Trade court says Trump’s 10% global tariffs are unlawful
US President Donald Trump during a military Mother’s Day event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal court on Thursday concluded that President Donald Trump’s global 10% tariffs are unlawful, a decision that the Department of Justice quickly appealed.
In a 2-1 decision, a panel of judges on the Court of International Trade concluded that the Trump administration misread the law used to justify the sweeping tariffs.
The ruling marks the second time the president’s tariff regime has been found to be illegal, with the Supreme Court earlier this year affirming a decision from the Court of International Trade blocking Trump’s first round of tariffs.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal at the Court of International Trade on Friday, signaling plans to challenge yesterday’s ruling.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., handles appeals from the Court of International Trade. The tariffs in question are set to expire in late July and it is unclear if the court will hear the case in time to meaningfully rule on the issue.
The immediate impact of Thursday’s ruling is also unclear. The court granted an injunction for two small businesses and the state of Washington; however, the judges dismissed the claims brought by the larger group of states because they lacked standing.
The dispute boiled down to the definition of the phrase “balance-of-payments deficits.” The Court of International Trade rejected the Trump administration’s argument that the term “balance-of-payments deficits” in Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 is the same as a “trade deficit.”
“It is clear that Congress was aware of the differences in the words it chose,” the majority wrote.
The judges acknowledged that the term “causes some confusion,” but concluded that the Trump administration’s interpretation was incorrect.
“The Government argues that in today’s world, the current account is the proper component for identifying a balance-of-payments deficit,” the majority wrote. “Problematically for the Government, and as discussed herein, Congress in 1974 identified the settlement, liquidity, and basic balance deficits as ‘balance-of-payments deficits.'”
The global 10% tariff took effect in February and by statute is set to expire in late July.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit on March 11, 2026, in Washington, DC. The global investment management company held the summit consisting of leaders from government, business, and labor to address expanding U.S. infrastructure. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.) — A man has been arrested for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at the San Francisco home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the company said.
No one was hurt, according to the San Francisco Police Department and OpenAI.
The incident unfolded around 4 a.m. Friday when someone “threw an incendiary destructive device” at the house, which sparked a fire on an exterior gate, police said.
The suspect fled on foot, but police said his description was dispatched to officers.
Around 5 a.m., officers responded to OpenAI’s headquarters where a man was allegedly threatening to burn down a building, and they “recognized the male to be the same suspect from the earlier incident,” police said.
The 20-year-old suspect was arrested and charges are pending, police said.
The company said the situation is under control and there is no immediate threat to its offices.
“We deeply appreciate how quickly SFPD responded and the support from the city in helping keep our employees safe,” OpenAI said in a statement. “We’re assisting law enforcement with their investigation.”
The SFPD’s Special Investigations and Arson Units are leading the investigation, the company said. The FBI said it’s aware of the incident and is working with San Francisco police.
Jeffrey Epstein in Cambridge, Ma., Sept 8, 2004. (Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein appears to have successfully hidden a trove of potential evidence of his crimes from investigators for more than a decade, according to documents released this month by the Department of Justice.
Internal correspondence between Epstein’s attorneys and private investigators, as well as previously sealed court filings, suggest that the disgraced financier went to extreme lengths to hide the potential evidence during the critical three-year period when local and federal law enforcement began investigating him before he secured a lenient plea deal that allowed him to avoid a lengthy prison sentence.
Less than two weeks before the Palm Beach Police Department raided Epstein’s mansion in October 2005, a private investigator retained by Roy Black, a criminal defense lawyer for the disgraced financier, removed a trove of evidence from the home, including multiple computers, more than two dozen phone directories, and sexually explicit material, according to documents released by the DOJ.
State and federal prosecutors appeared to have never accessed the materials while they investigated Epstein, potentially shielding Epstein from criminal exposure and contributing to how he was able to evade justice for more than a decade.
A 2020 report from the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility about the issues with the investigation later concluded that the computers contained “potentially critical” evidence that could have changed the trajectory of the case.
“There was good reason to believe the computers contained relevant — and potentially critical — information; and it was clear Epstein did not want the contents of his computers disclosed,” the report said.
In the two decades that have followed — despite multiple investigations into Epstein’s criminal actions — the boxes of sensitive evidence appear to have been passed between representatives of Epstein but never fully recovered by law enforcement.
While law enforcement has long been aware of the removed computers, documents released earlier this month by the Department of Justice for the first time shed light on the evidence removed from the home and the ill-fated effort to retrieve them by law enforcement.
The documents outlining the trove of removed evidence were first reported by The Telegraph.
‘Items of potential evidentiary value’
According to a 2005 memo from private investigator William Riley to Black, another private investigator, Paul Lavery, visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home at Black’s direction to remove “items of potential evidentiary value” from the home.
Attempts by ABC News to contact Lavery and Riley Wednesday about the developments were unsuccessful. Riley’s partner in his private investigative firm Steve Kiraly declined to comment.
Black died last year, and an attorney at his former firm said he was occupied with an ongoing trial on Wednesday and unavailable.
Searching Epstein’s home less than two weeks before police would raid it, Lavery removed more than a hundred pieces of potential evidence, including three computers, 29 bound telephone directories, a three-page listing of nearby masseuses, and at least ten photos of nude or partially nude women, according to the memo. At least two of the photos had handwritten messages on them, including from a woman who wrote, “You better never forget about me” before signing her name and ending the note “Class of 2005,” the memo said.
Lavery also removed more than dozen items of sexual paraphernalia, five pieces of women’s underwear, Epstein’s concealed carry permit, an Epstein identification card for Harvard University, and more than $2,000 in cash, according to the memo. Among the removed items was also more than forty mainly pornographic VHS tapes and books titled “‘Compleat Slave’ — creating and living an erotic dominant/submissive lifestyle” and “‘Training with Miss Abernathy’ — a workbook for erotic slaves and their owners,” the memo said.
The detective with the Palm Beach Police Department who was in charge of the investigation noted in a court filing that several items in Epstein’s home “were conspicuously absent” when they arrived to execute the search warrant.
“For example, there were several hanging file folders that had their contents removed, and the pre-existing security cameras that I had observed during my last visit to Mr. Epstein’s residence were in place but were not connected to recording equipment,” he said in the filing. “In addition, at each location where a computer had been present, computer monitors, printers, and other peripheral devices were present but the computers (CPU-Central processing unit) themselves were removed.”
A FBI later agent attested in a then-sealed court filing that the items “were purposely removed from Mr. Epstein’s home in anticipation of an execution of a search warrant” and may contain vital evidence.
“A review of Mr. Epstein’s computers may provide additional electronically stored message logs which could be further evidence of Mr. Epstein’s intent to travel to engage in sexual activity with teenagers he recruited from five Palm Beach County high schools,” the court filing said.
According to the filing, one of the computers potentially contained critical surveillance camera footage because it previously was hard-wired to the home’s surveillance system.
“The FBI investigation has determined that Mr. Epstein was actively involved in lewd and lascivious conduct with minor females as early as March 2004. To the extent that Mr. Epstein tries to deny that any or all of the victims ever visited his home, video footage of them at the house would rebut such a claim,” the filing said.
A review of the Department of Justice’s Epstein library and an index of evidence released last year by the Trump administration earlier this year suggests the materials were never fully recovered by law enforcement. Testimony from an FBI analyst during the 2021 trial of Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell suggested that investigators recovered a copy of at least one of the computers, though the original computers and physical documents appear to have never been located.
‘She needed to gather the stuff from the house’
The removal of the computers and other items was memorialized in multiple interviews conducted by law enforcement in the following two decades.
A woman who worked as a personal assistant for Epstein told the FBI in 2021 that she was instructed by the disgraced financier to gather his items so an unidentified man could collect them from Epstein’s Palm Beach Home.
“[She] recalled the conversation she had with EPSTEIN was where he told her that something happened to his detriment and she needed to gather the stuff from the house,” an FBI agent wrote in a report summarizing her account.
While the assistant said she believed she would likely be meeting with a member of law enforcement, she said she arrived at the home, gathered the material, and provided it to an unknown man. The assistant said she similarly removed items from Epstein’s island.
Epstein’s property manager also recounted the handover in his interview with federal agents, describing that Lavery retrieved the computers in the fall of 2005.
In the following years, law enforcement unsuccessfully made multiple attempts to retrieve the items, though court documents suggest that their attempt to recover the evidence was largely focused on the three computers, rather than the trove of physical evidence — such as dozens of address books and sexual paraphernalia — that were also removed from the home.
‘Never seen the equipment again’
As the investigation into Epstein heightened in the months following the search, Epstein’s lawyers fought to keep the materials out of the hands of law enforcement, arguing in previously sealed grand jury materials that the attempt to recover the materials were “simply the most recent of a series of highly intrusive and unusual attempts to acquire highly personal and/or privileged information” about Epstein.
In court filings, Epstein’s attorneys appeared to acknowledge that the items were removed from the home prior to the search but argued the materials were irrelevant to the investigation and protected by attorney-client privilege.
“Without disclosing any work done by Mr. Riley or his firm on Mr. Epstein’s behalf and at my direction, any actions thereafter taken by him or the firm were taken in connection with the legal representation of Mr. Epstein,” Epstein’s attorney Roy Black told the court in a then-sealed motion.
The exact location of the materials in the months following the search is not clear, though recently released documents suggest that the materials quickly changed hands. According to notes taken by federal agents in 2007, Lavery claims that he promptly delivered the items to Riley, another private investigator who worked for Epstein and managed multiple storage units for the financier, the Telegraph first reported.
“I took the items that were given to me,” Lavery said, according to notes. “Never seen the equipment again.”
Riley was subpoenaed for the information but appears to never have handed over the material, objecting to the requests with the help of Epstein’s lawyers. During the critical three-year period when Epstein was investigated by law enforcement before reaching a plea deal that allowed him to avoid a lengthy prison sentence, the trove of evidence was never accessed by law enforcement.
When Epstein fulfilled his objection to plead guilty in state court pursuant to his non-prosecution agreement, the grand jury subpoena was withdrawn. When victims suing Epstein began seeking the materials in 2009, lawyers for the convicted sex offender appeared to spring into action to further ensure the materials would not be disclosed, citing the terms of the non-prosecution agreement.
“Over the weekend I learned that plaintiff’s counsel are looking to get from me the computers and paperwork I took from Jeff’s house prior to the Search Warrant. I have them locked in storage and would like to know what to do with them,” Riley told an attorney for Epstein. “They are no longer needed in the criminal case, I assume.”
Riley later confirmed in a letter to Epstein’s attorney Robert Critton that he would continue storing the materials in a “safe and secure location.”
“If at any time, you are unable to maintain possession of those materials or have any concern whatsoever that Mr. Epstein’s possession may be compromised in any manner, please advise me immediately such that we can take the necessary actions to protect and preserve those materials as is required in the Non-Prosecution Agreement,” Critton wrote in a letter memorializing their conservation. Critton died in 2020.
Email correspondence between Riley and Epstein suggest that the disgraced financier was paying to keep the materials in a storage unit as late as 2010, though their location in the following decade — when investigators in New York opened a new investigation into Epstein and charged him with sex crimes before his 2019 death by suicide — appears to still be a mystery.
The shotgun and gas canister that were allegedly carried by 21-year-old man who was fatally shot, February 22, 2026, at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. (Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office)
(NEW YORK) — A man authorities alleged was carrying a shotgun and a gas canister was fatally shot by U.S. Secret Service agents and a deputy sheriff early Sunday outside of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, according to the Secret Service.
The shooting unfolded around 1:30 a.m. local time near the north main gate of the estate, Rafael Barros, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Miami field office, said at a news conference later Sunday.
“We want to be clear: the president of the United States was not in the state of Florida,” Barros said.
No “Secret Service protectees” were at the property at the time of the shooting, according to a statement from a Secret Service spokesperson earlier Sunday.
The FBI identified the man killed as Austin Tucker Martin, 21, of Moore County, North Carolina.
According to North Carolina state records, an individual named Austin Tucker Martin is listed as the founder of the business Fresh Sky Illustrations LLC. The business features various drawings of golf courses in North Carolina and is described on its website as “an artwork company that mainly focuses on bringing to life the hopeful feeling of being on a golf course.”
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at Sunday’s news conference outside of Mar-a-Lago that the individual was shot after he allegedly pointed the shotgun at the law enforcement officers.
Bradshaw said the man had made his way into the inner perimeter of Mar-a-Lago and that he was confronted by two Secret Service Agents and a deputy sheriff.
“They confronted a white male that was carrying a gas can and a shotgun,” Bradshaw said.
He later held up a printed copy of photo he said showed the weapon and canister.
“He was ordered to drop those two pieces of equipment that he had with him, at which time he put down the gas can, raised the shotgun to a shooting position,” Bradshaw said of the alleged intruder.
“At that point in time, the deputy and the two Secret Service agents fired their weapons and neutralized the threat,” Bradshaw said, adding that the individual was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Fortunately, nobody was injured inside because of the quick action that was taken by the deputy and the Secret Service,” Bradshaw said.
Investigators are determining how many shots were fired in the incident and whether the alleged intruder fired a shot at the law enforcement officers, who were part of the security detail at Mar-a-Lago, Bradshaw said. He added that it wasn’t yet known whether the shotgun was loaded.
The FBI is spearheading the investigation, said Brett Skiles, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, adding that FBI personnel was on the scene collecting evidence.
A motive for the incident is unknown at this time, officials said.
Skiles asked residents living near Mar-a-Lago to check their exterior security cameras for footage from Saturday night into early Sunday morning for “anything that looks suspicious or out of place,” and to contact the FBI or the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office if they do.
