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Category: Law/Crime

Governments are legally required to address climate change, top global court says

Governments are legally required to address climate change, top global court says

Inside Climate News reports: Tuesday’s landmark advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on climate change came as residents of some island nations are already “scraping barnacles off our grandfathers’ graves” as sea-level rise accelerates, said Julian Aguon, an Indigenous human rights lawyer and writer from Guam, in a poem he recited outside the Peace Palace as the judges started their two-hour presentation. That sense of urgency for action also came through in the 15-judge panel’s unanimous opinion. The…

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DOJ told Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files

DOJ told Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files

The Wall Street Journal reports: When Justice Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a “truckload” of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials. In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned…

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Republican voters are breaking with Trump over Epstein files, polls show

Republican voters are breaking with Trump over Epstein files, polls show

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration’s recent decision to backtrack on releasing new details about the investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has prompted something exceedingly rare: Republican voters have begun to break with the president. Mr. Trump has long engendered unwavering loyalty from his followers, who tend to shrug off even his most extreme controversies. But recent public polling suggests even such fervent support may have a limit. While 40 percent of Republicans approve of…

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There is no safe place for legal immigrants in Trump’s America

There is no safe place for legal immigrants in Trump’s America

The American Prospect reports: The federal agents stationed outside immigration courtrooms at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan wore face coverings, either medical masks or neck gaiters pulled up over their noses. Some obscured their identity further with sunglasses and baseball hats. None displayed their names or badge numbers, though one wore a T-shirt with a picture of a skull and the words “we the people defend liberty.” Assembled in three separate groups, they lingered casually as they waited for their…

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After major law firms bent the knee, a corps of ‘little guys’ jumped in to fight Trump

After major law firms bent the knee, a corps of ‘little guys’ jumped in to fight Trump

The New York Times reports: President Trump’s executive orders seeking to punish big law firms have led some of them to acquiesce to him and left others reluctant to take on pro bono cases that could put them at odds with the administration. But as opponents of the White House’s policies organized to fight Mr. Trump in court on a vast range of actions and policies, they quickly found that they did not need to rely on Big Law. Instead,…

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How John Roberts laid the foundations for an American dictatorship

How John Roberts laid the foundations for an American dictatorship

Peter M. Shane writes: No one on the Supreme Court has gone further to enable Donald Trump’s extreme exercise of presidential power than the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts. Associate justices have also written some important opinions shaping executive power, and the Court has issued ever more important unsigned orders, but the most transformative opinions—the opinions that directly legitimize Trump’s unprecedented uses of power—are Roberts’s handiwork. This is not happenstance. Under Supreme Court practice, the most senior…

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Trump officials accused of defying a third of the judges who have ruled against him

Trump officials accused of defying a third of the judges who have ruled against him

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump and his appointees have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling, a Washington Post analysis has found, suggesting widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system. Plaintiffs say Justice Department lawyers and the agencies they represent are snubbing rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence, quietly working around court orders and inventing pretexts to…

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Migrants at ICE jail in Miami made to kneel to eat ‘like dogs’, Human Rights Watch reports

Migrants at ICE jail in Miami made to kneel to eat ‘like dogs’, Human Rights Watch reports

The Guardian reports: Migrants at a Miami immigration jail were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to kneel to eat food from styrofoam plates “like dogs”, according to a report published on Monday into conditions at three overcrowded south Florida facilities. The incident at the downtown federal detention center is one of a succession of alleged abuses at Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice) operated jails in the state since January, chronicled by advocacy groups Human…

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A federal trial in Boston reveals the sprawling plan behind Trump’s attacks on pro-Palestinian students

A federal trial in Boston reveals the sprawling plan behind Trump’s attacks on pro-Palestinian students

Cristian Farias writes: In April, U.S. District Judge William Young, who sits in Boston, made a procedural ruling from the bench that seemed to catch the lawyers in the courtroom by surprise. Like many other judges these days, Young had convened a hearing to consider whether to grant a preliminary injunction—which, in the normal course, would put a quick stop to an illegal or otherwise unconstitutional government policy. By one count, in the first seventy days of Donald Trump’s presidency,…

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Most of the people being thrown into ICE detention centers have never been convicted of any crime

Most of the people being thrown into ICE detention centers have never been convicted of any crime

Eric Schlosser writes: Three weeks ago, Donald Trump attended the opening of an immigrant-detention center in the Florida Everglades, about 50 miles west of Miami. “Pretty soon, this facility will handle the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” the president said. Officially named Alligator Alcatraz, it was constructed in eight days by the state of Florida on a disused airport runway. The detention center features tents that contain chain-link cages crammed with bunk beds,…

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The U.S. government’s growing trove of social media data

The U.S. government’s growing trove of social media data

Brennan Center for Justice reports: Reviewing individuals’ social media to conduct ideological vetting has been a defining initiative of President Trump’s second term. As part of that effort, the administration has proposed expanding the mandatory collection of social media identifiers. The proposal would widen the government’s social media surveillance dragnet to include not only travelers, visa applicants, and visa holders, but also their U.S. citizen contacts. By linking individuals’ online presence to government databases, officials could more easily identify, monitor,…

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In the United States, citizens choose the president. The president does not choose citizens

In the United States, citizens choose the president. The president does not choose citizens

Chris Feliciano Arnold writes: Because I was naturalized as a child, I didn’t have to take the famous civics test—I was still learning that stuff in school. I just rolled my fingertips in wet ink and held still for a three-quarter-profile photograph that revealed my nose shape, ear placement, jawline, and forehead contour. My parents sat beside me for an interview with an immigration officer who asked me my name, where I lived, and who took care of me. But…

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Steve Bannon under pressure to release his own Epstein videotapes

Steve Bannon under pressure to release his own Epstein videotapes

NBC News reports: In 2021, the New York Post ran an online trailer for an upcoming documentary about Jeffrey Epstein that was produced by former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon. In the video, Bannon is on camera questioning Epstein about “all of the depravity you’ve done against young women,” among other things. But that documentary never came out. Now, Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, Mark, is asking for Bannon to show him the unseen footage. “Let me see the videotapes,” he told…

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Trump sues Murdoch, Dow Jones over WSJ story on Epstein birthday letter

Trump sues Murdoch, Dow Jones over WSJ story on Epstein birthday letter

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump on Friday followed through on his threat to sue media mogul Rupert Murdoch after his Wall Street Journal published an article saying that Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein a “bawdy” letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday, courts records show. Trump filed a lawsuit related to alleged libel, assault or slander against Murdoch, the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones & Co., and the two reporters who wrote the article in federal court for the Southern District of Florida, according…

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