Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes

Category: National Politics

  • Venezuela’s Machado says she presented her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump during their meeting

    Venezuela’s Machado says she presented her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump during their meeting

    WASHINGTON — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she presented her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Donald Trump on Thursday, “as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom.”

    Machado detailed having given her prize to Trump in comments to a group of reporters after the meeting, but did not provide further details. The White House did not immediately say if Trump accepted the medal.

    That followed her having met with Trump to discuss her country’s future, even though he has dismissed her credibility to take over after an audacious U.S. military raid that captured then-President Nicolás Maduro.

    Visiting Trump presented something of a physical risk for Machado, whose whereabouts have been largely unknown since she left her country last year after being briefly detained in Caracas. Nevertheless, after a closed-door discussion with Trump, she greeted dozens of cheering supporters waiting for her near the gates —stopping to hug many.

    “We can count on President Trump,” she told them, prompting some to briefly chant “Thank you, Trump,” but she didn’t elaborate.

    The jubilant scene stood in contrast to Trump having repeatedly raised doubts about Machado and his stated commitment to backing democratic rule in Venezuela. He has signaled his willingness to work with acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s No. 2.

    Along with others in the deposed leader’s inner circle, Rodríguez remains in charge of day-to-day government operations and was delivering her first state of the union speech during Machado’s Washington trip.

    In endorsing Rodríguez so far, Trump sidelined Machado, who has long been a face of resistance in Venezuela. That’s despite Machado seeking to cultivate relationships with the president and key administration voices like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a gamble to ally herself with the U.S. government and some of its top conservatives.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Machado “a remarkable and brave voice” for the people of Venezuela, but also said that the meeting didn’t mean Trump’s opinion of her changed, calling it “a realistic assessment.”

    Trump has said it would be difficult for Machado to lead because she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” Her party is widely believed to have won 2024 elections rejected by Maduro.

    Leavitt went on to say that Trump supported new Venezuelan elections “when the time is right” but did not say when he thought that might be.

    Trump administration plays down meeting expectations

    Leavitt said Machado sought the face-to-face meeting without setting expectations for what would occur. Machado previously offered to share with Trump the Nobel Peace Prize she won last year, an honor he has coveted.

    “I don’t think he needs to hear anything from Ms. Machado,” the press secretary said, other than to have a ”frank and positive discussion about what’s taking place in Venezuela.”

    All told, Machado spent about two and a half hours at the White House but left without answering questions on whether she’d offered to give her Nobel prize to Trump, saying only “gracias.” It wasn’t clear she’d heard the question as she hugged and her waiting supporters.

    Machado also visited Capitol Hill for a meeting in the Senate. She said she gave Trump the medal in comments after her time with the senators.

    Her Washington stop began after U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea seized another sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration says had ties to Venezuela.

    It is part of a broader U.S. effort to take control of the South American country’s oil after U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife at a heavily guarded compound in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges.

    Leavitt said Venezuela’s interim authorities have been fully cooperating with the Trump administration and that Rodríguez’s government said it planned to release more prisoners detained under Maduro. Among those released were five Americans this week.

    Rodríguez has adopted a less strident position toward Trump then she did immediately after Maduro’s ouster, suggesting that she can make the Republican administration’s “America First” policies toward the Western Hemisphere, work for Venezuela — at least for now.

    Trump said Wednesday that he had a “great conversation” with Rodríguez, their first since Maduro was ousted.

    “We had a call, a long call. We discussed a lot of things,” Trump said during an Oval Office bill signing. “And I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela.”

    Machado doesn’t get the nod from Trump

    Even before indicating the willingness to work with Venezuela’s interim government, Trump was quick to snub Machado. Just hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump said of Machado that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader.”

    Machado has steered a careful course to avoid offending Trump, notably after winning the peace prize. She has since thanked Trump, though her offer to share the honor with him was rejected by the Nobel Institute.

    Machado remained in hiding even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. She missed the ceremony but briefly reappeared in Oslo, Norway, in December after her daughter received the award on her behalf.

    The industrial engineer and daughter of a steel magnate, Machado began challenging the ruling party in 2004, when the nongovernmental organization she co-founded, Súmate, promoted a referendum to recall then-President Hugo Chávez. The initiative failed, and Machado and other Súmate executives were charged with conspiracy.

    A year later, she drew the anger of Chávez and his allies again for traveling to Washington to meet President George W. Bush. A photo showing her shaking hands with Bush in the Oval Office lives in the collective memory. Chávez considered Bush an adversary.

    Almost two decades later, she marshaled millions of Venezuelans to reject Chávez’s successor, Maduro, for another term in the 2024 election. But ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared him the winner despite ample credible evidence to the contrary. Ensuing anti-government protests ended in a brutal crackdown by state security forces.

  • Netanyahu says the announced start of Gaza ceasefire’s next phase is a ‘declarative move’

    Netanyahu says the announced start of Gaza ceasefire’s next phase is a ‘declarative move’

    DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli strikes in central Gaza on Thursday killed eight people, including three women, a day after the U.S. announced that the fragile ceasefire would advance to its second phase.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the ceasefire announcement largely symbolic, raising questions about how its more challenging elements will be carried out.

    Speaking with the parents of the last Israeli hostage whose remains are still in Gaza, Netanyahu late Wednesday said the governing committee of Palestinians announced as part of the second phase was merely a “declarative move,” rather than the sign of progress described by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff.

    Israeli police officer Ran Gvili’s parents had earlier pressed Netanyahu not to advance the ceasefire until their son’s remains were returned, Israel’s Hostage and Missing Families Forum said Wednesday.

    Netanyahu told Gvili’s parents that his return remained a top priority.

    The announcement of the ceasefire’s second phase marked a significant step forward but left many questions unanswered.

    Those include the makeup of a proposed, apolitical governing committee of Palestinian experts and an international “Board of Peace.”

    The committee’s composition was coordinated with Israel, said an Israeli official speaking on the condition of anonymity.

    Questions also include the timing of deployment of international forces and the reopening of Gaza’s southern Rafah border crossing, as well as concrete details about disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza.

    In an interview on Wednesday with the West Bank-based Radio Basma, Ali Shaath, the engineer and former Palestinian Authority official slated to head the committee, said he anticipated reconstruction and recovery to take roughly three years. He said it would start with immediate needs like shelter.

    “If I bring bulldozers, and push the rubble into the sea, and make new islands (in the sea), new land, it is a win for Gaza and (we) get rid of the rubble,” Shaath, a Gaza native, said.

    Progress announced but hardship endures

    Palestinians in Gaza who spoke to The Associated Press questioned what moving into phase two would actually change on the ground, pointing to ongoing bloodshed and challenges securing basic necessities.

    More than 450 people have been killed since Israel and Hamas agreed to halt fighting in October, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Thursday.

    Six people were killed Thursday in two strikes, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. The first strike killed two men, while three women and a man were killed in the second strike. Israeli military officials did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the strikes.

    Separately, the military said that it had killed someone Thursday who had approached troops near the so-called Yellow Line — which divides the Israeli-held part of Gaza from the rest — and posed an imminent threat.

    “We see on the ground that the war has not stopped, the bloodshed has not stopped, and our suffering in the tents has not ended,” said Samed Abu Rawagh, a man displaced to southern Gaza from Jabaliya.

    The casualties since the October ceasefire, which UNICEF said include more than 100 children, are among the 71,441 Palestinians killed since the start of Israel’s offensive, according to the ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians.

    The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on war casualties. Israel disputes its figures but has not provided its own.

    Hamza Abu Shahab, a man from eastern Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said he was waiting for tangible changes, such as easier access to food, fuel and medical care, rather than promises.

    “We were happy with this news, but we ask God that it is not just empty words,” he told the AP in Khan Younis. “We need this news to be real, because in the second phase we will be able to return to our homes and our areas … God willing, it won’t just be empty promises.”

    Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has struggled to keep cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months.

    This is the third winter since the war between Israel and Hamas started on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others.

    Challenges lie ahead

    The second phase of the ceasefire will confront thornier issues than the first, including disarming Hamas and transitioning to a new governance structure after nearly two decades of the group’s rule in the strip.

    The U.N. has estimated reconstruction will cost over $50 billion. This process is expected to take years and little money has been pledged so far.

    Hamas has said it will dissolve its existing government to make way for the committee announced as part of the ceasefire’s second phase. But it has not made clear what will happen to its military arm or the scores of Hamas-affiliated civil servants and the civilian police.

    Bassem Naim, a member of the group’s political bureau, said Thursday that Hamas welcomed the announcement of the committee as a step toward establishing an independent Palestinian state, but did not elaborate on the issues in question. He said on X that “the ball is now in the court” of the United States and international mediators to allow it to operate.

    Israel has insisted Hamas must lay down its weapons, while the groups’ leaders have rejected calls to surrender despite two years of war, saying Palestinians have “the right to resist.”

  • Press freedom advocates worry that raid on Washington Post journalist’s home will chill reporting

    Press freedom advocates worry that raid on Washington Post journalist’s home will chill reporting

    If the byproduct of a raid on a Washington Post journalist’s home is to deter probing reporting of government action, the Trump administration could hardly have chosen a more compelling target.

    Hannah Natanson, nicknamed the “federal government whisperer” at the Post for her reporting on President Donald Trump’s changes to the federal workforce, had a phone, two laptops, and a Garmin watch seized in the Wednesday search of her Virginia home, the newspaper said.

    A warrant for the raid said it was connected to an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials, said Matt Murray, the Post’s executive editor, in an email to his staff. The Post was told that Natanson and the newspaper are not targets of the investigation, he said.

    In a meeting Thursday, Murray told staff members that “the best thing to do when people are trying to intimidate you is not be intimidated — and that’s what we did yesterday.”

    The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said Thursday it has asked the U.S. District Court in Virginia to unseal the affidavit justifying the search of Natanson’s home.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the search was done at the request of the Defense Department and that the journalist was “obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.”

    “If the attorney general can describe the justification for searching a reporter’s home on social media, it is difficult to see what harm could result from unsealing the justification that the Justice Department offered to this court,” the Reporters Committee said in its application.

    Government raids to homes of journalists highly unusual

    Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, has been working on press freedom issues for a decade and said a government raid on a journalist’s home is so unusual he couldn’t remember the last time it happened. He said it can’t help but have a chilling effect on journalism.

    “I strongly suspect that the search is meant to deter not just that reporter but other reporters from pursuing stories that are reliant on government whistleblowers,” Jaffer said. “And it’s also meant to deter whistleblowers.”

    In a first-person piece published by the Post on Christmas Eve, Natanson wrote about how she was inundated with tips when she posted her contact information last February on a forum where government employees were discussing the impact of Trump administration changes to the federal workforce.

    She was contacted by 1,169 people on Signal, she wrote. The Post was notably aggressive last year in covering what was going on in federal agencies, and many came as a result of tips she received — and was still getting. “The stories came fast, the tips even faster,” she wrote.

    Natanson acknowledged the work took a heavy toll, noting one disturbing note she received from a woman she was unable to contact. “One day, a woman wrote to me on Signal, asking me not to respond,” she wrote. “She lived alone, she messaged, and planned to die that weekend. Before she did, she wanted at least one person to understand: Trump had unraveled the government, and with it, her life.”

    Natanson did not return messages from the Associated Press. Murray said that “this extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”

    The action “signals a growing assault on independent reporting and undermines the First Amendment,” said Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at the advocacy group PEN America. Like Jaffer, he believes it is intended to intimidate.

    Sean Spicer, Trump’s press secretary at the beginning of his first term, said the concerns are premature. If it turns out that Natanson did nothing wrong, then questions about whether the raid was an overreach are legitimate, said Spicer, host of the political news show The Huddle on streaming services.

    “If Hannah did something wrong, then it should have a chilling effect,” he said.

    A law passed in 1917 makes it illegal for journalists to possess classified information, Jaffer said. But there are still questions about whether that law conflicts with First Amendment protections for journalists. It was not enforced, for example, when The New York Times published a secret government report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam in 1971.

    “It’s the government’s prerogative to pursue leakers of classified material,” the Post said in an editorial. “Yet journalists have First Amendment rights to gather and publish such secrets, and the Post also has a history of fighting for those freedoms.”

    Not the first action taken against the press

    The raid was made in context of a series of actions taken against the media during the Trump administration, including lawsuits against The New York Times and the BBC. Most legacy news organizations no longer report from stations at the Pentagon after they refused to sign on new rules restricting their reporting set by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Funding for public broadcasting has been choked off due to Trump’s belief that its news coverage leaned left.

    Some news outlets have also taken steps to be more aligned with the administration, Jaffer said, citing CBS News since its corporate ownership changed last summer. The Washington Post has shifted its historically liberal opinion pages to the right under owner Jeff Bezos.

    The Justice Department over the years has developed, and revised, internal guidelines governing how it will respond to news media leaks. In April, Bondi issued new guidelines saying prosecutors would again have the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists.

    The moves rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations.

    “Leaking classified information puts America’s national security and the safety of our military heroes in serious jeopardy,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X. “President Trump has zero tolerance for it and will continue to aggressively crack down on these illegal acts moving forward.”

    The warrant says the search was related to an investigation into a system engineer and information technology specialist for a government contractor in Maryland who authorities allege took home classified materials, the Post reported.

    The worker, Aurelio Perez-Lugones, is accused of printing classified and sensitive reports at work, and some were found at his Maryland home, according to court papers. He was arrested last week on a charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents.

    Perez-Lugones made a brief appearance in a Baltimore courtroom on Thursday. His attorney said they weren’t prepared to proceed with a hearing to determine whether he should remain jailed until a trial.

  • Trump announces outlines of healthcare plan he wants Congress to consider

    Trump announces outlines of healthcare plan he wants Congress to consider

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the outlines of a healthcare plan he wants Congress to take up as Republicans have faced increasing pressure to address rising health costs after lawmakers let subsidies expire.

    The cornerstone is his proposal to send money directly to Americans for health savings accounts so they can handle insurance and health costs as they see fit. Democrats have rejected the idea as a paltry substitute for the tax credits that had helped lower monthly premiums for many people.

    “The government is going to pay the money directly to you,” Trump said in a taped video the White House released to announce the plan. “It goes to you and then you take the money and buy your own healthcare.”

    Trump’s plan also focuses on lowering drug prices and requiring insurers to be more upfront with the public about costs, revenues, rejected claims and wait times for care.

    Trump has long been dogged by his lack of a comprehensive healthcare plan as he and Republicans have sought to unwind former President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. Trump was thwarted during his first term in trying to repeal and replace the law.

    When he ran for president in 2024, Trump said he had only “concepts of a plan” to address healthcare. His new proposal, short on many specifics, appeared to be the concepts of a plan.

    Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, described it to reporters on a telephone briefing as a “framework that we believe will help Congress create legislation.”

    It was not immediately clear if any lawmakers in Congress were working to introduce the Republican president’s plan. A White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and described some details on condition of anonymity said the administration had been discussing the proposal with allies in Congress, but was unable to name any lawmakers who were working to address the plan.

    Few specifics on health savings accounts

    The White House did not offer any details about how much money it envisioned being sent to consumers to shop for insurance, or whether the money would be available to all “Obamacare” enrollees or just those with lower-tier bronze and catastrophic plans.

    The idea mirrors one floated among Republican senators last year. Democrats largely rejected it, saying the accounts would not be enough to cover costs for most consumers. Currently, such accounts are used disproportionately by the wealthiest Americans, who have more income to fund them and a bigger incentive to lower their tax rate.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked at her briefing Thursday whether the president could guarantee that under his plan, people would be able to cover their health costs. She did not directly answer, but said, “If this plan is put in place, every single American who has health care in the United States will see lower costs as a result.”

    Enhanced tax credits that helped reduce the cost of insurance for the vast majority of Affordable Care Act enrollees expired at the end of 2025 even though Democrats had forced a 43-day government shutdown over the issue.

    Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) has been leading a bipartisan group of 12 senators trying to devise a compromise that would extend those subsidies for two years while adding new limits on who can receive them. That proposal would create the option, in the second year, of a health savings account that Trump and Republicans prefer.

    The White House official denied that Trump was closing the door completely on those bipartisan negotiations, and said the White House preferred to send money directly to consumers.

    Plan follows massive cuts to health programs

    Trump’s plan comes months after the Republicans’ big tax and spending bill last year cut more than $1 trillion over a decade in federal healthcare and food assistance, largely by imposing work requirements on those receiving aid and shifting certain federal costs to the states.

    Democrats have blasted those cuts as devastating for vulnerable people who rely on programs such as Medicaid for their healthcare. The GOP bill included an infusion of $50 billion over five years for rural health programs, an amount experts have said is inadequate to fill the gap in funding.

    The White House said Trump’s new proposal will seek to bring down premiums by fully funding cost-sharing reductions, or CSRs, a type of financial help that insurers give to low-income ACA enrollees on silver-level, or mid-tier plans.

    From 2014 until 2017, the federal government reimbursed insurance companies for CSRs. In 2017, the first Trump administration stopped making those payments. To make up for the lost money, insurance companies raised premiums for silver-level plans. That ended up increasing the financial assistance many enrollees got to help them pay for premiums.

    As a result, health analysts say that while restoring money for CSRs would likely bring down silver-level premiums, as Trump says, it could have the unwelcome ripple effect of increasing many people’s net premiums on bronze and gold plans.

    Lowering drug prices is a priority

    Oz said Trump’s plans also seeks to have certain medications made available over the counter instead of by prescription if they are deemed safe enough. He mentioned higher-dose nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and peptic ulcer drugs as two examples.

    It was unclear whether the White House is asking Congress to take steps to make more prescription drugs available over the counter. For decades, the Food and Drug Administration has had the ability to do that.

    The heartburn drug Prilosec, as well as numerous allergy medications, are among those the FDA has approved for over-the-counter sales. The FDA only approves such changes if studies show patients can safely take the drug after reading the package labeling. Companies must apply for the switch.

    The White House said Trump’s plan would also codify his efforts to lower drug prices by tying prices to the lowest price paid by other countries.

    Trump has already struck deals with a number of drugmakers to get them to lower the prices. As part of that, the drugmakers have agreed to sell pharmacy-ready medicines directly to consumers who can shop online at the White House’s website for selling drugs directly to consumers, TrumpRx.gov.

    TrumpRx did not yet have any drugs listed on Thursday. Oz said drugs will be available on the website at the end of the month.

  • Court ruling jeopardizes freedom for pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil

    Court ruling jeopardizes freedom for pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil

    A federal appeals panel on Thursday reversed a lower court decision that released former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail, bringing the government one step closer to detaining and ultimately deporting the Palestinian activist.

    The three-judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia didn’t decide the key issue in Khalil’s case: whether the Trump administration’s effort to throw Khalil out of the U.S. over his campus activism and criticism of Israel is unconstitutional.

    But in its 2-1 decision, the panel ruled a federal judge in New Jersey didn’t have jurisdiction to decide the matter at this time. Federal law requires the case to fully move through the immigration courts first, before Khalil can challenge the decision, they wrote.

    “That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple — not zero or two,” the panel wrote. “But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government conduct.”

    The law bars Khalil, 31, “from attacking his detention and removal in a habeas petition,” the panel added.

    Ruling won’t result in immediate detention

    It was not clear whether the government would seek to detain Khalil, a legal permanent resident, again while his legal challenges continue.

    Thursday’s decision marked a major win for the Trump administration’s sweeping campaign to detain and deport noncitizens who joined protests against Israel.

    Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security Department spokesperson, called the ruling “a vindication of the rule of law.”

    In a statement, she said the department will “work to enforce his lawful removal order” and encouraged Khalil to “self-deport now before he is arrested, deported, and never given a chance to return.”

    In a statement distributed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Khalil said the appeals ruling was “deeply disappointing, but it does not break our resolve.”

    He added: “The door may have been opened for potential re-detainment down the line, but it has not closed our commitment to Palestine and to justice and accountability. I will continue to fight, through every legal avenue and with every ounce of determination, until my rights, and the rights of others like me, are fully protected.”

    Baher Azmy, one of Khalil’s lawyers, with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the ruling was “contrary to rulings of other federal courts.” He noted the panel’s finding concerned a “hypertechnical jurisdictional matter,” rather than the legality of the Trump administration’s policy.

    “Our legal options are by no means concluded, and we will fight with every available avenue,” he added, saying Khalil would remain free pending the full resolution of all appeals, which could take months or longer.

    The ACLU said the Trump administration cannot lawfully re-detain Khalil until the order takes formal effect, which won’t happen while he can still immediately appeal.

    Khalil has multiple options to appeal

    Khalil’s lawyers can request the active judges on the Third Circuit hear an appeal, or they can go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    An outspoken leader of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia, Khalil was arrested on March 8, 2025. He then spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail, missing the birth of his firstborn.

    Federal officials have accused Khalil of leading activities “aligned to Hamas,” though they have not presented evidence to support the claim and have not accused him of criminal conduct. They have also accused Khalil, 30, of failing to disclose information on his green card application.

    The government has justified the arrest under a seldom-used statute that allows for the expulsion of noncitizens whose beliefs are deemed to pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests.

    In June, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that justification would likely be declared unconstitutional and ordered Khalil released.

    President Donald Trump’s administration appealed that ruling, arguing the deportation decision should fall to an immigration judge, rather than a federal court.

    Khalil has dismissed the allegations as “baseless and ridiculous,” framing his arrest and detention as a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

    Dissenting judge says Khalil has right to fight detention

    Judge Arianna Freeman dissented Thursday, writing that her colleagues were holding Khalil to the wrong legal standard. Khalil, she wrote, is raising “now-or-never claims” that can be handled at the district court level. He does not have a final order of removal, which would permit a challenge in an appellate court, she wrote.

    Both judges who ruled against Khalil, Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, were Republican appointees. President George W. Bush appointed Hardiman to the Third Circuit, while Trump appointed Bibas. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, appointed Freeman.

    The majority opinion noted Freeman worried the ruling would leave Khalil with no remedy for unconstitutional immigration detention, even if he later can appeal.

    “But our legal system routinely forces petitioners — even those with meritorious claims — to wait to raise their arguments, the judges wrote. “To be sure, the immigration judge’s order of removal is not yet final; the Board has not affirmed her ruling and has held the parties’ briefing deadlines in abeyance pending this opinion. But if the Board ultimately affirms, Khalil can get meaningful review.”

    The decision comes as an appeals board in the immigration court system weighs a previous order that found Khalil could be deported. His attorneys have argued that the federal order should take precedence.

    That judge has suggested Khalil could be deported to Algeria, where he maintains citizenship through a distant relative, or Syria, where he was born in a refugee camp to a Palestinian family.

    His attorneys have said he faces mortal danger if forced to return to either country.

  • Trump threatens to use the Insurrection Act to ‘put an end’ to protests in Minneapolis

    Trump threatens to use the Insurrection Act to ‘put an end’ to protests in Minneapolis

    MINNEAPOLIS — President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy troops to quell persistent protests against the federal officers sent to Minneapolis to enforce his administration’s massive immigration crackdown.

    The threat comes a day after a man was shot and wounded by an immigration officer who had been attacked with a shovel and broom handle. That shooting further heightened the fear and anger that has radiated across the city since an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good in the head.

    Federal officer shoots person in leg after being attacked during Minneapolis arrest, officials say

    Trump has repeatedly threatened to invoke the rarely used federal law to deploy the U.S. military or federalize the National Guard for domestic law enforcement, over the objections of state governors.

    “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump said in social media post.

    Presidents have indeed invoked the Insurrection Act more than two dozen times, most recently in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush to end unrest in Los Angeles. In that instance, local authorities had asked for the assistance.

    Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison responded to Trump’s post by saying he would challenge any deployment in court. He’s already suing to try to stop the surge by the Department of Homeland Security, which says it has made more than 2,000 arrests in the state since early December. ICE is a DHS agency.

    Protests, tear gas, and another shooting

    In Minneapolis, smoke filled the streets Wednesday night near the site of the latest shooting as federal officers wearing gas masks and helmets fired tear gas into a small crowd. Protesters responded by throwing rocks and shooting fireworks.

    Demonstrations have become common in Minneapolis since Good was fatally shot on Jan. 7. Agents who have yanked people from their cars and homes have been confronted by angry bystanders demanding they leave.

    “This is an impossible situation that our city is presently being put in and at the same time we are trying to find a way forward to keep people safe, to protect our neighbors, to maintain order,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said.

    Frey said the federal force — five times the size of the city’s 600-officer police force — has “invaded” Minneapolis, and that residents are scared and angry.

    The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota filed a lawsuit on behalf of three people who said they were questioned or detained in recent days. The lawsuit says two are Somali and one is Hispanic; all three are U.S. citizens. The lawsuit seeks an end to what the ACLU describes as a practice of racial profiling and warrantless arrests. The government did not immediately comment.

    Shooting followed chase

    Homeland Security said in a statement that federal law enforcement officers on Wednesday stopped a driver from Venezuela who is in the U.S. illegally. The person drove off then crashed into a parked car before fleeing on foot, DHS said.

    Officers caught up, then two other people arrived and the three started attacking the officer, according to DHS.

    “Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life,” DHS said. The confrontation took place about 4.5 miles from where Good was killed.

    Police chief Brian O’Hara said the shot man was being treated for a non-life-threatening injury. The two others are in custody, DHS said. O’Hara’s account of what happened largely echoed that of Homeland Security.

    Earlier Wednesday, Gov. Tim Walz described Minnesota said what’s happening in the state “defies belief.”

    “Let’s be very, very clear: this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” he said. “Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”

    Clashes in court as well

    Earlier Wednesday, a judge gave the Trump administration time to respond to a request to suspend its immigration crackdown in Minnesota, while the Pentagon looked for military lawyers to join what has become a chaotic law enforcement effort in the state.

    “What we need most of all right now is a pause. The temperature needs to be lowered,” state Assistant Attorney General Brian Carter said during the first hearing in a lawsuit filed by Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

    Local leaders say the government is violating free speech and other constitutional rights with the surge of law enforcement. U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez gave the U.S. Justice Department until Monday to file a response to a request for a restraining order.

    Justice Department attorney Andrew Warden suggested the approach set by Menendez was appropriate.

    The judge is also handling a separate lawsuit challenging the tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officers when they encounter protesters and observers. A decision could be released this week.

    During a televised speech before Wednesday’s shooting, Gov. Tim Walz described Minnesota as being in chaos, saying what’s happening in the state “defies belief.”

    “Let’s be very, very clear, this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” he said. “Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”

    Military lawyers may join the surge

    CNN, citing an email circulating in the military, says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is asking the military branches to identify 40 lawyers known as judge advocate general officers or JAGs, and 25 of them will serve as special assistant U.S. attorneys in Minneapolis.

    Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson appeared to confirm the CNN report by posting it on X with a comment that the military “is proud to support” the Justice Department.

    The Pentagon did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press seeking more details.

    It’s the latest step by the Trump administration to dispatch military and civilian attorneys to areas where federal immigration operations are taking place. The Pentagon last week sent 20 lawyers to Memphis, U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant said.

    Mark Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law and a former Navy JAG, said there’s concern that the assignments are taking lawyers away from the military justice system.

    “There are not many JAGs but there are over one million members of the military, and they all need legal support,” he said.

    An official says the agent who killed Good was injured

    Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who killed Good, suffered internal bleeding to his torso during the encounter, a Homeland Security official told The Associated Press.

    The official spoke to AP on condition of anonymity in order to discuss Ross’ medical condition. The official did not provide details about the severity of the injuries, and the agency did not respond to questions about the extent of the bleeding, exactly how he suffered the injury, when it was diagnosed or his medical treatment.

    There are many causes of internal bleeding, and they vary in severity from bruising to significant blood loss. Video from the scene showed Ross and other officers walking without obvious difficulty after Good was shot and her Honda Pilot crashed into other vehicles.

    She was killed after three ICE officers surrounded her SUV on a snowy street a few blocks from her home.

    Bystander video shows one officer ordering Good to open the door and grabbing the handle. As the vehicle begins to move forward, Ross, standing in front, raises his weapon and fires at least three shots at close range. He steps back as the SUV advances and turns.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said Ross was struck by the vehicle and that Good was using her SUV as a weapon — a self-defense claim that has been deeply criticized by Minnesota officials.

    Chris Madel, an attorney for Ross, declined to comment on any injuries.

    Good’s family, meanwhile, has hired a law firm, Romanucci & Blandin, that represented George Floyd’s family in a $27 million settlement with Minneapolis. Floyd, who was Black, died after a white police officer pinned his neck to the ground in the street in May 2020.

    The firm said it would conduct its own investigation and publicly share what it learns.

  • Trump’s promised manufacturing boom is a bust so far

    Trump’s promised manufacturing boom is a bust so far

    Introducing the highest U.S. tariffs since the Great Depression, President Donald Trump made a clear promise in the spring: “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.”

    They haven’t.

    Manufacturing employment has declined every month since what Trump dubbed “Liberation Day” in April, saying his widespread tariffs would begin to rebalance global trade in favor of American workers. U.S. factories employ 12.7 million people today, 72,000 fewer than when Trump made his Rose Garden announcement.

    The trade measures that the president said would spur manufacturing have instead hampered it, according to most mainstream economists. That’s because roughly half of U.S. imports are “intermediate” goods that American companies use to make finished products, like aluminum that is shaped into soup cans or circuit boards that are inserted into computers.

    So while tariffs have protected American manufacturers like steel mills from foreign competition, they have raised costs for many others. Auto and auto parts employment, for example, has dipped by about 20,000 jobs since April.

    “2025 should have been a good year for manufacturing employment, and that didn’t happen. I think you really have to indict tariffs for that,” said economist Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana.

    Small- and midsize businesses have found Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs especially vexing. Fifty-seven percent of midsize manufacturers and 40 percent of small producers said they had no certainty about their input costs in a November survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Only 23 percent of large manufacturers shared that complaint.

    Smaller companies also were more than twice as likely to respond to tariffs by delaying investments in new plants and equipment, the survey found. One reason could be that taxes on imports raise the price of goods used in production much more than they do with typical consumer items, according to a study by the San Francisco Fed.

    Industries producing more technologically complex goods such as aircraft and semiconductors also are paying an outsize price, according to Gary Winslett, director of the international politics and economics program at Middlebury College. Makers of semiconductors, for example, shed more than 13,000 jobs since April.

    “They’re the ones who need the imported inputs. Really advanced manufacturing is actually what’s getting hit the hardest,” he said.

    Trump’s tariffs, however, are not the industrial sector’s only headache. Factory payrolls began their post-pandemic decline in early 2023, almost two years before Trump returned to the White House.

    High interest rates and a shift in consumer spending patterns are hurting the nation’s manufacturers, economists said. Business loans are more than twice as expensive as they were four years ago, with banks charging their most creditworthy borrowers interest rates of 6.75 percent. That discourages businesses from expanding operations and hiring additional workers.

    After bingeing during the height of the pandemic on durable goods, consumers have gradually redirected their spending to in-person services. Money that once went to makers of furniture, televisions and exercise machines now goes instead to restaurants and entertainment venues.

    In Indiana, the spending switch can be glimpsed in the fortunes of the recreational vehicle industry, a local mainstay. RV shipments soared to a record 600,400 in 2021 as consumers trapped at home by the pandemic hit the road. But by 2024, the work-from-home era was over, and sales fell by nearly half. Thor Industries, the largest RV manufacturer, laid off several hundred workers last year, as demand flagged.

    Once Trump returned to the White House, manufacturers responded by over-ordering imports to beat the anticipated tariffs. That’s left many producers with more inventory than they need, suggesting cuts lie ahead, according to Hicks.

    “The manufacturing job losses that we see now are really just the beginning of what will be a pretty grim couple of quarters as manufacturing adjusts to a new lower level of demand,” he said.

    Modest numbers of manufacturing jobs have been trimmed throughout the economy. In December, Westlake Corp., a Houston-based producer of industrial chemicals, said it would idle four production lines at facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi, putting 295 employees out of work. Speaking on an investor call, company executives blamed excess global capacity and weak demand for the move.

    While the jobs that Trump promised have not materialized, factory output rose in 2025, reaching its highest mark in almost three years, according to Federal Reserve data, and administration officials said it is only a matter of time before the full benefits of the president’s plan are felt.

    Trump’s tariffs and jawboning encourage CEOs to invest in new U.S. plants. Provisions in the president’s signature fiscal legislation permitting companies to quickly write off the full expense of new investments in equipment and research and development expenses will spur modern manufacturing, they said.

    “It also encourages the build-out of high-precision manufacturing here at home, which will lead to high-paying construction and factory jobs,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a speech this month.

    Companies are spending more than three times as much on constructing new factories as they did when Trump was first inaugurated, though less than during the Biden-era peak. The White House last fall hailed recent investment announcements by companies such as Stellantis and Whirlpool. Last month, T. RAD North America, a subsidiary of a Japanese manufacturer, announced plans for a new auto parts plant in Clarksville, Tennessee, which would employ 928 workers.

    Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which backs Trump’s manufacturing policies, said the roughly 1 percent shrinkage in factory employment last year was less significant than the uptick in business investment.

    “We saw a significant increase in capital expenditures, which is the earliest signal that reindustrialization is taking hold. Those investments take time to permit, build and staff before they show up in employment data,” he said.

    The president’s hopes of increasing manufacturing employment defy decades of experience in the United States and other advanced economies. American factory jobs peaked at 19.5 million in the summer of 1979 and have been sliding ever since, largely because of the introduction of machinery that can do the job of several workers.

    As two presidents sought to revive domestic production over the past decade, manufacturing employment rode a roller coaster. Factory jobs increased by 421,000 during Trump’s first term before sinking by more than 1 million during the pandemic. President Joe Biden used government subsidies to encourage hiring, especially for green energy projects, and manufacturing payrolls rose more than 100,000 above Trump’s highest mark.

    But those gains evaporated by the end of 2024.

    On Tuesday, the president addressed the Detroit Economic Club, touting “the strongest and fastest economic turnaround in our country’s history.” He boasted about growth, productivity, investment, incomes, inflation and the stock market.

    “The Trump economic boom is officially begun,” the president said.

    All that’s missing now are the jobs.

    GRAPHIC

    https://washingtonpost.com/documents/fa67e068-5b52-48f2-aaf1-1cf62d5ac320.pdf
  • Lawmakers propose $2.5B agency to boost production of rare earths and other critical minerals

    Lawmakers propose $2.5B agency to boost production of rare earths and other critical minerals

    WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers have proposed creating a new agency with $2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals, while the Trump administration has already taken aggressive actions to break China’s grip on the market for these materials that are crucial to high-tech products, including cellphones, electric vehicles, jet fighters and missiles.

    It’s too early to tell how the bill, if passed, could align with the White House’s policy, but whatever the approach, the U.S. is in a crunch to drastically reduce its reliance on China, after Beijing used its dominance of the critical minerals market to gain leverage in the trade war with Washington. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a one-year truce in October, by which Beijing would continue to export critical minerals while the U.S. would ease its export controls of U.S. technology on China.

    The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to help ensure its access to the materials after the trade war laid bare just how beholden the U.S. is to China, which processes more than 90% of the world’s critical minerals. To break Beijing’s chokehold, the U.S. government is taking equity stakes in a handful of critical mineral companies and in some cases guaranteeing the price of some commodities using an approach that seems more likely to come out of China’s playbook instead of a Republican administration.

    The bill that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) and Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.) introduced Thursday would favor a more market-based approach by setting up the independent body charged with building a stockpile of critical minerals and related products, stabilizing prices, and encouraging domestic and allied production to help ensure stable supply not only for the military but also the broader economy and manufacturers.

    Shaheen called the legislation “a historic investment” to make the U.S. economy more resilient against China’s dominance that she said has left the U.S. vulnerable to economic coercion. Young said creating the new reserve is “a much-needed, aggressive step to protect our national and economic security.”

    Rep. Rob Wittman (R., Va.) introduced the House version of the bill.

    New sense of urgency

    When Trump imposed widespread tariffs last spring, Beijing fought back not only with tit-for-tat tariffs but severe restrictions on the export of critical minerals, forcing Washington to back down and eventually agree to the truce when the leaders met in South Korea.

    On Monday, in his speech at SpaceX, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that the Pentagon has in the past five months alone “deployed over $4.5 billion in capital commitments” to close six critical minerals deals that will “help free the United States from market manipulation.”

    One of the deals involves a $150 million of preferred equity by the Pentagon in Atlantic Alumina Co. to save the country’s last alumina refinery and build its first large-scale gallium production facility in Louisiana.

    Last year, the Pentagon announced it would buy $400 million of preferred stock in MP Materials, which owns the country’s only operational rare earths mine at Mountain Pass, California, and entered into a $1.4-billion joint partnership with ReElement Technologies Corp. to build up a domestic supply chain for rare earth magnets.

    On Wednesday, Trump announced in a proclamation that the U.S. is “too reliant” on foreign-sourced critical minerals and directed his administration to negotiate better deals. He said possible remedies would include minimum import prices for certain critical minerals.

    “Reshoring manufacturing that’s critical to our national and economic security is a top priority for the Trump administration,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson.

    The drastic move by the U.S. government to take equity stakes has prompted some analysts to observe that Washington is pivoting to some form of state capitalism to compete with Beijing.

    “Despite the dangers of political interference, the strategic logic is compelling,” wrote Elly Rostoum, a senior fellow at the Washington-based research institute Center for European Policy Analysis. She suggested that the new model could be “a prudent way for the U.S. to ensure strategic autonomy and industrial sovereignty.”

    Companies across the industry are welcoming the intervention from Trump’s administration.

    “He is playing three-dimensional chess on critical minerals like no previous president has done. It’s about time too, given the military and strategic vulnerability we face by having to import so many of these fundamental building blocks of technology and national defense,” NioCorp’s Chief Communications Officer Jim Sims said. That company is trying to finish raising the money it needs to build a mine in southeast Nebraska.

    Relying on allies for help

    In addition to trying to boost domestic production, the Trump administration has sought to secure some of these crucial elements through allies. In October, Trump signed an $8.5 billion agreement with Australia to invest in mining there, and the president is now aggressively trying to take over Greenland in the hope of being able to one day extract rare earths from there.

    On Monday, finance ministers from the G7 nations huddled in Washington over their vulnerability in the critical mineral supply chains.

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has led several rounds of trade negotiations with Beijing, urged attendees to increase their supply chain resiliency and thanked them for their willingness to work together “toward decisive action and lasting solutions,” according to a Treasury statement.

    The bill introduced on Thursday by Shaheen and Young would encourage production with both domestic and allied producers.

    Past efforts to bolster rare earths production

    Congress in the past several years has pushed for legislation to protect the U.S. military and civilian industry from Beijing’s chokehold. The issue became a pressing concern every time China turned to its proven tactics of either restricting the supply or turned to dumping extra critical minerals on the market to depress prices and drive any potential competitors out of business.

    The Biden administration sought to increase demand for critical minerals domestically by pushing for more electric vehicle and windmill production. But the Trump administration largely eliminated the incentives for those products and instead chose to focus on increasing critical minerals production directly.

    Most of those past efforts were on a much more limited scale than what the government has done in the past year, and they were largely abandoned after China relented and eased access to critical minerals.

  • Public mistrust linked to drop in deceased donor organ donations and kidney transplants

    Public mistrust linked to drop in deceased donor organ donations and kidney transplants

    WASHINGTON — Organ donations from the recently deceased dropped last year for the first time in over a decade, resulting in fewer kidney transplants, according to an analysis issued Wednesday that pointed to signs of public mistrust in the lifesaving system.

    More than 100,000 people in the U.S. are on the list for an organ transplant. The vast majority of them need a kidney, and thousands die waiting every year.

    The nonprofit Kidney Transplant Collaborative analyzed federal data and found 116 fewer kidney transplants were performed last year than in 2024. That small difference is a red flag because the analysis traced the decline to some rare but scary reports of patients prepared for organ retrieval despite showing signs of life.

    Those planned retrievals were stopped and the U.S. is developing additional safeguards for the transplant system, which saves tens of thousands of lives each year. But it shook public confidence, prompting some people to remove their names from donor lists.

    Andrew Howard, who leads the Kidney Transplant Collaborative, said last year’s dip in kidney transplants would have been larger except for a small increase — about 100 — in transplants from living donors, when a healthy person donates one of their kidneys to someone in need. The collaborative advocates for increased living donations, which make up a fraction of the roughly 28,000 yearly kidney transplants.

    With the exception of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging, organ transplants have been rising year-to-year. Last year’s decline in deceased donors didn’t translate into fewer transplants overall: There were just over 49,000 compared with 48,150 in 2024. Transplants of hearts, livers and lungs continued to see gains, according to federal data. Howard said that was likely due to differences in how various organs are evaluated and allocated for transplant.

    The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations wasn’t involved in Wednesday’s analysis but expressed alarm, calling on its members, hospitals and federal regulators “to unite in restoring public trust and strengthening this critical system.”

  • Moscow agrees with Trump that Ukraine is holding up a peace deal, the Kremlin says

    Moscow agrees with Trump that Ukraine is holding up a peace deal, the Kremlin says

    Moscow agrees with President Donald Trump’s view that Ukraine is holding up a peace deal to end the almost four years of fighting since Russia invaded its neighbor, a Kremlin official said Thursday.

    Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “Yes, we can agree with it, it’s indeed so.” His comments came after Trump said in published remarks Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is an obstacle in U.S.-led peace talks.

    That assessment is at odds with the sentiment of European officials, who have repeatedly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of stalling in negotiations while his bigger army tries to push deeper into Ukraine and Russia relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities.

    Kyiv and Moscow still appear publicly far apart on their terms for a peace deal.

    “I think he’s ready to make a deal,” Trump was quoted as saying of the Russian president in an interview with Reuters. “I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal,” he said, naming Zelensky as obstructing a settlement.

    Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who along with many European and NATO member nations has strongly backed Ukraine, pushed back on Trump’s reported comments.

    “It is Russia who rejected the peace plan prepared by the U.S.,” not Zelensky, Tusk posted on X on Thursday. “The only Russian response (was) further missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. This is why the only solution is to strengthen pressure on Russia. And you all know it.”

    Putin said Thursday that Moscow, like Ukraine, demands security guarantees as part of a prospective peace deal.

    “We must proceed from the premise that security must be truly universal, and therefore equal and indivisible, and it cannot be ensured for some at the expense of the security of others,” Putin said after receiving credentials from foreign ambassadors in the Kremlin.

    “In the absence of it, Russia will continue to consistently pursue the goals it has set,” Putin added.

    Trump’s position appeared to deviate from recent comments by U.S. officials that the American president is running out of patience with Putin.

    U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said last week that Trump is on board with a tough sanctions package intended to economically cripple Russia.

    “This will be well-timed, as Ukraine is making concessions for peace and Putin is all talk, continuing to kill the innocent,” Graham said in a statement.

    Also, the United States accused Russia on Monday of a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation” of its war at a time when the Trump administration is trying to advance negotiations toward peace.

    The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said late Wednesday that “the Kremlin has been delaying the peace process for months in order to protract the war and achieve Russia’s original war aims through military means.”

    A Russian drone struck a playground in the western city of Lviv overnight, according to the head of the regional military administration Maksym Kozytskyi. The blast shattered over a hundred windows in the area, though nobody was injured, he said.

    Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that no date has been agreed for U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff to make another visit to Moscow for further peace talks.