Politics

One week after the first detainees began arriving at the Florida-run detention center for migrants in the Everglades, Miami immigration attorney Katie Blankenship showed up at the gates of Alligator Alcatraz with a list of five names and a demand: let me in to see them.

She waited two and a half hours, only to be told to put her name on a list and to wait between 24 and 48 hours for a call back.

“These folks have due process and the right to counsel,” Blankenship told the employee manning the gate on July 10. “They cannot be denied counsel for this long and we cannot have a black hole of information where we do not know how to contact clients.”

That call has yet to come.

The Department of Homeland Security system links a network of federal immigration databases with Social Security Administration data. That integration means county and state election officials can check the citizenship of not only foreign-born naturalized citizens, but also U.S.-born citizens for the first time.

In Trump's March 25 executive order on voting, he called on DHS to give states "access to appropriate systems" without cost for verifying the citizenship of voters on their rolls. The same order told the attorney general to prioritize prosecuting noncitizens who register or vote.

The Trump administration has been combining and linking government data sets on Americans in unprecedented ways, and there are questions about what the federal government could do with the voter roll data states share.

Legal and privacy experts told NPR last month they were alarmed that the new data system — which is an upgrade to an existing USCIS platform known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — was being rolled out quickly without a transparent process or the public notices typically required for such projects by federal privacy laws.

The senators wrote they were "gravely concerned" that DHS "has not shared information with lawmakers and the public, but did reportedly provide a private advance briefing about the changes to the database to the Election Integrity Network, an organization founded by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who worked to overturn the results of the 2020 election."

Like the 50 other judges fired within the last six months, the union said, the judges who received the most recent notices were not given a reason for the terminations. They were at the end of their two-year probationary period with the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which is part of the Justice Department. Dozens of others took the "Fork in the Road," a voluntary resignation program aimed at reducing the size of the federal workforce. EOIR declined to comment.

"I wanted to ride it until the very end," said one of the fired judges, who spoke to NPR under the condition of anonymity since they are still employed by the department for a few more days. "I wanted to keep adjudicating, reviewing these cases. I figured as long as I am here, I can do some good."

The terminations landed after Congress approved a mega-spending bill that allocated over $3 billion to the Justice Department for immigration-related activities, including hiring more immigration judges. The funding and additional personnel are aimed at alleviating the growing case backlog, which is nearly 4 million cases. Hiring and training new judges can take more than a year.

In late June, the US supreme court cleared the way for president Donald Trump’s administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. The decision handed the government a win in its aggressive pursuit of mass deportations.

On 4 July, the US completed deportation of eight other migrants to conflict-plagued South Sudan. The men had been put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan, which was diverted to a base in Djibouti, where they had been held in a converted shipping container.

Tom Homan, the US border tsar, said last week he did not know what happened to the eight men deported to South Sudan, saying: “If we removed somebody to Sudan, they could stay there a week and leave, I don’t know.”

Earlier this month, a top Trump administration official said in a memo that immigration officials may deport migrants to countries other than their home nations with as little as six hours’ notice.

Eswatini, the last absolute monarchy in Africa, has been led by King Mswati III since 1986. The 57-year-old ruler has been criticised for his lavish lifestyle and has faced accusations of human rights violations.

His country, formerly known as Swaziland, is landlocked by neighbours South Africa and Mozambique.

The mass demonstration on June 11 was in response to the detention of two young asylum seekers in Spokane by ICE who were present in the U.S. legally. Stuckart posted a call to action on social media, creating a large protest which swelled to hundreds in the streets of Spokane and led to Stuckart’s arrest for blocking an ICE vehicle.

Federal prosecutors are accusing nine people in Spokane, Washington, of violence against federal agents in the wake of an anti-ICE mass demonstration in June.

On Tuesday, FBI agents began arresting people involved in the protest, following a grand jury indictment on July 9, as reported by The Spokesman-Review. Among those detained was former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart, who was charged with engaging in conspiracy to impede or injure law enforcement.

The eight others face similar charges, though two are also charged with assault on a federal officer, per the Department of Justice.

Democrats had been pressing for an amendment to cryptocurrency legislation that would have forced the release of information and exhibits itemized in a list of evidence held by the justice department from the 2019 child sex-trafficking case against disgraced financier Epstein.

Democrats had weighed in on the issue, hoping to force a release of the documents. “The question with Epstein is: Whose side are you on?” California Democratic US House member Ro Khanna, the author of the Epstein measure, told Axios. “Are you on the side of the rich and powerful, or are you on the side of the people?”

But Republicans on the US House rules committee voted down the amendment that would have allowed Congress to vote on whether the evidence – which includes micro cassettes, DVDs, CDs including one labelled “girl pics nude book 4”, computer hard drives and three massage tables in green, beige and brown – should be released.

Word of Gomes da Silva’s detention spread quickly through Milford, a 30,000-person blue-collar town 40 miles southwest of Boston. When he didn’t show up to volleyball practice that Saturday morning, his teammates and coaches assumed he must have overslept. Then coach Andrew Mainini got a text from a player, an undocumented 17-year-old who was in the car with Gomes da Silva. ICE had let him go along with an exchange student from Spain, but held onto Gomes da Silva. Mainini recalled feeling shocked and helpless. “We didn’t know what to do,” he said.

When Colin texted his mother to say ICE had taken Gomes da Silva, Greco could not believe it. She thought it must have been a typo. But then she jumped into action. Greco reached out to her sister, an immigration attorney, who alerted a longtime immigrant rights advocate in the governor’s office. She also began contacting local reporters and helped connect Gomes da Silva’s parents, who are undocumented, with a legal team and Low, a Portuguese speaker. “The dad was obviously grief-stricken,” she said, “and his English was getting worse and worse because he was just so emotional.”

On June 5, Immigration Judge Jenny Beverly in Chelmsford ruled that DHS had not proved that Gomes da Silva was a “danger to community” and set a $2,000 bond for his release. Outside the courthouse, friends and teammates celebrated the decision. Gomes da Silva was freed that day and, standing through a car’s sunroof, rode back home as his neighbors and relatives awaited waving signs. His father, in tears, apologized as he embraced him.

Civil rights organizations and anti-corruption groups voiced alarm Monday after the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate confirmed the first federal judge of President Donald Trump's second term, granting 38-year-old Whitney Hermandorfer a lifetime position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

"Her limited legal career shows a demonstrated hostility towards the protection of civil and human rights—including a disturbing and unacceptable record on reproductive rights, LGBTQ equality, birthright citizenship, labor and employment, environmental protections, and the expansion of executive power—which should be disqualifying for any judicial nominee," Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said following Hermandorfer's confirmation via a party-line vote.

ProPublica has obtained a blueprint of the system, which would create an “on demand” process allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to obtain the home addresses of people it’s seeking to deport.

Last month, in a previously undisclosed dispute, the acting general counsel at the IRS, Andrew De Mello, refused to turn over the addresses of 7.3 million taxpayers sought by ICE. In an email obtained by ProPublica, De Mello said he had identified multiple legal “deficiencies” in the agency’s request.

Two days later, on June 27, De Mello was forced out of his job, people familiar with the dispute said. The addresses have not yet been released to ICE. De Mello did not respond to requests for comment, and the administration did not address questions sent by ProPublica about his departure.

The videos show him doing mundane tasks, like laying on a bunk bed inside the facility, riding in a golf cart and sitting at a table in front of a cup of instant ramen in a mess hall. He also shows something that looks like meat loaf or bread in a container, while a voice says, “Doesn’t look very appetizing, does it?” Then he throws the food away.

“A lot of officers quit just because they were trying to help out the residents/inmates,” he said, according to New Times. “And their bosses kept telling them, ‘If you help them out, like give them water, take them to the bathroom, you will be fired.’”

The TikTok videos have surfaced among controversy about conditions at the site. Wives of detainees told the Herald that they have limited access to showers. Bugs like mosquitoes and grasshoppers are inside the cells, and the air conditioning had stopped working earlier this week, they said.

A coalition of mostly Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging a move by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to withhold about $6.8 billion in congressionally approved federal funding for K-12 schools.

Attorneys general or governors from 24 states and the District of Columbia sued in federal court in Providence, Rhode Island, arguing that the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of Management and Budget threw schools nationwide into chaos by unconstitutionally freezing funding for six programs approved by Congress.

The freeze extended to funding used to support the education of migrant farm workers and their children; recruitment and training of teachers; English proficiency learning; academic enrichment; and after-school and summer programs.

The administration also froze funding used to support adult literacy and job-readiness skills. The government was legally required to release the money to the states by July 1, the lawsuit said. Instead, the Education Department notified states on June 30 that it would not be issuing grant awards under those programs by that deadline. It cited the change in administration as its reason.

Edit: Listed in complaint- https://rhodeislandcurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Dkt.-No.-1-compl.pdf

• STATE OF NEW JERSEY
• COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
• STATE OF NEW YORK
• STATE OF ARIZONA
• STATE OF CALIFORNIA
• STATE OF COLORADO
• STATE OF CONNECTICUT
• STATE OF DELAWARE
• THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
• STATE OF HAWAI‘I
• STATE OF ILLINOIS
• STATE OF MAINE
• STATE OF MARYLAND
• ATTORNEY GENERAL DANA NESSEL FOR THE PEOPLE OF MICHIGAN
• STATE OF MINNESOTA
• STATE OF NEVADA
• STATE OF NEW MEXICO
• STATE OF OREGON
• JOSH SHAPIRO, in his official capacity as Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
• STATE OF RHODE ISLAND
• STATE OF VERMONT
• STATE OF WISCONSIN

A federal judge in Texas has reversed a Biden administration rule that wiped medical debt from credit reports, affecting nearly 15 million Americans.

The rule, which did not discharge debt but changed how credit scores could be calculated, would have removed $50 million of medical debt from credit reports.

U.S. District Judge Sean Jordan, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, argued in his decision that the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not allow the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to remove medical debt from reports.

Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch have voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump's election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former Justice Department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.

The tally has not been previously reported. Using court records and LinkedIn accounts, Reuters was able to verify the departure of all but four names on the list.

Reuters spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump's administration.

"Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system," said one lawyer who left the unit during Trump's second term. "How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?"

In Louisiana, natural gas—a planet-heating fossil fuel—is now, by law, considered “green energy” that can compete with solar and wind projects for clean energy funding. The law, signed by Republican Governor Jeff Landry last month, comes on the heels of similar bills passed in Ohio, Tennessee, and Indiana. What the bills have in common—besides an “updated definition” of a fossil fuel as a clean energy source—is language seemingly plucked straight from a right-wing think tank backed by oil and gas billionaire and activist Charles Koch.

Louisiana’s law was based on a template created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative organization that brings legislators and corporate lobbyists together to draft bills “dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.” The law maintains that Louisiana, in order to minimize its reliance on “foreign adversary nations” for energy, must ensure that natural gas and nuclear power are eligible for “all state programs that fund ‘green energy’ or ‘clean energy’ initiatives.”

The Democratic National Committee is threatening to sue the North Carolina board of elections if they go forward with plans to purge almost 100,000 voters from the rolls.

The state elections board – with a new Republican majority – voted at its 24 June meeting to require registered voters to cast provisional ballots if they have not provided their driver’s license number, last four digits of their social security number or an identification number supplied by the state.

The board’s move comes after the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit requiring voter information under the Help America Vote Act that it alleged had been missing in the state. The North Carolina Court of Appeals ordered the board to seek the information from voters before allowing them to vote in future elections.

More than one million Houstonians could have new congressional representation as early as next year under Gov. Greg Abbott's push to redraw the state's political maps.

Abbott has ordered the Texas Legislature into a special session beginning July 21 that includes redrawing the state’s congressional districts. In his order Wednesday, the Republican governor singled out Houston’s majority-minority areas like the Greater Fifth Ward and the East End, suggesting their boundaries could be reshuffled ahead of the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump's political team has been pressing lawmakers to redraw Texas' congressional districts to help Republicans pick up additional seats next November as they look to defend their U.S. House majority against a potential Democratic surge.

The state prison system has had a population more than 200 inmates over capacity on average during the past roughly two years. It was 193 male inmates over capacity on average between July 2023 and May 2025, according to data presented at the meeting. The system averaged 31 female inmates over capacity during that same time frame, the data show.

The agency got a little over $8 million to purchase man camps to provide overflow housing within the Missouri River Correctional Center. The department anticipates it to house 72 to 96 inmates, said Michele Zander, chief financial officer for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The $8 million would cover the housing units, an emergency generator, washers and dryers, technology costs and more.

The idea would be for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide case management and behavioral health services, while the Burleigh Morton Detention Center would handle operations. Zander said the agreement is expected to take effect sometime early next year.

The bulk of the deficiency — a little over $8 million — came from county and regional jails that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation previously contracted with to house inmates that state facilities don’t have room for.

"In the reconciliation bill, Texas entered $85 million to move the space shuttle from the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia, to Texas. Eighty-five million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but it is not nearly what's necessary for this to be accomplished," Durbin said.

Citing research by NASA and the Smithsonian, Durbin said that the total was closer to $305 million and that did not include the estimated $178 million needed to build a facility to house and display Discovery once in Houston.

Furthermore, it was unclear if Congress even has the right to remove an artifact, let alone a space shuttle, from the Smithsonian's collection. The Washington, DC, institution, which serves as a trust instrumentality of the US, maintains that it owns Discovery. The paperwork signed by NASA in 2012 transferred "all rights, interest, title, and ownership" for the spacecraft to the Smithsonian.

Axon's Draft One debuted last summer at a police department in Colorado, instantly raising questions about the feared negative impacts of AI-written police reports on the criminal justice system. The tool relies on a ChatGPT variant to generate police reports based on body camera audio, which cops are then supposed to edit to correct any mistakes, assess the AI outputs for biases, or add key context.

But the EFF found that the tech "seems designed to stymie any attempts at auditing, transparency, and accountability." Cops don't have to disclose when AI is used in every department, and Draft One does not save drafts or retain a record showing which parts of reports are AI-generated. Departments also don't retain different versions of drafts, making it difficult to assess how one version of an AI report might compare to another to help the public determine if the technology is "junk," the EFF said. That raises the question, the EFF suggested, "Why wouldn't an agency want to maintain a record that can establish the technology’s accuracy?"

The Trump administration has given contracts to four defense contractors that Vice President JD Vance has a financial stake in, according to a report by the government watchdog group Accountable.US.

Financial disclosure forms published by the Office of Government Ethics for June 2025 reveal that through at least the end of 2024—the last date at which he was required to disclose his investments—Vance had anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 invested in Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based venture capital group he helped to found before taking office.

A Texas firefighter asked if emergency flood alerts could be sent to Kerr County residents about an hour before the first warnings were received, audio reveals.

In the recording, obtained by US outlets, the firefighter asks at 04:22 on 4 July if a CodeRED alert can be issued. The dispatcher says a supervisor needs to approve the request.

Some residents received the alert an hour later - for others it took up to six hours, according to reports. Asked about the delays, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said officials were putting together a timeline.

Attorney Phillip Arroyo said his client, whom he isn’t identifying out of fear of retaliation, arrived in the United States from Mexico when he was a minor.

The man, now in his early 30s, has legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to the attorney. Arroyo said his client was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a “misunderstanding” during a traffic stop.

He was sent to Alligator Alcatraz on Friday and remains at the facility, Arroyo said. Considering his client’s legal status, Arroyo told the Herald he’s confident he will be able to get an immigration bond.

“The narrative is that only violent criminals are being sent to Alligator Alcatraz,” Arroyo said. “We don’t know why [he was sent there] because he has legal status.”

She believes the construction of the centre, which is owned by Meta (the parent company of Facebook), disrupted her private well, causing an excessive build-up of sediment. Ms Morris now hauls water in buckets to flush her toilet.

She says she had to fix the plumbing in her kitchen to restore water pressure. But the water that comes of the tap still has residue in it.

"I'm afraid to drink the water, but I still cook with it, and brush my teeth with it," says Morris. "Am I worried about it? Yes."

Meta, however, says the two aren't connected.

Many centres use evaporative cooling systems, where water absorbs heat and evaporates - similar to how sweat wicks away heat from our bodies. On hot days, a single facility can use millions of gallons.

One study estimates that AI-driven data centres could consume 1.7 trillion gallons of water globally by 2027.

Still, the numbers add up. A single AI query - for example, a request to ChatGPT - can use about as much water as a small bottle you'd buy from the corner shop. Multiply that by billions of queries a day, and the scale becomes clear.

A staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, recently got high-level access to view and change the contents of a payments system that controls tens of billions of dollars in government payments and loans to farmers and ranchers across the United States, according to internal access logs reviewed by NPR.

"When we talk about farm loan application records, there is no more personal information anywhere than in that database," Scott Marlow, a former senior official in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told NPR. "The farmer's entire financial life and the life of their kids and their family, every time they've missed a payment, every time they've had a hard time, every time they've gotten in financial trouble … it's there."