babysandpiper

Judge finds Republican-crafted law probably unconstitutional for encroaching on federal authority

The US supreme court maintained on Wednesday a judicial block on a Republican-crafted Florida law that makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants in the United States to enter the state.

The justices denied a request by state officials to lift an order by the Florida-based US district judge Kathleen Williams that barred them from carrying out arrests and prosecutions under the law while a legal challenge plays out in lower courts. Williams ruled that Florida’s law conflicted with the federal government’s authority over immigration policy.

The law, signed by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, in February and backed by the Trump administration, made it a felony for some undocumented migrants to enter Florida, while also imposing pre-trial jail time without bond.

Copper prices hit a record high in the US after Donald Trump announced he would impose a 50% tariff on the industrial metal, in the latest escalation of his trade war.

Trump said before a cabinet meeting on Tuesday: “Today we’re doing copper,” proposing a 50% tariff rate for imports. He also threatened to impose a 200% border tax on pharmaceuticals but in a year or a year and a half’s time.

The comments added to the confusion around the president’s ever-changing tariffs after he sent letters on Monday setting rates of up to 40% for more than a dozen countries but coming into effect from 1 August rather than a previously reported 9 July date.

Team of firefighters and first responders volunteer along Guadalupe River after mass flooding in show of solidarity

A contingent of firefighters and first responders from Mexico arrived in Texas over the weekend to aid in search and rescue efforts following the devastating flooding of the Guadalupe River in a show of solidarity with their northern neighbors.

“When it comes to firefighters, there’s no borders,” Ismael Aldaba, founder of Fundación 911, in Acuña, Mexico, told CNN on Tuesday. “There’s nothing that’ll avoid us from helping another firefighter, another family. It doesn’t matter where we’re at in the world. That’s the whole point of our discipline and what we do.”

They represent one of a handful of volunteer groups, including highly skilled search and rescue teams from California, that have traveled to Texas after the flooding which is being described as one of the US’s deadliest floods in decades. Dozens of people are still missing.

Some social media users falsely claimed that the extreme weather was being controlled by the US government

Disasters and tragedies have long been the source of American conspiracies, old and new. So when devastating flash floods hit Texas over the Fourth of July weekend, and as the death toll continues to rise, far-right conspiracists online saw their opportunity to come out in full force, blurring the lines of what’s true and untrue.

Some people, emerging from the same vectors associated with the longstanding QAnon conspiracy theory, which essentially holds that a shadowy “deep state” is acting against president Donald Trump, spread on X that the devastating weather was being controlled by the government.

“I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS,” posted Pete Chambers, a former special forces commander and frequent fixture on the far right who once organized an armed convoy to the Texas border, along with documents he claimed to show government weather operations. “WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?”

An estimated 17 million people could lose their health insurance , putting financial strain on hospitals.

Rural hospitals across the U.S. say they’re being forced to consider tough choices — like cutting services for children or cancer patients — after Donald Trump signed into law a sprawling domestic policy bill that includes sweeping cuts to not only Medicaid but the Affordable Care Act, as well.

Benjamin Anderson, CEO of Hutchinson Regional Healthcare System, oversees a 180-bed hospital that serves as the only hospital for many residents in rural South Central Kansas. He’s evaluating how the hospital and its broader health system will be able to afford to keep offering all of its services, which includes hospice and home care, inpatient mental health treatment, and a cardiology program.

Services that aren’t traditionally profitable — such as women’s health and pediatric care — will be the hardest to sustain, Anderson said. He added the system is trying to see which programs can be saved.

Warehouses in the US are full of foods that fight malnutrition, while kids go hungry in places like South Sudan.

Few lifesaving tools are as effective as ready-to-use therapeutic foods, known as RUTFs, which are specially designed to treat severe malnutrition and often resemble fortified peanut butter.

Despite announcing a $50 million pledged to fund RUTFs earlier this summer, the Trump administration's deep cuts to foreign assistance have wreaked havoc on RUTF distribution globally, and the State Department hasn’t placed orders with leading suppliers this year. Experts say the disruptions will result in more children dying from hunger.

“Stock is running critically low,” Clement Nkubizi, the country director for the nonprofit Action Against Hunger in South Sudan, tells WIRED. “People are going to die.”

A judge ordered Mike Lindell's lawyers to pay $3000 each in fines for using AI to create court documents. The documents contained mistakes, including errors when quoting cases and citations to non-existent cases.

Judge Nina Y. Wang of the U.S. District Court in Denver found 30 errors in the filings.

It was a dramatic start to the week in Russia.

On Monday morning, Vladimir Putin sacked his transport minister, Roman Starovoit.

By the afternoon Starovoit was dead; his body was discovered in a park on the edge of Moscow with a gunshot wound to the head. A pistol, allegedly, beside the body.

Investigators said they presumed the former minister had taken his own life.

Donald Trump's White House had grandly promised "90 deals in 90 days" after partially pausing the process of levying what the US president called "reciprocal" tariffs.

In reality, there won't even be 9 deals done by the time we reach Trump's first cut-off date on 9 July.

The revealing thing here, the poker "tell" if you like, is the extension of the deadline from Wednesday until 1 August, with a possibility of further extensions - or delays - to come.

Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine last week, according to 5 sources familiar with the matter, setting off a scramble inside the administration to understand why the halt was implemented and explain it to Congress and the Ukrainian government.

Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that he was not responsible for the move. Asked on Tuesday during a Cabinet meeting whether he approved of the pause in shipments, Trump demurred, saying only that the US would continue to send defensive weapons to Ukraine. Pressed again on who authorized the pause, Trump replied, “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”

The episode underscores the often-haphazard policy-making process inside the Trump administration, particularly under Hegseth at the Defense Department. The pause was the second time this year that Hegseth had decided to halt the flow of US weapons to Ukraine, catching senior national security officials off guard, sources said.