Supreme Court allows Trump administration to end protections for Venezuelan migrants
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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans who were protected from deportation and allowed to work in the United States.
The court approved the administration’s request to lift a lower court’s order that barred it from ending the protections.
In their application to the high court, lawyers representing the government had said the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California undermined “the Executive Branch’s inherent powers as to immigration and foreign affairs,” when it halted the administration from ending protections and work permits in April 2025 as opposed to the original date in October 2026.
Ahilan Arulanantham, who is representing TPS holders in the case, said he believes this to be “the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern U.S. history.”
“This is the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern U.S. history. That the Supreme Court authorized this action in a two-paragraph order with no reasoning is truly shocking,” Arulanantham said. “The humanitarian and economic impact of the Court’s decision will be felt immediately, and will reverberate for generations.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon’s independent watchdog has announced it has agreed to a request from top senators and is launching a probe into the use of the commercial messaging app Signal by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior Trump administration officials to discuss a future U.S. military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen.
Last week, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., sent a letter to DOD acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins requesting an expedited inquiry into that Signal discussion.
“The purpose of this memorandum is to notify you that we are initiating the subject evaluation,” Stebbins wrote in a memo to the offices of the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense. “We are conducting this evaluation in response to a March 26, 2025 letter I received from the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, requesting that I conduct an inquiry into recent public reporting on the Secretary of Defense’s use of an unclassified commercially available messaging application to discuss information pertaining to military actions in Yemen in March 2025.”
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business. Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements,” Stebbins added in the memo.
“We may revise the objective as the evaluation proceeds. We plan to perform this evaluation in accordance with the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency ‘Quality Standards for Inspection and Evaluation,'” he said.
Last week, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed he had been added to a Signal text group that appeared to include senior Trump administration national security officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, discussing plans to strike against Houthi targets in Yemen in mid-March.
Senior Trump administration officials including Hegseth pushed back on The Atlantic’s description of the conversation and argued no classified war plans had been discussed.
(WASHINGTON) — Speaker Mike Johnson is working to keep the focus on the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” on Friday as all eyes remain on President Donald Trump and Elon Musk amid their bitter public feud.
Johnson is pushing the House-passed bill that advances Trump’s legislative agenda, which is being negotiated in the Senate. Musk has publicly criticized the bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination” and encouraging members of Congress to “kill the bill.”
Musk’s criticism reached a boiling point on Thursday — ending with an explosive spat between the president and the tech billionaire. On Friday morning, Trump told ABC News that Musk had “lost his mind.”
Johnson was once one of Musk’s most powerful boosters on Capitol Hill. Johnson met with Musk repeatedly and would even talk him through legislation by phone. Musk even addressed a meeting of House Republicans in March.
Asked by ABC News if it was a mistake to trust Musk, Johnson dismissed the question and turned the focus back to the bill.
“I’m not going to engage in this back-and-forth stuff. I don’t think the American people care much about Twitter wars. I think they care about us accomplishing our legislative agenda, and the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ does that.”
Johnson reiterated Friday that he has a job to do — and it’s not to get involved in the Musk-Trump squabble. Still, Johnson engaged in the online battle Thursday, responding to a Musk post criticizing the speaker.
Several other House Republicans are weighing in on the dispute and whether Musk’s influence and strong opinions about the megabill could influence its passage.
“I think Elon probably did change the trajectory of this bill two or three days ago when he came out against it because people trust the guy who can land rockets backwards more than they do the politicians,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie said. Massie was one of two House Republicans who opposed the bill when the House voted on it last month.
GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene sided with both Trump and Musk on different aspects of the bill — favoring Musk on the price tag. She said ultimately she thinks the focus should be on passing Trump’s agenda.
“I don’t think lashing out on the Internet is the way to handle any kind of disagreement, especially when you have each other’s cell phones,” Greene told reporters Friday. “I hope this gets worked out, but I will tell you right now that people are going to be focused on making sure that we get the agenda that we voted for.”
Republican Rep Troy Nehls, a staunch Trump ally, called for an end to the spat between the president and Musk, saying “enough is enough.”
Despite Musk publicly clashing with the head of their party — even seeming to suggest the House should impeach the president — some Republicans didn’t go out of their way to bad mouth the billionaire.
“Elon Musk can use his funds as he sees fit,” Republican Rep. Ralph Norman said when asked if he’s worried Musk would primary Republicans. “Again, he’s a patriot and if he disagrees, I respect the honesty, really.”
Republican Rep. Warren Davidson called for unity.
“I just hope that people that I care a lot about get along, that they mend, that they patch up their relationship,” he said. “It’s disappointing to see them arguing in public that way.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries capitalized on the clash, calling it a “welcome development.”
“To the extent that the developments of this week will make it more likely that we can kill the GOP tax scam, that’s a welcome development,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Three federal prosecutors who worked on the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned Tuesday — while they were on administrative leave — instead of agreeing to “preconditions” on them returning to the office, sending a sharp letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and accusing him of pressuring them to falsely “express regret and admit some wrongdoing” in the case.
“The Department placed each of us on administrative leave ostensibly to review our, and the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s Office’s, handling of the Adams case,” the trio of prosecutors assigned to Adams’ case, Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom, wrote to Blanche. “It is now clear that one of the preconditions you have placed on our returning to the Office is that we must express regret and admit some wrongdoing by the Office in connection with the refusal to move to dismiss the case. We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none.”
The three lawyers were part of a group in the Justice Department who refused to sign off on the dismissal of the bribery case against Adams in February. They were placed on administrative leave last month as an investigation played out.
“We have served under Presidents of both parties, advancing their priorities while pursuing justice without fear or favor,” the three prosecutors wrote. “The role of a career prosecutor is not to set policy. But a prosecutor must abide by the oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States and the rules of professional ethics set by the bar and the courts.”
They later added, “Now, the Department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington. That is wrong.”
The fallout from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s request that the Southern District of New York dismiss charges without prejudice began in mid-February. Danielle Sassoon, then-acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned from her position Feb. 13 after suggesting DOJ leadership, including Bove, were explicitly aware of a quid pro quo suggested by Adams’ attorneys, saying Adams’ vocal support of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies would be boosted by dismissing the indictment against him.
“Rather than be rewarded, Adams’s advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case,” Sassoon wrote at the time. “Although Mr. Bove disclaimed any intention to exchange leniency in this case for Adams’s assistance in enforcing federal law, that is the nature of the bargain laid bare in Mr. Bove’s memo.”
Five other DOJ officials would join Sassoon in resigning from the office in protest, while at least six top Department of Justice officials refused to sign onto the case’s dismissal, sources told ABC News last month.
Adams was indicted last year in the Southern District of New York on five counts in an alleged long-standing conspiracy connected to improper benefits, illegal campaign contributions and an attempted cover-up. He had pleaded not guilty.
The dismissal paperwork was later signed by an attorney in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, leaving the decision to dismiss the case to a federal judge in New York.
On April 2, Judge Dale Ho officially dismissed the case, however, he did so with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be revived. The DOJ had asked for the charges to be dismissed without prejudice and said they could be brought against Adams again following the November mayoral election.
But three weeks later, the fallout continued with Tuesday’s letter.
The three prosecutors ended their letter to Blanche: “Serving in the Southern District of New York has been an honor. There is no greater privilege than to work for an institution whose mandate is to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons. We will not abandon this principle to keep our jobs. We resign.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.
