(NEW YORK) — Millions in the Southwest are on alert for fire weather through the end of the week due to extreme or critical risks posed by warmer temperatures, high winds and a low relative humidity, officials said.
Red flag warnings are in place for 4.5 million people — beginning on Wednesday and continuing through the rest of the workweek — due to the combination of warmer-than-normal temperatures, a relative humidity of around 10% to 15% and winds gusts between 25 to 40 mph, officials said.
In New Mexico, portions of the state, including Albuquerque, are under an extreme threat — the highest warning by the National Weather Service — due to wind gusts that could reach 60 mph on Thursday, along with a relative humidity between 5% and 10%. The extreme warning means a “threat to life and property from existing or potential wildfires due to weather and fuel conditions.”
Portions of eastern Arizona and New Mexico are under a critical fire risk, the second-highest level, including Tucson, Catalina Foothills, Las Cruces and Roswell, officials said.
These dry, gusty conditions will increase the threat of wildfires to these areas and will continue to intensify on Thursday, with most of New Mexico, western Texas, southeastern Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle under a critical threat, officials said.
The conditions should ease heading into the weekend, but portions of New Mexico and the Southwest could still remain in a critical wildfire threat through Friday, officials said.
Along with the threat of wildfires, another storm system will bring more rain and severe weather across the central U.S. beginning on Thursday and continuing throughout the weekend.
Five million people, including eastern Nebraska, Iowa, southern Minnesota and northern Missouri, are under a slight risk for severe weather on Thursday, which could bring hail, damaging winds and even possible tornadoes. Isolated severe storms could impact Omaha, Nebraska; and Davenport, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Thursday afternoon.
This system is expected to expand on Friday, with areas from north Texas through Michigan under a slight risk for scattered severe storms.
(CAMBRIDGE, Mass.) — A temporary restraining order on President Donald Trump barring foreign Harvard University students from entering the U.S. will remain in effect until next Monday while a federal judge considers arguments made for a preliminary injunction.
The temporary block was due to expire on Thursday before being extended Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs.
Harvard’s lawyers argued Trump’s proclamation violates its First Amendment rights and is outside the authority of the executive branch. Listing the actions taken by the government against Harvard in recent weeks, attorney Ian Gershengorn argued in a court hearing Monday in Boston that the move was retaliation and viewpoint discrimination against the institution.
Gershengorn argued the president is not restricting entry, but instead limiting what you do and who you associate with after you enter. The permissible way to classify a class of aliens is based on the character of the alien, he argued.
The government pushed back, arguing the administration does not “trust” Harvard and that it did not monitor the “aliens” that it brought into the U.S. The government said bringing in foreigners is a privilege not a right, according to Tiberius Davis, counsel to the assistant attorney general.
“We don’t trust Harvard to vet, host, monitor or discipline” foreigners, Davis argued. Davis also raised concerns about Harvard’s “foreign entanglements” with the Chinese government and said it did not provide sufficient information to the government on foreign students — which Harvard has denied.
Harvard University filed the lawsuit against the government after U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced it was canceling Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which would bar the school from enrolling foreign students.
The suit was later amended to include the proclamation and Harvard moved to request a second block on Trump’s proclamation. That would have gone into effect for at least six months before it was blocked by Burroughs.
The judge questioned arguments made by the government over its concerns about Harvard that motivated the proclamation.
“I can’t imagine that anything that you just described applies only to Harvard,” Burroughs said.
Davis argued the government is free to investigate other institutions and said that “a lot of these other universities are willing to” do more to address issues on campus.
Davis also argued that different government agencies chose to terminate grants with Harvard because they believed the institution was not following the law, saying that move was not retaliation either. Davis also said Harvard is not being singled out with grant terminations because other institutions have suffered the same.
The government argued it is not singling out Harvard, but rather other institutions have been more willing to take action to address issues on campus, while Harvard has not, Davis said.
“There’s a lack of evidence of retaliation here,” Davis said in court.
Burroughs said if the point is to root out antisemitism, “Why aren’t we letting in people from Israel?”
Davis argued antisemitism was just one part of the issue, along with foreign entanglements and not providing sufficient information to the government. Because of their other conduct on campus and their inattentiveness to it “we don’t trust them,” Davis said.
“They don’t have to pull over everybody who’s speeding. Frankly they can’t do that,” Davis said.
Pushing back on arguments that it did not monitor its students, Harvard said it is the government’s responsibility to vet students being allowed into the country.
“The vetting is done by the State Department in their visa process,” Gershengorn said.
At one point in the Monday hearing, the judge asked Harvard’s attorneys why it did not name the president in its lawsuit, asking if he needed to appear in this case.
Gershengorn said it sued the people who are tasked with implementing the proclamation.
Gershengorn argued Trump’s usage of the proclamation to block entry of foreign Harvard students is a “vast new authority to regulate the domestic conduct of domestic institutions,” a departure from how this proclamation has been used in the past. Gershengorn said it has been used to block the entry of individuals or nationals of a country that have “done something bad.”
The question is not whether the action is lawful or not, Gershengorn argued. If lawful action is taken as a First Amendment-motivated action, it is no longer lawful, he added.
Gershengorn said what Harvard has suffered over the last two months is probably the most “irregular” and “improper” action any institution has suffered.
Harvard pushed back against claims there is widespread violence on campus, saying the story the government cites identified two incidents of violence on the basis of religion. The government is “throwing things at the wall to see what sticks,” Gershengorn said.
Harvard has alleged that the administration is in an “escalating campaign of retaliation” against the school. After Harvard publicly refused to comply with demands made by the Trump administration, the administration responded by freezing more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to the school.
(WASHINGTON) — A second federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funds from schools that participate in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Hours after a New Hampshire judge issued a similar order on Thursday, a federal judge in Maryland appointed by Trump issued a broader ruling that prohibits the Department of Education from using federal funding to end DEI initiatives within public schools.
“This Court takes no view as to whether the policies at issue here are good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair,” wrote U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher of Maryland. “But this Court is constitutionally required to closely scrutinize whether the government went about creating and implementing them in the manner the law requires. The government did not.”
Judge Gallagher wrote that the group that brought the lawsuit — the American Federation of Teachers, American Sociological Association and a public school in Oregon — successfully proved they would be irreparably harmed and the Education Department letter at issue likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
“This Court ends where it began—this case is about procedure,” she wrote. “Plaintiffs have shown that the government likely did not follow the procedures it should have, and those procedural failures have tangibly and concretely harmed the Plaintiffs. This case, especially, underscores why following the proper procedures, even when it is burdensome, is so important.”
Earlier, a judge in New Hampshire said the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes.
In an 82-page order, U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing the memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.
“Ours is a nation deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,” Judge McCafferty wrote, adding the “right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is…one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.”
“In this case, the court reviews action by the executive branch that threatens to erode these foundational principles,” she wrote.
Judge McCafferty stopped short of issuing a nationwide injunction, instead limiting the relief to any entity that employs or contacts with the groups that filed a lawsuit challenging the DOE’s memo.
Education groups sued the Department of Education in February after the agency warned all educational institutions in a letter to end discrimination based on race or face federal funding consequences.
The lawsuit criticized what it said was an unlawful “Dear Colleague” letter which will “irreparably harm” schools, students, educators, and communities across the country.
“This vague and clearly unconstitutional memo is a grave attack on students, our profession and knowledge itself,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement at the time.
In justifying her preliminary injunction Thursday, Judge McCafferty called out the DOE for taking a position on DEI that flatly contradicts its own policies from a few years ago.
“Prior to the 2025 Letter, the Department had not indicated a belief that programs designed to promote diversity, equity, or inclusion constituted unlawful discrimination. Nor had it taken the position that schools necessarily behave unlawfully when they act with the goal of increasing racial diversity. In fact, the Department had taken the opposite position,” the judge wrote.
In addition to finding the policy is likely unconstitutional and illegal, Judge McCafferty also criticized the Department of Education for making funding conditional on DEI programming, though the judge said the memo “does not even define what a DEI program is,” pointing to “vague and expansive prohibitions” in the DOE’s letter from February.
The Department of Education has not yet commented on the rulings.
(COOPERSTOWN, NY) — Pete Rose, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and 15 other deceased baseball players have been removed from MLB’s permanent list of banned players, according to a memo from the league’s commissioner.
The decision allows Rose, who accepted a ban for life from MLB in 1989 for gambling on games, to be eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame posthumously.
The decision only applies to dead players who have been placed on the ineligible list.
“The National Baseball Hall of Fame has always maintained that anyone removed from Baseball’s permanently ineligible list will become eligible for Hall of Fame consideration,” Hall of Fame Chairman Jane Forbes Clark said in a statement. “Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered.”
However, a vote by the Historical Overview Committee, often known as the veterans committee, which considers players who made their greatest impact prior to 1980, will not vote on candidates to be included in the hall again until December 2027.
Rose died last October at 83 years old. Rose petitioned the league to be removed from the list in 1992, 1998, 2003, 2015 and 2022 — but either was rejected or received no response each time, including from Manfred.
Rose and Jackson are likely the only two players on the list of players whose body of work would make them likely to be voted to the Hall of Fame.
Rose’s workmanlike attitude and hustle on the field won him innumerable fans. By the end of his 24-year career, 19 of which were with the Cincinnati Reds, he held the record for most career hits, as well as games played, plate appearances and at-bats. He was also a 17-time All-Star, the 1973 NL MVP and 1963 Rookie of the Year.
He also won three World Series — two with Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine” clubs in 1975 and 1976, and a third with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980.
But Rose will always be remembered for being banned for life over gambling on games while he was managing the Reds.
With Rose under suspicion, new MLB Commissioner Bart Giamatti commissioned an investigation led by John Dowd, a lawyer with the Department of Justice, in April 1989. By June, the damning report was released, documenting at least 52 bets on Reds games in 1987, his first season as solely a manager after serving as player/manager for three seasons. The bets totaled thousands of dollars per day, according to the Dowd Report.
“While it is my preference not to disturb decisions made by prior Commissioners, Mr. Rose was not placed on the permanently ineligible list by Commissioner action but rather as the result of a 1989 settlement of potential litigation with the Commissioner’s Office,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday. “My decision today is consistent with Commissioner Giamatti’s expectations of that agreement.”
Jackson, meanwhile, was banned from baseball for life in 1920 by then-Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in connection to the so-called “Black Sox Scandal.”
Jackson and seven other members of the Chicago White Sox were given money by an organized gambling ring to fix the 1919 World Series for the Reds. The players made a paltry sum of money compared to today’s mega-millionaire contracts and were angry about the team owner, Charles Comiskey, paying them a pittance. There was no baseball players union at the time.
All eight of the players — featured in the 1988 movie “Eight Men Out” — have been reinstated: Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Happy Felsch, Chick Gandil, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Lefty Williams. Gandil was known as the ringleader of the group and allegedly set up the payment, while it’s always been disputed how much Jackson even knew about the plan. He did, however, allegedly admit to accepting $5,000 as part of the scheme, according to testimony from a criminal trial over the case, something he later recanted.
If he did accept money, he didn’t show any signs of throwing games on the field. Jackson hit 12-for-35 (.375) with three doubles, five runs scored and six runs batted in over the eight games in the series. The World Series was a best-of-9 format at the time.
Jackson was one of the best hitters of the early 20th century. Over 13 seasons with Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago, the outfielder had a lifetime batting average of .356 with a .423 on-base percentage. He finished in the top 10 in MVP voting four times and led the majors in hits twice, triples twice and total bases twice.
The other former players banned from the league and now reinstated — who are not as widely known — were Joe Gedeon, Gene Paulette, Benny Kauff, Lee Magee, Phil Douglas, Cozy Dolan, Jimmy O’Connell and William Cox.
