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Category: Law/Crime

Samuel Alito wrote one of the cruelest opinions in recent memory

Samuel Alito wrote one of the cruelest opinions in recent memory

Alexis Romero writes: On Thursday, the Supreme Court blessed the Trump administration’s efforts to kick hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians out of the United States. This was one of three unspeakably wrong opinions released on the same day, all by a 6–3 ideological divide, and all written by Justice Samuel Alito. Alito’s opinion pulls off a nearly unfathomable one-two punch of white racial apology: simultaneously backing all of the Trump administration’s claims of crime and filth across Black…

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Supreme Court decision penalizes immigrants who followed the law but white South Africans are welcomed

Supreme Court decision penalizes immigrants who followed the law but white South Africans are welcomed

Elora Mukherjee writes: On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration sweeping power to remove the legal right to live in America for Haitians and Syrians who are here under a program known as Temporary Protected Status. For more than three decades, T.P.S. enabled highly vetted immigrants from countries ravaged by war or natural disaster to remain in America. In 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano granted Haitians the right to apply for T.P.S. after a devastating earthquake….

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Supreme Court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’

Supreme Court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’

The Guardian reports: Lawmakers and immigration advocacy groups on Thursday sharply denounced two US supreme court rulings that allowed the Trump administration to strip certain immigration protections and fundamentally reshape the asylum system. Dozens of groups, advocates and members of Congress called the court’s decisions “disastrous” and “cruel”, while the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers and anti-immigrant groups celebrated the rulings. “Today, Trump’s loyalists in the supreme court have joined forces with him to deny immigrants’ internationally recognized human rights and…

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We can’t let my former venture capital colleagues in the AI lobby buy off our democracy

We can’t let my former venture capital colleagues in the AI lobby buy off our democracy

John O’Farrell writes: I first came to America from Ireland in 1984, as a young engineer about to attend business school. I chose Stanford University — partly for the weather and natural beauty, but more for the electrifying entrepreneurial spirit coursing through Silicon Valley. I was riveted by Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl ad — an athlete hurls a sledgehammer into Big Brother’s screen, shattering IBM’s grip on computing. More than an advertisement, it was a manifesto that technology could dismantle…

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Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote

Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote

The Associated Press reports: A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston effectively converts a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago, in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s efforts to overhaul elections, into a permanent ban….

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‘Blatantly unlawful’: Federal judge blocks DOJ subpoenas aimed at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz

‘Blatantly unlawful’: Federal judge blocks DOJ subpoenas aimed at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz

Politico reports: A federal judge has thrown out Justice Department grand jury subpoenas aimed at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his allies, calling them an abusive and retaliatory process to punish Walz based on his refusal to assist President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. In a blistering ruling, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz said there was “no doubt” that the subpoenas were issued to damage Walz — part of what he said was a pattern of Trump administration efforts to use…

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Federal judge blocks Trump admin’s database of Americans’ Social Security numbers and citizenship status

Federal judge blocks Trump admin’s database of Americans’ Social Security numbers and citizenship status

Politico reports: A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from creating a database of millions of Americans’ private information — including Social Security numbers and citizenship status — saying the administration has fed knowingly inaccurate data to states that are now “actively” and “haphazardly” purging purported non-citizens from voter rolls. “The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan wrote…

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‘A huge grab of power’: Trump is defying Congress on foreign aid

‘A huge grab of power’: Trump is defying Congress on foreign aid

By Anna Maria Barry-Jester This story was originally published by ProPublica After the Trump administration upended the world’s largest foreign aid provider last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff, its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely. But because it is a congressionally created agency, President Donald Trump needed lawmakers’ permission to do so. So this year, Trump officials asked Congress for permission to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and…

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Ehud Olmert: Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in the West Bank

Ehud Olmert: Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in the West Bank

Israel’s former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, writes: The fight against Jewish terrorism in the West Bank must advance to the next stage and be waged with greater determination. The daily terrorism that is managed, directed, encouraged and supported by the Israeli government can no longer be tolerated. What is happening across the West Bank today is not the work of “70 kids … from broken homes,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once tried to claim, disingenuously. Nor are these the…

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Israel’s former defence minister compares settler ideology to Nazism

Israel’s former defence minister compares settler ideology to Nazism

Middle East Eye reports: Israel’s former defence minister has compared settler ideology to Nazism, and accused authorities of failing to investigate Israelis responsible for killing Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank. In a wide-ranging interview with the Israeli news site Ynet on Sunday, Moshe Ya’alon said that factions within the religious Zionist movement, which is closely aligned with Israeli settlers, hold a “Jewish supremacy ideology”. “What is Jewish supremacy? Eighty years after the Holocaust, it’s Mein Kampf in reverse….

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DOJ officials refuse to follow judge’s demand to swear on oath that anti-weaponization fund is dead

DOJ officials refuse to follow judge’s demand to swear on oath that anti-weaponization fund is dead

The Hill reports: The Justice Department (DOJ) on Friday snubbed a federal judge’s demand to swear that a nearly $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund is dead, arguing the request raises “serious separation of powers concerns.” Judge Leonie Brinkema indefinitely blocked the fund last Friday and issued a seven-day deadline for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward to declare under penalty of perjury that it would not move forward “to avoid any further…

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Human Rights Watch: Federal government terrorized Minnesota communities

Human Rights Watch: Federal government terrorized Minnesota communities

The Trump administration’s deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents to Minnesota between December 2025 and March 2026 led to widespread human rights violations, terrorized residents with long-lasting effects, and spotlighted the deeply abusive patterns in US immigration enforcement, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 180-page report, “‘A Manufactured Crisis’: Minnesota Communities Terrorized by the Federal Government,” comprehensively documents how the US government’s “Operation Metro Surge” caused a human rights crisis in Minnesota, particularly in and…

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The criminal tendencies of AI

The criminal tendencies of AI

Science reports: In an infamous thought experiment known as the paperclip problem, an artificial intelligence (AI) program is tasked with making paperclips. Because it single-mindedly optimizes for the literal objective rather than the intent, the AI ends up consuming all the resources on Earth and judging any collateral damage—for example, killing all humans who get in its way—as irrelevant. This problematic logic is already simmering in today’s AI systems, a new study suggests. When researchers presented a large language model…

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MN U.S. Attorney won’t say whether officers were harmed as he charges ICE protesters with felonies

MN U.S. Attorney won’t say whether officers were harmed as he charges ICE protesters with felonies

TPM reports: Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen announced an eight-count felony indictment against 15 anti-ICE protesters Tuesday, centered on a broad “antifa”-inflected conspiracy. During a Tuesday press conference, Rosen would not say whether any federal officers were actually harmed, despite one of the counts being conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer and two of the counts being assault on a federal officer. “Whether or not they actually at the end of the day caused bodily harm is not…

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Frustrated by courts, Trump weighed suspending a fundamental constitutional right: habeas corpus

Frustrated by courts, Trump weighed suspending a fundamental constitutional right: habeas corpus

The New York Times reports: Last spring, Will Scharf, an arch-conservative lawyer serving as the White House staff secretary, wrote a secret memo to the chief of staff that reflected growing unease in the West Wing about one of the extreme measures being weighed by Stephen Miller, the powerful adviser driving President Trump’s deportation campaign. Dated April 29, 2025, and stamped “confidential,” the memo was careful and lawyerly but amounted to a warning against end-running the rule of law. The…

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The Constitution promises an interpreter for fair trials – U.S. courts often can’t deliver

The Constitution promises an interpreter for fair trials – U.S. courts often can’t deliver

A court interpreter checks the day’s schedule of assignments. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley By Carol Rose Little, University of Oklahoma In northern Oregon, just before dawn in October 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested and shackled two farmworkers on their way to work. The man and woman were Guatemalan citizens who spoke no English and very little Spanish. They spoke Mam, an Indigenous Mayan language. Despite the man trying to tell an ICE officer as much, he was not provided…

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