US troops on the ground in LA immigration enforcement operation, DOD says
ABC News
(LOS ANGELES, Calif. ) — A large immigration enforcement operation is underway in Los Angeles with U.S. troops on the ground.
According to a post on X by the Defense Department, U.S. military personnel were on the ground to ensure the safety of federal agents.
“We will protect federal law enforcement and assist by establishing a security perimeter,” DOD wrote.
Defense officials said that 90 armed troops were involved in the operation in support of immigration authorities.
It was not immediately clear who or what was targeted, as the local Fox News Channel affiliate aired video of agents in a mostly empty park.
Defense officials had said the troops were deployed to set up a security perimeter to protect federal law enforcement officials against potentially hostile crowds.
All of the troops involved in the operation were activated members of the California National Guard.
The operation included some 17 Humvees, four military cargo trucks and two military ambulances, officials said.
The armed troops were told in advance of the raid that they could defend themselves and federal employees if needed. If a person was a threat, the troops could detain the individual briefly before handing them off to law enforcement, officials said.
Earlier this summer, Trump deployed some 4,700 troops to California under a law known as Title 10, which allows the use of military forces to protect federal personnel and federal property.
(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs may be able to survive a legal challenge, thanks in part to a Japanese zipper company that sued the Nixon administration 50 years ago.
Earlier this week, a federal judge in Florida nominated by Donald Trump suggested the president has the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs — basing his ruling on the precedent from a 1970s court case — but stopped short of issuing an order affirming the president’s right to impose sweeping tariffs.
In a largely technical ruling issued on Tuesday, U.S. Judge T. Kent Wetherell II transferred one of the first lawsuits challenging Trump’s tariffs to a different federal court while also weighing in on the legality of the controversial tariffs. Florida-based planner company Emily Ley Paper sued over the tariffs in April, asking Wetherell to invalidate them because Trump lacks the power to impose tariffs himself.
According to the judge, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 gives Trump the authority to set tariffs for reasons other than raising revenue. Wetherell wrote that Trump’s justification for the tariffs — both stemming the flow of illicit drugs into the country and resolving a trade imbalance — is sufficient to satisfy the terms set by Congress.
“This is a civil action commenced against the United States and it ‘arises out of’ a federal law—IEEPA—so the dispositive question framed by the parties’ filings is whether IEEPA ‘provid[es] for … tariffs,'” he wrote. “Defendants contend that it does; Plaintiffs contend that it doesn’t. The Court agrees with Defendants …”
The decision is at best a symbolic victory for the Trump administration, which is fending off a half dozen lawsuits challenging the legality of the recent “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Judge Wetherell ultimately decided to transfer the case from a federal court in Florida to the Court of International Trade in New York, meaning that, despite his favorable view of the tariffs, he won’t be the one deciding the case.
But the decision marks the first time a federal judge has suggested Trump’s imposition of tariffs falls within his authority as president, offering a positive sign that the Trump administration may find a receptive audience at the Court of International Trade. During two hearings over the last week, judges at the Court of International Trade have wrestled with the same question about Trump’s authority.
The question comes down to the interpretation of the 1970s law that Trump used to impose his tariffs. The IEEPA gives the president the right to “regulate” imports but does not explicitly mention tariffs. Lawyers challenging the tariffs have argued that Trump’s interpretation of the law oversteps his authority by treading into an issue controlled by Congress, but the Trump administration has pointed judges to a court decision related to the IEEPA’s legal predecessor — the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 — to guide the way.
Back when President Richard Nixon confronted the country’s 1971 economic crisis with steep tariffs on Japanese goods, a zipper company based in Japan called Yoshida sued Nixon over the tariffs.
The Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, the predecessor to the Court of International Trade, sided with the government and held that the TWAE gives the president the power to impose tariffs.
According to Wetherell, the same reasoning would apply 50 years later to the IEEPA, meaning Trump has the power to impose tariffs without the help of Congress. “The reasoning in Yoshida is persuasive, and the Court sees no reason why it would not apply to IEEPA because the operative language of IEEPA is identical to the operative language in TWEA,” the judge wrote.
Despite losing its legal battle, Yoshida remains in business today. Now operating under the name YKK, it produces more zippers than any other company in the world.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic lawmakers are “urgently” calling for the White House to issue a full disclosure of financial transactions leading up to President Donald Trump’s sudden pause on a sweeping set of tariffs earlier this month, raising concerns that people close to the president “potentially violated federal ethics and insider trading laws” surrounding his actions.
Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., sent a letter on Monday, signed by a group of 23 other Democrats, to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, calling for a commitment from all senior White House and executive branch employees to “expeditiously” transmit all reports related to their securities transactions since the start of Trump’s term to the Office of Government Ethics, requesting, too, that all of this mandatory reporting be made public.
The letter, shared first with ABC News, also asks that any extensions granted to White House employees related to their accounting reports become public, noting that this was practiced during the first Trump administration.
“We are concerned that no periodic transaction reports have been posted on the OGE database for White House officials’ individual disclosures at any point since President Trump took office on January 20, 2025,” Schiff and Levin wrote.
“There is reason to doubt that not a single senior White House official or employee has made any financial transactions triggering a periodic transaction report since the start of the Administration,” the letter continued. “As an important point of reference, during the first Trump Administration, periodic transaction reports filed by senior White House officials were made publicly available on the OGE’s disclosure database, as required by the Ethics in Government Act and the STOCK Act.”
The White House did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.
Hours before Trump announced he was rolling back tariffs to 10% to all countries except China, which sent the stock market soaring, he posted on Truth Social: “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!” and “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.”
Stocks were down the morning before Trump’s Truth Social post. Nasdaq soared 12.1% at close, the index’s largest single-day gain since 2021, while the Dow jumped 7.8%, its biggest one-day increase in five years.
“Newly identified data raises concerns about potential violations of federal ethics and insider trading laws by individuals close to the President with access to non-public information,” Schiff and Levin’s letter reads.
Trump has said he hasn’t engaged in insider trading himself — but that he couldn’t definitively claim that members of his administration have not. “I can commit to myself, that’s all I can commit to,” Trump told reporters on Friday, when asked whether he could assure Americans that no one in his administration was insider trading with information about trade deals coming together.
Trump said he hires “honorable people” but said, “I have thousands of people that work for me, but I can’t imagine anybody doing that.”
The Democrats requested a response from Wiles no later than May 9, 2025, and for a “detailed plan” for how the administration plans to address any officials and employees who may have failed to file required disclosures from the start of the administration.
“By failing to take these steps, the Administration would be withholding critical information from the American people regarding potential violations of federal ethics and insider trading laws. We look forward to reviewing all required reports and disclosures,” Schiff and Levin wrote.
“Senior White House officials have influence over or become witting of consequential policy decisions that can have market moving impacts,” the letter said. “It is critical that such officials adhere to all applicable ethics, conflict of interest, and disclosure requirements.”
“The American public deserves nothing less than full transparency, particularly in the context of the harm done to pension funds and retirement savings as a result of the President’s erratic trade policy,” it continued
The letter was signed by Sens. Chris Van Hollen, Elizabeth Warren, Jeffrey Merkley and Elissa Slotkin, as well as Reps. Brad Sherman, Brad Schneider, Angie Craig, Jerry Nadler, Rashida Tlaib, Cleo Fields, Yassamin Ansari, Seth Magaziner, Pramila Jayapal, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Nanette Diaz Barragán, Mark DeSaulnier, Madeleine Dean and Delia Ramirez.
Schiff had previously written to Wiles and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer over the rollbacks on Trump’s tariffs. In that letter, sent with Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., Schiff asked for an investigation into potential conflicts of interest. Schiff has not received a response from Wiles following his request, a spokesperson for the senator told ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Thursday over President Donald Trump’s emergency request to roll back nationwide injunctions blocking his executive order to end birthright citizenship.
The rare May sitting of the court sets the stage for a decision by this summer on whether Trump can move forward with plans to limit U.S. citizenship only to children born on American soil to lawful permanent residents.
The case is also expected to address the legality of individual district court judges single-handedly blocking a presidential policy nationwide. Trump is seeking to dissolve judicial orders preventing mass federal layoffs, funding freezes, and expedited deportation protocols.
For more than a century, courts and the government have interpreted the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause to apply to anyone born in the U.S., regardless of the citizenship status of a child’s parents.
The Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, states that all “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order unilaterally declaring that only newborns whose parents have permanent legal status are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. and therefore eligible to be citizens.
“This administration believes that birthright citizenship is unconstitutional,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt explained during a February briefing.
Three different sets of plaintiffs sued to block the order, including a group of 22 states, immigrant advocacy groups, and pregnant women whose soon-to-be-born children would be affected.
“Birthright citizenship is at the core of our Nation’s foundational precept that all people born on our soil are created equal, regardless of their parentage,” attorneys for the immigrant advocates wrote in legal briefs.
An estimated 150,000 children are born each year in the U.S. to parents who are not legal permanent residents, according to government data.
“Instead of the right to full participation and belonging in their home country — the United States — these children will be forced to live in the shadow,” the states warned in court filings, “under the constant risk of deportation while the appeals run their course.”
Federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state — and three federal appeals court panels — have issued nationwide injunctions keeping the Trump policy on hold during litigation, concluding that it very likely violates the Constitution and high court precedent.
“I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the case presented is as clear as it is here,” said Judge John Coughenour of the Western District of Washington during a January hearing in the case. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”
In 1898, the Supreme Court directly addressed the question of citizenship for children born to non-citizens on U.S. soil, ruling in the landmark case U.S. v Wong Kim Ark that they are Americans under the law.
“The [14th] Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States,” wrote Justice Horace Gray for the 6-2 majority. “Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States.”
The issue arrives back at the high court in an unusual posture.
Neither side has briefed the justices on the constitutionality of the executive order. Instead, the primary dispute is over the scope of injunctions issued by individual district court judges.
“It focuses only on whether it is appropriate for courts to issue nationwide injunctions against the President’s egregiously unconstitutional executive order, as opposed to remedies limited to people directly involved in the litigation or those living in states that have sued the government,” said Ilya Somin, a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute.
The Trump administration has complained that judges should only be allowed to block a contested policy insofar as it impacts the actual plaintiffs who brought the case — not block it universally.
“Only this Court’s intervention can prevent universal injunctions from becoming universally acceptable,” acting solicitor general Sarah Harris wrote in the government’s application to the court.
Many of the administration’s high-profile attempts to reshape the federal government, sharply curtail federal spending, transform immigration policy, and limit protections for LGBTQ people have been blocked by nationwide injunctions issued by district courts.
Justice Department attorneys from administrations of both political parties have long complained about the overuse of nationwide injunctions and alleged incursion on executive branch power. The court may use this case to articulate parameters for when such sweeping injunctions are warranted and when they are not.
“This Court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched,” Harris said, calling on the justices to narrow the injunctions applied to the birthright citizenship order.
Immigrant advocates, civil rights organizations, and Democratic state attorneys general have warned that blocking Trump’s birthright citizenship in some places but not others — or, exempting a small group of plaintiffs but not others — would create chaos.
“A situation where Trump’s order is in force for some people, but not others (or, alternatively, in some states but not others), creates obvious confusion and anomalies,” he said, “especially when it comes to a policy (citizenship rules) that is supposed to be uniform throughout the nation.”
Some legal scholars say it may be impossible for the court to address the question of nationwide injunctions without also resolving the underlying dispute over Trump’s attempt to redefine birthright citizenship.
“They’re going to have to address the whole thing,” said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law scholar and professor at South Texas College of Law. “The only way to avoid the scope of the injunction question is to rule on the merits. I believe they’re going to roll against Trump. He gets maybe one or two votes but not much more than that.”
A decision in the case is expected by early summer.
