Thursday, Apr 03rd
Last update06:53:29 AM GMT
A federal appeals court panel ruled against the Trump administration, declining to block a trial judge’s decision that temporarily halted certain deportations under an 18th century wartime law.
Federal officials filed an emergency appellate motion after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued temporary restraining orders on March 15. President Donald Trump had invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to summarily remove alleged Venezuelan gang members and fly them to El Salvador.
The 7-2 decision, which overturned an opinion by a conservative appeals court, was a victory for former President Joe Biden. But President Donald Trump could repeal the regulation, something gun rights advocates are counting on.
Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the Gun Control Act allows the government to regulate some weapon parts kits and unfinished frames or receivers.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
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Just as Palestinian Basel Adra began narrating the opening scenes of “No Other Land” — the Oscar-winning documentary about Masafer Yatta, his embattled home in the West Bank — six late-coming moviegoers burst through the screening room doors, filling the 25-seat space in the Coolidge Corner Theatre nearly to capacity.
An audience of young and old, singletons and couples, had turned out on a drizzly St. Patrick’s Day evening to watch this film. Some visibly demonstrated their support for Palestine with accessories such as watermelon-slice pins or keffiyehs. The film tells the story of Masafer Yatta, a group of Palestinian villages located in a region that the Israel Defense Forces have declared a training zone.
The narrative centers around Basel, a lawyer by training and activist by necessity. Upset by IDF servicemembers who demolish Palestinian homes with the goal of forcing villagers off their land, he organizes peaceful protests that receive a violent response from the military.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza are “unjustifiable” and “intolerable”, Wes Streeting has said, as the health secretary expressed discomfort at images of bombs shattering the region that has been under threat by the Israelis “for many years”.
Streeting said he found Israel’s decision to break the Gaza ceasefire “soul-destroying”, and insisted the attacks do not “serve in Israel’s self-interest and cannot be justified as self-defence”, adding: “It has got to stop.”
On Monday, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 65 people in Gaza, including women, children and two journalists, nearly a week after it broke its ceasefire deal with Hamas.
U.S. intelligence agencies sounded the alarm on Ukraine’s dwindling battlefield prospects against Russia in an annual report released Tuesday.
The 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community — released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in conjunction with top officials’ testimony at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing — warns that Moscow has “seized the upper hand” in the war over the past year and “is on a path to accrue greater leverage” to force favorable terms in its negotiations with Ukraine and the West.
Intelligence agencies see continued Russian military resilience despite heavy battlefield losses — replenishing personnel and ratcheting up its industrial capacity.
“Even though Russian President [Vladimir] Putin will be unable to achieve the total victory he envisioned when initiating the large-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia retains momentum as a grinding war of attrition plays to Russia’s military advantages,” the report states. “This grinding war of attrition will lead to a gradual but steady erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any U.S. or allied attempts to impose new and greater costs on Moscow.”
The first amendment guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. It will have little meaning if multibillion-dollar corporations can sue peaceful protesters out of existence for their speech. Yet, that’s exactly what was decided in a small courtroom in Morton county, North Dakota.
Energy Transfer – a Dallas-based fossil fuel company that is responsible for the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) – sued two Greenpeace entities in the US (Greenpeace Inc and Greenpeace Fund), and Greenpeace International. Energy Transfer was awarded more than $660m in a highly watched, month-long case. Greenpeace will appeal the verdict.
The company sued Greenpeace entities simply for peacefully supporting the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline back in 2016-2017. At issue in the North Dakota case are nine statements made by Greenpeace that are alleged to be defamatory. All of the statements at issue are legitimate expressions under the first amendment, and none of the statements in question were original to Greenpeace.
The University of Southern California announced an immediate hiring freeze for all staff positions, “with very few critical exceptions” in a letter to faculty and staff on Tuesday.
The letter, from USC’s president, Carol Folt, and provost, Andrew Guzman, said the hiring freeze was one of nine steps to cut the school’s operating budget amid deep uncertainty about federal funding – given sweeping cuts to scientific research, the reorganization of student loans, and an education department investigation accusing the university of failing to protect Jewish students during protests over Israel’s destruction of Gaza following the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.
Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, said on Tuesday he takes “full responsibility” for the group chat of senior administration officials that inadvertently included a journalist and leaked highly sensitive information about planned airstrikes in Yemen.
Waltz’s comments came one day after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic, revealed that he was added to a group on Signal, a private messaging app, that included vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio and other high-profile figures discussing “operational details” of planned attacks on the Houthis in Yemen.
Goldberg’s account in the Atlantic suggested Waltz had mistakenly invited him to the chat. The prominent journalist remained in the group undetected as the president’s cabinet members discussed policy and coordinated a wave of bombings, an extraordinary breach that critics said put national security at risk.
Democrat James Malone has won an open Pennsylvania state Senate seat in a major upset in a district that comfortably voted for President Trump in November, Decision Desk HQ projects.
Malone, the mayor of East Petersburg, is projected to defeat Republican Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons to represent Senate District 36 for the remainder of former state Sen. Ryan Aument’s (R) term. Aument resigned from his office in December to become the state director for McCormick, who took office in January.
Parsons was considered likely to win in the conservative-leaning district, which President Trump carried in November with 57 percent of the vote and McCormick won with 56 percent. Aument had even been unopposed in his last election in 2022.
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