ReportWire

Tag: Trump administration

  • The Right-Wing Nonprofit Serving A.I. Slop for America’s Birthday

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    PragerU is also supplying the multimedia content for the Freedom Truck Mobile Museums, a travelling exhibition of touch-screen displays, Revolutionary War artifacts, and A.I. slop that will chug across the country on tractor-trailers throughout 2026, in celebration of the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It seems that the battle over who defines good and evil—or, at least, over who defines American history—will be waged, in part, from the helm of an eighteen-wheeler.

    Prager, who is seventy-seven, is an observant Jew who sees evangelical Christians as natural allies in his pursuit of “transforming America into a faith-based nation,” as he once wrote. (He has also lamented what he termed Jewish “bigotry” toward evangelical Christians, whose “support, and often even love, of the Jewish people and Israel is the most unrequited love I have ever seen on a large scale.”) In 2009, decades into a successful career in conservative talk radio, he co-founded PragerU, in order to provide what he called a “free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education.” PragerU has received major funding from hard-right benefactors, including Betsy DeVos’s family foundation and the billionaire fracking brothers Dan and Farris Wilks. According to its most recent tax filing—which describes PragerU’s purpose as “marketing and producing educational content for all ages, 4-104, with a focus on a pro-American, Judeo-Christian message”—it received more than sixty-six million dollars in donations in 2024. (In November of that year, Prager sustained a severe spinal-cord injury in a fall that left him paralyzed below the shoulders; he has since resumed making video content for the PragerU website, and composed part of “If There Is No God” by dictation.)

    Prager’s nonprofit is just one of dozens of conservative organizations, many of them Christian, that are named as “partners” in the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, which is overseen by Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary. The coalition has the secular task of developing programming for America’s birthday, such as PragerU’s Founders Museum and the Freedom Trucks, the latter of which received a fourteen-million-dollar grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. (In March, President Trump signed executive orders to dismantle both the I.M.L.S. and the D.O.E.; they remain alive, albeit in shrunken, ideologized versions of their former selves.) Other America 250 partners include both of the major pro-Trump think tanks (the America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation), a Christian liberal-arts school (Hillsdale College), the Supreme Court’s favorite conservative-Christian legal-advocacy group (the Alliance Defending Freedom), the Christian-right-aligned church of Charlie Kirk (Turning Point USA), and something called Priests for Life.

    According to a D.O.E. press release, the America 250 coalition is “dedicated to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge, and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.” Of course, one of America’s founding principles, taught in every civics class, is the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which might seem to frown on the knitting together of so many religious organizations and public funds intended to advance civic education.

    “Real patriotic education,” McMahon said, at the opening of the Founders Museum last year, “means that, just as our founders loved and honored America, so we should honor them, while deeply learning and earnestly debating, still, their ideas.” One way to take McMahon up on this challenge is to deeply learn what James Madison wrote, in 1785, after a bill arose in Virginia’s General Assembly to establish a taxpayer provision for “Teachers of the Christian Religion.” In a petition to his colleagues in the Assembly, Madison asked, “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?” He abhorred the proposal as “a melancholy mark” of “sudden degeneracy.” “Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted,” he wrote, “it is itself a signal of persecution.” A governing body that would permit such an incursion on the free exercise of religion was one that “may sweep away all our fundamental rights,” Madison warned. The bill died.

    Although PragerU has won fans at the highest levels of federal and state government, its educational content and short-form videos are reviled across many chambers of the internet, where the Prager name—attached to videos with titles such as “DEI Must Die,” “Preferred Pronouns or Prison,” “Multiculturalism: A Bad Idea,” and “Is Fascism Right or Left?”—has become synonymous with MAGA-brand disinformation. (PragerU claims that its videos receive tens of millions of views per quarter, but these metrics have not been independently verified.) A PragerU Kids video called “How to Think Objectively,” which was reportedly shown in Houston public schools, provides the thinnest façade for a lesson in climate-change denial. Democratic socialism and, especially, immigration are scourges of the Prager-verse, which has attempted to undermine the constitutional provision of birthright citizenship and cranked out endless pro-ICE videos since the Department of Homeland Security began its violent occupations of Minneapolis and other major U.S. cities.

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    Jessica Winter

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  • Gov. Walz unveils anti-fraud bill after feds halt $259 million in Medicaid to Minnesota

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    Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz laid out his anti-fraud legislative package on Thursday, one day after the White House paused $259 million in federal Medicaid payments to the state until a comprehensive action plan is laid out to fight fraud.

    The package focuses on three main components:

    • Better detection and oversight
    • Strengthened investigative and enforcement authority
    • Increased criminal penalties

    “Any dollar of state money, especially those being used for programs to enhance people’s lives, if that goes to the wrong place, is misspent, or in the case of this, criminals are stealing it, we need to do everything possible to prosecute that,” Walz said.

    Vice President JD Vance and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said on Wednesday the funding freeze is part of a broader national crackdown on misuse of public funds following several high-profile fraud cases in the state, including the Feeding our Future scandal. He said the state has 60 days to respond.

    “All we need the governor and administration of Minnesota to do is something quite simple, is to show when they’re giving Medicaid funds to somebody that you’re taking seriously the funds that you’re providing, and the fact that there are so many people handing out millions and billions of dollars without confirming that they are doing the thing that they are doing. It’s a disgrace and we are stopping it,” Vance said.

    Walz said Thursday the Trump administration’s move “is absolutely not serious,” and it’s “not meant to fight fraud.”

    “How does taking and punishing children and elderly have anything to do with fighting fraud when that’s not where this issue is taking place?” Walz said.

    The governor added the Medicaid pause is “totally illegal and unprecedented.”

    “We’re at a crossroads here in Minnesota. If you like talking about fraud and you think it’s an electoral issue for you, that’s gone. I’m not running. That’s gone,” Walz said. “If you’re serious about fighting fraud, you can help us work on this package, get this package passed.”

    Following Wednesday’s Medicaid announcement, Walz took to social media following the announcement, saying in part the move is another piece in a “campaign of retribution” against Minnesota.

    “Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota,” Walz said. “These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young kids, folks with disabilities and working people across our state.”

    Shireen Gandhi, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, echoed Walz’s sentiment, saying Vance’s announcement is “part of a broad and sustained attack.”

    “Deferring $259 million will significantly harm the state’s health care infrastructure and the 1.2 million Minnesotans who depend on Medicaid,” Gandhi said.

    This story will be updated.

    Stephen Swanson and

    Aki Nace

    contributed to this report.

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    Beret Leone

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  • What’s behind the Anthropic-Pentagon feud

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    Washington — The Pentagon gave Anthropic an ultimatum this week: Give the U.S. military unrestricted use of its AI technology or face a ban from all government contracts. 

    At the center of the issue is a question of who controls how artificial intelligence models are used, the Pentagon or the company’s CEO.

    The Pentagon’s AI contracts 

    The Pentagon awarded Anthropic a $200 million contract in July to develop AI capabilities that would advance U.S. national security. 

    Anthropic’s rivals, including OpenAI, Google and xAI were also awarded $200 million contracts by the Pentagon last year. 

    Anthropic is currently the only AI company to have its model deployed on the Pentagon’s classified networks, through a partnership with data analytics giant Palantir.

    A senior Pentagon official told CBS News that Grok, which is owned by Elon Musk’s xAI, is on board with being used in a classified setting, and other AI companies are close. 

    The Pentagon announced last month that it’s looking to accelerate its uses of AI, saying the technology could help the military “rapidly convert intelligence data” and “make our Warfighters more lethal and efficient.”

    Clash over the guardrails 

    The standoff between the Pentagon and Anthropic was reportedly set off by the U.S. military’s use of its technology, known as Claude, during the operation to capture former Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro in January. 

    An Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement that the company “has not discussed the use of Claude for specific operations with the Department of War.”

    Anthropic has repeatedly asked the Pentagon to agree to certain guardrails, among them a restriction on using Claude to conduct mass surveillance of Americans, sources told CBS News. 

    And the company also wants to ensure Claude is not used by the Pentagon for final targeting decisions in military operations without any human involvement, one source familiar with the matter said. Claude is not immune from hallucinations and not reliable enough to avoid potentially lethal mistakes, like unintended escalation or mission failure without human judgment, the source said.  

    When asked for comment, a senior Pentagon official said: “This has nothing to do with mass surveillance and autonomous weapons being used. The Pentagon has only given out lawful orders.”

    Pentagon officials have expressed concerns to Anthropic that the company’s guardrails could stand in the way of critical actions, such as responding to an intercontinental ballistic missile launched toward the United States.

    Any company-imposed restrictions “could create a dynamic where we start using them and get used to how those models work, and when it comes that we need to use it in an urgent situation, we’re prevented from using it,” Emil Michael, the undersecretary of defense for research, said at an event in February.

    On the question of when AI is used to strike or kill military targets and makes a mistake, who is liable — the military or the AI company — a defense official said: Legality is the Pentagon’s responsibility as the end user.

    What top leaders are saying  

    Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been vocal in expressing his concerns about the potential dangers of AI and has centered the company’s brand around safety and transparency. 

    In a lengthy essay last month, Amodei warned of the potential for abuse of the technologies, writing that “a powerful AI looking across billions of conversations from millions of people could gauge public sentiment, detect pockets of disloyalty forming, and stamp them out before they grow.” 

    “Democracies normally have safeguards that prevent their military and intelligence apparatus from being turned inwards against their own population, but because AI tools require so few people to operate, there is potential for them to circumvent these safeguards and the norms that support them. It is also worth noting that some of these safeguards are already gradually eroding in some democracies,” he wrote. 

    Amodei has long backed what he describes as “sensible AI regulation,” including rules that would require AI companies to be transparent about the risks posed by their models and any steps taken to mitigate them.

    The Trump administration, meanwhile, has favored a lighter touch, and has argued that stringent AI regulations could stifle innovation and make it harder for the American AI industry to compete. The administration has sought to block what it calls “excessive” state-level regulations. At one point last year, venture capitalist and White House AI and crypto adviser David Sacks accused Anthropic of “fear-mongering” and suggested its interest in AI regulations is self-serving.

    In a January speech, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth derided what he views as “social justice infusions that constrain and confuse our employment of this technology.” 

    “We will not employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars,” Hegseth declared. “We will judge AI models on this standard alone; factually accurate, mission relevant, without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications. Department of War AI will not be woke. It will work for us. We’re building war-ready weapons and systems, not chatbots for an Ivy League faculty lounge.” 

    What’s next in the Anthropic v. Pentagon saga

    Hegseth gave Anthropic until Friday to agree to give the U.S. military unrestricted use of its technology or risk being blacklisted, sources familiar with the situation told CBS News. 

    Pentagon officials are considering invoking the Defense Production Act to compel Anthropic to comply on national security grounds.

    Or, if an agreement can’t be reached, defense officials have discussed declaring the company a “supply chain risk” to push it out of government, according to the sources. 

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  • Nuclear Energy Isn’t Scary Anymore. It’s Just Crypto-Coded

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    Nuclear power was once an environmental boogeyman, but not anymore. Somehow, despite shedding its reputation for creating Blinky the three-eyed fish on the Simpsons, and despite convincing AOC to like it, nuclear power is still managing to be right-coded in the year 2026. Nuclear’s sketchiness is just mutating into a new form—smearing it with the same cultural muck as crypto and AI. 

    In September of last year, when Trump negotiated tariffs with Japan, Japan’s end of the bargain required its government to invest $550 billion in the U.S. That deal is creating a giant pool of Japanese money for American businesses to pitch proposals to, and potentially receive giant capital injections via the Trump administration.

    Politico just profiled one such company called Entra1 Energy, which purports to set up nuclear power. Entra1 is under consideration for $25 billion from the fund, but it doesn’t sound like a super reliable way for Japan to see a return on its investment. 

    According to Politico, Entra1:

    • Was founded about three years ago
    • Is based out of a Houston WeWork office
    • Has five or fewer employees
    • Has never brought a nuclear project online

    Citi investment analyst Vikram Bagri told Politico that, “generally, we see names of the leaders, evidence of proof, what they’ve executed on. Generally, we see what projects they’ve worked on, which is missing, and that’s the genesis of the questions.”

    Entra1 gave statements to Politico in defense of its record. It claimed it has, over many years, “conducted due diligence and analysis on the various nuclear technologies that have been under research and development phases and recognized the need for a partner to support their commercialization phases.”

    This “partner” line refers to a larger company called NuScale that plans to collaborate with Entra1 on the project. Politico’s reporting here seems to stem largely from the concerns of about six anonymous NuScale investors fretting about the company’s involvement with NuScale.

    The CEO of Entra1, Wadie Habboush, formerly ran his father’s investment company. According to another investigation from 2019, by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, that father, named R.W. Habboush, made a million-dollar donation to Trump in 2017, and within weeks, Wadie Habboush was granted access to Trump and other powerful figures.

    According to the Entra1 website, the company “is NuScale’s exclusive global strategic partner commercializing the NuScale SMR Technology.” SMR stands for small modular reactor. 

    In most ways, nuclear power is a great alternative to fossil fuels once the plants are built, but global nuclear energy peaked in 2006. Most of the world has largely moved on, especially China, which gets its low-carbon energy from renewables, although it occasionally embarrasses the U.S. by doing things like putting innovative nuclear reactors online that we can’t seem to pull off. China and its next-door neighbor Russia are the only countries with small modular reactors.

    Needless to say, the U.S. doesn’t have any SMRs. The last time any new nuclear reactor went online in the U.S. was in 2023, but construction on that project started in 2009. Before that, the last time a nuclear reactor had gone online was in 2016—a construction project that had begun in 1973. Those are the only two new nuclear reactors in the U.S. in the 21st century.

    For whatever reason (largely this one guy named Michael Shellenberger) people in the U.S. have become convinced that nuclear power is the sane person’s modern energy solution, rather than pie-in-the-sky renewables. Todd Abrajano, CEO of the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council claimed in the Hill a couple weeks ago that private finance is falling in love with the possibilities of nuclear. “Gone are the days in which governments alone financed and brokered new nuclear projects,” he wrote.

    Maybe, but there’s very little nuclear energy on the grid right now feeding AI data centers—which are using technologies like gas turbines to make up for the unmet demand. And meanwhile the Trump administration is funneling money into businesses like Entra1, and performing PR stunts on behalf of the nuclear energy, like airlifting a tiny nuclear reactor from one state to another as a proof of concept for…something. 

    In another part of its statement to Politico, Entra1 said it brings “finance, project development and deal execution management expertise to our projects.” I’m hesitant to predict the future, or speculate wildly, but in the year 2036 do you suppose that through the power of “deal execution management expertise” Entra1 will have brought any nuclear reactors online? And in that same year, do you think Wadie Habboush will still be rich?

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    Mike Pearl

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  • The Supreme Court’s tariff decision vindicates the rule of law and the separation of powers

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    On Friday, hours after the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump had no tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), he invoked a different law to impose “a temporary import surcharge of 10 percent,” later raised to 15 percent. Trump suggested he also might impose tariffs under four other statutes, some of which he has used before.

    Despite that seemingly quick recovery from a decision that Trump called “terrible” and “deeply disappointing,” the IEEPA ruling undeniably complicated his economically illiterate trade war. More importantly, it upheld the rule of law and the separation of powers by rejecting Trump’s audacious claim that the 1977 law, which does not even mention import taxes and had never before been used to impose them, gave him the previously unnoticed authority to completely rewrite the tariff schedule approved by Congress.

    Trump maintained that IEEPA authorizes the president to impose any taxes he wants on any imports he chooses from any country he decides to target for any length of time he considers appropriate whenever he deems it necessary to “deal with” an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad that constitutes a “national emergency.” And according to Trump, Chief Justice John Roberts noted, “the only way of restraining the exercise of that power” is the “veto-proof majority in Congress” required to terminate the supposed emergency.

    The Constitution unambiguously gives Congress the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” If Congress meant to delegate that authority to the president as completely as Trump claimed, the Supreme Court reasoned, it would have said so.

    “When Congress grants the power to impose tariffs, it does so clearly and with careful constraints,” Roberts noted. “It did neither here.”

    In other words, the very statutes to which Trump resorted after his Supreme Court defeat provide compelling evidence that Congress did not grant him the extraordinary powers he claimed under IEEPA. Among other things, those laws authorize tariffs to protect “national security,” counter allegedly discriminatory trade practices, help U.S. manufacturers “adjust” to foreign competition, and alleviate “fundamental international payments problems.”

    These provisions cover a lot of territory, and their use is often dubious. But all of them restrict presidential action by specifying acceptable rationales, requiring agency investigations, or limiting the size, scope, or duration of tariff hikes.

    Trump’s attempt to avoid those “careful constraints” prompted a richly deserved rebuke. Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, concluded that Trump’s reading of IEEPA ran afoul of the “major questions” doctrine, which says the executive branch can exercise delegated powers of “vast ‘economic and political significance’” only with clear congressional approval.

    Two Trump appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, agreed that the president could not meet that test. “The Constitution lodges the Nation’s lawmaking powers in Congress alone, and the major questions doctrine safeguards that assignment against executive encroachment,” Gorsuch explained in his concurring opinion.

    Under that doctrine, “the President must identify clear statutory authority for the extraordinary delegated power he claims,” Gorsuch wrote. “That is a standard he cannot meet,” Gorsuch continued, because Congress “did not clearly surrender to the President the sweeping tariff power he seeks to wield.”

    The three Democratic appointees on the Court—Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—saw no need to rely on the major questions doctrine. But they agreed that the IEEPA cannot reasonably be read as conferring the untrammeled authority that Trump perceived.

    By joining Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson in rejecting his power grab, Trump averred, Gorsuch and Barrett became “an embarrassment to their families,” revealing themselves as “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical-left Democrats.” But that assessment had nothing to do with the quality of their reasoning.

    Trump’s condemnation instead hinged on the fact that Gorsuch and Barrett had the temerity to vote against the president who appointed them. Unlike Trump, they understand that justices have a higher duty than obedience to the president’s will.

    © Copyright 2025 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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    Jacob Sullum

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  • Trump’s Section 122 tariffs could spur new legal battle, experts say

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    President Trump’s move to invoke an obscure legal tool to impose a global 15% tariff on U.S. imports could face its own legal challenges, trade experts told CBS News. 

    The White House said in a fact sheet on Friday that the temporary import duty, imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, addresses a “fundamental international payments problem” and that it will help the Trump administration rebalance the nation’s trade relationships. 

    Mr. Trump’s use of Section 122 to apply new tariffs, which will take effect on Tuesday, is unprecedented, legal experts told CBS News. 

    “No president has used it until now, so it could be ripe for legal challenges,” Luis Arandia, a partner with Washington, D.C., law firm Barnes & Thornburg focused on customs and international trade partner, told CBS News. 

    What is Section 122?

    Section 122 authorizes the U.S. president to impose tariffs to rectify what the statute describes as “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.” 

    Yet Mr. Trump is the first president to take any action under Section 122, according to the Congressional Research Service, which analyzes legislation for lawmakers. “Section 122 has never been used, and therefore courts have had no occasion to interpret its language,” the agency states.

    But trade and legal experts said Section 122 might not apply in the current context because the large U.S. trade deficit, which Mr. Trump has invoked to justify tariffs, does not qualify as a balance-of-payments deficit. This measure encompasses all the financial and commercial transactions between one country and another. 

    By contrast, a trade deficit occurs when a country imports more goods and services than it exports, and it is that imbalance that Trump administration officials have pointed to as justifying sharply higher tariffs.  

    “Section 122 is for a balance of payments crisis, which is when you don’t have enough foreign reserves to pay external debts,” Philip Luck, director of the economics program at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The U.S. has a very large trade deficit, but so long as we can continue to sell assets to the global market, we have no challenge conducting international trade.”

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on possible challenges to its legal basis for imposing Section 122 levies. 

    The scope of Section 122 is also much more limited than the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) — the 1977 law that the Supreme Court ruled last week did not, in fact, legally authorize Mr. Trump to impose more than half of his administration’s tariffs. 

    Notably, any tariffs implemented under Section 122 can only remain in place for 150 days. giving Mr. Trump’s 15% tariff an expiration date of July 24. After that date, Congress would need to vote to extend the tariffs, and that could prove politically challenging, according to Cato Institute trade expert Colin Grabow.

    What is the U.S. tariff rate under Section 122?

    The new, global 15% tariff under Section 122 brings the average effective tariff rate to 14.5%, according to Capital Economics, an investor advisory firm. 

    That figure includes exemptions for goods from Canada and Mexico under the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, plus pharmaceuticals, electronics, agricultural goods, and products like steel and aluminum that are already subject to sectoral tariffs. 

    Can Section 122 tariffs be extended?

    Yes, lawmakers can vote to extend Section 122 tariffs an additional 150 days. But even if Congress opts against that, the Trump administration has signaled it plans to use the five-month period to impose more durable tariffs under alternative legal trade laws.

    As such, Section 122 tariffs are effectively a fallback plan for the Trump administration as it tries to match the tariffs that were in place under IEEPA, according to Washington, D.C.-based attorney Nate Bolin, head of K&L Gates’ international trade group.

    Bolin also thinks the administration’s use of Section 122 is on a stronger legal footing than its reliance on IEEPA to impose tariffs.

    “There have to be these balance-of-payment issues, which the White House has demonstrated,” he told CBS News. “This is reflective of the fact that the administration has had this in the works and has been planning on this for many months.”

    What does this mean for U.S. businesses?

    The move to replace IEEPA tariffs with Section 122 duties sows more uncertainty for businesses as U.S. trade policies remain in flux, experts said. 

    “It’s more harmful than having higher tariffs, because businesses don’t want to invest when they’re not sure what is going to happen,” international trade economist Asha Sundaram, chair of the economics department at Northeastern University, told CBS News. 

    “The issue with uncertainty is that companies don’t know if tariffs will remain at that level or change,” she added. “So they will hesitate to make any business decision that’s medium to long-term. They might even stop investing, and that could potentially have negative implications for growth and jobs.”

    Edited by

    Alain Sherter

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  • US deported gay asylum-seeker to third country where homosexuality is illegal

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    DAKAR, Senegal — Being gay in Morocco is illegal and punishable by up to three years in prison. But it was the violence from her family that forced Farah, a 21-year-old gay woman, to flee the country.

    After a long journey to the United States and a third-country deportation by the Trump administration, however, Farah said she is now back in Morocco and in hiding.

    “It is hard to live and work with the fear of being tracked once again by my family,” she told The Associated Press, in a rare testimony from a person deported via a third country despite having protection orders from a U.S. immigration judge. “But there is nothing I can do. I have to work.”

    She asked to be identified by her first name only for fear of persecution. The AP saw her protection order and lawyers verified parts of her account.

    Farah said that before she fled, she was beaten by her family and the family of her partner when they found out about their relationship. She was kicked out of the family home and fled with her partner to another city. She said her family found her and tried to kill her.

    Through a friend, she and her partner heard about the opportunity to get visas for Brazil and fly there with the aim of reaching the United States, where they had friends. From Brazil, she trekked through six countries for weeks to reach the U.S. border, where they asked for asylum.

    “You get put in situations that are truly horrible,” she recalled. “When we arrived (at the U.S. border), it felt like it was worth the trouble and that we got to our goal.”

    They arrived in early 2025. But instead of finding the freedom to be herself, Farah said she was detained for almost a year, first in Arizona, then in Louisiana.

    “It was very cold,” she said of detention. “And we only had very thin blankets.” Medical care was inadequate, she said.

    She was denied asylum, but in August she received a protection order from an U.S. immigration judge, who ruled she cannot be deported to Morocco because that would endanger her life. Her partner, denied asylum and a protection order, was deported.

    Farah said she was three days from a hearing on her release when she was handcuffed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and put on a plane to an African country she had never visited, and one where homosexuality is illegal: Cameroon. She was put in a detention facility.

    “They asked me if I wanted to stay in Cameroon, and I told them that I can’t stay in Cameroon and risk my life in a place where I would still be endangered,” she said. She was flown to Morocco.

    Most deportees had protection orders

    She is one of dozens of people confirmed to be deported from the U.S. by the Trump administration to third countries despite having legal protection from U.S. immigration judges. The real number is unknown.

    The administration has used third-country deportations to pressure migrants who are in the U.S. illegally to leave on their own, saying they could end up “in any number of third countries.”

    The detention facility in Cameroon’s capital of Yaounde, where Farah was held, currently has 15 deportees from various African countries who arrived on two flights, and none is Cameroonian, according to lawyer Joseph Awah Fru, who represents them.

    Eight of the deportees on the first flight in January, including Farah, had received a judge’s protection orders, said Alma David, an immigration lawyer with the U.S.-based Novo Legal Group who has helped deportees and verified Farah’s case. The AP spoke to a woman from Ghana and a woman from Congo, who both said they had protection orders, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

    Another flight on Monday brought eight more people. Three freelance journalists reporting on the deportations to Cameroon for the AP were briefly detained there.

    Deporting people to a third country where they could be sent home was effectively a legal “loophole,” said David.

    “By deporting them to Cameroon, and giving them no opportunity to contest being sent to a country whose government hoped to quietly send them back to the very countries where they face grave danger, the U.S. not only violated their due process rights but our own immigration laws, our obligations under international treaties and even DHS’ own procedures,” David said.

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security earlier confirmed there were deportations to Cameroon in January.

    “We are applying the law as written. If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period,” it said, and asserted that the third-country agreements “ensure due process under the U.S. Constitution.”

    Asked about the deportations to Cameroon, the U.S. State Department on Friday told the AP it had “no comment on the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments.” It did not reply to further questions.

    Cameroon’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    ‘Impossible choices’

    Farah was one of two women from the first group of deportees to return to Morocco.

    “They were given two impossible choices,” David said, and asserted that claiming asylum was not clearly presented as one of them. “This was before the lawyer had access to them.”

    She said International Organization for Migration staff in the facility did not give them any indication that there was a viable option other than going back to their home countries.

    Fru said he has not been granted access to the deportees. He said the assistant to the country director for the IOM, a U.N.-affiliated organization, told him he must apply to speak to them. Fru plans to do that Monday.

    The IOM told the AP it was “aware of the removal of migrants from the United States of America to some African countries” and added that it “works with people facing difficult decisions about whether to return to their country of origin.” It said its role is providing accurate information about options and ensuring that “anyone who chooses to return does so voluntarily.”

    The IOM said the facility in Yaounde was managed by the authorities in Cameroon. It did not respond to further questions.

    African nations are paid millions

    Cameroon is one of at least seven African nations to receive deported third-country nationals in a deal with the U.S. Others include South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and Equatorial Guinea.

    Some have received millions of dollars in return, according to documents released by the State Department. Details of other agreements, including the one with Cameroon, have not been released.

    The Trump administration has spent at least $40 million to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a report released last week by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

    According to internal administration documents reviewed by the AP, 47 third-country agreements are in various stages of negotiation.

    In Morocco, Farah said it was hard to hear U.S. officials refer to people like her as a threat.

    “The USA is built on immigration and by immigrant labor, so we’re clearly not all threats,” she said. “What was done to me was unfair. A normal deportation would have been fair, but to go through so much and lose so much, only to be deported in such a way, is cruel.”

    Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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  • U.S. Secret Service shot and killed armed man who entered the secure perimeter of Mar-a-Lago

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    The U.S. Secret Service announced Sunday that an armed man was shot and killed after entering the secure perimeter of Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla.

    Although Trump often spends weekends at his resort, he was at the White House during this incident. First lady Melania Trump was also with the president at the White House on Saturday night.

    The name of the person who was shot has not been released. According to the Secret Service, he was “observed by the north gate of the Mar-a-Lago property carrying what appeared to be a shotgun and a fuel can.” The incident took place at 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

    The suspect, who was in his early 20s and from North Carolina, was reported missing a few days ago by his family. Investigators believe he left North Carolina and headed south, picking up a shotgun along the way, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. The box for the gun was recovered in his vehicle, Guglielmi said. The man drove through the north gate of Mar-a-Lago as another vehicle was exiting and was confronted by Secret Service agents, Guglielmi said. The agents confronted the armed man and he was fatally shot. Investigators are working to compile a psychological profile and a motive is still under investigation.

    He was shot by Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff deputy, the agency said.

    Trump has faced threats to his life before. He was wounded during an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, 2024.

    Then on Sept. 15, 2024, a man with a rifle was captured after waiting near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach while the president played a round. He was sentenced to life in prison earlier this month.

    The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

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  • Trump raises his new global tariffs to 15% after Supreme Court’s strike down

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    President Trump raised his new, global tariffs to 15%, one day after the Supreme Court struck down many of his punishing taxes. Willie James Inman reports on the impact on American businesses and whether there could be refunds issued.

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  • Supreme Court ruling against Trump tariffs will offer relief, business owners say

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    Business owners said that a Supreme Court ruling on Friday striking down sweeping U.S. tariffs could spell relief by lowering their costs and potentially leading to refunds.

    The high court ruled that President Trump does not have the authority to impose levies on imports under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. Mr. Trump last year invoked the 1977 law to impose tariffs on dozens of U.S. trade partners, claiming that trade deficits and the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the U.S. constitute national emergencies. 

    Beth Benike, co-founder of  Busy Baby, which makes mealtime accessories for babies, said that uncertainty about the legal status of the IEEPA tariffs had forced her to halt all imports from China, where the Minnesota-based company’s products are made. She also has inventory in China that her manufacturer is holding for her overseas.

    “I should have had it shipped last month, but I was waiting for the Supreme Court decision, because it was the difference between paying an extra $48,000 [in tariffs] or not,” she told CBS News before the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision on Friday.

    Beth Fynbo Benike, founder of Busy Baby, talks with her brother and COO, Eric Fynbo, about an order they’re packing for WalMart on Oct. 15, 2024 in the company’s warehouse in Zumbrota, Minn.

    Anthony Souffle/Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images


    Not all businesses opposed the emergency tariffs. Before the high court’s ruling, Drew Greenblatt, owner of Maryland manufacturer Marlin Steel told CBS News on Friday that he supported higher levies on U.S. trade partners because they provided a “level playing field” that allowed Marlin Steel to better compete with overseas steelmakers. 

    The average U.S. tariff rate on all imports is around 17%, including levies Mr. Trump imposed under IEEPA, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Scrapping the IEEPA duties will drop the average tariff rate to the 7% range, according to Michael Gregory, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets Economics. 

    A recent analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that U.S. businesses and consumers bore the brunt of Mr. Trump’s tariffs in 2025, paying for nearly 90% of the levies. The Trump administration disputes the analysis.

    Billions in potential refunds

    Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said the Supreme Court ruling against Mr. Trump’s tariffs nullifies “the biggest and baddest of Trump’s 2025 tariffs.” 

    “The court’s decision is welcome news for American importers, the United States economy, and the rule of law, but there’s much more work to be done,” he said in an email after Friday’s ruling. “Most immediately, the federal government must refund the tens of billions of dollars in customs duties that it illegally collected from American companies pursuant to an ‘IEEPA tariff authority’ it never actually had.” 

    The Treasury Department collected $287 billion in tariffs in 2025, up 192% from the previous year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. As of mid‑December, roughly $130 billion had been collected in IEEPA tariffs, although total refunds for businesses could approach $150 billion, according to economists with PNC Financial Services Group.

    “I am expecting a full refund, but if for some reason we don’t get them, I would have to raise my prices, which will be tough for consumers,” Benike said. “People buying baby products are already buying new stuff they didn’t have to buy before they had the baby, so they are already squeezed.”

    Rachel Rozner, owner of Elden Street Tea Shop in Reston, Virginia, said ahead of the decision that a Supreme Court ruling striking down the IEEPA tariffs could make an “astronomical” difference for her business. Most of the tea and other products she sells come from China, India, Japan and Nepal. 

    “If I can just order and get the product, and I know the price is good, that will take away a lot of stress,” she told CBS News. 

    Meanwhile, some experts think the issue of tariff refunds could end up in court. 

    “[W]e think it’s reasonable to assume a few months would pass before refunds begin, and even longer if the distribution faces significant legal challenges,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report.

    Although Rozner’s business could be eligible for a tariff refund following the ruling, she expressed concern that she might never see the money.

    “What if they run out of money before you’re able to get your refund?” Rozner said. “I’m worried that some people might get refunds and others will not, and that people will take advantage of the system.”

    We Pay the Tariffs, an advocacy group of 800 small businesses that opposes the Trump administration’s tariffs, said the IEEPA levies had damaged small businesses by forcing them to take out loans and freeze hiring. 

    “Today’s Supreme Court decision is a tremendous victory for America’s small businesses, who have been bearing the crushing weight of these tariffs,” the group’s executive director, Dan Anthony, said in a statement to CBS News. 

    The group also urged the White House to issue “full, fast and automatic refunds” to employers that had paid the tariffs.

    Trump announces new tariffs

    The Trump administration has previously said it can deploy other import duties to replace the IEEPA tariffs. To that end, after the high court’s ruling, Mr. Trump promptly announced he would impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, and then announced the next day he’s raising it to 15%.

    The president also indicated that his administration would expand other existing tariffs, such as levies imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. 

    Section 301 allows the U.S. president to apply country-based tariffs if the U.S. Trade Representative determines that another nation is engaging in unfair trade practices. Section 232 authorizes the president to impose duties on trade partners to protect national security, based on an investigation from the Department of Commerce.

    Still, those tariffs are more restrictive than the IEEPA levies, however. Section 122 tariffs are capped at 15% and may remain in force only for 150 days, according to Capital Economics. The tariff rate also must be the same for all trade partners, limiting Mr. Trump’s ability to negotiate different deals with different countries. 

    Section 301 tariffs also can’t be applied to all foreign imports, according to trade experts. And replacing IEEPA tariffs with substitute levies could also take many months, according to Morgan Stanley. 

    If businesses could get a boost from the removal of IEEPA tariffs, consumers may not see a dip in prices, with companies such as Walmart recently saying that they are hiking their prices because of the import duties. 

    “Any consumer looking for relief from tariff-driven price hikes did not find it at the Supreme Court today,” Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collective, a progressive think tank focused on economic issues, said in a statement on Friday. 

    He added that refunds for businesses could take years to process and that, even if they are eventually administered, “there is little reason to believe companies will pass those savings on to consumers.” 

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  • US military strikes another alleged drug boat in eastern Pacific, killing 3

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    WASHINGTON — The U.S. military said Friday that it has carried out another deadly strike on a vessel accused of trafficking drugs in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

    U.S. Southern Command said on social media that the boat “was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” It said the strike killed three people. A video linked to the post shows a boat floating in the water before bursting into flames.

    Friday’s attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats to at least 148 people in at least 43 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

    President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”

    Critics have questioned the overall legality of the strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.

    The boat strikes also drew intense criticism following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.

    Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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  • Virginia Sen. Kaine, top tariff foe, says SCOTUS decision is win for consumers – WTOP News

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    Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine was joined by Sen. Mitch McConnell in his support for the high court’s decision to strike down the Trump administration’s tariff campaign.

    Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who has repeatedly introduced bills to lift President Donald Trump’s tariffs, may be one of the happiest members of Congress after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike the levies down.

    The Democratic lawmaker was among the first to issue a statement after the high court’s decision on Friday.

    “Broad-based tariffs are a tax on American consumers, and the Trump administration’s attempt to pretend otherwise was laughable in its inaccuracy and deeply disrespectful to the millions of American consumers who have faced higher prices because of Trump’s unaffordable economic policies,” he wrote.

    Kaine has led the way for Democrats in the fight against tariffs, getting four bills advanced in the Senate, including one aimed at Canada.

    The Virginia lawmaker has cited the economic pain that tariffs can cause not just to consumers, but to small businesses like beer breweries and even pie shops that rely on aluminum pie tins.

    In his Friday statement, he also accused the administration of carrying out an “egregious and destructive abuse of presidential power.”

    Longtime GOP senator also praises high court decision

    Many Republicans criticized the Supreme Court decision, arguing it ties the hands of the president as he tries to take on unfair trade practices to protect American workers.

    But, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who served as GOP Senate leader longer than any other lawmaker, issued a statement strongly backing the ruling.

    He said the high court “reaffirmed authority that has rested with Congress for centuries.”

    “Congress’ role in trade policy, as I have warned repeatedly, is not an inconvenience to avoid,” he wrote. “If the executive would like to enact trade policies that impact American producers and consumers, its path forward is crystal clear: convince their representatives under Article 1.”

    McConnell’s view is one that had been held by most Republicans for decades. But it was upended when Trump was elected to office in 2016, making it clear he supported tariffs.

    The president then imposed sweeping tariffs when he returned to the White House last year.

    What’s ahead for Congress on tariffs?

    U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, called on fellow GOP lawmakers on Friday to pass legislation that would codify the president’s tariffs affected by the Supreme Court decision.

    He called the decision “outrageous” in a post on X.

    “This betrayal must be reversed and Republicans must get to work immediately on a reconciliation bill to codify the tariffs that had made our country the hottest country on earth!” he said.

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson issued statements of support for the president and indicated they would work with him to do what he wants.

    But the president, when asked at a news conference about working with Congress to produce new tariff legislation, dismissed the idea.

    “I’ve always had the right to do tariffs. It’s all been approved by Congress,” he said. “So there’s no reason to do it.”

    However, the president has relied on executive orders — not Congress — to impose his tariffs, which is what the high court called into legal question.

    Trump announced Friday that he would impose 10% global tariffs through a different provision.

    It would require congressional approval to be extended after 150 days.

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2026 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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  • Feds say former North Miami mayor lived a 30-year lie, move to strip him of citizenship

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    Former North Miami Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime

    Former North Miami Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime


    Sydney Walsh

    swalsh@miamiherald.com

    From the moment Philippe Bien-Aime stepped foot in the United States on July 25, 1995, immigration authorities, say the Haitian native has been living a lie.

    The former mayor of North Miami arrived in the U.S. with his photo on someone else’s passport, authorities say in a federal lawsuit seeking to strip Bien-Aime of his citizenship. As part of his naturalization process, they add, Bien-Aime, 60, has lied about who and how many women he’s married and divorced and also about how many children he has had with them.

    READ MORE: Feds move to strip U.S. citizenship from Haiti-born former mayor of North Miami

    He used his original name, Jean Philippe Janvier, in a 2000 deportation case in which a U.S. immigration judge ordered his return to Haiti — though he never moved back to his country. Instead, he used a new name, Philippe Bien-Aime, on a naturalization application in 2005 after he married a U.S. citizen. He also used that name when he won the mayoral election in North Miami in 2019, after six years on the city council.

    An immigration officer said in an affidavit filed in federal court in Miami this week that as part of the naturalization process, “Bien-Aime was not eligible to receive a visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen because his marriage to the U.S. citizen … was bigamous and invalid” – pointing out that he lied about being divorced from his Haitian wife. “Bien-Aime was not legally free to marry” the U.S. citizen or allowed to attain an immigration benefit through a “bigamous marriage,” the officer said in the affidavit supporting the federal lawsuit.

    Two simultaneous weddings

    Adding to the intrigue are court documents that say that, under the name Jean Philippe Janvier, he married Sarahjane Ternier, and under the name Philippe Bien-Aime, he married Beatrice Gelin — both on the same date, June 20, 1993, in Port-au-Prince.

    A U.S. immigration summary of Haitian government records show that the marriage and divorce certificates for Janvier and Ternier were found to be fraudulent. Meanwhile, the Haitian divorce records for Bien-Aime and Gelin were also found to be fraudulent. The immigration summary, however, states that a marriage certificate for Bien-Aime and Gelin was found in Haiti’s National Archives but does not comment on whether it’s valid or invalid.

    Court records show Bien-Aime asserted throughout his applications for a green card and for naturalization that he divorced Gelin on Dec. 30, 1999, and married Marie Rose Chauvet, a U.S. citizen, on May 30, 2001. Bien-Aime attained U.S. citizenship on Sept. 22, 2006.

    The federal suit seeking his denaturalization accuses Bien-Aime of falsely telling authorities that “he has not practiced polygamy and has not given any false testimony to obtain immigration benefits.”

    The decades of alleged deceptions and misrepresentations are at the heart of the federal government’s efforts to strip Bien-Aime of his American citizenship. The case is part of a larger, aggressive Trump administration campaign to catch immigrants who fraudulently obtain U.S. citizenship. The Department of Justice last year ordered its civil division to prioritize denaturalization, cases that have previously been rarely pursued.

    “United States citizenship is a privilege grounded in honesty and allegiance to this country,” Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “The fact that he later served as an elected mayor makes the alleged deception even more serious, because public office carries a duty of candor and respect for the rule of law.”

    Facing deportation

    Should U.S. authorities succeed in revoking his citizenship, Bien-Aime is facing deportation to native Haiti, a country in the throes of violence and instability.

    U.S. officials were investigating the fraudulent marriage and divorce documents as early as August 2019, during President Donald Trump’s first term, according to an overseas verification report that also lists both the Bien-Aime and the Janvier monikers. That was two months after Port-au-Prince-born Bien-Aime had been elected mayor of North Miami. Neither the first Trump administration nor the subsequent Biden administration pursued legal action against him.

    To back up their allegations, the federal government provides a July 1965 certificate registering the birth of Jean Philippe Janvier; immigration applications where Bien-Aime does not list he had other names or mention one of his purported wives in Haiti and the children she bore him in the United States; a divorce certificate to the other woman in Haiti that they say is fraudulent; and his original deportation order from the early 2000s.

    On a phone call Thursday, Bien-Aime declined to comment and referred the Miami Herald to his lawyer. His immigration attorney, Peterson St. Philippe, said he was not in a position to provide detailed comments.

    “We believe it is appropriate to address the allegations through the judicial process rather than through public commentary. We trust that any reporting will reflect that the matter remains unresolved and that no findings have been made,” St. Philippe said.

    Bien-Aime is no stranger to controversy. In 2018, a former North Miami city administrator filed a lawsuit against Bien-Aime and the city claiming he had sexually harassed her for months and “held her prisoner” in a car while trying “to have sex with her.” The aide said her contract with the city was terminated in retaliation for filing the federal lawsuit against Bien-Aime, a councilman at the time.

    What the complaint says

    Prosecutors say that U.S. authorities were not aware that the Jean Philippe Janvier whom an immigration judge had ordered deported was the Philippe Bien-Aime granted U.S. citizenship. On a campaign website, Bien-Aime said he was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, before immigrating to Canada in 1991 and arriving in the U.S. in 1993.

    U.S. immigration authorities issued an identification number for Bien-Aime in 1994, according to court documents, while Janvier entered the United States in 1995 on the photo-switched passport. Two years later, while Janvier was being served a notice to show up to deportation proceedings, the U.S. Embassy in Port-Au-Prince issued Bien-Aime a tourist visa, according to an affidavit from an immigration official who reviewed his records extensively. Bien-Aime entered the U.S. in June 1997 and kept traveling between the U.S. and Haiti while Janvier’s deportation proceedings were ongoing.

    During three years of deportation proceedings, Janvier submitted a birth certificate with his name, testified that he was Jean Philippe Janvier and that he had used a fake passport. He welcomed a daughter with Ternier in 1999.

    On July 31, 2000, an immigration judge ordered Janvier and Ternier deported. The couple challenged the decision through the Board of Immigration Appeals. But the next year, Janvier notified the court he was withdrawing his appeal and that he planned on living in Haiti. The board determined that his deportation order was final in July 2001. Janvier had another child with Ternier in 2002. The Department of Homeland Security set his departure date for June 26, 2003.

    Instead of going back to Haiti, Bien-Aime married Marie Rose Chauvet, the American spouse, in 2001. Immigration authorities say that Janvier – under the name Bien-Aime – was still then married to another Haitian woman, Beatrice Gelin, who he claimed to have divorced. He applied for a green card as Philippe Bien-Aime through his marriage with Chauvet, in 2002. After he provided his fingerprints and was interviewed by immigration officers, the federal government granted Bien-Aime permanent residency.

    In his green card application filed in 2002, he did not mention his deportation order and did not list any children. During his green card interview that same year, he mentioned one daughter he said was born in Haiti in 1999. The complaint says he and Ternier had welcomed a daughter in the United States in August 1999.

    Meanwhile, in the application to make his green card permanent he listed one son: Marc Peterson, born August 1988, and no other children, according to the complaint. In his subsequent application to become a U.S. citizen, he listed Marc Peterson again, but with a different birthday, June 1987.

    Bien-Aime went on to have a third child with Ternier in 2004. Bien-Aime’s campaign website for an unsuccessful run for Miami-Dade county commissioner in 2022 described as “loving husband to Sara and proud father of Saphi, Philjae, and Terphil.”

    He applied for naturalization in 2005, once more using his current name. During the interview process to become a naturalized citizen, Bien-Aime did not disclose other names and claimed to not be married to more than one person at a time. He was approved for citizenship on Sept. 11, 2006 and took the naturalization oath 11 days later.

    Nearly 13 years after Bien-Aime became a naturalized citizen, a 2019 report out of U.S. immigration offices in Port-Au-Prince determined his marriage to Ternier and divorces to both Ternier and Gelin were fraudulent. It also linked him to the Jean Philippe Janvier identity. At the time of the investigation, he was North Miami’s mayor.

    Seven years later, in February 2026, the U.S. government moved to denaturalize him.

    Raisa Habersham

    Miami Herald

    Raisa Habersham is the race and culture reporter for the Miami Herald. She previously covered Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale for the Herald with a focus on housing and affordability. Habersham is a graduate of the University of Georgia. She joined the Herald in 2022.

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  • Trump imposes 10% tariffs on all countries after Supreme Court struck down earlier tariffs

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    President Trump signed a proclamation Friday night that will impose 10% tariffs on most foreign imports to the United States, just hours after the Supreme Court struck down a set of sweeping global tariffs that were issued under a different legal authority. 

    The new tariffs take effect Monday and will be in place for 150 days, according to a White House fact sheet. Some foreign goods are exempted from the 10% duties, including certain food imports, critical minerals, electronics and cars. Goods from Canada and Mexico that are covered by a 2018 trade deal also aren’t subject to tariffs. 

    “It is my Great Honor to have just signed, from the Oval Office, a Global 10% Tariff on all Countries, which will be effective almost immediately,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post.

    The move comes as Mr. Trump tries to resurrect the worldwide regime of steep tariffs and trade deals that form a core part of his economic agenda. Most of his tariffs hinged on a law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, which the Supreme Court ruled Friday cannot be used to impose tariffs.

    Friday’s tariffs were issued under a different law: Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. That legal provision lets the president impose duties of up to 15% for 150 days to deal with “large and serious” balance-of-payment issues.

    The new levies are similar to the 10% baseline tariff rate Mr. Trump rolled out on goods from dozens of U.S. trading partners starting last spring. He argues that blanket tariffs are necessary to address trade deficits and revive American manufacturing, but many economists warn that the costs of tariffs are largely borne by consumers.

    Many trading partners faced higher rates under Mr. Trump’s previous tariffs, including a set of “reciprocal” tariffs on a litany of countries, and levies on many goods from China, Canada and Mexico that were linked to drug trafficking concerns. Some countries negotiated down those rates as part of broader trade deals. But those measures relied on the Trump administration’s interpretation of IEEPA, which was struck down by the high court on Friday.

    It’s not clear whether the administration will try to reinstate those higher tariff rates. Asked whether his trade deals still stand, Mr. Trump told reporters Friday: “Some of them stand. Many of them stand. Some of them won’t, and they’ll be replaced with the other tariffs.”

    Mr. Trump also directed U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s office to open investigations into “certain unreasonable and discriminatory acts, policies, and practices that burden or restrict U.S. commerce” under Section 301 of the Trade Act, the White House said. That law allows the government to impose tariffs and other measures to correct unfair trade practices.

    Greer said in a statement late Friday he expects the Section 301 probes “to cover most major trading partners.” He said they will be conducted on an “accelerated timeline” and could result in tariffs.

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  • Will Americans get refunds after Trump’s tariffs were overturned by the Supreme Court?

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    Businesses are pressing the Trump administration to issue tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruled Friday that President Trump unlawfully imposed levies under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. Yet that process faces potential legal and political roadblocks, with experts saying it could drag out for years.

    Economists and trade experts told CBS News they expect the issue to be litigated in court, while no government mechanism is currently set up for businesses to file for or collect a tariff refund. 

    “We anticipate another long legal fight over those refunds,” Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist with Capital Economics, said in a note to investors. 

    Will Americans get tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruling?

    The Supreme Court did not indicate in its ruling whether businesses that paid billions of dollars in IEEPA tariffs must be reimbursed, effectively punting the question to lower courts. 

    In a press conference on Friday after the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Trump demurred on whether his administration will issue refunds, but suggested the process is likely to be drawn out — possibly for years.

    “They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” he said. “What happens to all the money we took in? It wasn’t discussed.” 

    “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years,” he added.

    The Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan research initiative focused on public policy analysis, estimated Friday that businesses could be owed up to $165 billion in tariff refunds. 

    How would a tariff refund work?

    Currently, no procedures are in place to automatically refund businesses for the IEEPA tariffs they paid; similarly, no portal exists that would enable businesses to apply for reimbursement. 

    Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in economics at Pacific Research Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that supports free-market principles, told CBS News that processing billions of dollars in tariff refunds would be an “unprecedented” move by the federal government. 

    “Certainly, the administration is not going to volunteer refunds, and companies will have to ask for them,” he said. “The bottom line is that the government didn’t have the authority to levy the tax, so they are entitled to refunds.” 

    Although Winegarden said businesses will likely have to jump through various hoops to claim a refund, he suspects some companies will opt against filing for compensation out of concern that it could anger Mr. Trump. 

    “It’s a complicated mess. For businesses, it’s a crapshoot, and he’s a punitive person, so that will keep them from asking,” Winegarden told CBS News.

    Which tariffs would qualify for a tariff refund?

    The Supreme Court struck down country-based tariffs imposed under IEEPA. Those levies account for roughly 60% of the U.S. tariff revenue collected each month, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model. 

    At a speech at the Economic Club of Dallas on Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested it is unclear if the federal government must provide tariff refunds to businesses, saying the issue is “in dispute.” 

    “The Supreme Court did not rule on that today — they pushed it back down to the International Tax and Trade Court. And you know, my sense is that could be dragged out for weeks, months, years,” he said. 

    Meanwhile, the Trump administration has said it is working to replace the IEEPA tariffs through other powers.

    “We can use other of the statutes, other of the tariff authorities, which have also been confirmed and are fully allowed,” Mr. Trump said Friday. To that end, he announced he would impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act.

    The president also indicated that his administration would seek to expand other existing tariffs, such as levies imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act.

    Who has called for tariff refunds?

    Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collective, a progressive economic think tank, said that businesses have filed more than 1,000 claims for tariff refunds with the Court of International Trade. He expects that number to soar following Friday’s high court ruling. 

    Those cases “have been stayed since the Supreme Court decided they would take this on — now they will all go forward,” he said. “There will be a massive number of cases.”

    Shawn Phetteplace, national campaigns director for Main Street Alliance, a small business advocacy group that opposes Mr. Trump’s tariffs, urged the White House to swiftly provide refunds. 

    “We are going to work really hard to get the money back, because it’s the kind of money that can make a business unsustainable,” he said, noting that some small business owners have closed permanently because of higher tariff costs. 

    “If tariffs are deemed illegal, then the money should be paid back, and you would hope they follow the law and the ruling,” Phetteplace added. 

    Following the Supreme Court decision, some state political leaders also called on Mr. Trump to issue refunds to U.S. consumers. 

    “Trump took hard-earned money from the pockets of working families and the American people. Time to pay up,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a video posted on social media.

    In a memo on Friday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also demanded that the Trump administration pay every household in the state $1,700 each — a total of $8 billion. That is the amount Democratic lawmakers on the Joint Economic Committee recently estimated that U.S. families have paid in tariff costs.

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  • New Trump Administration Order Could Lead To The Detention Of Thousands Of Legal Refugees – KXL

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    MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Trump administration has issued a sweeping new order that could lead to the arrest of tens of thousands of refugees who are lawfully in the United States but do not yet have permanent residency, overturning years of legal and immigration safeguards.

    A memo filed by the Department of Homeland Security ahead of a Thursday federal court hearing in Minnesota says refugees applying for green cards must return to federal custody one year after they were admitted to the U.S. for review of their applications.

    DHS “may maintain custody for the duration of the inspection and examination process,” said the memo, which was filed Wednesday.

    Advocacy and resettlement groups slammed the order, which will likely face legal challenges and could sow confusion and fear among the nearly 200,000 refugees who came to the United States during the Biden administration.

    The order is the latest in a series of immigration restrictions by the Trump administration, which has upended longstanding policies toward refugees, including dramatically reducing the number admitted into the country. A memo obtained by The Associated Press late last year said the administration was planning a review of all refugees admitted to the U.S. during the Biden administration, and immediately suspended green card approvals for refugees who arrived during those years.

    The administration has cited national security and economic concerns for its changed policies. Experts say refugees let into the country already undergo extensive vetting.

    The new order came hours before U.S. District Judge John Tunheim heard arguments Thursday on whether he should extend a temporary order that protects Minnesota refugees lawfully in the U.S. from being arrested and deported. Tunheim’s order applies only in Minnesota, but the implications of the new national policy was a major part of the discussion anyway.

    How many people could be arrested under the new order was unclear.

    Justice Department attorney Brantley Mayers said during Thursday’s hearing that the government should have the right to arrest refugees one year after entering the U.S., but indicated that would not always happen.

    “That’s a discretion call for DHS to make,” he said, a comment met with skepticism by attorneys for the Minnesota refugees.

    Tunheim did not rule Thursday, saying he’d issue a written decision on whether the temporary order would be extended.

    After the hearing, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota said at a news conference outside the courthouse that the government “failed to offer any coherent argument for their policy in either law or fact.” She wasn’t in court for the hearing, but said she’d been briefed about it.

    “And so we will continue the fight for justice in the courts,” Smith said, flanked by attorneys and refugee rights supporters, including U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.

    Advocacy groups decry the new order
    Immigration advocates quickly pushed back against the new policy, with HIAS, an international Jewish nonprofit serving refugees and asylum-seekers, calling it “a transparent effort to detain and potentially deport thousands of people who are legally present in this country, people the U.S. government itself welcomed.”

    “They were promised safety and the chance to rebuild their lives. Instead, DHS is now threatening them with arrest and indefinite detention,” Beth Oppenheim, the group’s CEO, said in a statement.

    Tunheim blocked the government from targeting the Minnesota refugees last month, saying the plaintiffs in the case were likely to prevail on their claims “that their arrest and detention, and the policy that purports to justify them, are unlawful.” His Jan. 28 temporary restraining order will expire Feb. 25 unless he grants a more permanent preliminary injunction.

    The judge previously rejected the government’s claim that it had the legal right to arrest and detain refugees who haven’t obtained their green cards within a year of arriving in the U.S.

    “Mandating detention would lead to an illogical result,” Tunheim wrote, since refugees can’t even apply for green cards until they’ve been in the U.S. for a year. The government’s interpretation, he said, means nearly all refugees would face detention unless immigration officials conducted their review at exactly the one-year mark, which he called “nonsensical.”

    Refugee rights groups sued the federal government in January after the government launched Operation PARRIS, an acronym for Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening.

    It was billed as a “sweeping initiative” to reexamine the cases of 5,600 Minnesota refugees who had not yet been granted permanent resident status, or green cards. The agencies cited fraud in public programs in Minnesota as justification.

    Operation PARRIS was part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown targeting Minnesota, including a surge of thousands of federal officers. Homeland Security called it the largest immigration enforcement operation ever. It sparked mass protests after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens. White House border czar Tom Homan announced last week the surge was ending, though a small federal presence would remain.

    Judge notes that refugees are extensively vetted
    The lawsuit alleges that ICE officers went door to door under Operation PARRIS arresting refugees and sending them to detention centers in Texas, without access to attorneys. Some were later released in Texas and left to find their own way back to Minnesota, they said.

    Tunheim noted in his order that refugees are extensively vetted by multiple agencies before being resettled in the U.S. He wrote that none arrested in the operation had been deemed a danger to the community or a flight risk, nor had any been charged with crimes that could be grounds for deportation.

    Tunheim stressed that the refugees impacted by his order were admitted into the U.S. because of persecution in their home countries. He prohibited further arrests under Operation PARRIS and ordered that detainees still in custody from it be released and returned to Minnesota.

    “They are not committing crimes on our streets, nor did they illegally cross the border. Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully,” he wrote.

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    Jordan Vawter

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  • How Trump Is Still Deporting People Wherever He Wants

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    In March of 2025, the Trump Administration was widely criticized for sending more than two hundred Venezuelans to CECOT, a notoriously brutal mega-prison in El Salvador. Yet, over the past eleven months, the Administration has continued the practice of deporting large numbers of noncitizens to so-called third countries, or countries to which the deportee typically has no connection. This is often because many immigrants living in America have judicial orders that prevent the government from sending them to their home country owing to the risk of persecution. This third-country practice has continued, however, despite the fact that a number of deportees have been sent back to their home countries after arriving in the third country. (Others remain stuck in prisons.) Recently, the Administration sent nine people of various nationalities to Cameroon, where most of them are now being held in detention until they agree to return to their home countries.

    I recently spoke by phone with Ahilan Arulanantham, a law professor at U.C.L.A. and the faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy there. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how judges have tried to limit the Trump Administration’s use of this third-country loophole by demanding that it bring wrongly deported immigrants home, the legal process that allows this type of deportation, and how the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to rein in the Trump Administration has strained federal courts.

    Early in Trump’s second term, there was a lot of concern about the degree to which immigration authorities would start removing people from America and sending them to third countries. A year later, how prevalent is this?

    I think it’s important to distinguish between third-country arrangements that result in the deportees being imprisoned in a foreign country, and other kinds of third-country arrangements, where, for example, Mexico has agreed to take in people who are not from Mexico and then, in some way or another, encourage those people to go back to their home countries. I would say that, in the case of the latter, the deportations to countries where people are just left at sea have happened on a massive, really unprecedented scale.

    The former, which are these deportation-to-prison arrangements, obviously happened with El Salvador, and then in other places like Ghana, and they’re also very troubling. But the total number of them is small. It’s probably less than a hundred, if you leave out the ones to El Salvador.

    In January, the Trump Administration secretly deported nine people to Cameroon, where none of them are from, according to the Times. It seems like when the Administration is legally prohibited from deporting people to a country where they may be persecuted, they send people to a third country, and then essentially throw up their hands and say, “Well, if the third country is going to send them to the country that they’re not supposed to be sent to, we can’t do anything.” Some legal observers argue that this workaround is just as illegal. How do you see it?

    I think it’s clearly illegal for two different reasons. The Administration’s recent arrangement with Cameroon resulted in the imprisonment of these nine people in Cameroon, and, at least in the reporting that I’ve read, most of them will be imprisoned unless they agree to go back to their home country. So that’s punishment. When you send somebody to a place to be imprisoned, that is imprisonment without trial. And so that, I think, is unquestionably illegal.

    Separate from that, even in cases where they’re being sent to these places, and it’s not necessarily resulting in imprisonment, but it’s resulting in a follow-on deportation, that is illegal—absent the person having had an opportunity to challenge that arrangement in the United States in immigration court. The law requires deportees to receive notice of the country to which they are going to be removed, and then an opportunity to raise any claims against that decision in court. This was challenged in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. last year, a class-action lawsuit challenging the government’s practice of sending people to third countries without providing any notice or opportunity to challenge the legality of that arrangement. A lower court held a hearing, took evidence, and issued a ruling declaring that procedure unlawful and requiring the government to provide notice in such situations. But the Supreme Court then stayed that order in mid-April without real explanation. They didn’t say that the lower court was wrong. They just said that the government can keep doing third-country deportations while the case is pending.

    Is the Court going to come back and provide an explanation for why it stayed the order at some point?

    The way the Supreme Court handles stay orders requires that the case come back to the Supreme Court, and then the Court has to either agree to take it or not. And if they decide not to take it, then the stay expires at that point. So you’re right that every time the Supreme Court stays an order in these cases, it means that the case will return to the Supreme Court, but it’s not like that happens immediately. That can take months and months, and there is, in my view, a direct line from the Supreme Court’s stay order in the D.V.D. case to the months of third-country removals that we’ve been seeing without people having any opportunity to contest the legality of that practice.

    So is the lack of any opportunity for the deportees to have the Supreme Court rule on the challenge to third-country removal before they were flown away the reason that you think this was illegal?

    The law on this is that a noncitizen gets to elect the country to which they will be deported in the event of an order of removal after a deportation hearing. The immigration judge asks the person to elect which country they wish to be removed to. In that case, the government has to try to send the person to their requested country. But if they can’t, for whatever reason—and one reason might be because the immigration judge has said, “You’ll be tortured there,” and barred it—then the government has to go through a whole list of other possible places to which they can send the person, like places where the person transited through or any other place where the person held any residency status. If none of those places agree to take them, they can be deported to any other country that accepts the person. But in that case they have to tell the person, We’re going to send you to this country. And because that wasn’t the subject of the original removal proceeding, they have to be given the opportunity to challenge the removal to that country.

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    Isaac Chotiner

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  • UCLA fires top finance officer, saying he made inaccurate claims about campus budget

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    In a rare action against a top administrator, UCLA on Tuesday fired its chief financial officer after officials said he inaccurately described the campus deficit, which has come under scrutiny by faculty leaders amid growing operation costs, attacks by the Trump administration and weaker-than-promised state funding.

    Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer Stephen Agostini, who had overseen UCLA’s $11-billion budget since May 2024, “will no longer serve in his role, effective immediately,” Chancellor Julio Frenk wrote in a brief campuswide message, announcing an interim appointment and a national search for a replacement.

    The abrupt change came days after Agostini gave an interview to the Daily Bruin student newspaper saying the campus had “financial management flaws and failures” predating his arrival, leading to what he said was a $425-million deficit. In the interview, Agostini blamed financial woes on faculty and staff raises, academic departments’ requests for new positions and expanded programs, and UCLA athletics, which has run in the red for multiple years.

    Agostini suggested that UCLA’s annual financial reports going back to 2002 were incorrect, saying he saw “very serious errors” — a charge UCLA officials deny. UCLA’s last posted financial report covers the 2022-23 fiscal year.

    Agostini did not respond to requests for comment from The Times.

    In his campus letter, Frenk did not state a reason for Agostini’s dismissal.

    A source with knowledge of the situation told The Times that the firing was tied to Agostini’s public statements regarding the budget and long-term financial management, which were made without Frenk’s approval. The person asked to have their name withheld because they were not authorized to speak to the media about administrative matters.

    In a separate statement, Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, dismissed Agostini’s comments directly.

    “Recent claims of a projected $425-million deficit for UCLA’s fiscal year 2025–26 are inaccurate,” Osako said. “The figure includes funds that are not committed for expenditure, including items that have been proposed or discussed but not approved. As such, it does not represent the university’s projected operating deficit.”

    Osako said the deficit was “substantially lower,” but did not say by how much. A UCLA spokesperson on Tuesday also declined to release a deficit number.

    Osako said budget challenges were caused not by academic programs but instead “reflect broader institutional and external factors affecting higher education.”

    “The university’s financial strategy has evolved under successive campus leaders in response to changing economic conditions, state funding levels and operational priorities,” she said. Also, “in spite of current strains, UCLA has the financial strength to maintain its excellence while adapting to new financial realities and opportunities.”

    She also said allegations suggesting long-term financial mismanagement were incorrect. “Chancellor Frenk is confident in the integrity of UCLA’s leadership, past and present, and their financial oversight and decision-making processes. Statements suggesting otherwise are unfounded and do not reflect his or UCLA’s position.”

    Financial challenges are common at U.S. universities, which have grappled with shifting enrollment, rising costs and funding pressures as well as lingering effects of pandemic-era financial declines. Harvard, which has faced major federal funding clawbacks since last year, recently said it has a $113-million deficit. UC Santa Cruz — where the operating budget is a fraction of UCLA’s — recently reported a $95-million deficit.

    UCLA leaders say the university is facing increasing costs and unpredictable state and federal support — including $584 million in federal research grant suspensions from the Trump administration that are currently blocked in court. The UC initiated a systemwide freeze on most hires last year and UCLA has made several cuts since then.

    At UCLA, changes include layoffs at the extension school, and reduced courseloads or a lack of contract renewals among some part-time faculty. The cuts are not uniform, with areas of the campus scaling back in different ways. Last year, the math department reported cutting paid graders and instituting reduced hours for teaching assistants. Lower-enrollment and less commonly taught foreign-language courses have also faced reductions. Faculty in other departments said their travel and conference budgets were reduced.

    UCLA, which is preparing to host the Olympic Village in 2028 and has invested tens of millions into athletics since joining the Big Ten, has also faced internal criticism for heavy spending on sports programs that have run in the red.

    A UCLA Academic Senate report released last month called for a “phased plan toward break-even or substantially reduced subsidy” for university money funneled toward athletics. The senate represents thousands of faculty members.

    Overall, the report said there was “incomplete data” and “major gaps in transparency” over financial matters.

    Speaking Tuesday, Megan McEvoy, a professor in the Institute for Society and Genetics who chairs the Academic Senate, said she was, “heartened that Chancellor Frenk took seriously the ongoing and serious concerns raised on campus about the now-former CFO.”

    But McEvoy said she and her colleagues still had questions.

    “Senate faculty need full, trustworthy accounting of decisions and policies that caused the current campus budget deficit,” she said. “Without accountability, we are concerned that the administration may repeat the same sort of decisions that led to the deficit. Senate faculty want to understand how the administration will balance the budget in ways that preserve the academic mission. The recent allegation that we can’t trust prior financial statements is worrisome, if true.”

    Anna Markowitz, president of the UCLA Faculty Assn. — an independent campus group that sued the Trump administration over its $1.2-billion UCLA settlement demand — said she had similar concerns.

    “We want to know how much money has been paid to subsidize athletics; on policing costs that have no clear goals or accountability structures; on real estate purchases; administrative consultants; and for high-level leadership who did not take action last year when our school was under grave threat,” said Markowitz, an associate professor in UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies.

    UCLA is not the only Southern California campus to face financial hurdles. Last year, USC laid off roughly 1,000 employees as it faced down a $230-million deficit. Speaking to The Times this month, USC President Beong-Soo Kim said the university was in a “much stronger financial position now” and that he was “optimistic” about its financial outlook.

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    Jaweed Kaleem

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  • Rep. Jim McGovern introduces bill to end “counterproductive” U.S. embargo against Cuba

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    On Thursday, Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts introduced a bill to the House of Representatives that calls for the end of the United States’ 64-year-old embargo against Cuba.

    The proposed measure comes as the Trump administration has moved toward placing a total oil blockade on the island nation, following the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

    Since Maduro’s capture, the U.S. has cut off all shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. President Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs on countries that send oil to the island.

    The oil deprivation in Cuba has sparked concern from international bodies, including the United Nations, which warned that the holdout would strain an already-fragile fuel situation and create a humanitarian crisis in the country.

    “For 60 years, we have been waiting for [the] embargo to do what politicians in Washington claim it will do — deliver freedom or democracy to the people of Cuba. It has failed,” McGovern wrote in his newly introduced bill.

    “It’s time to throw away the old, obsolete, failed policies of the past and try something different. Let’s focus on the people of Cuba — and let’s treat them like human beings who want to live their lives in dignity and freedom. The Cuban people — not politicians in Washington — ought to decide their own leaders and their own future.”

    The Massachusetts representative’s proposal mirrors a similar bill that was put forth to the U.S. Senate by Oregon Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in 2025.

    Additionally, McGovern criticized the seemingly hypocritical nature that the blockade has on Trump’s desire to curb immigration in the U.S.

    “The Trump administration says they want to curtail migration, but their own hard line approach only incentivizes migration to the United States by making living conditions worse in Cuba,” he wrote.

    “Not only is the embargo absurdly ineffective — it is counterproductive, hurting the very people it purports to help. It’s not Cuban elites who are harmed by our policies — it’s regular people and families who are denied food, medicine, and basic goods. We ought to use diplomacy and engagement to achieve our goals.”

    McGovern isn’t new to looking for an end of the embargo, his advocacy on the topic dates back to at least 2000.

    At the turn of the century, he penned an Op-Ed in The Times calling for former President Bill Clinton to put an end to the Cold War politics looming over the two countries’ strain.

    “The president should … declare to the Cuban people that the Cold War is finally over,” McGovern wrote in his 2000 article. “He should announce that he will use his executive power to normalize diplomatic relations, lift the travel restrictions imposed on U.S. citizens who want to travel to Cuba and waive as much of the outdated economic embargo as current law allows.”

    Other Democratic congresspeople have criticized the devastating nature of the oil embargo in recent days. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared the Cuban crisis to that of Gaza, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota called for the “cruel” and “despotic” blockade to be lifted and Rep. Chuy García of Illinois said the blockade is “deliberately starving civilians” in Cuba.

    To help curb the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Cuba, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent two of her country’s naval ships filled with humanitarian aid to the island last week, despite Trump’s tariff threats.

    In another effort to send aid to Cuba, an international coalition is preparing to send a flotilla with resources in March to the Caribbean archipelago. Named after “Nuestra América,” the 1891 essay by Cuban independence leader José Marti, the “Nuestra América Flotilla” mission is inspired by the Global Sumud Flotilla, which attempted to get aid to Gaza last year amid Israel’s blockade of the Palestine coastline.

    The coalition includes the political and grassroots organizations Progressive International, the People’s Forum and Code Pink, among others.

    “We are sailing to Cuba, bringing critical humanitarian aid for its people,” the organizers wrote on the official flotilla website. “The Trump administration is strangling the island, cutting off fuel, flights, and critical supplies for survival. The consequences are lethal, for newborns and parents, for the elderly and the sick.”

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    Carlos De Loera

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  • Watch live: Minnesota DFL lawmakers to call on GOP to stand against federal immigration actions

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    Some Democratic Minnesota lawmakers will gather at the State Capitol on Presidents Day to urge their Republican colleagues to stand against what they call President Trump’s “abuse of power.”

    How to watch: 

    • What: Minnesota DFL lawmakers call on GOP to stand against President Trump’s “abuse of power”
    • Who: Sen. Erin Maye Quade, Rep. Leigh Finke and others
    • When: 10 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 16.
    • How to watch: In the video player above, and streamed in full on YouTube.

    According to organizers, DFL Party members will be joined by some Minnesotans who “have been harmed” by the actions of federal immigration officers during Operation Metro Surge, including some Republican constituents.

    This event comes one day after White House border czar Tom Homan announced on CBS News’ “Meet the Press” that around 1,000 immigration officers have left Minnesota since he announced the operation’s end last week. He also said several hundred more are expected to leave in the coming days.

    This story will be updated.

    In:

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    WCCO Staff

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