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A carve-up in gift wrapping: In Trump’s peace plan, all the sacrifice is demanded from Ukraine

A carve-up in gift wrapping: In Trump’s peace plan, all the sacrifice is demanded from Ukraine

Dan Sabbagh writes: “Crimea will stay with Russia,” Donald Trump told Time magazine in a largely sympathetic profile on Friday. And with that statement, the US president made clear that he wanted to carve up another country, Ukraine, and so legitimise the forcible seizure of land made by Moscow 11 years ago. From reading the transcript of the interview, Trump’s thinking is hardly coherent. Crimea, he says, wouldn’t have been seized if he had been president in 2014, but “it…

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Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney Ed Martin

Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney Ed Martin

The Washington Post reports: The acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia sent a letter to the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, accusing the tax-exempt organization of “allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public.” In the letter dated April 24, Ed Martin, said he sought to determine whether the Wikimedia Foundation’s behavior is in violation of its Section 501(c)(3) status. Martin, who was appointed to the post by President Donald Trump in January, asked…

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When we see the Earth as ‘a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’ what do we learn about human significance?

When we see the Earth as ‘a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’ what do we learn about human significance?

Tim Bayne writes: On St Valentine’s Day 1990, NASA’s engineers directed the space-probe Voyager 1 – at the time, 6 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) from home – to take a photograph of Earth. Pale Blue Dot (as the image is known) represents our planet as a barely perceptible dot serendipitously highlighted by a ray of sunlight transecting the inky-black of space – a ‘mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’, as Carl Sagan famously put it. But to find that mote of dust, you need to know…

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U.S. agencies alarmed after China plays trump card: curbs on exports of rare-earth minerals

U.S. agencies alarmed after China plays trump card: curbs on exports of rare-earth minerals

The Washington Post reports: Senior administration officials are scrambling to stem economic damage from China’s restrictions on rare-earth exports, as President Donald Trump’s trade war risks cutting key industries and defense contractors off from supplies of metals crucial to production, according to three people familiar with internal deliberations. While companies search for alternative suppliers and urge the White House to cut a deal that will keep the materials flowing to U.S. manufacturers, the Trump administration is finding there are no…

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A Georgetown beneficiary of the Scholars at Risk program never imagined the U.S. would pose a risk

A Georgetown beneficiary of the Scholars at Risk program never imagined the U.S. would pose a risk

Nader Hashemi writes: In March, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, was arrested by federal agents. The nature and circumstances of his detention parallel the cases of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University and Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts. I am the academic director of the center at Georgetown that hosted Badar Khan Suri as a postdoctoral fellow — the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. I recently went to visit him at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement…

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ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil without a warrant, Trump administration concedes

ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil without a warrant, Trump administration concedes

CBS News reports: The Trump administration conceded on Thursday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents did not have a warrant when they detained Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil in March, acknowledging it was “a warrantless arrest.” Khalil’s attorneys are asking an immigration judge in Louisiana, where their client has been detained by ICE for weeks, to terminate his deportation case based on the fact that he was arrested without a warrant. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, admitted…

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Judge rules Trump admin must seek return of another man who was improperly deported to El Salvador

Judge rules Trump admin must seek return of another man who was improperly deported to El Salvador

Politico reports: The Trump administration must seek to return a second man who was improperly deported from the U.S. to El Salvador in violation of a previous court order, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Maryland-based Trump appointee, ruled that the administration deported a 20-year-old Venezuelan man last month in violation of a legally binding, court-approved settlement agreement reached in a lawsuit last year. Under that settlement, the U.S. agreed not to deport migrants who…

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After judge’s scathing rebuke, DOJ files sealed motion and is granted an extension in deportation case

After judge’s scathing rebuke, DOJ files sealed motion and is granted an extension in deportation case

NPR reports: A federal judge agreed to give the Trump administration another week to answer detailed questions about the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. A day earlier, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis issued a scathing rebuke of the administration’s response to her order for more details about its efforts to return him to the U.S. But the Trump administration asked for more time to respond in the case of the Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador last…

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How Ed Martin ghostwrote online attacks against a judge — and still became a top Trump prosecutor

How Ed Martin ghostwrote online attacks against a judge — and still became a top Trump prosecutor

By Jeremy Kohler and Andy Kroll This story was originally published by ProPublica The attacks on Judge John Barberis in the fall of 2016 appeared on his personal Facebook page. They impugned his ethics, criticized a recent ruling and branded him as a “politician” with the “LOWEST rating for a judge in Illinois.” Barberis, a state court judge in an Illinois county across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, was presiding over a nasty legal battle for control over the…

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100 days of DOGE brings lots of chaos and not much efficiency

100 days of DOGE brings lots of chaos and not much efficiency

Reuters reports: At the Social Security Administration, lawyers, statisticians and other high-ranking agency officials are being sent from the Baltimore headquarters to regional offices to replace veteran claims processors who have been fired or taken buyouts from the Trump administration. But most of the new arrivals don’t know how to do the job, leading to longer wait times for disabled and elderly Americans who depend on these benefits, according to two people familiar with the situation. Asked about the changes,…

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Three ways Trump’s immigration crackdown could hit U.S. citizens

Three ways Trump’s immigration crackdown could hit U.S. citizens

Axios reports: Trump administration officials are suggesting their immigration crackdown could expand to include deporting convicted U.S. citizens and charging anyone — not just immigrants — who criticizes Trump’s policies. Why it matters: Such moves — described by officials in recent days — would show how U.S. citizens could be impacted by the growing number of tactics President Trump is using to, in his view, improve national security. They’d also be certain to ignite new legal battles over how far Trump’s team…

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Detained then disappeared. ICE is silent on the fate of Venezuelan man

Detained then disappeared. ICE is silent on the fate of Venezuelan man

The Miami Herald reports: A Venezuelan man has disappeared into the U.S. immigration system. His family is looking for answers. Where is their brother? Where is her boyfriend? Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel, 27, was admitted into the U.S. in June 2023, after crossing the southern border through a scheduled appointment with immigration authorities — part of a digital portal created under the Biden administration to manage the flow of migrants entering from Mexico. In his hand, he carried a phone….

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Wife of Kilmar Abrego García forced into safe house after U.S. officials post family address online

Wife of Kilmar Abrego García forced into safe house after U.S. officials post family address online

The Washington Post reports: The wife of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration, has been moved to a safe house by supporters after U.S. officials posted a court document on social media that included the family’s address. Jennifer Vasquez Sura said in an interview with The Washington Post that she began fearing for her safety and that of their three children — two of whom are autistic…

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As much as Trump has tried to project himself as unstoppable, the truth is, he is as vulnerable as ever

As much as Trump has tried to project himself as unstoppable, the truth is, he is as vulnerable as ever

Jamelle Bouie writes: The goal of [Senator Chris] Van Hollen’s journey to El Salvador — during which he was stopped by Salvadoran soldiers and turned away from the prison itself — was to bring attention to Abrego Garcia and invite greater scrutiny of the administration’s removal program and its disregard for due process. It was a success. And that success has inspired other Democrats to make the same trip, in hopes of turning more attention to the administration’s removal program…

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