Judge Boasberg cancels hearing on Trump deportations after Supreme Court ruling

(CHELAN COUNTY, Wash.) — Three young sisters who were found dead near a Washington campground after they left home for a “planned visitation” with their father died from suffocation, authorities said Monday.

Paityn Decker, 9; Evelyn Decker, 8; and Olivia Decker, 5, were located on June 2 near the Rock Island Campground in Chelan County, Washington, following a search, police said.

An autopsy completed on Friday determined the girls’ cause of death to be suffocation and the manner of death is homicide, according to the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office.

The girls had each been found with plastic bags over the heads and their wrists were zip-tied, according to court documents previously obtained by ABC News.

Their father, Travis Decker, who is wanted for their murders, remains at large.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — Lawyers for the Justice Department, facing pushback on the Trump administration’s efforts to deport alleged migrant gang members under the wartime Alien Enemies Act, told a federal judge in Colorado Monday that they would give such migrants at least 24 hours to file a habeas petition contesting their removal.

The move came during a hearing Monday in which U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney heard arguments over a temporary order she issued barring the administration from removing any noncitizens from Colorado under the 18th century authority that lets noncitizens be removed with little-to-no due process.

Regarding individuals who file for habeas corpus, the DOJ attorney said “the government, at this time, has no intent to remove those individuals pending litigation.”

In response, ACLU Colorado Legal Director Tim Macdonald argued that it is “preposterous” to suggest that a 24-hour notice would be enough time to allow people to file a habeas petition.

“I guess we should be peppering this court with hundreds of habeas petitions to the extent the government even allows us in the facility to talk to those people,” said Macdonald. “That’s not the way the rule of law should work.”

The hearing came two days after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the AEA deportations of Venezuelan migrants being held in northern Texas after attorneys for the men said the accused gang members had received notices saying they were about to be deported.

Macdonald on Monday argued that the notices are “chilling to anyone who cares about due process” and requested the judge grant a temporary restraining order blocking such deportations in Colorado.

“If your honor were to deny the TRO, [the government] could either begin removing people immediately from the District of Colorado or find another jurisdiction where they don’t yet have a TRO and begin removing people there,” Macdonald said. “This has life or death consequences.”

The Trump administration last month touched off a legal battle when it invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.

An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged that “many” of the men lack criminal records in the United States — but said that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose” and “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”

“The alleged harm to the government being unable to remove someone from a statute that was last seen more than 75 years ago … is trivial in comparison to the harms the humans that have been sent to the CECOT, potentially for the rest of their lives,” Macdonald argued Monday.

Judge Sweeney said her existing order would remain in effect until she issues a new ruling in 24 hours.

Also Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco will consider next steps after that judge last month put a temporary pause on the Trump administration’s plans to end legal protections and benefits for up to 350,000 Venezuelan migrants.

The hearing comes after an appeals court on Friday denied the Trump administration’s effort to block that pause.

The alleged Venezuelan gang members deported to El Salvador last month were sent to CECOT as part of a $6 million deal the Trump administration made with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for El Salvador to house migrant detainees as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In a post on social media on Sunday, Bukele proposed repatriating the 252 Venezuelans deported from the U.S. in exchange for the release of an equal number of “political prisoners” from Venezuela.

“I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and surrender of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners you hold,” Bukele wrote to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on X in Spanish.

Last week, Venezuelan Minister of Interior Relations Diosdado Cabello claimed that the Venezuelan government has “proved” that none of the Venezuelan migrants the Trump administration deported to El Salvador are members of Tren de Aragua.

The Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Treasury Department says it will phase out production of new pennies early next year after President Donald Trump asked the agency to stop producing the coin that has been part of the American currency for more than 230 years.

The Treasury Department said in a statement that the U.S. Mint, which it oversees, will stop producing new pennies once it runs out of blank templates used to make the mostly copper and zinc coins. The agency confirmed that it made its final order of penny blanks this month.

The retirement of the penny, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is expected to save the Treasury Department around $56 million annually in reduced material costs, according to the department’s statement.

“Additional savings will accrue as facility usage is adjusted and other efficiencies are achieved with the reduced production,” the Treasury Department said.

The agency announced the move just months after Trump criticized production of the coin in February as being “wasteful.”

In an announcement in February on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the cost of minting the coin featuring the profile of the country’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, is more than twice the currency’s face value.

“For far too long the United States has minted pennies, which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is wasteful!” Trump wrote. “I have instructed my Secretary of Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the cost of producing a single penny has more than doubled in the past 10 years, from 1.3 cents to 3.69 cents in 2024.

Printing a paper $1 bill is cheaper than producing a penny, which, according to the U.S. Mint, is comprised of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper and requires a smelting process to mold the metals. According to the Federal Reserve, it costs Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing 3.2 cents to print a $1 note – less than the cost of minting a penny.

The U.S. Mint reported losing $85.3 million on making pennies in fiscal year 2024, according to the Mint’s annual report to Congress.

The one-cent piece has been part of the fabric of America since 1792. Lincoln’s portrait has been embossed on it for 116 years, according the U.S. Mint’s website.

There are about 114 billion pennies currently in circulation in the United States, but they are severely underutilized, according to the Treasury Department.

“Given the cost savings to the taxpayer, this is just another example of our administration cutting waste for the American taxpayer and making the government more efficient for the American people,” the Treasury Department said in it’s statement.

The move would usually require the approval of Congress. Even though it’s part of the U.S. Treasury, “Congress authorizes every coin and most medals that the U.S. Mint manufactures and oversees the Mint’s operations under its Public Enterprise Fund,” according to the Mint’s website.

However, Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School, told the Associated Press in February that the U.S. Code, a list of general and permanent federal statues, gives Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent the authority to scrap the penny.

“This action seems to me entirely lawful and fully constitutional,” Tribe said.

The penny will become the 12th U.S. currency denomination to be retired, joining the half-cent coin, the 2-cent coin, the 20-cent piece and the “trime” – a silver three-cent piece issued from 1851 to 1873, Caroline Turco, assistant curator of the Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, told ABC News.

“We retired them for multiple different reasons, but normally because they were not being used or they just became too expensive to produce,” said Turco.

Is it a good idea

Mark Weller is executive director of Americans for Common Cents, a Washington, D.C., organization that provides research to Congress and the executive branch on the benefits of the penny. He told ABC News that he believes eliminating the coin “is an absolutely horrible idea.”

“It would be bad for consumers and it would be bad for the economy. It really would, in fact, not save money, but it would increase government losses and have some unintended economic consequences,” Weller said.

Weller – who disclosed to ABC News that he is also a lobbyist for companies in various industries, including Artazn, a Tennessee-based manufacturer of zinc products, some of which are used in making pennies – said doing away with the penny would prompt the U.S. Mint to increase production of the nickel.

According to the U.S. Mint, the cost of minting a single nickel is nearly 14 cents, almost three times the coin’s face value and more than three-and-a-half times the cost of minting a penny.

“Without the penny, nickel production could nearly double, which would increase the Mint’s losses,” Weller said. “So, it’s just hard to understand how you could produce more nickels that are losing more money than the penny and say you’re going to save money.”

Weller further said that ditching the penny could lead to the cost of goods going up for American consumers.

“If there’s one thing most economists agree on is that private business has a profit motive. So, the assumption would be that they would price things in a way that they would round up, not round down,” Weller said.

Although digital payments are increasingly more common, Weller said cash remains a crucial tool, “especially for someone economically underserved and under-banked.”

The U.S. Mint produced 3.2 billion pennies in fiscal year 2024, according to the Mint’s annual report to Congress, with an estimated 250 billion pennies currently in circulation.

History of the penny

Turco, whose museum is the education branch of the American Numismatic Association, told ABC News that one big misconception about the penny is that, technically, it has never existed in the United States.

“The American system does not have a ‘penny.’ That is a misnomer,” Turco said. “We have a cent because when we rebelled against the British they had pennies and that is a British word.”

Turco said the 1-cent piece was first produced in the United States in 1792 and was originally the size of the present-day quarter.

Turco said Lincoln, whose likeness is also on the $5 bill, was added to the coin in 1909.

The United States wouldn’t be the first country to eliminate the coin, Turco said. Canada, for example, decided to phase out its penny in 2012. In the U.S., the Department of Defense stopped using pennies at its overseas bases in 1980 because it became too expensive to ship them.

Regardless of the penny’s fate, Turco said she believes it will always be a part of the United States, at least colloquially, adding that such phrases as “a lucky penny” and “a penny saved is a penny earned” will likely always be a part of the American lexicon. Perhaps, ironically, the penny’s value could increase if its discontinued.

“I think collectors will still enjoy having them,” Turco said. “But I don’t think that the value of a penny will just skyrocket overnight.”

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