The Arlington, VA County Board has limited local police interactions with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by removing Sections 7 and 8 of the county’s “Trust Policy.” This policy change aims to encourage immigrant communities to seek emergency assistance without fear.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-policy-delivers-major-blow-to-ice/ss-AA1FE7aX
Donald Trump has been dropped from a lawsuit accusing his administration of illegally wielding power to slash government agencies and purge the federal workforce.
But a federal judge won’t let Elon Musk escape the case.
Musk — tapped by the president to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — is facing a lawsuit from a group of 14 states arguing that the world’s wealthiest person lacks any legal authority to carry out mass firings, terminate grants and access sensitive government information and taxpayer data.
Attorneys for the Trump administration claimed Musk is only serving a temporary advisory role as a “special government employee” serving under the president.
But District Judge Tanya Chutkan shot down the White House’s attempt to “minimize” his role as “a mere advisor without any formal authority.”
Musk instead “occupies a continuing position” and “exercises significant authority,” all without “proper appointment” by Congress, Chutkan wrote.
President Donald Trump‘s immigration enforcers have reportedly arrested the daughter of a U.S. veteran.
Alma Bowman, 58, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March during a scheduled check-in at its Atlanta field office, according to Atlanta News First. She has been living in the country since she was 10 years old.
…
Her father, Lawrence Bowman, a U.S. Navy service member from Illinois, was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. Alma Bowman was born in the Philippines in 1966, and her family relocated to the United States a decade later. She has lived in Macon, Georgia, for almost 50 years.
Certain legal provisions allow for the extension of citizenship to family members of individuals who have served in the U.S. military.
https://www.newsweek.com/alma-bowman-veteran-daughter-detained-ice-immigration-2077893
On Friday afternoon, just before the holiday weekend was set to begin, word began to spread among Pentagon reporters: new, even more restrictive press limitations were imminent. Shortly after, the Pentagon Press Association was informed just how sweeping they would be. Pete Hegseth, the embattled Secretary of Defense, announced he would revoke journalists’ long-held ability to navigate the Pentagon’s unclassified hallways freely, cutting off access that has been permitted across Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.
Hegseth cloaked the decision in the language of national security. In a memo that he publicized via tweet, Hegseth claimed the restrictions were necessary to safeguard “sensitive information—the unauthorized disclosure of which could put the lives of U.S. Service members in danger.” But to many reporters, the rationale felt hollow—especially coming from a figure at the center of Signalgate, the scandal involving Hegseth’s own use of an insecure messaging app to conduct sensitive military business. The notion that hallway access for credentialed reporters posed more of a security threat than his own sloppy use of an encrypted messaging app struck many as absurd, to say the least.
https://www.status.news/p/pete-hegseth-pentagon-press-access
A federal court on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law, swiftly throwing into doubt Trump’s signature set of economic policies that have rattled global financial markets, frustrated trade partners and raised broader fears about inflation intensifying and the economy slumping.
The ruling from a three-judge panel at the New York-based U.S. Court of International Trade came after several lawsuits arguing Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs exceeded his authority and left the country’s trade policy dependent on his whims.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-trade-court-0392dbd59f548e49ad4f64254ae3f94a
In December, Trump said that while his ramblings may appear incoherent, they were “genius.”
“I do the weave,” he explained. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like friends of mine that are like English professors, they say: ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-shows-signs-of-cognitive-decline-says-speech-expert
So what’s the next step? Will the supreme court and lower courts hold the administration in contempt and enforce the contempt citations?
Trump and his Republican stooges in Congress apparently anticipated this. Hidden inside their Big Ugly Bill is a provision intended to block the courts from using contempt to enforce its orders. It reads:
“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued …”
Translated: no federal court may enforce a contempt citation.
The measure would make most existing injunctions – in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases and others – unenforceable.
Its only purpose is to weaken the power of the federal courts.
…
But the provision inside the bill that neuters the federal courts is even worse. It would remove the last remaining constraint on Trump, and thereby effectively end American democracy.
Early one late March morning, Farmworker activist and union leader Alfredo Juarez Zeferino was taking his partner to her job on a tulip farm in the picturesque Skagit Valley, Washington, when the couple was stopped by immigration enforcement.
According to reporting in The Stranger, Zeferino called Rosalinda Guillen, a long-time organizer and founder of Community to Community (C2C), at 7:23 am on March 25, 2025. In the background, she could hear Zeferino’s partner crying as Zeferino told ICE officers to leave her alone, before the chaotic phone call abruptly ended.
Zeferino was arrested that day and has remained in a detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, despite the efforts of activists and legal aid.
At 25, Zeferino is already an accomplished organizer; he was a founding member of local farmworker union Familias Unidas por la Justicia, won a Peacemaker Award from the Whatcom Peace & Justice Commission, and sat on the now-defunct Bellingham Immigration Advisory Board.
Zeferino’s detention seems to be a part of a pattern of targeted immigration enforcement against immigration labor movement leaders. Fabiola Ortiz Valdez, the director of organizing for the Food Chain Workers Alliance, an organization that connects immigrant labor organizers across the US and Canada, has seen an increase in immigration and labor activist detentions by immigration officials.
“We have seen ICE and immigration enforcement targeting workers; we also see harsher targeting for organizers as well,” Ortiz Valdez said, adding “I think that our members and organizations understand that the immigration laws in this country have always meant to do what they’re doing right now, which is create a more exploitable workforce within the United States. So it’s not surprising, but it’s definitely very alarming.”
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Migrant Justice filed a lawsuit in 2018 to stop the targeting. In 2020, they settled successfully with ICE, which dropped their deportation cases against the plaintiffs, paid restitution, and committed to not targeting Migrant Justice and its membership in the future.
Van Hollen told Rubio, “I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for Secretary of State.”
Rubio responded, “Your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job.
Such a typical FU response from one of King Donald’s cronies.
The former chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisers warned Monday that the bond markets are flashing red over Donald Trump’s economic agenda.
In a sharply worded MSNBC op-ed titled, “The Bond Market is an Economic Lie Detector Test,” Jared Bernstein, a Biden administration economist, argued that markets are reacting to “a toxic combination” of MAGA-inspired policies that threaten to both raise interest rates and slow growth.
Trump “is failing” the test, according to Bernstein, and “that’s bad news for your wallet,” he added.
