A federal judge has prohibited the Trump administration from dismissing Voice of America director Michael Abramowitz, handing President Donald Trump a defeat in his effort to dismantle the government-run and federally funded international news organization.
In his ruling Thursday, Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of D.C. stated that the Trump administration cannot fire Abramowitz without approval of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board.
“The applicable statutory requirements could not be clearer: the director of Voice of America ‘may only be removed if such action has been approved by a majority of the vote,'” Lamberth wrote.
“There is no longer a question of whether the termination was unlawful.”
Trump has sought to dismantle Voice of America, a decades-old soft-power tool for the United States that broadcasts news internationally, since returning to the White House in January, stating the broadcaster creates anti-Trump and “radical propaganda.”
On taking office, Trump fired six of the seven International Broadcasting Advisory Board members, and then in March placed Abramowitz and 1,300 other Voice of American employees on administrative leave.
On July 8, the U.S. Agency for Global Media informed Abramowitz that he was being reassigned as chief management officer to Greenville, N.C., and if he did not accept the position, he would be fired.
Before the end of the month, Abramowitz sued.
Then on Aug. 1, USAGM sent Abramowitz a letter stating he would be fired effective the end of this month if he did not accept the Greenville transfer.
The government had argued before the court that Abramowitz’s claims are not valid because he has not yet been fired, and that the rule dictating advisory board approval for hiring and firing a VOA director interfered with Trump’s executive authority.
In response, Lamberth, a President Ronald Reagan appointee, countered that whether USAGM fired Abramowitz or transferred him, he would still be removed from his position without the board’s approval, and if the Trump wished to have a vote on the matter, he could replace the board members he removed.
“To the extent the Board’s current lack of quorum institutes a practical barrier to removing Abramowitz, the Broadcast Act gives the President a straightforward remedy: replacing the removed members,” he wrote.
“The defendants do not even feign that their efforts to remove Abramowitz comply with that statutory requirement. How could they, when the board has been without a quorum since January?”
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/08/29/Trump-VOA/6481756449616
A portrait of Confederate general Robert E Lee that includes a slave guiding his horse is set to be reinstated in the Pentagon.
The 20-foot-tall painting, which was on display at the United States Military Academy for 70 years, will be hung in the West Point library under President Trump’s instruction despite a congressionally mandated commission that ordered its removal back in 2020.
“At West Point, the United States Military Academy is prepared to restore historical names, artifacts, and assets to their original form and place,” said the Army’s communications director, Rebecca Hodson, to the New York Times. “Under this administration, we honor our history and learn from it — we don’t erase it.”
Memorials to General Lee, former commander of the Confederate army and a slave owner, have long proven controversial. Multiple monuments to Confederate leaders like Lee have been taken down in recent years by campaigners who see them as a celebration of white supremacy.
The law that led to the painting’s removal was passed during Trump’s first term, when a key Senate committee passed a $741 billion defense policy plan in defiance of the president.
Proposed by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, it required the Department of Defense to remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honored or commemorated the Confederate States of America, as well as any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America.
Against Trump’s wishes, the Pentagon was forced to scrub names from monuments and paraphernalia honoring the Confederacy and its leaders from military bases and assets.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has moved to reverse a number of those decisions.
Speaking at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in June, Trump said he would also be restoring the names of Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort AP Hill, as well as Fort Robert E. Lee.
In 2023, Fort Lee was redesignated Fort Gregg-Adams to commemorate African American veterans Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams, following earlier proposals for the name change.
“Over the course of United States history, these locations have taken on significance to the American story and those who have helped write it that far transcends their namesakes,” Trump said.
He slated Congress’s 2020 directive as a “politically motivated attempt to wash away history and to dishonor the immense progress our country has fought for in realizing our founding principles.”
President Donald Trump has moved to unilaterally cancel $4.9 billion in foreign aid authorized by Congress, escalating the fight over who controls the nation’s spending.
In a letter posted online late Thursday, Trump told House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson that he plans to withhold funding for 15 international programs.
The U.S. Constitution grants funding power to Congress, which passes legislation each year to fund government operations.
The White House must secure Congress’ approval if it does not want to spend that money. Congress did this in July when it approved the cancellation of $9 billion in foreign aid and public media funding.
The latest move — known as a “pocket rescission” — bypasses Congress entirely.
Trump budget director Russell Vought has argued that Trump can withhold funds for 45 days, which would run out the clock until the end of the fiscal year on September 30. The White House said the tactic was last used in 1977.
According to a court document filed on Friday, the money at issue was earmarked for foreign aid, United Nations peacekeeping operations, and democracy-promotion efforts overseas. Most of that had been handled by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump’s administration has largely dismantled.
“This is going to make our budget situation or liquidity situation that much more challenging, but we will follow up with U.S. authorities to get more details,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.
Democrats say the administration froze more than $425 billion in funding overall.
Most Republican lawmakers have said they support spending cuts in any form even if it erodes Congress’ authority.
But Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who oversees spending legislation as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the action is illegal.
“Instead of this attempt to undermine the law, the appropriate way is to identify ways to reduce excessive spending through the bipartisan, annual appropriations process,” she said in a statement.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump is aiming to force a government shutdown at the end of September by indicating that he is willing to ignore any spending laws passed by Congress.
“Republicans don’t have to be a rubber stamp for this carnage,” Schumer said in a statement.
The lights of half a dozen police cars bounced off buildings and the faces of 50 or so homeless adults as federal and D.C. officers lined up outside New York Avenue Presbyterian Church two blocks east of the White House.
Joyce Baucom leaned on her metal cane, knees still unsteady from a double replacement years earlier, and ducked under a tree to shelter from the rain.
Her 5-year-old Chihuahua-pit bull mix, Lil Mama, barked at nearby police officers until her body quaked.
Baucom and her 40-year-old son have been living on the streets for about a year, most recently near the church, a longtime safe harbor that serves the nearly 800 people living unsheltered on the streets of the nation’s capital, according to an annual count by the city. That night, a week into President Donald Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in the District, no one would be allowed to sleep nearby.
“You’re going to have to remove your things, okay?” a city worker told the crowd.
Lil Mama’s barks grew louder.
“Right now!” another city worker yelled over the dog.
The clearing that took place outside the church Aug. 18 was one of 50 that White House officials said this week have been executed by multiagency teams since Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C. on Aug. 11, ordered federal agents to patrol the streets and warned unhoused residents that they “have to move out, IMMEDIATELY.”
Trump’s scrutiny of street homelessness in the District has mobilized advocates, community members and even D.C. officials to open up additional shelter beds. But for many unhoused Washingtonians, the federal crackdown this month has felt more like a continuation of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s years-long push to remove visible homelessness from the city’s downtown — only now at an accelerated pace and backed by federal manpower.
The president’s crusade has crashed against the same reality that for years has derailed attempts to solve the city’s homelessness crisis: There are not enough services, subsidies or beds to house the thousands of adults and children in the District without permanent housing. Men and women pushed out of encampments by federal law enforcement this month told The Washington Post they have scrambled to find somewhere else to go. Some spent a night or two in a hotel, others in an emergency room. But most simply picked up their belongings and moved to another street corner, another patch of trees, another neighborhood, where they hoped federal agents would pass them by.
Baucom, a D.C. native and former custodian who spent years cleaning government buildings, has passed many nights along with her son and Lil Mama outside the church on New York Avenue — sometimes sleeping right on the concrete steps. The church is a day center for the unsheltered, a place where people can find regular meals, bathrooms, showers and case workers. But when the doors close at 5 p.m., many spend their nights in nearby alleys, on park benches or the church’s small triangle of grass.
As officers closed in around her, Baucom raised her voice to be heard over Lil Mama’s barking.
“Why y’all not giving me housing or putting me up in a hotel?” she said. “There’s nowhere to go.”
By the time the Trump administration directed law enforcement to remove homeless people from the nation’s capital, many of the District’s most prominent encampments had long been cleared by city or federal officials.
Since 2021, hundreds of homeless people have been forced to pack up and leave amid widespread clearings that dismantled the largest tent encampments in D.C. — under the NoMa overpass, on New Jersey Avenue, in parks near Union Station and blocks away from the White House — as well as countless small ones that consisted of one or two tents. D.C. officials have said the large encampments were unsanitary and made passersby and nearby business owners feel unsafe.
But forcing homeless individuals to move from site to site impedes their ability to get help and get housed, advocates and caseworkers have said. Belongings, important documents and even phones can get lost in the shuffle of an eviction. Moving to a different part of the city can mean crossing into the jurisdiction of a different nonprofit and force a restart of the outreach process with new case managers.
Shelley Byars, 47, has lived in nearly a dozen spots around the District in the past two years.
Although she has been approved for the Permanent Supportive Voucher program since July 2022, Byars was one of about 75 people who lived in McPherson Square until the National Park Service forcibly evicted them in early 2023. Since then, she has bounced around.
When Trump’s crackdown began, Byars had been living just outside George Washington Circle, a small park in Foggy Bottom that has at its center an equestrian statue of the nation’s first president. When federal agents last week instructed the homeless residents living there to clear out, Byars packed up her bags and moved — again.
“I mean what can I do about it?” Byars said recently, shrugging as she stood in line for a meal from Catholic volunteers. “Just more of the same.”
The Trump administration has threatened to fine or arrest those who refuse to move or go to a shelter. The White House said this week that of the people at the 50 encampments cleared by multiagency teams since the federal takeover began, two individuals were arrested; both were accused of assaulting police. The White House did not provide names or details on the incidents.
“President Trump is cleaning up D.C. to make it safe for all residents and visitors while ensuring homeless individuals aren’t out on the streets putting themselves at risk or posing a risk to others,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Post. “Homeless people will have the opportunity to be taken to a homeless shelter or receive addiction and mental health services. This will make D.C. safer and cleaner for everyone.”
Byars landed last week next to an old neighbor: Daniel Kingery, a 64-year-old man who lived for years in the McPherson Square encampment.
Kingery doesn’t have a tent. He sleeps on a cart he has constructed to display political messages and challenges to authority.
He abhors what he sees as the criminalization of homelessness and, in 2023, refused to leave McPherson Square when police officers encircled the park and closed off its entry points. He was arrested and spent several weeks in jail.
Many of the city’s chronically unhoused residents who choose to live on the street do so because they have determined that shelters don’t work for them. Advocates call the main drivers of this “the four P’s”: property, partners, pets and, most recently, pandemic. Most of the city’s shelters are not able to accommodate opposite-sex partners, pets or many personal belongings. Following the coronavirus pandemic, many unhoused people became more leery of living in the close confines of congregate shelters.
Baucom had several reasons for sleeping on the street outside New York Avenue Presbyterian instead of in a shelter: There was Lil Mama. There were the half-dozen bags she carries with her. And there was her adult son, Jonathan. He has kidney failure and needs frequent dialysis treatments.
“He can’t go into a shelter in his condition,” Baucom said.
Back near McPherson, Kingery keeps a watchful eye. Groups of police and National Guard members have approached him in recent days, he said, but have only issued verbal warnings, encouraging him to move.
He has declined.
A week and a half into the federal government’s takeover, Bowser (D) stood in the basement of a new low-barrier shelter near Union Station built to house up to 190 adults — the majority of whom, D.C. officials said, will be brought in off the street — in small dorm-style apartments. But it won’t open until after Trump’s 30-day federal emergency is set to expire.
In the immediate term, the District has made more space for people at the city’s already-crowded shelters, an approach typically reserved for cold-weather months when sleeping outside can have deadly consequences.
“Our message today, as it is every day, is that there is shelter space available in Washington, D.C., and we encourage everyone to come inside,” Bowser said at the news conference.
This week, Bowser said that 81 additional people had come into the shelter system since the push began. City staff and volunteers also planned to fan out across the city Thursday night to track the number of unhoused people on the District’s streets, Bowser and administration officials said.
A week and a half into the federal government’s takeover, Bowser (D) stood in the basement of a new low-barrier shelter near Union Station built to house up to 190 adults — the majority of whom, D.C. officials said, will be brought in off the street — in small dorm-style apartments. But it won’t open until after Trump’s 30-day federal emergency is set to expire.
In the immediate term, the District has made more space for people at the city’s already-crowded shelters, an approach typically reserved for cold-weather months when sleeping outside can have deadly consequences.
“Our message today, as it is every day, is that there is shelter space available in Washington, D.C., and we encourage everyone to come inside,” Bowser said at the news conference.
This week, Bowser said that 81 additional people had come into the shelter system since the push began. City staff and volunteers also planned to fan out across the city Thursday night to track the number of unhoused people on the District’s streets, Bowser and administration officials said.
For years, the city’s homeless population has been in decline. According to the 2025 Point-In-Time count, the annual federally mandated census of unhoused people, there were 5,138 unhoused individuals sleeping in shelters and on the streets in 2025 — a 9 percent dip from the previous year and a 19 percent drop since 2020, when 6,380 homeless people were recorded.
Rachel Pierre, the acting director of the D.C. Department of Human Services, said the city has expanded shelter capacity to meet demand and will continue to do so for the duration of the federal emergency. No one, she added, has been denied a shelter bed since Aug. 8.
“It is still not illegal to be homeless,” Bowser said. “You cannot have camps, you cannot have tents, but it is not illegal to be homeless.”
Advocates, who have pushed the District to open additional shelter capacity and redouble its outreach, have said the city is not doing enough to get unhoused individuals out of harm’s way.
At the start of the federal crackdown, community members in Ward 2, which encompasses most of downtown, began asking unhoused people what would “make them feel safer” as the federal government’s reach into the District grew. The most popular responses they got, according to Ward 2 Mutual Aid organizer Hadley Ashford, 29, were people asking for transit cards and help spending a few nights off the streets.
In less than a week, the group collected more than $5,200 and was able to move 20 people into hotel rooms for a couple of nights at a time. The majority of those the group helped, Ashford said, refused to move into a shelter because they didn’t want to have to separate from pets or partners or family members. At least one individual was immunocompromised and did not want to be in a crowded facility.
“We just wanted to get people out of harm’s way in the immediate term,” she said. “Regardless of how many donations we’re getting in, this is not something we can continue to do forever. … The city needs to do more; they’re not providing enough services.”
Homeless advocates and service providers in surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia have not seen the surge of homeless people many expected amid the federal crackdown in D.C.
ohn Mendez, executive director of Bethesda Cares, which does homeless outreach in Montgomery County, Maryland, said they’ve instead seen unhoused people relying on public transportation — to try to stay out of sight and away from where federal officers might be doing sweeps.
In recent days, Byars has been uneasy straying too far from her camp, just in case. She knows what happens when officials decide to remove an encampment: Belongings get confiscated, sometimes trashed. Tents are leveled and thrown out. Important personal effects and documents can get lost.
Still, Byars said, she hopes she won’t have to move at all.
“I’ve talked to the National Guard, and they told me they’re here to protect the people of D.C.,” Byars said. “That should mean all the people. Right?”
Days after the clearing outside New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, bags, tents and people were already back along the sidewalk. The same cycle had set back in: They came for the day center, then, when it closed, many bedded down nearby.
Kingery has been sleeping on the same street corner, just feet away from where he once lived in McPherson Square’s sprawling homeless encampment, for more than a year.
Byars, who has been removed from every major homeless encampment in the District over the past three years, has decided to try her luck on the same block. It’s familiar territory: She also used to live in the park across the street.
When asked where she might go next, if the federal government’s crackdown forces her to pack up again, Byars shrugged.
That’s a problem for another time.
Baucom and her son spent two nights in a motel. The next night, she felt pain in her shoulders, and the pair landed in the emergency room. She got some sleep there.
By the next evening, Baucom was again sitting on the steps outside the church, waiting for nightfall.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/29/trump-dc-homeless-encampments-cleared
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/anger-over-trump-administration-s-latest-firings/vi-AA1Lum22
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is asking a federal judge for a gag order to stop Trump administration officials from publicly attacking him with “inflammatory” statements that attorneys say are threatening his right to a fair trial on criminal smuggling charges.
Lawyers for the wrongly deported Salvadoran immigrant say Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi, among others, have spent months publicly disparaging his “character and reputation” by smearing him as a wife beater, pedophile, gang member and terrorist.
“The government’s ongoing barrage of prejudicial statements severely threaten — and perhaps have already irrevocably impaired — the ability to try this case at all — in any venue,” lawyers wrote Thursday night.
The Trump administration has “distorted the events and evidence underpinning his case to the public; misrepresented his criminal record; disseminated false, irrelevant, and inflammatory claims; and expressed the opinion that he is guilty of the crimes charged,” lawyers wrote.
Last month, the federal judge overseeing the criminal case ordered his release from jail before trial, finding that prosecutors failed to show “any evidence” that his history or the arguments against him warrant his ongoing detention. Judges have found the allegations “fanciful” and formally ruled that he does not pose a danger to the public.
Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to a brutal prison in his home country, igniting a high-profile legal battle for his return at the center of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.
Government lawyers admitted he was removed from the United States due to a procedural error, and several federal judges and a unanimous Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return after his “illegal” arrest.
But the government spent weeks battling court orders for his return while officials launched a barrage of public attacks, declaring that he would never again step foot in the country.
He was then abruptly returned in June to face allegations that he illegally moved other immigrants across the country. He has pleaded not guilty.
In their request to keep him in jail before trial, federal prosecutors claimed he is a member of the transnational gang MS-13 and “personally participated in violent crime, including murder.”
Prosecutors also claimed he “abused” women and trafficked children, firearms and narcotics, and there is also an ongoing investigation into “solicitation of child pornography.”
Abrego Garcia is not facing any charges on any of those allegations, nor has he been convicted of anything. A federal judge determined that the government failed to link those allegations to evidence that implicates him.
Abrego Garcia’s wife had previously sought a protective order against him several years ago, though she never pressed charges and said the couple has since resolved their disputes. She has played a prominent public role defending him.
Last week, a federal judge granted his release from pretrial detention. Immigration authorities arrested him days later and threatened to deport him to Uganda.
A separate judge has blocked the government from deporting him while he challenges his latest arrest. A decision is expected after October 6.
His attorneys have argued that the indictment is aimed at punishing Abrego Garcia for his ongoing legal battle with the Trump administration, which has “vilified” him from the moment the case made headlines that caused massive political headaches for the White House.
After he was released from jail this month, Noem labeled him a “MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser and child predator.”
That same day, the White House called him “a criminal illegal alien, wife-beater and an MS13 gang member facing serious charges of human smuggling.”
This week, the president called him an “animal” who had “beat the hell out of his wife.”
But the “pièce de résistance,” according to Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, was a cartoon posted by the White House’s official X account depicting him with “MS-13” written beneath it.
“If the government is allowed to continue in this way, it will taint any conceivable jury pool by exposing the entire country to irrelevant, prejudicial, and false claims about Mr. Abrego,” lawyers wrote.
A DHS official told The Independent that if Abrego Garcia does “not want to be mentioned” by administration officials, “then he should have not entered our country illegally and committed heinous crimes.”
“Once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend this criminal illegal MS-13 gang member who is an alleged human trafficker, domestic abuser, and child predator,” the official added.
“The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart, yet they continue to peddle his sob story,” the official said. “We hear far too much about gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims.”
The Justice Department declined to comment to The Independent.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker delivered a pointed warning Sunday to Republicans aiding Donald Trump’s efforts to weaponize the federal government against political enemies, vowing they will be held accountable once power shifts. Citing Trump’s threats to send troops into Chicago, Pritzker said history shows justice can be delayed but not denied, and reminded allies that Trump has little loyalty to those who break the law for him. Quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Pritzker declared that the arc of justice “doesn’t bend on its own” — and promised to help force it there if necessary.
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