Judge halts parts of Trump’s overhaul of US elections, including proof-of-citizenship requirement

▶ Follow live updates on President Donald Trump and his administration SOMERS, N.Y. (AP) — Voters in U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler’s suburban New York swing district heaped criticism on the Republican during a raucous town hall Sunday night, peppering him with questions around President Donald Trump’s aggressive agenda before devolving into a chaotic chorus of boos as attendees were removed by law enforcement. The town hall in Somers, a leafy section of Lawler’s Hudson Valley district, began to teeter off the rails soon after it began. The first crack emerged when Lawler, in his opening remarks, told the packed prep school auditorium: “This is what democracy looks like.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has asked a judge to toss out a lawsuit from three Republican-led states seeking to cut off telehealth access to the abortion medication mifepristone. Justice Department attorneys on Monday stayed the legal course charted by the Biden administration, though they didn’t directly weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the drug, which is part of the nation’s most common method of abortion. Rather, the government argued the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue. “The states are free to pursue their claims in a district where venue is proper, but the states’ claims before this court must be dismissed or transferred pursuant to the venue statute’s mandatory command,” federal government attorneys wrote.

A federal judge expressed sympathy on Tuesday for thousands of federal employees who were suddenly fired by the Trump administration earlier this year, but he also voiced skepticism about whether reinstating them to their jobs was a proper remedy and questioned what the courts could ultimately do. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson made the comments during a hearing in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, as part of a lawsuit brought by 19 states and the District of Columbia. The suit alleges the states were harmed by the mass firings of probationary workers, because states did not...

▶ Follow live updates on President Donald Trump and his administration WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was pardoned by Donald Trump for his conviction related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, said he met with the president over the weekend in Florida. Tarrio posted about the meeting on his X account Sunday morning. “Yesterday, I had the honor of meeting the President of the United States, a moment I never could have imagined in my darkest days,” Tarrio wrote.

▶ Follow live updates on President Donald Trump and his administration WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Thom Tillis says he’s informed the White House that he won’t support Ed Martin, President Donald Trump’spick for top federal prosecutor in Washington, stalling the nomination in the Senate weeks before the temporary appointment expires. The North Carolina Republican told reporters Tuesday that he had met with Martin on Monday evening and was opposing his nomination because of his defense of rioters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Martin, a leading figure in Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election, spoke at a rally on the eve of the violent riot and represented defendants who were prosecuted for the attack. “We have to be very, very clear that what happened on January 6th was wrong,” Tillis said. “It was not prompted or created by other people to put those people in trouble. They made a stupid decision, and they disgraced the United States by absolutely destroying the Capitol.”

GOP Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick claims he is “firmly committed to protecting” Medicaid. But when the opportunity arose to join a dozen of his Republican Congressional colleagues who signed a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson stating they would not support a final GOP budget that guts Medicaid, Fitzpatrick’s signature was conspicuously missing.

The Social Security Administration is backing off a plan it announced in March to withhold 100% of many beneficiaries’ monthly payments to claw back money the government had allegedly overpaid them.

This story was originally published by InvestigateWest , a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to change-making investigative journalism. Sign up for their Watchdog Weekly newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Reach Whitney Bryen at 208-918-2458 or whitney@investigatewest.org. Reach Kaylee Tornay at 503-877-4108 or kaylee@investigatewest.org.

Rite Aid customers can expect their local store to close or change ownership in the next few months, as the struggling drugstore chain goes through another bankruptcy filing. The company plans to sell customer prescription files, inventory and other assets as it closes distribution centers and unloads store locations. Stores will remain open for now, but the company isn’t buying new inventory so bare shelves are likely become more common. “I think what we’ll progressively see is the stores will become more and more spartan,” said retail analyst Neil Saunders. The company runs 1,245 stores in 15 states, according to its website. It has a heavy presence in New York, Pennsylvania and California, which alone has 347 locations.

SEATTLE (AP) — A judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to admit some 12,000 refugees into the United States under a court order partially blocking the president’s efforts to suspend the nation’s refugee admissions program. The order from U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead followed arguments from the Justice Department and refugee resettlement agencies over how to interpret a federal appeals court ruling that significantly narrowed an earlier decision from Whitehead. During a hearing last week, the administration said it should only have to process 160 refugees into the country and that it would likely appeal any order requiring it to admit thousands. But the judge dismissed the government’s analysis, saying it required “not just reading between the lines” of the 9th Circuit’s ruling, “but hallucinating new text that simply is not there.” “This Court will not entertain the Government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says,” Whitehead wrote Monday. “The Government is free, of course, to seek further clarification from the Ninth Circuit. But the Government is not free to disobey statutory and constitutional law — and the direct orders of this Court and the Ninth Circuit — while it seeks such clarification.”

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The president of the nation’s largest union for federal workers said Monday the organization’s ongoing staff downsizing will devastate the services it provides members and threatens the group’s survival. Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in March removed over 200,000 of its dues-paying members, or about two-thirds of the total. The order stripped union rights from employees in several executive branch agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. AFGE and other unions are fighting the order in court as illegal and retaliatory. But Kelley said the order has already taken a “very direct hit” on the group’s finances because agencies stopped collecting union dues from paychecks.

The Associated Press and four other media companies argue in a federal lawsuit that Indiana’s ban on reporters attending state-sanctioned executions violates the public’s constitutional right to an independent and unsanitized description of a sensitive and contentious government action. The complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in...

Other than those indigenous to this vast and blessed land, we are all immigrants here in the United States of America, with rights enshrined in the constitution, no matter our status. The frantic mass deportations pushed by the current administration have affected visa holders, asylum seekers, tourists, and legal citizens. Sweeping reforms have eliminated due process in a web of reinterpreting archaic laws like the Alien Enemies Act and have revoked Temporary Protection Statuses (TPS) , affecting hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Three Democratic U.S. senators are asking the Trump administration to explain how it analyzed a proposed rule to eliminate habitat protections for endangered and threatened species and whether industry had a hand in drafting it. Senators Adam Schiff, Sheldon Whitehouse and Cory Booker sent a letter Monday to the departments of Interior and Commerce that also asks how the administration plans to protect species if the rule is changed. At issue is a long-standing definition of “harm” in the Endangered Species Act, which has included altering or destroying the places those species live — the No. 1 cause of extinction. Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service proposed a rule that says habitat modification shouldn’t be considered harm because it isn’t the same as intentionally targeting a species, called “take.” Environmentalists argue that the definition of “take” has always included actions that harm species, and the definition of “harm” has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, an early supporter of President Donald Trump’s first successful White House bid and a polarizing figure in state politics, said Monday he is running for Congress in a competitive district. LePage, a Republican who was governor from 2011 to 2019 and lost a bid for another term in 2022, filed papers late Sunday to run for the 2nd Congressional District seat currently held by Democratic Rep. Jared Golden. The district is politically mixed, as voters have sent Golden to Washington four times in a row while also supporting President Donald Trump...

NEW YORK (AP) — Police in New York City are investigating whether the department violated policy by sharing a report with federal immigration authorities that included internal records of a Palestinian woman’s arrest at a protest. The probe follows reporting by The Associated Press on the cooperation between the NYPD and President Donald Trump’s administration, which is seeking to deport Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian resident of New Jersey, as part of its widening crackdown on noncitizens who participated in protests against the war in Gaza. The report shared by police with the federal government included Kordia’s name, address and birthday, as well as an NYPD officer’s two-sentence summary of her arrest for protesting outside Columbia University last spring. That charge — a summons for disorderly conduct — was dismissed and the case sealed, meaning it should not have been accessible for law enforcement purposes, according to legal experts.

WASHINGTON — Millions of immigrants in the country without legal authorization are required as of Friday to register with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after a federal judge rejected advocacy groups’ request to pause the requirement.

Another Trump promise bites the dust. Remember when the former reality TV host-turned-president swore—SWORE on his stack of golden toilet paper—that he’d end the Russia-Ukraine war before he even walked into the White House? Like, poof, war over. All he needed was a chair, a Diet Coke, and maybe a few compliments for Putin’s abs.

An analysis by the National Alliance to End Homelessness shows that as many as 9 million people could become homeless if the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ends rental assistance.

The long flight delays and cancellations plaguing Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and spilling over to airports across the U.S. can be traced to a week ago when air traffic controllers temporarily lost communications with planes in the sky, according to the controllers union. Crews in the Philadelphia air traffic control facility that lines up flights going in out and of Newark lost radar and communications with the planes on April 28, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. The outage left controllers “unable to see, hear, or talk to” planes under their control, union spokesperson Galen Munroe said. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the brief problem and said traffic into the Newark airport was reduced afterward as a precaution to ensure safety. But that move led to the widespread delays and canceled flights. After the breakdown, a number of controllers took leave under a contract provision that allows them to step away after experiencing a traumatic event on the job. Having those controllers on leave exacerbated staff shortages at the facility.

Ahwar Sultan, a second-year graduate student in comparative studies, speaks at a Thursday press conference organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, alongside other Ohio State student organizations. Credit: Sandra Fu | Photo Editor.

By Anjeanette Damon, ProPublica, and Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and photography by Cengiz Yar, ProPublica. This article was originally published by ProPublica and co-published with The Texas Tribune. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox .

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Kristan Hawkins, president of the national anti-abortion group Students for Life, tours college campuses, she has grown accustomed to counterprotests from abortion rights activists.

Actor Ron Palillo, a heavy smoker who died of a heart attack in 2012, was devastated by the demise of his father decades before. But that tragic loss ultimately led to Pallilo’s success with his portrayal of Arnold Horshack, on the 1970s classic TV school-com, Welcome Back, Kotter.

A federal judge has temporarily barred President Donald Trump’s administration from dramatically shrinking three agencies that fund libraries across the U.S., settle labor disputes with public sector workers, and support state business contracting programs. U.S. District Judge John McConnell, Jr. in Rhode Island said Trump can’t unilaterally end the funding and programs for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Minority Business Development Agency and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. All three agencies were established by Congress. The agencies carried out the cuts under the direction of an executive order from Trump. In Tuesday’s preliminary injunction, McConnell said the actions were likely arbitrary and capricious because the agencies weren’t able to provide more than “vague” justifications for the sweeping cuts. “It also disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated,” McConnell wrote.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday directed the active duty military to shed 20% of its four-star general officers as the Trump administration moves forward with deep cuts that it says will promote efficiency but that critics worry could result in a more politicized force. Hegseth also told the National Guard to shed 20% of its top positions and directed the military to cut an additional 10% of its general and flag officers across the force, which could include any one-star or above or officer of equivalent Navy rank. The cuts are on top of more than a half-dozen top general officers that President Donald Trump or Hegseth have fired since January, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr. They also have fired the only two women serving as four-star officers, as well as a disproportionate number of other senior female officers. In the earlier rounds of firing, Hegseth said the eliminations were “a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national security approach we want to take.”

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A new shark alert system, inspired by a teen who survived an attack last year, that warns beachgoers when a shark has bitten someone in the vicinity will be established in Alabama under legislation signed by Gov. Kay Ivey on Tuesday. The system will issue...

A pickup truck that collided with a tour van near Yellowstone National Park last week, killing seven people, crossed the highway’s center line and hit the van, according to Idaho State Police. Investigating troopers have determined that the Dodge Ram pickup crossed the line on U.S. Highway 20 and struck the Mercedes passenger van, Police said in a Tuesday statement. Police are still investigating what caused the driver to veer into oncoming traffic. There was a group of twelve Chinese tourists and an Italian tourist on board the van, in addition to the driver. Five of the Chinese tourists, the Italian tourist and the pickup driver died in the crash, according to police, the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco and the Italian Consulate General in San Francisco. Police previously identified the pickup driver as Isaih Moreno, 25, of Humble, Texas.

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — A 17-year-old Polish high school student appeared in a Greek court on Monday after being arrested over the killing of a 16-year-old girl in Poland, authorities said. The suspect, who was in Greece as part of a school exchange program, refused a voluntary extradition request during his court appearance in the northern city of Thessaloniki, citing concerns for his family’s safety, according to court officials. He was taken into police custody pending a decision on extradition by a panel of judges. Polish police discovered the victim’s body on May 1 in shrubbery near railroad tracks in Mlawa, in northeastern Poland, ending a weeklong search that began after she went missing on April 23. The search operation involved drones and scent-tracking dogs. The girl had told her mother she was meeting a friend who lived on a nearby street before she disappeared, police spokeswoman Katarzyna Kucharska said.

NEW YORK (AP) — WeightWatchers said Tuesday it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to eliminate $1.15 billion in debt and focus on its transition into a telehealth services provider. Parent WW International Inc. said it has the support of nearly three-quarters of its debt holders. It expects to emerge from bankruptcy within 45 days, if not sooner. WeightWatchers, which was than 60 years ago, has struggled recently. In 2023, the company moved into the prescription drug weight loss business — particularly with the $106 million acquisition of Sequence, now WeightWatchers Clinic, a telehealth service that helps users get prescriptions for drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Trulicity.