Category: Nation World News Wires

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration Tuesday in an immigration case dealing with the government’s power over green card holders accused of crimes.

The 6-3 decision centers around an immigration officer’s 2012 decision to put lawful permanent resident Muk Choi Lau on immigration parole when he returned from a short trip to China because he had been accused of a counterfeiting crime.

Lau argued that the officer overstepped their authority, and the decision wrongly allowed the Department of Homeland Security under then-President Barack Obama to swiftly begin deportation proceedings after he pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit clothes in New Jersey.

The high court disagreed. “Border officers did not have the burden to establish by clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed, writing that the decision to put Lau on immigration parole effectively sentenced him to “immigration limbo” before he’d been convicted of any crime, she wrote.

“I worry that the Court has now handed the Government a massive blank check,” she wrote in a dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues.

The liberal group Alliance for Justice echoed that concern, saying it could provide an expanded path for revoking green cards.

But Advancing American Freedom, a group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, applauded the decision, calling it an important case to allow the removal of people who “abuse the privilege of being granted lawful permanent resident status.”

The decision comes as the high court considers a series of immigration-related issues against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, though this case started before Trump took office.

His administration argued that suspicion of a crime is enough to put a lawful permanent resident, also known as a green-card holder, on immigration parole. Federal attorneys urged the court to take an expansive view of executive authority over immigration.

The court is also considering cases over Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship, potentially revive a restrictive asylum policy, and end temporary legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disasters in their homelands.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine said Tuesday its forces struck a railway bridge, a power plant, and other key infrastructure targets in Crimea as Kyiv’s military seeks to isolate the vital Russian-held peninsula in the latest stage of the 4-year-old war.

The drone attacks added to the woes on the Black Sea peninsula, where Russian authorities have had to suspend gasoline sales to civilians as Ukraine has intensified its recent campaign to disrupt supply lines and the electrical grid at the height of the summer tourist season.

The peninsula was seized by force and illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. Ukraine’s increasing use of long-range strikes has highlighted its ability to inflict painful damage on Russia and put added pressure on the Kremlin while Moscow’s advances recently have ground to a near halt, Western analysts and officials say.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said last week that his forces are “isolating Crimea with drones.”

“It looks like in the nearest time, Crimea will become an island. This could lead to some very unexpected consequences for Russians,” Fedorov said on a blogger’s YouTube channel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had been warned that Ukraine aimed to disrupt energy supplies and Russia’s tourism industry. He didn’t say who gave the warning.

Ukrainian drones “coming in a huge stream” seek to “destabilize” Russian society, Putin said.

Russia’s ​Deputy Prime Minister ​Alexander Novak told Putin on Tuesday that officials were considering suspending diesel fuel exports to protect the country’s motorists, adding to ongoing bans on the export of jet fuel and gasoline, according to the Tass news agency. Novak also said scheduled maintenance at refineries had been postponed.

Ukraine also has hit targets near to the Kremlin in Moscow and in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, this month.

Parts of Crimea are without power

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said drones struck an oil storage depot at the Kerch thermal power plant in eastern Crimea, an electrical substation in the west, and a liquefied natural gas distribution station in Simferopol, the peninsula’s second-biggest city.

In addition, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said their units, working with what it said was the resistance movement in Crimea, destroyed a rail bridge over the North Crimean Canal near the village of Rozdolne.

The military described the span as a key logistics route used to supply Russian forces in southern Ukraine and said drones began hitting the structure late Sunday to Monday, collapsing part of it. A second strike early Tuesday targeted railway repair equipment deployed at the bridge and its remaining sections, it said on Telegram.

It was not possible to independently verify the Ukrainian claims, and Russian officials made no immediate comment.

Parts of Crimea were without power Tuesday, the area’s energy supplier said. But it attributed the outages to “technical malfunctions” in local electrical grids and said it expected power to be restored within 24 hours.

The diamond-shaped peninsula is important because of its naval bases and beaches, as well as its strategic location in the Black Sea. Russia has spent centuries fighting for it.

Russian-appointed officials in Crimea have appeared reluctant to discuss attacks on the peninsula, but new security measures suggest deepening tension.

Its Ministry of Sport on Tuesday canceled all sporting events, competitions, and training sessions for children through Sept. 1. It described the measures as “aimed solely at ensuring the safety of our children, athletes, and anyone who is involved with sport.”

On Monday, Gov. Sergei Aksyonov said that for security reasons, all summer camps in the region had stopped accepting children and new bookings until Sept. 1.

Successes against Russia boost Ukrainian morale

On the front line in eastern Ukraine, where Russia’s war of attrition has made slow and costly advances since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has deployed cutting-edge drone technology to keep the enemy pinned down.

Meanwhile, its medium-range drones have also disrupted Russia’s supply lines to the front, and its long-range strikes have increasingly damaged Russian oil facilities that provide vital revenue for the Kremlin’s war effort.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Monday its forces have hit more than 800,000 enemy targets with drones since the beginning of the year and that 95% of drones used by the armed forces are domestically produced.

The successes have boosted Ukrainian confidence, and President Volodymyr Zelensky says sustained foreign support is locked in to help stop Russia.

Officials have shown renewed vigor in talking about the war.

Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Andrii Melnyk said Monday that Kyiv remained ready for direct talks with Russia to achieve a “just and lasting peace” based on the U.N. Charter, but warned that Ukraine’s willingness to compromise was not open-ended.

Melnyk said at a U.N. Security Council meeting that a ceasefire along the current front line already represented a major concession and urged Russia to withdraw from occupied Ukrainian territory.

He also said recent Ukrainian strikes had altered the dynamics of the war, adding: “This is just the beginning.”

Russia’s top diplomat says Moscow will defend Belarus

Meanwhile, the Kremlin is ready to “ensure the security” of its neighbor and ally Belarus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday, days after Zelensky demanded that Belarus remove relay equipment on its territory that Kyiv said aided Russian drone attacks.

The relay stations are used for signal transmissions to Russian drones attacking Ukraine, according to Zelensky.

Lavrov told the Russian news agency Interfax that Kyiv was trying to drag Belarus into the conflict. Moscow, in fact, had used Belarus territory to launch its invasion of Ukraine.

FORT WORTH, Texas — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifa were sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer and that prosecutors called an act of terrorism.

One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.

The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Song received the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”

“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.

The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.

Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a target of the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.

The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.

Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.

“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”

Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.

“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”

Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.

Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.

“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”

Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.

Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated ”didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”

Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.

“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.

Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.

Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.

Critics warn the case could have wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.

Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 people with impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.

OMAHA, Nebraska — The last eight American passengers who endured 42 days in a specialized hospital quarantine unit after exposure to an unusual hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship that killed three people have left the Nebraska facility.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials on Monday confirmed the end of the quarantine.

“Through close collaboration among federal, state, and local partners, HHS helped protect the American people, contain potential risks, and bring this response effort to a successful conclusion,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in an email.

More than 120 people were evacuated from the MV Hondius in Spain’s Canary Islands early last month — including the 18 Americans who wound up in the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha — though most were from other countries.

In addition to those people evacuated by health officials in full protective suits, at least 30 other passengers had left the ship earlier before the outbreak was documented. That included seven Americans, who were allowed to monitor for any symptoms at home. When the ship eventually docked in the Netherlands, 25 crew members and two medical personnel were on board and had to quarantine.

The World Health Organization didn’t immediately respond Monday to questions about the status of all the other people who had to quarantine around the globe. A total of 13 cases of the virus, including the three who died, were identified among people who were on the ship.

Most Americans returned home but some were forced to quarantine

One of the American passengers, Angela Perryman, had been held against her will and against the recommendation of a government medical expert. She said in an interview Monday passengers were told that the quarantine monitoring period ended Sunday at 2 p.m. She left on a flight that evening. Others were flying out Monday, she said.

“We were locked in our rooms until 1:55. And at 2 o’clock, ‘OK, well, everybody walk out and go home,’” Perryman said, speaking from her Florida home.

Some stayed the night elsewhere in Omaha, but Perryman pushed for a flight home that evening. The government paid for the flights, she said.

Seven of the last remaining patients stayed there voluntarily, but Perryman was forced to stay as the result of a controversial quarantine order that was deemed unnecessary even by some health officials.

Perryman and seven others spent six weeks at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. That monitoring period was set because symptoms of hantavirus have taken as long as 42 days to appear in previous outbreaks. None were reported to have developed the illness.

Ten others who were at the facility were allowed to leave earlier under an agreement that they would be closely monitored in their home states.

Outbreak developed on a small cruise ship

The passengers were on a Dutch cruise ship, the MV Hondius, traveling in the South Atlantic that became the setting of a hantavirus outbreak that killed three people, including a Dutch couple who health officials believe were the first exposed to the virus while visiting South America.

Hantaviruses usually spread when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings, but the hantavirus that caused the outbreak, called the Andes virus, may be able to spread between people in rare cases, health officials say.

Some 25 Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked in April and 18 who remained on board. Sixteen were evacuated to the Nebraska quarantine unit in Omaha on May 11, and two other Americans joined them a few days later.

Passengers staying in Omaha enjoyed Nebraska hospitality

During the passengers’ stay, local Omaha restaurants and food trucks delivered special meals for them to enjoy almost daily. And the nurses sometimes made Starbucks runs to deliver some of the passengers’ favorite drinks.

The rooms they stayed in are like hotel rooms equipped with a desk, television, internet connection, and exercise equipment to help the passengers pass the time.

One of the passengers, Jake Rosmarin, on Monday morning posted an “I’m finally coming home” video that showed him leaving his room at the quarantine center, hauling two suitcases and a backpack and turning out the lights as he walked out the door. Later Monday, he posted a video of the Omaha skyline shot out the window of his plane as he headed home to his fiance in Boston and his family.

Rosmarin, who is a travel blogger, posted a tearful video Sunday thanking the staff of the quarantine unit, the Omaha community, and his family and friends who helped him get through quarantine.

“I want to thank the Omaha, Nebraska, community for welcoming us with open arms and showing us complete kindness and generosity. And a big thanks to all of you who have helped me get through this because I really don’t know if it would have been as easy without the support from strangers,” he said while wearing a Nebraska Huskers sweatshirt that someone sent him.

Florida wouldn’t agree to monitor passenger round the clock

Perryman had a darker take. She was forced to stay after Florida officials refused a federal demand that the state provide round-the-clock surveillance on her if she were returned home. This happened even as they had started making travel arrangements for the passengers weeks ago, she said.

“Nobody actually expected anybody to get sick at that point,” she said. “Everybody was well aware that we were all going home on commercial flights.”

She called the six-week quarantine “a political stunt.”

BUNIA, Congo — Confirmed cases in the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo have reached 1,003, including 254 deaths, officials said, as tracing those who had been in contact with patients remains a major challenge.

A total of 100 people have recovered in the outbreak concentrated in the Ituri province since it was declared on May 15, Congo’s Ministry of Health said Sunday. At least 365 patients are in hospitals or in isolation, it said.

The Ebola outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no vaccines or treatment, was the worst ever in its first month. Officials admit there could be far more cases they still don’t know about and that the peak of the outbreak is still ahead.

Contact tracing remains a key issue for local authorities, who have only achieved a 55% coverage rate, the ministry said.

“If you want to control an outbreak, especially Ebola outbreak, you must know the index case. We don’t have confidence on when this outbreak started,” the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director-General Jean Kaseya told the Associated Press last week.

Officials also are yet to identify the patient zero and trace more than 35,000 people who have come in contact with infected individuals as of last week, authorities said.

That’s partly because eastern Congo is also battling ongoing violence from rebels. In Ituri, attacks by the Islamic State group-backed Allied Democratic Force have cut off access to many villages and forced people to flee their homes, including those sheltering in overcrowded camps and others constantly on the move.

More than a month into the outbreak, officials believe the disease continues to outpace response efforts and no one knows its true scale.

Displaced persons at risk

At the Kigonze displacement camp in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, camp officials said Friday that 10 people had died last week in unusual circumstances, raising the fear of a possible outbreak in the camp of over 20,000 displaced people.

There had been no Ebola case confirmed at the site, camp officials said, but added that the death rate was unprecedented and called for investigation.

The U.N. refugee agency has said at least 2 million people forcibly displaced from their homes, including over 320,000 refugees, live in areas at risk of Ebola in Congo.

In a statement on Friday, the agency said it was “deeply concerned by the accelerating spread” of the virus and “the growing risks it poses to displaced communities across the region.”

“If a disease or epidemic were to spread among the thousands of people living at this (Kigonze) site, it would be a real catastrophe given our already very precarious living conditions,” said Charité Banza, a civil society leader in Ituri.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday denied a request to disqualify top Justice Department officials from supervising the prosecution of the man charged with trying to kill President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Cole Tomas Allen had argued that involvement in his prosecution by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro created a potential conflict of interest because they were among many administration officials present at the April dinner. Allen’s attorney also had raised concerns about the close friendship between Trump and Pirro, a former Fox News commentator.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden wrote in his ruling that neither their attendance at the dinner nor Pirro’s personal relationship with the president merited their disqualification. McFadden noted that Allen is not charged with attempting to harm Blanche and Pirro, and there is no evidence to suggest he even knew they would attend the dinner.

“They are unlikely to be trial witnesses, nor do they meet the legal definition of victims,” wrote McFadden, who was nominated to the bench by Trump.

Allen has been accused of trying to breach a security checkpoint armed with guns and knives. He has pleaded not guilty to various charges, including assaulting a federal official with a deadly weapon and attempted assassination of the president. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of the attempted assassination charge alone.

Allen also is accused of firing a shotgun at a Secret Service agent during the attack, which disrupted and ultimately prompted an early end to one of the highest-profile annual events in the nation’s capital. The Secret Service officer who was shot once in a bullet-resistant vest fired his own weapon five times without hitting anyone. Allen, of Torrance, Calif., was injured but was not shot.

A federal judge has blocked an attempt by the Trump administration to subpoena Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other state officials, calling it an effort to “harass and retaliate against them.”

In a ruling unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schlitz found the “dominant purpose” of the subpoenas was to “coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration law and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so.”

The subpoenas seeking records were served in January as part of an investigation into whether Walz and other officials obstructed or impeded law enforcement during a sweeping immigration operation in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. They were sent to the offices of Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, and officials in Ramsey and Hennepin counties.

The ruling is the latest rebuke by the federal judiciary of Justice Department efforts to aggressively implement the Trump administration agenda in courts and target the president’s political adversaries through subpoenas and similar demands.

The judge ruled that there appeared to be “extremely weak to nonexistent” connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation. The subpoenas seek materials “that largely if not entirely relate to constitutionally protected conduct,” the judge wrote, noting that Minnesota has the legal right not to devote its resources to enforcing federal immigration law.

The Justice Department “is not conducting a criminal investigation,” the judge wrote, “but is instead using the grand jury process for other (unlawful) purposes.”

The evidence that the subpoenas were issued for unlawful reasons is overwhelming, the judge said, arguing that the Justice Department “has struggled — without success — to identify a single plausible investigatory justification” for them.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Walz, in a statement, called the ruling “a victory for the rule of law and our democracy.”

“The U.S. Justice Department is pursuing criminal investigations into the President’s political opponents,” said Walz, the 2024 Democratic nominee for vice president. “This case was just one example of that, but we are seeing daily reminders of this administration’s lawlessness — in Minnesota and around the country. We all must continue to seek justice and uphold the rule of law.”

Ellison said “it should disturb every American that Donald Trump is weaponizing the criminal justice system against people he disagrees with.”

The subpoenas were “a politically motivated retaliation against our city for lawfully standing up to ICE and fighting for our residents,” Her said in a statement, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Frey said the investigation was “never about justice, law, and order, but the absence of it.”

“Subpoenaing political opponents because they spoke on behalf of their constituents violates the core tenets of our democracy and human decency,” he said.

Frey also observed that criticizing government action is not a crime.

“One of the defining strengths of our democracy is the ability to challenge those in power without fear of retribution. Elected officials have both the right and the responsibility to speak honestly about how government decisions affect the people they serve,” he said.

Over the last year, judges have dismissed indictments against two prominent Trump foes, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, and grand juries have repeatedly refused to return indictments sought by the Justice Department.

The moves reflect mounting public concerns that the Justice Department, an institution meant to make investigative and prosecution decisions independent of the White House, is being politicized under the current Trump administration.

Vice President JD Vance has separately called on the Justice Department to investigate Walz and Ellison over allegations they failed to stop widespread social services fraud, though the department has not said whether it will open an investigation. Walz and Ellison have described those allegations as politically motivated and defended their efforts to combat fraud in Minnesota.