as FAST, in hopes of finding them again.

And after that’s completed, the long-running program will officially be a wrap, in part because it has now reached point of diminishing scientific returns.

“The output of the first two phases of SETI@home were millions of what we call signal candidates, which are basically collections of momentary bursts of energy from the same place in the sky at about the same frequency, but possibly spread over many years,” Anderson told UPI.

“And of course, there was a lot of work involved in removing the man-made interference from from these things and ranking them, because at some point we had to go through them and manually inspect the signal candidates to get rid of the ones that are obviously interference.

“A lot of that we could do by using computer algorithms we developed, but in the end, we had to look at these signals ourselves.”

To guide the development of those algorithms, Anderson and his team used artificial candidates, or “birdies,” that modeled persistent ET signals within a range of power and bandwidth parameters. The birdies were introduced blindly, allowing the team to gauge how sensitive their detection system was.

The only reason they were able to generate the initial billions of candidate signals was due to the small processors provided the home-based volunteers, whose response at the start of effort in the late ’90s was overwhelming, Anderson said.

“Whether there is extraterrestrial life is kind of the most important unanswered scientific question at this point, and so I think we knew that we’d get some users,” he said. “We banked on, I think, 50,000 people initially, which we thought we’d need to keep up with the stream of data from Arecibo.

“We got a lot of national media coverage at right at the beginning, and within the first year we had close to 1 million participants. We actually had to scramble to figure out ways to use that surplus of computing power effectively.”

UC Berkeley research astronomer Eric Korpela, another co-founder of the program, said he felt a keen “sense of accomplishment” with SETI@home, both in the sense of technical achievements — such as in vastly increasing the sensitivity of signal detection over existing spectroscopic methods — and in how it demonstrated the intensity of worldwide public interest in the search for ET.

“We encountered a lot of resistance from the SETI community when we first started started this,” he told UPI. “Whenever you start a project with a large public-facing component, there’s always the fear in a lot of peoples’ minds that you are going to do something wrong and you’re going to turn people off the entire field.

“But, of course, I think that wasn’t the case. Instead, this really engaged the public imagination, and I don’t think that we’re necessarily done with that. Someone could again tap into that sense of fascination that people have about the search for extraterrestrial life.”

Many people still want to have a connection to this sort of science, Korpela said, adding, “I think that is really a large part of our legacy.”

Others praise, assess impact of SETI@home

Other researchers and organizations deeply involved in the search for extraterrestrial life also praised the accomplishments and legacy of SETI@home as it wraps up its mission.

One of them is the National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, trailblazers in radio astronomy and operators of Breakthrough Listen, described as the largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth.

Observatory public information officer Jill Malusky noted that her organization and UC Berkeley’s SETI Research Center worked together on SETI@home, and that its winding down won’t sever that relationship.

“The NSF NRAO/GBO are big supporters of citizen science projects, and we’re excited about the impact of SETI@home’s legacy through the tireless work of its volunteers, and for the public recognition SETI can bring to efforts like these,” she told UPI.

“The search for techno-signatures and extraterrestrial life is a very exciting part of the scientific research that the NSF NRAO’s telescopes can do — and it’s one of the accessible areas for the public to understand.”

Most staffers who work at the West Virginia observatories were drawn there “by the same curiosity we all have when we look up at the universe — are we the only ones here? Is anyone else out there?” she said.

“While what we find with our telescopes may not be as dramatic as we hope, like a sci-fi movie, it’s still exciting to have our work overlap with the search.”

Similarly, prominent astrobiologist and SETI researcher Douglas Vakoch said SETI@home revolutionized the search for life in the universe by solving one of the greatest challenges of looking for intelligence in space, and that by doing so “directly inspired a new generation of researchers who are attempting first contact by sending powerful radio messages to the stars.”

Vakoch is president of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to messaging extraterrestrial intelligence, and editor of many academic works in several fields.

He told UPI that SETI@home was a breakthrough in that it was able to combine “mainstream astronomy” with the search for extraterrestrials, which researchers must “constantly struggle to justify” as they seek precious telescope time.

“With SETI@home, scientists did both,” Vakoch said. “As astronomers pointed the Arecibo radio telescope at targets of their choice, SETI@home also analyzed the incoming data, but this time for signals that can’t be created by nature. SETI@home was designed so scientists could conduct mainstream astronomy and simultaneously determine whether we’re alone in the universe.”

in that way, instead of becoming an obstacle to astronomers seeking time on the world’s largest radio telescope, SETI@home “helped foster public support and recognition for space science.”

Its greatest legacy, he said, is that it is now “guiding the next generation of interstellar communication,” including Vakoch’s own METI project, which rather than listening for radio signals from space as SETI does, reverses the process by sending powerful radio signals to nearby stars in the hope of eliciting a response from an advanced civilization.

Despite thus far coming away empty-handed in the search for ET, the SETI@home project nonetheless provided many valuable insights, Anderson said.

“It was a ‘whole sky’ project that covered the everything visible from Arecibo, and there’s there’s a lot of technical things that we did, some of which were right and others we would do differently if we had to go back,” he said.

“So we learned a lot of lessons about how to do radio astronomy, and we published two papers last year describing them.”

He added that the powerful distributed computing system established for SETI@home can be used in the future for research in related areas such as cosmology and pulsars, or even for medical research.

Jan. 30 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Thursday night said he was decertifying all Canada-made aircraft and threatened a 50% tariff on all planes sold to the United States, further deepening the fissure in U.S.-Canada relations created under Trump’s second term in office.

Trump made the threat in a post on his Truth Social platform, stating the threat was in response to Canada’s alleged refusal to certify several Gulfstream jet series.

“We are hereby decertifying their Bombardier Global Expresses and all Aircraft made in Canada, until such time as Gulfstream, a Great American Company, is fully certified, as it should have been many years ago,” Trump said.

“Further, Canada is effectively prohibiting the sale of Gulfstream products in Canada through this very same certification process. If, for any reason, this situation is not immediately corrected, I am going to charge Canada a 50% Tariff on any and all Aircraft sold in the United States of America.”

By law, aircraft certification, which includes safety and airworthiness determinations, is governed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and it was not clear if the president has the power to decertify already approved aircraft by presidential action.

UPI contacted the FAA for clarification and was directed to speak with the White House, which has yet to respond to questions about decertification and its process.

Bombardier, the Montreal-based aerospace company, said it has “taken note” of Trump’s social media post and is in contact with the Canadian government.

“Our aircraft, facilities and technicians are fully certified to FAA standards and renowned around the world,” Bombardier said in a statement.

Bombardier said it employs more than 3,000 people across nine facilities in the United States and creates “thousands of jobs” there through its 2,800 suppliers. It said it is also “actively investing” in expanding its U.S. operations.

Relations between the United States and Canada have precipitously dropped since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

Trump’s threats to annex Canada, impose unilateral tariffs and take Greenland — territory of a NATO ally — by force if needed has prompted Ottawa to pivot toward Europe and Asia.

The announcement comes on the heels of reports stating that the Trump administration has been in talks with the Alberta Prosperity Project separatist organization.

According to The Financial Times, the first to report on the development Thursday, separatist leaders in the western Canadian province met with U.S. officials in Washington three times since spring.

The APP has said that its leadership has taken “several strategic trips” to Washington, D.C., to foster discussions on Alberta’s potential as an independent nation.

Jeffry Rath, a separatist supporter who participated in the talks, said U.S. officials are “very enthusiastic about Alberta becoming an independent country,” according to the APP.

The meetings were swiftly and widely condemned in Canada.

“I expect the U.S. administration to respect Canadian sovereignty,” Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada told reporters on Thursday.

“I’m always clear in my conversations with President Trump to that effect, and then move on to what we can do together.”

Premier David Eby of British Columbia called the meetings “treasonous activity.”

“I’m not talking about debates that we have inside the country among Canadians, about how we order ourselves, our relationships between the federal government, the provinces, referenda that might be held. I’m talking about crossing the border, soliciting the assistance of a foreign government to break up this country,” Eby said during the same press conference.

“And I don’t think we should stand for it.”

Jan. 29 (UPI) — An appeals court ruled that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem unlawfully ended immigration protections for Haiti and Venezuela.

The three judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Noem, who ended the Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans on Jan. 29, 2025. She ended TPS protection for Haitians on June 28.

The opinion, written late Wednesday by Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, said Noem’s “unlawful actions have had real and significant consequences for the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians in the United States who rely on TPS.”

She said the move has hurt immigrants who came here to work.

“The record is replete with examples of hard-working, contributing members of society — who are mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, and partners of U.S. citizens, pay taxes, and have no criminal records — who have been deported or detained after losing their TPS,” Wardlaw wrote.

“The Secretary’s actions have left hundreds of thousands of people in a constant state of fear that they will be deported, detained, separated from their families, and returned to a country in which they were subjected to violence or any other number of harms,” she said.

The concurring opinion by Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. noted that Noem and President Donald Trump had made racist remarks about the people of Venezuela and Haiti, meaning that the decision to end TPS was “preordained” and not based on need.

“The record is replete with public statements by Secretary Noem and President Donald Trump that evince a hostility toward, and desire to rid the country of, TPS holders who are Venezuelan and Haitian,” Mendoza wrote. “And these were not generalized statements about immigration policy toward Venezuela and Haiti or national security concerns to which the Executive is owed deference. Instead, these statements were overtly founded on racist stereotyping based on country of origin.”

The concurring opinion cites Noem calling Venezuelans “dirtbags” and “criminals,” and Trump saying that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of Americans.

The ruling, though, won’t change the TPS removal for Venezuelans. The Supreme Court ruled in another case in October to allow Noem to end the TPS while the court battles continue.

TPS began as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the Department of Homeland Security secretary to grant legal status to those fleeing fighting, environmental disaster or “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return. TPS can last six, 12 or 18 months, and if conditions stay dangerous, they can be extended. It allows TPS holders to work, but there is no path to citizenship.

Haiti was given TPS in 2010 after a magnitude 7 earthquake that killed about 160,000 people. It left more than 1 million without homes.

Jan. 29 (UPI) — The National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration is investigating an incident in which an autonomous Waymo taxi struck and injured a child last week in Santa Monica, Calif.

The child was injured Friday after they ran into the street and was struck by an autonomous Waymo taxi about two blocks from an elementary school during its morning drop-off hours, the NHTSA’s Office of Defects said.

“The child ran across the street from behind a double-parked SUV towards the school and was struck by the Waymo AV,” NHTSA officials said in a document on the matter.

The child stood up after being struck and walked to the sidewalk as Waymo officials contacted local authorities to report the incident. The extent of the child’s injuries was not reported.

The autonomous vehicle remained in the spot where the incident occurred and stayed there until police cleared it to leave.

The agency said its Defects Investigation unit will determine if the driverless Waymo taxi “exercised appropriate caution given, among other things, its proximity to the elementary school during drop-off hours and the presence of young pedestrians and other potential vulnerable road users.”

Waymo officials said Wednesday they were committed to improving road safety for passengers and everyone who shares the road. Transparency regarding crashes and other incidents is a component of that commitment to safety, they said.

“Following the event, we voluntarily contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that same day. NHTSA has indicated to us that they intend to open an investigation into this incident, and we will cooperate fully with them throughout the process.”

Waymo officials said the unidentified child “suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle’s path.”.

“Our technology immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle,” Waymo officials said.

“The Waymo driver braked hard, reducing speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made.”

While the autonomous taxi struck the child, Waymo officials said a similar vehicle driven by a human likely would have struck the child at about 14 mph instead of less than 6 mph.

“This event demonstrates the critical value of our safety systems,” Waymo said. “We remain committed to improving road safety where we operate as we continue on our mission to be the world’s most trusted driver.”

Friday’s incident was the second for Waymo during the past week in California.

Another of its vehicles on Sunday struck several parked vehicles while traveling on a one-way street near Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

That vehicle was being operated in manual mode by a driver when the crash occurred, and no injuries were reported.

Tech firm Alphabet owns Waymo, as well as Google and other subsidiary companies.

Jan. 29 (UPI) — The Justice Department on Thursday filed charges against Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, for spraying a substance on Rep. Ilhan Omar as she conducted a town hall hearing in Minneapolis.

FBI special agent Derek Fossi, in a criminal complaint, said Kazmierczak “forcibly assaulted, opposed, impeded, intimidated and interfered with” Omar while she was conducting a town hall with her constituents Tuesday, The New York Times reported.

Omar told the audience that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should resign when Kazmierczak approached her.

“She’s not resigning. You’re splitting Minnesotans apart,” Kazmierczak said after squirting her with the unknown liquid, as reported by NBC News.

Omar’s security staff detained Kazmierczak, who was arrested after briefly disrupting the congresswoman’s event.

A hazardous materials specialist with the Minneapolis Police Department’s North Metro Chemical Assessment Team tested the substance and identified it as a mix of water and apple cider vinegar, Fossi said.

Kazmierczak was carrying a plastic syringe when he approached Omar while she was speaking and sprayed her with an unidentified liquid that stained her clothes and might have contacted her face and right eye, Fossi wrote.

“As he sprayed her, Kazmierczak gestured at Rep. Omar and shouted at her before turning away and being brought to the floor by two security officers,” he said in the affidavit.

Minneapolis Police Department officers responded to the scene and arrested Kazmierczak and jailed him on third-degree assault charges.

While being arrested, Kazmierczak told officers that he sprayed Omar with vinegar.

Fossi said he interviewed a “close associate” of Kazmierczak on Wednesday, and that person recalled a time “several years ago” when the suspect, during a phone conversation, allegedly said, “somebody should kill that [expletive].”

U.S. District Court of Minnesota Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster confirmed receipt of the criminal complaint and supporting affidavit on Wednesday but did not say when an arraignment hearing will be held to formally charge Kazmierczak.

Jan. 29 (UPI) — White House border czar Tom Homan says federal agents will continue so-called targeted operations in Minneapolis during a news conference on Thursday.

Homan added that the focus of these targeted operations will be “criminal aliens” and threats to public and national safety. He has also directed federal agents to prepare a drawdown plan for Minneapolis but clarified that the administration will not stop with detainments and deportations.

Homan added that decreasing the number of federal agents on Minneapolis’ streets will require the local government and law enforcement entities to cooperate with the federal government to identify and detain immigrants.

“We will conduct targeted enforcement operations. What we’ve done for decades,” Homan said. “With a prioritization on public safety threats. We are not surrendering the president’s mission on immigration enforcement. Prioritization of criminal aliens does not mean we forget about everybody else. That’s just ridiculous.”

Homan took the reins of President Donald Trump‘s Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Minneapolis earlier this week. Before his arrival, federal agents had detained several children from an area school district.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison have met with Homan this week.

Homan said he “did not agree with everything” the local officials have said, but they did acknowledge ICE is a congressionally approved agency.

“What we did agree on is the community’s safety is paramount,” Homan said. “What we did agree upon is not to release public safety risks back into the community when they could be lawfully transferred to ICE.”

The Minnesota Department of Corrections has been working with ICE to identify and remove immigrants with criminal records, Homan added. He went on to clarify that he was referring to people who were already detained in the Minnesota prison system.

In regards to the fatal shootings of two Minneapolis-area residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 years old, Homan said he will not comment or share his personal opinion. He only acknowledged that the federal operation in the city has not been “perfect” and he and Trump “have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made.”

Homan referred to anti-ICE protesters as “agitators,” and asked local officials to “tone down the dangerous rhetoric” and work with federal agents who are “performing their duties in a challenging environment.”

“They’re trying to do it with professionalism,” Homan said. “If they don’t, they’ll be dealt with. Like any other federal agency, we have standards of conduct.”

Homan later blamed the increase of federal agents in Minneapolis on “rhetoric” directed towards agents and the immigration operation.

“I said in March if the rhetoric didn’t stop there was going to be bloodshed,” Homan said. “And there has been. I wish I wasn’t right.”

Frey on Thursday acknowledged participating in “good and productive meetings” with President Donald Trump and Homan, but cautioned that “I will believe it when I see it” regarding improvements in immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis.

“They have talked about drawing down the numbers in terms of federal agents — ICE and Border Patrol — in Minneapolis, and that is essential,” Frey told media.

“The reality is we need Operation Metro Surge to end,” he said, adding that the operation did not make the city safer or reduce chaos.

He called the federal law enforcement effort an “invasion” of the city and said that he expects the “conduct to immediately change,” but did not address the conduct of protesters.

Jan. 29 (UPI) — A judge has barred federal immigration officers from arresting and detaining legally present refugees in Minnesota, handing the Trump administration a legal defeat in its aggressive immigration crackdown.

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, in Minneapolis on Wednesday, issued a temporary restraining order that bars the arrest and detention of any Minnesota resident with refugee status as litigation on the issue continues.

“They are not committing crimes on our streets, nor did they illegally cross the border,” Tunheim wrote in his order.

“Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully — and importantly, a right not to be subjected to the terror of being arrested and detained without warrants or cause in their homes or on their way to religious services or to buy groceries.”

The Trump administration has been conducting an aggressive immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have arrested thousands of people since December, attracting protests, which have been met with violence.

Democrats and civil and immigration rights advocates have accused the agents of using excessive force and violating due process protections.

The order issued Wednesday comes in a lawsuit filed by the International Refugee Assistance Project against Operation PARRIS, an initiative launched Jan. 9 to re-examine the 5,600 pending refugee cases in Minnesota in a hunt for fraud and other possible crimes.

IRAP said in its complaint, filed Saturday, that since the operation began, federal immigration agents have arrested and detained more than 100 of Minnesota’s refugee population without warrants and often with violence.

Those detained have not been charged with any crime nor with any violation of immigration statutes, according to the immigration legal aid and advocacy organization, which said this policy not only goes against immigration law but also ICE’s own guidance that states there is no authority to detain refugees because they have not yet changed their status to lawful permanent residents.

The organization states that the purpose of Operation PARRIS “is to use these baseless detentions and coercive interviews as fishing expeditions to trigger a mass termination of refugee statuses and/or to render refugees vulnerable to removal.”

“For more than two weeks, refugees in Minnesota have been living in terror of being hunted down and disappeared to Texas,” Kimberly Grano, staff attorney for U.S. litigation at IRAP, said in a statement, referring to the location of detention centers where refugees detained in Minnesota are being held.

“This temporary restraining order will immediately put in place desperately needed guardrails on ICE and protect resettled refugees from being unlawfully targeted for arrest and detention.”

Tunheim’s order does not interfere with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ ability to conduct re-inspections to adjust refugees’ status to lawful permanent residents nor the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement of immigration laws. It only prevents the arrest and detention of refugees in the state who have yet to become lawful permanent residents while litigation proceeds.

“At its best, America serves as a have of individual liberties in a world too often full of tyranny and cruelty,” Tunheim said.

“We abandon that ideal when we subject our neighbors to fear and chaos.”

Jan. 28 (UPI) — Electric vehicle maker Tesla’s revenue and profits fell during the fourth quarter of 2025 despite record levels of production.

Tesla officials on Wednesday reported the Elon Musk-owned company’s adjusted income dropped by 16% during the final quarter of 2025, while net income fell 61% for the quarter and 46% for the entire year.

The quarterly and final revenue report for 2025 reflects Tesla’s largest year-to-year revenue drop as its quarterly global sales of electric vehicles declined despite an increased global demand for EVs.

Partly to blame is the end of a $7,500 federal tax credit for those who bought qualifying EVs, combined with opposition by those who opposed Musk leading the Department of Government Efficiency and his general support of the Trump administration earlier in 2025.

Tesla also is facing increased competition from other EV makers, including Chinese EV firm BYD.

Despite the decline in revenues, Tesla shares rose in value by about 3% during after-hours trading on Wednesday and peaked at $449.76 per share before declining to $437.02.

Tesla officials reported that it produced a quarterly record 434,358 EVs during the final three months of 2025 and delivered 418,227. It also produced a record 14.2 GWh of energy-storage products.

For the year, Tesla produced 1.66 million EVs, delivered 1.64 million and produced 46.7 GWh of energy-storage products.

Jan. 28 (UPI) — Deploying National Guard and other military troops in U.S. cities cost taxpayers nearly $500 million in the second half of 2025, the Congressional Budget Office reported Wednesday.

The cost breakdown includes the cost to activate, deploy and pay National Guard personnel; related operational, logistical and sustainment costs; and other direct and indirect costs of deploying National Guard and other military units, such as the U.S. Marine Corps, the CBO report shows.

Since June, the CBO said the Trump administration deployed National Guard troops and active-duty Marines to the nation’s capital, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis and Portland, Ore.

The administration also kept 200 National Guard personnel deployed in Texas after they left Chicago.

“CBO estimates that those deployments (excluding the one to New Orleans, which occurred at the end of the year) cost a total of approximately $496 million through the end of December 2025,” the CBO said in a letter to Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.

“The costs of those or other deployments in the future are highly uncertain, mainly because the scale, length and location of such deployments are difficult to predict accurately,” the CBO said.

“That uncertainty is compounded by legal challenges, which have stopped deployments to some cities, and by changes in the administration’s policies.”

Merkley is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on the Budget and asked the CBO to provide a cost breakdown of National Guard deployments in U.S. cities.

“The American people deserve to know how many hundreds of millions of their hard-earned dollars have been and are being wasted on Trump’s reckless and haphazard deployment of National Guard troops to Portland and cities across the country,” Merkley said Wednesday in a prepared statement.

The CBO further estimated the cost for continuing such deployments would be $93 million per month, including between $18 million and $21 million per month per city to deploy 1,000 National Guardsmen in 2026.

The cost breakdown includes healthcare, military pay and benefits, plus lodging, food and transportation costs.

“CBO does not expect the military to incur significant costs to operate and maintain equipment during domestic deployments,” the report said.

“So far, such deployments appear to mainly involve foot patrols conducted by small units, without the extensive types of supporting forces or heavy equipment associated with operations in combat zones.”

CBO officials also do not expect the Department of Defense to incur new equipment costs for the deployments.

Jan. 28 (UPI) — A NASA research jet performed a gear-up landing at Houston’s Joint Reserve Base Ellington after suffering a “mechanical issue,” according to NASA officials.

Uncorroborated video of the Tuesday landing posted online shows the plane, a WB-57 research aircraft, coming in low toward the runway, touching down with the belly of its fuselage.

Sparks, fire and smoke spew from the back of the plane as it comes to a stop, the video shows.

NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens said in a statement that the gear-up landing was the result of an unspecified “mechanical issue.”

“Response to the incident is ongoing, and all crew are safe at this time,” she said.

“As with any incident, a thorough investigation will be conducted by NASA into the cause. NASA will transparently update the public as we gather more information.”

The incident occurred at about 11:30 a.m. CST Tuesday on Runway 17R-35L, according to Houston Airports, the Texas city’s Department of Aviation.

The WB-57 high-altitude research plane is a mid-wing, long-range aircraft based near the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.

According to NASA, three of the jets operate out of Ellington Field, and can fly in excess of 63,000 feet above sea level. It can also fly for about 6 1/2 hours with a range of about 2,500 miles.

A pilot and a sensor equipment operator generally crew the aircraft during flights.

Jan. 27 (UPI) — A rapidly growing measles outbreak in South Carolina is the nation’s worst since measles was declared eradicated in 2000, with 789 reported cases.

The South Carolina Department of Public Health reported 89 new measles cases since Friday, raising the state’s total to 789, the most in one state in decades, WOLO-TV reported.

The state’s Public Health Department reported 756 cases in Spartanburg County in northwestern South Carolina, followed by 28 in Greenville County, which is adjacent to and west of Spartanburg.

Fewer than five cases were reported in Anderson County, which is directly southwest of Greenville County, and Cherokee County, which is directly east of Spartanburg.

The outbreak began in October, and most of the state’s measles cases — 692 — were among those who are not vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella, and another 63 have an unknown vaccination status, for a total of 755 cases and 96% of those reported.

Another 20 cases occurred among those who are fully vaccinated, and 14 are among those who are partially vaccinated. At least 18 have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported.

When broken down by age, young children between ages 5 and 11 accounted for 345 cases, followed by 201 among those ages 0 to 4.

Another 149 cases were reported among youth between ages 12 and 17, followed by 26 among those between ages 18 and 29, and 25 cases among those between ages 30 and 49.

Five cases have been reported among people ages 50 and over, while 28 cases are among those whose ages are unknown.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is allocating $1.4 million in aid to help South Carolina officials counteract the outbreak.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also is working with state officials to identify transmission trends and helping to coordinate the state’s response.

The 789 cases reported as of Tuesday in South Carolina exceed the 762 reported in Texas a year ago during a measles outbreak that ended in August.

The outbreaks in those states and others might result in the United States being removed from the Pan American Health Organization’s list of nations in which measles has been eliminated.

Jan. 27 (UPI) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz met with President Donald Trump‘s border czar Tuesday to discuss the situation on the ground as immigration enforcement personnel operate in the state.

“Governor Walz met with Tom Homan this morning and reiterated Minnesota’s priorities: impartial investigations into the Minneapolis shootings involving federal agents, a swift, significant reduction in the number of federal forces in Minnesota, and an end to the campaign of retribution against Minnesota,” the governor’s office said in a statement to the media.

The two agreed to continue talks on the matter.

“The Governor and Homan agreed on the need for an ongoing dialogue and will continue working toward those goals, which the President also agreed to yesterday. The Governor tasked the Minnesota Department of Public Safety as the primary liaison to Homan to ensure these goals are met.”

Homan was sent to the state by Trump after he recalled Immigrations and Customs Enforcement commander Greg Bovino. Trump said that Homan will manage ICE operations in the state and will report directly to him.

“He has not been involved in that area but knows and likes many of the people there,” Trump said of Homan on Monday. “Tom is tough but fair and will report directly to me.”

Since ICE began Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis in December, two people in the state were killed by federal immigration agents, causing a swell of protests throughout the state. Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were both shot by agents. Good was driving away, and Pretty was filming an agent with his cell phone.

Walz said he had a “productive call” with Trump on Monday.

“The President agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and to talk to DHS [Department of Homeland Security] about ensuring the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation, as would ordinarily be the case,” Walz posted on X.

Jan. 27 (UPI) — Minnesota’s chief federal judge has summoned the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to appear in a Minneapolis court on Friday or be held in contempt.

U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz said in an order on Monday that the court has run out of patience with ICE head Todd Lyons after ICE has defied the court’s orders for weeks.

“The Court acknowledges that ordering the head of a federal agency to personally appear is an extraordinary step but the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary and lesser measures have been tried and failed,” Schiltz wrote.

Schiltz’s order is in response to the case of a man who challenged his detention by ICE in Minnesota earlier this month. The federal court ordered that the man be given a bond hearing on Jan. 14 or be released within a week of that date.

As of Jan. 23, the man had not received his hearing and was still in detention. Schiltz said in his order that this is one of dozens of orders that ICE has defied.

“The practical consequence of respondents’ failure to comply has almost always been significant hardship to aliens (many of whom have lawfully lived and worked in the United States for years and done absolutely nothing wrong),” Schiltz wrote.

“The Court has been extremely patient with respondents, even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result.”

Schiltz was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, has also accused the Trump administration of defying court orders, “or at least to stretch the legal process to the breaking point in an attempt to deny noncitizens their due process rights.”

Last week, the Trump administration pushed for Schiltz to assist in the arrest of former CNN anchor-turned independent journalist Don Lemon. This was after Lemon visited a Minneapolis-area church to cover a demonstration by anti-ICE protesters.

Schiltz refused the Trump administration’s bid to arrest Lemon.

Jan. 27 (UPI) — Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube will face accusers in a series of lawsuits alleging that they intentionally design their platforms to be addictive.

The trials begin in Los Angeles Superior Court Tuesday, filed by a group of parents, teens and school districts. Once teens are addicted to the platforms, plaintiffs allege, they suffer from depression, self-harm, eating disorders and more. There are about 1,600 plaintiffs involving 350 families and 250 school districts.

“The fact that a social media company is going to have to stand trial before a jury … is unprecedented,” Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and an attorney in the cases, said in a press conference.

The first case involves a 19-year-old identified as KGM and her mother, Karen Glenn. They are suing TikTok, Meta and YouTube because they say the companies created addictive features that damaged her mental health and led to self-harm and suicidal ideation. Snap was also a defendant in the case, but it settled the case last week.

Her case’s outcome could help determine the outcomes of more than 1,000 injury cases against the companies. The case is expected to last several weeks.

The thousands of cases against these tech giants have been lumped together in a judicial council coordination proceeding, which allows California cases to collaborate and streamline pre-trial hearings.

The plaintiffs want financial damages as well as injunctions that would force the companies to change the design of their platforms and create industry-wide safety standards.

Top company executives are expected to testify, including Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, Instagram’s Adam Mosseri and more. Experts in online harm are also expected to testify.

“For parents whose children have been exploited, groomed, or died because of big tech platforms, the next six weeks are the first step toward accountability after years of being ignored by these companies,” Sarah Gardner, CEO of the Heat Initiative, which advocates for child safety online, told CNN. “These are the tobacco trials of our generation, and for the first time, families across the country will hear directly from big tech CEOs about how they intentionally designed their products to addict our kids.”

KGM alleges in court documents that on Instagram she was bullied and sextorted, which is when someone threatens to share explicit images of the victim unless they send money or more photos.

For two weeks, KGM’s friends and family had to ask other Instagram users to report the people targeting her before Meta would do something about it, court documents said.

“Defendants’ knowing and deliberate product design, marketing, distribution, programming and operational decision and conduct caused serious emotional and mental harms to K.G.M. and her family,” the suit said. “Those harms include, but are not limited to, dangerous dependency on their products, anxiety, depression, self-harm, and body dysmorphia.”

Tech companies and their CEOs reject the allegation that social media harms teens’ mental health. They argue that it offers a connection with friends and entertainment. They also lean on Section 230, a federal law that protects them from liability over content posted by users.