Federal judge rules Trump administration has to pay millions in foreign aid to nonprofits

(NEW YORK) — The coldest air of the season is moving into the Northeast and a huge part of the U.S., including the Gulf Coast, after a snowstorm.

At least 40 states, from Oregon to Florida and up to Maine, are on cold alerts on Monday morning.

The inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump in Washington will be a cold one, the coldest since President Ronald Reagan’s 1985 inauguration.

That one also had to be pushed indoors due to brutal cold, with the temperature at noon at only 7 degrees with wind chills below zero.

The forecast this year calls for temperature in the mid 20s with wind chills in the mid-teens, which isn’t as cold as it was in 1985, but is about 15 degrees colder than normal for Washington, D.C.

The cold expected on the East Coast is nothing compared to what people in the Upper Midwest are dealing with. Wind chills there are dipping as low as 40 to 50 degres below zero.

The bitter cold has reached the Gulf Coast where freeze alerts are issued and temperatures could reach the lower 20s and even teens this week.

The cold alerts follow a quickly moving little snowstorm that is done with, after most major cities from D.C. to NYC got just an inch or two. More fell inland.

Terra Alta, West Virginia, got about a foot of snow, along with 12.5 inches in Grantsville, Maryland. Boston, Massachusetts, had 4 inches so far, while Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, got about 2 inches.

Central Park in New York City saw about 1.6 inches and Washington, D.C., received less than a foot of snow ahead of Monday’s inauguration.
 

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(NEW YORK) — A New York resident making s’mores in their backyard is suspected of accidentally igniting a series of wildfires over the weekend that swept through hundreds of acres of the Pine Barrens region of Long Island, authorities said Monday.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina said the “operating theory” is that a fire was started at about 9:30 a.m. ET Saturday when a resident used cardboard to start a fire to make s’mores, a confection that includes toasted marshmallows and chocolate sandwiched between graham crackers.

“The individual making s’mores was unable to get the fire lit due to the winds, but they used cardboard to initially light that fire,” Catalina said during a news conference on Monday. “The person subsequently discovers that the fire does ignite in the backyard area and all goes up in fire.”

Catalina said the initial fire was extinguished by 10:30 a.m., but investigators believe embers blew about an eighth of a mile southeast of the s’mores fire and started a second blaze just before 1 p.m. in the Manorville community of Suffolk County.

Northwest winds of up to 45 mph quickly spread embers from Manorville, igniting a fire in Eastport and another fire in the publicly protected Pine Barrens region of West Hampton, according to Catalina.

“It was initially reported that there were four separate fires, or reported at one time,” Catalina said. “All of those fires are in a direct line with the strong northwest wind that was blowing that day. And it is believed that the embers from each fire traveled and continuously started more fires. So that is the operating theory right now.”

Catalina said the department has 25 arson investigators probing the blaze to determine the exact cause of the fire, but added, “So far, our investigation is pointing strongly toward an accidental origin for Saturday’s fires.”

The combined fires burned about 600 acres of wildland and prompted New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to declare a state of emergency. At least two commercial structures were damaged, officials said.

Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine said Monday that two volunteer firefighters were injured battling the blazes on Saturday, with one being airlifted to Stony Brook Hospital in Stony Brook with second-degree burns to the face. The other hospitalized firefighter suffered a non-life-threatening head injury, Romaine said.

The fires in Suffolk County are “100% contained,” Amanda Lefton, the acting commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said. Firefighters will remain on-scene over the next few days to prevent any spot fires from igniting, Lefton said.

Romaine said that at one point during Saturday’s blazes, firefighters feared the blaze would jump Sunrise Highway and spread into the more populated communities of Suffolk County.

He said the fire was fueled by hundreds of dead pine trees in the Pine Barrens region.

“Without the combined efforts of everyone involved, we would not have been able to stop this fire,” Romaine said. “This was a fire that could have been far more serious than it was.”

More than 600 firefighters from 80 volunteer Suffolk County fire departments responded to the blaze, battling flames and smoke visible from as far away as Connecticut, Romaine said.

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(NEW YORK) — The detaining of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student and Palestinian activist who possessed a green card, has raised questions about the deportation risks faced by lawful permanent residents amid the Trump administration’s escalating crackdown on immigration.

President Donald Trump’s administration, which has alleged that Khalil was a supporter of Hamas, has said it has the authority to deport Khalil under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“Secretary [Marco] Rubio reserves the right to revoke the visa of Mahmoud Khalil under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Secretary of State has the right to revoke a green card or a visa for individuals who are adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference this week.

Khalil, whose detention has sparked protests this week, is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.

Under the Immigration Nationality Act, which experts say is rarely invoked, the government can charge a green card holder as being deportable without being convicted of a crime if there are reasonable grounds to believe they engaged in certain criminal or terrorist activities.

But experts and immigration attorneys ABC News spoke with said the statute does not give the secretary of state the power to deport green card holders like Khalil without going through a procedure.

“The way the statute is constructed, it doesn’t mean that Secretary Rubio can just say, ‘Oh, I determined this, and therefore we’re just going to deport you out of the country,'” said Greg Chen of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “You would still need to go through a process.”

After the federal government invokes the statute, individuals like Khalil are entitled to argue their case before an immigration judge. Khalil is set to appear before an immigration judge later this month in Louisiana.

“There are some due process and protective procedures that the person is entitled to,” Chen said, “including being given a notice of the charges, and an opportunity to confront that evidence and to bring his or her own evidence in response.”

Chen told ABC News that typically it can take months or even years for immigration cases to “go from start to finish” — but because of Khalil’s “unique circumstances,” a judge can prioritize a case and expedite the process.

Experts told ABC News there are a number of reasons why an individual could lose their green card, including marriage fraud, immigration fraud, violent crimes and other offenses.

Andrew Nietor, an immigration attorney, told ABC News said that while there are cases where the government invokes the Immigration and Nationality Act for certain green card holders with criminal convictions, he said he has never seen a case like Khalil’s.

“I’ve never seen this ground of deportation invoked,” Nietor said. “It’s almost always a green card holder who is almost always in deportation proceedings because of some type of criminal conviction.”

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