CBP asks judge for more time to work on tariff refunds
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection logo is displayed on the side of a patrol boat on September 26, 2025, in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A Customs and Border Protection official on Friday told a federal judge that the agency does not have the technology or manpower to immediately process $166 billion in tariff refunds, arguing the process would distract from its role addressing “imminent threats to national security.”
In a sworn filing, the official said that CBP needs an additional 45 days to create a system to process refunds for the more than 53 million entries related to the unlawful tariffs.
“CBP has never been ordered to, nor has it attempted to, process a volume of refunds anywhere near the volume of total entries and Entry Summary lines on which IEEPA duties have been deposited,” wrote Brandon Lord, the executive director of CBP’s Trade Programs Directorate.
The disclosure comes two days after a judge from the Court of International Trade initially ordered the Trump administration to remove the tariffs from its backlog of import paperwork. Even though the liquidation process — when the agency finalizes a tariff payment after goods enter the country — is largely automated and the Supreme Court overturned the tariffs two weeks ago, Lord said that Customs and Border Protection “is not able to comply” with the court’s order.
“CBP is now facing an unprecedented volume of refunds. Its existing administrative procedures and technology are not well suited to a task of this scale and will require manual work that will prevent personnel from fully carrying out the agency’s trade enforcement mission,” Lord said.
According to Lord, the current system used to process tariffs cannot handle the volume of refund requests, and that doing so manually would take resources away from “responsibilities that serve to mitigate imminent threats to national security and economic security.”
Following a hearing on Friday related to the refund process, which was closed to the public, Judge Richard Eaton of the Court of International Trade suspended his earlier order to immediately begin recalculating tariffs dues.
By lifting his initial order, the judge appears to be making room for the refund process to play out, though the exact timeline of refunds remains unclear.
During previous hearings, the judge had expressed skepticism that the refund process would be a “mess” or that the government lacked the resources to issue refunds.
Bill Clinton speaks onstage during the Clinton Global Initiative 2025 Annual Meeting at New York Hilton Midtown on September 25, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by JP Yim/Getty Images for New York Hilton Midtown)
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Bill Clinton, in his opening statement at his historic closed-door deposition before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee on Friday, denied any knowledge of the crimes committed by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, going on to say making his wife Hillary Clinton testify “was simply not right.”
In his statement as released, he stated that he will often say, “I do not recall” throughout his questioning because the events were “all a long time ago.”
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said, according to the statement.
The former president is being grilled by the committee as part of its investigation into Epstein in Chappaqua, New York — marking a historic moment for a former president. Friday’s deposition is the first time a former president has been compelled to testify before a congressional panel.
He is facing questions under oath about his relationship with Epstein and photos that show the former president with both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-conspirator who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and other crimes.
The former president’s testimony comes a day after the committee questioned former Secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton over the couple’s dealings with the convicted sex offender.
On Friday, Bill Clinton said he had to “get personal” and blasted the committee for forcing his wife to answer their questions.
“You made Hillary come in. She had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Nothing. She has no memory of even meeting him. She neither traveled with him nor visited any of his properties,” he said in his statements as released. “Whether you subpoenaed 10 people or 10,000, including her was simply not right.”
In her deposition Thursday, Hillary Clinton said she did not know Epstein, could not recall ever encountering him and never visited him on his island or at his home or office.
Hillary Clinton, on Thursday, also gave a preview of how her husband, former President Bill Clinton, will handle his own deposition.
“I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of people who had contact with him before his criminal pleas in ’08 were like most people — they did not know what he was doing. And I think that that is exactly what my husband will testify to tomorrow,” she said.
Neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing and both deny having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
No Epstein survivor or associate has ever made a public allegation of wrongdoing or inappropriate behavior by the former president or his wife in connection with his prior relationship with Epstein.
Bill Clinton said in his opening statement that he had “no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing.”
“No matter how many photos you show me, I have two things that at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos. I know what I saw, and more importantly, what I didn’t see. I know what I did, and more importantly, what I didn’t do,” he said in his statement as released.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer reiterated Friday morning that the Clintons have been called to testify to try to answer questions about Epstein.
“No one’s accusing anyone of any wrongdoing, but I think the American people have a lot of questions, and our House Oversight Committee is committed to getting answers,” Comer said Friday morning.
Bill Clinton’s association with Epstein was first noted publicly in 2002 after reporters learned of the former president’s flight that year on Epstein’s jet for a humanitarian mission to multiple African nations.
Bill Clinton told New York Magazine through a spokesperson at the time that “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of 21st century science.”
Maxwell said in a recorded interview last year with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, that it was she, not Epstein, who had a friendship with Bill Clinton, and that she was the one who suggested and organized his trips on Epstein’s aircraft.
The Clintons were subpoenaed to appear under oath in front of the committee for a deposition in January, but failed to comply, arguing the subpoenas were without legal merit. Rather, they proposed a four-hour transcribed interview instead.
David Kendall, the Clintons’ lawyer, argued that the couple has no information relevant to the committee’s investigation of the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, and should not be required to appear for in-person testimony.
Kendall contended the Clintons should be permitted to provide the limited information they have to the committee in writing.
Comer had long threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they failed to appear before the committee, so when they didn’t, a contempt resolution was drafted and put to a vote.
The Oversight Committee passed the contempt resolution with nine Democrats voting in favor of it, teeing it up for a full House vote.
At the last minute, just before the resolution was to be voted on in the House, the Clintons agreed to sit for a deposition, postponing further consideration of a contempt vote.
Democrats on the committee said they hope this week’s testimony from the Clintons spark Republican committee members to investigate more of Epstein’s ties to President Donald Trump.
Trump has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said that he cut off contact with his former friend more than 20 years ago.
“We have said from day one that we want to talk to former President Bill Clinton, and the other person we want to talk to is current President Donald Trump,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said Friday. “And so we should be very clear that now that we’re going to hear from former President Clinton, I hope that Chairman Comer and the Republicans will join us in demanding that the person who actually appears more times in the files than the former president who we want to speak with is President Donald Trump.”
While the Clintons have agreed to speak with the committee behind closed doors, they have still pushed for public hearings as part of the committee’s investigation.
“I will not sit idly as they use me as a prop in a closed-door kangaroo court by a Republican Party running scared,” Bill Clinton wrote in a lengthy post on X. “If they want answers, let’s stop the games & do this the right way: in a public hearing, where the American people can see for themselves what this is really about.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise speaks alongside House Republican leadership during a news conference on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, on April 15, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — In the dead of night at 2:09 a.m., the House passed a bill to extend FISA through April 30 by unanimous consent, after Republicans tanked procedural votes on the controversial warrantless surveillance law.
The short-term extension buys GOP leaders more time to continue negotiations amid Republican infighting over the program that was set to expire on Monday.
Despite opposition from some GOP hardliners, Speaker Mike Johnson was this week still trying to determine a path forward to muscle through an 18-month clean extension of the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
The program allows the federal government to collect communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant, including when those people are interacting with Americans.
According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. government believes it’s a vital tool for protecting the country against “hostile foreign adversaries, including terrorists, proliferators, and spies, and to inform cybersecurity efforts.”
House Republican leaders postponed a debate and a procedural vote on FISA that had been scheduled for 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The Senate now will need to consider the legislation.
President Donald Trump has urged Republicans to back the measure and hosted a group of hardliners at the White House Tuesday night to find a path forward as the law is set to expire on Monday.
“I am asking Republicans to UNIFY, and vote together on the test vote to bring a clean Bill to the floor. We need to stick together when this Bill comes before the House Rules Committee today to keep it CLEAN!” Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday.
“Our Military Patriots desperately need FISA 702, and it is one of the reasons we have had such tremendous SUCCESS on the battlefield,” Trump added. “It has already prevented MANY such Attacks, and it is very important that it remain in full force and effect.”
CIA Director John Ratcliffe attended the House Republican closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday and also advocated for a clean extension of the program.
Hardline Republicans, who oppose a clean extension of the surveillance tool and demand reforms like a warrant requirement, were not convinced to change their position following the meeting.
Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris of Maryland said “no” when asked if progress was made on FISA during the meeting.
“They have to deal with the FISA court’s objection to the warrantless searches,” Harris said.
There has been a continued debate over Section 702 because it sometimes allows the government to collect Americans’ communications without a warrant.
“Discussions are ongoing still,” Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona said leaving.
Rep. Keith Self of Texas, who attended the White House meeting on Tuesday night, said he does not believe a clean extension will pass.
“We’ll see … but, I don’t think the clean extension will pass,” he said.
After the meeting, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise suggested some “minor changes” could be made to the legislation to appease the holdouts but did not divulge specifics.
“FISA has been important for our country’s national security,” Scalise said. “We’ve put some important much needed reforms in place the last time it was up for reauthorization and what President Trump has asked is that now we reauthorize it with those reforms in place, and that’s what we’re working to do. So, we’re having some final conversations. Not all of our members are quite there yet.”
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said several Republicans “want to see further reforms” to the program.
“We feel like we need improvements. Obviously, we want greater protections for citizens with respect to warrants,” he said. “We want to make sure that there’s greater penalties, for example, for government officials who abuse their authority and power.”
Scalise said Ratcliffe explained to Republicans how FISA is being “used in the real world to stop bad things from happening.”
As he was leaving, Ratcliffe said the meeting “went great.”
US President Donald Trump takes a question from a reporter after signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 31, 2026. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Monday shared new details about the harrowing lengths a U.S. aviator shot down in Iran went through to keep himself alive and the scope of the mission to rescue him.
“Despite the peril, the officer followed his training and climbed into the treacherous mountain terrain and started climbing toward a higher altitude, something they were trained to do in order to evade capture,” Trump recounted in a briefing on the operation to the media. “He scaled cliff faces, bleeding rather profusely, treated his own wounds, and contacted American forces to transmit his location.”
Trump said the weapons system officer, who ejected along with the pilot from an F-15 fighter jet, was “injured quite badly” and stranded in an area “teeming” with members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, militia and local authorities.
The pilot was rescued in a separate and challenging broad daylight mission on Friday.
But finding the second aviator, who landed miles away, was “comparable to hunting for a single sand of grain of sand in the middle of a desert,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said.
Trump said the U.S. has taken out Iran’s radar and air defense capabilities but the F-15 was shot down by a shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missile.
“They had probably a little luck because you got to get lucky,” the president said.
Trump said the second rescue mission involved involved “hundreds” of service members and 155 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers, 13 rescue aircraft and others, as well as efforts to deceive the Iranians about where U.S. forces were searching.
“We had seven different locations where they thought, and theywere very confused,” Trump said of the Iranians.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth described Iran’s military as “embarrassed and humiliated” by the rescue.
Trump said the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for finding “this little speck” in the mountainous area in which he was hiding.
Ratcliffe, the CIA director, said the U.S. deployed both human assets and “exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possesses” to locate the weapons system officer on Saturday, who was “concealed in a mountain crevice, still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA.”
Ratcliffe said some of the unique capabilities the CIA used are ones that only the president can deploy and that he would not publicly divulge what they were.
“As an agency, the CIA possesses unique capabilities that only the president can deploy. Some of these capabilities fall under covert action authorities. And because covert means exactly that, I’m not going to be able to tell you everything that you want to know,” Ratcliffe said.
Ratcliffe said finding the downed aviator was “comparable to hunting for a single sand of grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”
“This was also a race against the clock, as it was critical that we locate the downed aviator as quickly as possible, while at the same time keeping our enemies misdirected,” he added.
Hegseth said once the airman turned on his transponder, his first message was “God is Good.”
“In that moment of isolation and danger, his faith and fighting spirit shown through,” Hegseth said.
Trump said once it was determined that the two airplanes used to ferry in troops and equipment could not take off from the soft, wet sand in the makeshift landing area, “we blew them up to smithereens” so that the technology they carried couldn’t be captured by the Iranians.
“And we had a contingency plan, which was unbelievable, where lighter, faster aircraft came in and they took them out. We blew up the old planes. We blew them up to smithereens, because we had equipment on the planes that, frankly, we’d like to take, but I don’t think it was worthwhile spending another four hours there taking it off,” he said.
