A federal judge appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump is not budging in his demand that the government “facilitate” a deported Venezuelan man’s return to the United States.

In the case, Daniel Lozano-Camargo, 20, was “wrongfully” deported to El Salvador in violation of a legal settlement agreement that was meant to keep him in the country while his pending asylum claim was litigated with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Notably, the plaintiff has filed his case under the pseudonym “Cristian,” but Politico reported his full identity on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the court itself, in line with a prior order binding the parties, is continuing to use the pseudonym.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, cited contract law principles in a 19-page opinion directing the government to try and get Lozano-Camargo back stateside “so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”

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On Monday, the government filed sealed arguments in an attempt to convince the judge to vacate her order. Along with those mysterious legal arguments, the government publicly filed a heavily redacted “Indicative Asylum Decision.”

The government’s public formal document explains why the Trump administration believes Lozano-Camargo’s underlying asylum claim will fail.

During a hearing on Tuesday, however, the judge said the asylum case is too far removed from the current legal dispute to be dispositive.

“I don’t think that this is a case about whether or not Cristian is going to eventually get asylum,” Gallagher said, according to a courtroom report by Politico. “Whether he ultimately receives asylum is not the issue. The issue is, and has always been, one of process.”

The issue, rather, is a 2024 settlement that limits how people who came to the country as unaccompanied minors can be deported, according to the judge. In Lozano-Camargo’s case, because he came to the U.S. when he was 17, that court-approved agreement means the government must wait until his asylum claim is extinguished.

“It is an axiomatic principle of contract law that when a defendant breaches a contract, that defendant must restore the situation that existed before the breach,” Gallagher wrote. “In the case of Cristian, this requires putting him in the position ‘to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.’ In other words, under contract law principles, Cristian, and any other Class Member who has been removed in violation of the Settlement Agreement, must be returned to the United States to await adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by USCIS.”

An accompanying April 23 order explains, in relevant part:

Defendants are hereby ORDERED to facilitate Class Member Cristian’s return to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by USCIS under the terms of the Settlement Agreement. Facilitation includes, but is not limited to, a good faith request by Defendants to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States.

President Donald Trump won a rare victory at the district court level on Friday when a judge in Washington, D.C., allowed the government to move full steam ahead with a series of executive orders aimed at rooting out “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives.

On Feb. 19, the National Urban League and others sued the Trump administration over several executive orders ending DEI programs in federal government contracts, barring the government from contracting with vendors who have internal DEI programs or that “promote the idea that transgender people exist,” and directing administrative agencies to only recognize “two sexes.”

In the original petition and a later-filed motion for a preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs alleged eight provisions in Trump’s anti-DEI orders ran afoul of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause and the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, among other issues.

In a 58-page memorandum opinion, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, rejected those claims, both procedurally and for their legal arguments.

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“For one reason or another, Plaintiffs’ claims are likely to fail,” the judge writes. “Some falter on standing—a prerequisite to success on the merits—and others on the underlying First and Fifth Amendment claims.”

The majority of the court’s opinion strikes a blow for the long-aggressive nature of Article III standing, which is widely understood by legal scholars as “conservative standing doctrine.”

This judicial theory was created in two cases from the 1920s by conservative judges who sought to restrain the use and limits of constitutional redress. In other words, standing doctrine was created – and has over time been honed and sustained – to limit citizens from suing the government over perceived violations of their rights. While technically procedural in nature, as opposed to relying on underlying arguments in a dispute, standing arguments are fact-intensive.

Kelly, for his part, quickly dispenses with how he views the facts in the case brought by the nonprofit organizations.

“For half the challenged provisions, Plaintiffs fail to establish a prerequisite to success on the merits: standing,” the opinion goes on. “Presidential directives to subordinates that inflict no concrete harm on private parties—or at least not on these parties—do not present a justiciable case or controversy.”

In the present case, the judge found many of the challenged provisions had to do with changing the government’s own behavior, and do not result in what, in standing doctrine legalese, is known as an “injury in fact.” This state of affairs, rather, turns the plaintiffs into “at most ‘concerned bystanders’ to internal Executive Branch processes.”

“Everything is intra-governmental,” the judge muses.

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘The opposite of diversity is segregation’: Judge castigates Trump over anti-DEI policies, but says he cannot intervene

In sum, Kelly found four of the challenged provisions asked “nothing from Plaintiffs—no compliance, no changed behavior, nothing at all” because those provisions are “not aimed at them” but instead tell “only the agencies to do something.”

For the remaining four challenged provisions, however, the court determined the plaintiffs did, in fact, have standing.

But the court still rejected their arguments as legally deficient.

“Plaintiffs have not shown that the provisions threaten a protected liberty or property interest—a threshold requirement for due process claims,” Kelly’s opinion continues. “And even if they had, Plaintiffs’ vagueness challenge fails for independent reasons. The First Amendment claim, moreover, clashes with two settled rules: the government does not abridge the right to free speech by choosing not to subsidize it, and that right does not permit Plaintiffs or anyone else to violate federal anti-discrimination law.”

One of the major problems, the court says, is that the plaintiffs argued a bit too much, resting their claims on so-called “facial rather than as-applied challenges.”

In lawsuits, government action can be challenged facially, meaning in general, or as-applied, meaning in a specific circumstance.

In the present case, Kelly suggests the plaintiffs would have been better off limiting their claims to more specific problems. Instead, they argued, as the judge framed the issues, that each of the challenged anti-DEI provisions “is unconstitutional in all its applications.”

President Trump’s venture into crypto products has increased his family’s wealth by billions in the last six months, according to a new report, as his administration continues to loosen the federal government’s regulatory approach to the digital currency industry as a whole. 

The group State Democracy Defenders Action estimated in a new report that the president’s crypto holdings now represent nearly 40% of his net worth — or approximately $2.9 billion. That increase is due in part to his release of the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, in addition to a large stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto exchange affiliated with the Trump family that launched in October 2024. State Democracy Defenders Action identifies itself as non-partisan, but it is overseen by frequent critics of President Trump, with an agenda focused on “the autocratic threat to our nation.”

The president’s net worth is expected to get another bump, with World Liberty Financial’s announcement this week that a Abu Dhabi-backed firm will invest billions of dollars in the Trump family-affiliated crypto fund. The Emirati firm, MGX, will purchase $2 billion in a stablecoin product offered by World Liberty, the company said in a statement to CBS. The currency, called “USD1” will then be used to invest in Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.

World Liberty has ties to the president and his sons. The fine print on the company’s website says an entity affiliated with Mr. Trump and his family members own a 60% stake in the company.

According to the company’s public reports, a Trump family entity also holds 22.5 billion of the $WLF tokens –- and takes an additional 75% in net revenue from future token purchases.

Details of the MGX deal have not been released, so it is unclear how much the Trump family stands to benefit from this transaction.

In a statement to CBS News, World Liberty said the deal represents the “single largest-ever investment in a crypto company” and sets a “historic precedent.” It did not respond to questions about how much the Trump family stands to make from the investment.

The White House responded to a request for comment by telling CBS News to “report on something people actually care about.” A spokesperson provided links to several White House technology initiatives.

As the president’s investments in crypto have grown, the Securities and Exchange Commission has paused investigations into a dozen crypto companies since his inauguration, a CBS News analysis found.

“The bottom line is it appears like he’s profiting off of his public office,” said Virginia Canter, State Democracy Defenders chief counsel for ethics and anticorruption. Canter, who co-authored the new report, served as senior ethics counsel for the Treasury Department under both Republican and Democratic administrations. 

“In terms of prior presidents in the modern age, they’ve all divested their assets, or they’ve rolled them over into what we call blind trusts,” Canter said. “President Trump did not do that in his first term, and it seems as if in the second term he’s doubled down and he is all in (on) the crypto industry.”

The report leans heavily on past media reports, including a Fortune magazine article that reviewed the Trump family’s financial disclosures and provided the original estimates of the president’s net worth.

Crypto companies are not legally required to disclose who is buying and selling on their platforms to the public, so little is known about who has invested in Trump family-affiliated crypto products. 

Canter says this makes it more difficult to identify potential conflicts of interest. 

“In his first administration, we could see who was walking in and out of the Trump hotels,” she said.

Trump hopes U.S. will be the “crypto capital of the world”

The president, who as recently as 2021 described crypto currency as a “scam,” has since embraced digital currency, saying he hopes to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world.”

Since his inauguration, Mr. Trump has made several moves to unwind the regulatory environment that many industry insiders say crippled crypto businesses. 

He has issued multiple executive orders to promote cryptocurrency, including one that seeks to promote the growth of digital currencies and another that instructed the Treasury Department to create a strategic cryptocurrency reserve. 

Mr. Trump has also used his office to pardon the three founders of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to failing to prevent money laundering on their platform, according to a report by Reuters. 

The value of Mr. Trump’s crypto assets have at times fluctuated with his policy decisions and social media posts.

The value of $TRUMP increased 18.1% in early March after the president issued an executive order promoting a strategic cryptocurrency reserve, according to the report. A few weeks later, on March 23, the president posted “I Love $TRUMP– SO COOL!! The Greatest of them all!!!!” on Truth Social, which led to an increase in the price of the meme coin from $10.93 to $12.24.

Whether or not the $TRUMP coin increases in value, the president’s business collects trading fees when people buy or sell the coin. A Reuters analysis found that business entities behind the $TRUMP coin could have made nearly $100 million in fees in less than two weeks of trading.

World Liberty Finance: The Trump family’s crypto exchange

Aside from meme coins, the Trump family’s more recent foray into cryptocurrency may become its most profitable. 

In October, then-candidate Trump helped launch World Liberty Finance, a decentralized or “defi” cryptocurrency exchange. Its website, which heavily features the president’s image, offers users the opportunity to buy into the exchange using $WLFI tokens. 

“Good News, the World Liberty Financial token is now live. Crypto is the future, let’s embrace this incredible technology and lead the world in the digital economy. Go to World Liberty Financial.com,” Mr. Trump posted on X in October, before the presidential election. 

The website says World Liberty is “inspired by Donald J. Trump” and Mr. Trump is listed as chief crypto advocate. His sons, Eric, Donald Jr. and Barron, are all listed as Web3 ambassadors. 

Donald Trump Jr. promoted World Liberty Financial in March, at the D.C. Blockchain conference, where crypto industry insiders rubbed shoulders with members of Congress and the administration.

“I’m just super excited about what this can mean for the future of banking for the future of financial systems,” said Trump Jr., who joined World Liberty’s panel remotely. Founders Chase Herro, Zak Folkman and Zach Witkoff appeared on stage to promote World Liberty’s stablecoin offering.

“We want Republicans, Democrats, whether it be black, blue, brown, white, to be using our stable coin,” said Zach Witkoff, the son of Steven Witkoff, the White House special envoy to the Middle East. “We think it democratizes finance.” 

World Liberty says it has raised more than $550 million from investors who purchase the $WLF governance token. The majority of these investors remain anonymous to the public. For now, these $WLFI tokens are non redeemable, meaning that once they are purchased, users cannot exchange them. 

World Liberty denied CBS’ multiple requests for an interview.

Justin Sun, the crypto billionaire famous for buying and eating a $6.2 million banana duct-taped to the wall, is one of World Liberty’s few publicly known investors. 

Sun, who was being investigated for securities fraud in the Biden administration, said he invested $30 million shortly after Mr. Trump’s election, at the time claiming in a post on X to be World Liberty’s”largest investor.”

Days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Sun said he invested another $45 million, which he also disclosed in a post on X. A few weeks later, the Securities and Exchange Commission reversed itself and asked the judge to grant a stay in Sun’s case, citing “public interest.” The pause in Sun’s case was part of a larger push by the SEC to dismiss cases against crypto companies. 

A spokesperson for Sun and the SEC declined to comment. 

Last month, Democrats on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee sent a letter to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency about the potential for conflict of interest as the Trump administration considers regulations of companies like World Liberty Financial.

“President Trump’s involvement in this venture, as he strips financial regulators of their independence…presents an extraordinary conflict of interest that could create unprecedented risks to our financial system,” said the letter, which was signed by five Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden and Chris Van Hollen. 

World Liberty Financial says 85,000 investors have gone through a standard Know Your Customer process to determine “participation eligibility,” and the company says it is arranging for a third-party accounting firm to audit its new venture into the U.S.-debt-backed stablecoins. 

As president, Mr. Trump is not subject to the criminal conflict-of-interest law. But he is required to disclose his assets and income under the Ethics in Government Act, including his crypto assets. The next financial disclosure report deadline for the president is May 15. 

A federal judge in Maryland on Thursday expressed severe misgivings about the Trump administration‘s efforts to root out “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives, but insisted he had little power to change the current state of play in an ongoing legal battle.

In the underlying litigation, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, a membership organization, won a late February injunction barring the new policies. This initial victory came when U.S. District Judge Adam B. Abelson, a Joe Biden appointee, found that the directives were both unconstitutionally vague and violative of the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

But the victory was short-lived.

On March 14, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, along with Circuit Judges Pamela Harris and Allison Rushing, granted the government’s request for a stay pending appeal.

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The plaintiffs, undeterred, then asked Abelson to vacate his original injunction, citing what the court termed “new factual developments.” This effort was in service of a bid for a new preliminary injunction.

“[T]hey believe that ‘evidence related to agencies’ interpretation and implementation of the Executive Orders’ would further support the likelihood of success on the merits of their already-asserted claims, and further that they ‘could amend their complaint to add new facial claims’ challenging the executive order provisions at issue,” the court explains. “The new ‘facial claims’ Plaintiffs state they may add in an amended complaint would be claims under the Administrative Procedures Act.”

Such an injunction would more or less reset the case – and force the Trump administration to spend several weeks requesting and litigating another stay. And, the plaintiffs argued, even the appellate panel that paused the first injunction would be amenable here.

From the plaintiff’s motion, at length:

The concurrences emphasized that their opinions spoke only to the record so far and that future developments might alter the outcome. In his concurrence, for example, Chief Judge Diaz noted he was satisfied “for now” that Defendants had met their stay burden, but explicitly “reserve[d] judgment on the extent to which the government relies on the Orders’ savings clause provisions as it enforces the Orders’ directives ” …

Similarly, in her concurrence, Judge Harris concluded “for now” that Defendants had met their burden, but offered the “caveat” that “[a]gency enforcement actions that go beyond the Orders’ narrow scope may well raise serious First Amendment and Due Process concerns, for the reasons cogently explained by” this Court.

The full slate of judges on a federal appeals court in Virginia rejected the Trump administration’s request to give the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “immediate and unfettered” access to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) records systems, dealing the president another court loss just after passing the 100-day mark in office.

In a nine-to-six vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on Wednesday kept in place a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander, of Maryland, that blocked the Elon Musk-led organization from gaining access to the highly sensitive personal information of “essentially everyone in the country.” The majority reasoned that the “bedrock” principle of the SSA keeping personal data confidential “has been flouted by the sudden grant to DOGE of unfettered access to SSA system of records.”

In the majority’s 12-page order, Circuit Judge Robert Bruce King, an appointee of Bill Clinton, heaped praise on Hollander, an appointee of Barack Obama, referring to her as a “very able district judge” who had “carefully and thoughtfully examined the evidence and the legal issues” in the case. He also noted that her initial TRO order was accompanied by a 137-page opinion, while her preliminary injunction order included a 148-page opinion.

King lauded Hollander’s dual opinions as “addressing extensive evidence proffered by the parties” and “refining the pertinent legal analysis” of the lawsuit. The complaint accused the administration of violating the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by granting DOGE SSA system access, and claimed it was acting in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner by “flouting SSA protocols for hiring, onboarding, training, and granting systems access to the DOGE affiliates.”

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In her latest opinion in the case, Hollander noted that since the SSA’s inception in 1935, it has “collected, stored, respected, and protected” personal and private data of U.S. citizens. She then emphasized that ensuring the confidentiality of that information was a “bedrock principle of the agency” — a principle the Trump administration sought to change by giving DOGE “unfettered access to SSA systems.”

“The objective to address fraud, waste, mismanagement, and bloat is laudable, and one that the American public presumably applauds and supports,” Hollander wrote. “Indeed, the taxpayers have every right to expect their government to make sure that their hard earned money is not squandered.”

Rather, she said, the issue was how DOGE wants to perform its work, and how the SSA was willing to abandon its long-standing mission.

“However, the issue here is not the work that DOGE or the [Social Security Administration] want to do,” she continued. “The issue is about how they want to do the work. For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records,” adding, “This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation.”

Hollander ultimately found the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on the merits, as did the majority of the appellate court judges.

“[Hollander’s preliminary injunction] analysis of those claims and the preliminary injunction factors is lengthy, thorough, and compelling,” the appellate court’s opinion says. “Rather than repeating that carefully crafted analysis herein, I adopt and attach hereto the [preliminary injunction] Opinion in its entirety.”

A coalition of 24 states and Washington, D.C., is suing the Trump administration, claiming that it unlawfully dismantled the AmeriCorps grant program, an independent federal agency that funds volunteer efforts throughout the United States. The lawsuit came in response to billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutting the agency’s funding by $400 million and terminating about 85% of its workforce as part of the administration’s ongoing efforts to gut the federal bureaucracy.

States joining the filing include California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan.

In the 69-page complaint, the state attorneys general state that the administration’s stripping of resources is an “unlawful effort to dismantle AmeriCorps” that usurps the power of the legislative branch by rendering the agency ineffective and unable to pursue the goals set forth and funded by Congress.

“The Administration’s abrupt decision to dismantle AmeriCorps flouts Congress’s creation of AmeriCorps and assignment of agency duties; usurps Congress’s power of the purse and thereby violates the Constitution’s separation of powers; and arbitrarily and capriciously — without any reasoned analysis — vitiates the agency’s ability to function consistent with its statutory mission and purpose,” the 69-page complaint states. “It also violates a provision of AmeriCorps’ statutory appropriation that requires the agency to make ‘significant changes to program requirements, service delivery or policy only through public notice and comment rulemaking.’”

The suit asserts that if the Trump administration wants to put an end to the agency, it is “free to ask Congress” to do so, but the executive branch “cannot simply terminate the agency’s functions by fiat or defund the agency in defiance of administrative procedures, Congressional appropriations, and the Constitutional separation of powers.”

“The Executive Branch violates the Take Care Clause where it declines to execute or otherwise undermines statutes enacted by Congress and signed into law or duly promulgated regulations implementing such statutes,” the attorneys general wrote, adding, “The President is without authority to set aside congressional legislation by executive order.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that Trump and Musk’s actions in “turning away tens of thousands of volunteers who want to serve their communities” were “unlawful,” in a news briefing on the lawsuit Tuesday afternoon.

Lawyers for the families of two children with U.S. citizenship, including a 4-year-old who has Stage 4 cancer, have accused the Trump administration of deporting the youths to Honduras on the same day another child with citizenship was allegedly sent to the Central American country, which led to an order from a federal judge requiring the government to explain itself.

President Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, went on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday and insisted that “no U.S. citizen child” had been deported. He claimed that “deported means ordered by an immigration judge” and suggested that the mothers may have chosen to take the children with them, saying: “That’s a parent’s decision. It’s not a government decision, it’s a parent’s decision.”

Reports emerged late Saturday and Sunday from The Washington Post and New York Times saying the 4-year-old and a 7-year-old had also been shipped out Friday with the child that led to the judge’s memorandum in federal court.

As Law&Crime previously reported, a federal judge in Louisiana known for his rulings that tend to align with causes championed by Trump issued a memorandum order Friday setting a hearing to address the apparent deportation of a 2-year-old identified only as V.M.L. According to a petition for a writ of habeas corpus — a request that court determine whether a person’s detention is unlawful — V.M.L. was born in 2023 in Baton Rouge, as indicated on her birth certificate.

Lawyers for the mother of the 2-year-old told the Times that she and the other two kids were all deported to Honduras Friday. The Times reports that the mother of the 2-year-old is pregnant, while the 4-year-old from the other family has a rare form of late-stage cancer. The boy allegedly had no access to his medications or his doctors during the removal process, the lawyers say.

Gracie Willis, a lawyer with the National Immigration Project who is reportedly involved in the case involving the 2-year-old, has condemned the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and local law officials as being both “horrifying and baffling” as the children are all considered “U.S. citizen” children.

Homan, however, says the government sees things differently.

“Having a U.S. citizen child after you enter this country illegally is not a get-out-of-jail free card,” he told “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

“It doesn’t make you immune from our laws,” Homan said. “If that’s the message we sent the entire world, women are gonna keep putting themselves at risk and come to this country. We send a message. You can enter [the] country illegally, which is a crime. That’s okay. You can have due process, great taxpayer expense. Get ordered removed. That’s okay. Don’t leave. But have a U.S. citizen child and you’re immune from removal? That’s not the way it works.”

Speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that if the children’s families want them to come back to the U.S. that they will be allowed to “if there’s their father or someone here who wants to assume them” in the United States.

“Ultimately, who was deported … was their mothers, who were here illegally,” Rubio said. “The children just went with their mothers. But it wasn’t like — you guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the 2-year-old and threw him on an airplane. That’s misleading.”

A representative “next friend” of the 2-year-old, who says she has known her since birth, has filed a motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to block the child’s removal, accusing ICE of engaging in “attempts to disappear” V.M.L. and lying to the child’s family and representatives in the process.

At the time the TRO motion was filed, the girl’s representatives believed she was still in the U.S.

In its opposition to the TRO request, ICE said the girl’s mother wanted to take V.M.L. with her back to Honduras, and provided as proof a note written by hand in Spanish. Just like Homan and Rubio, the government also signaled skepticism that the child’s “next friend,” as well as V.M.L.’s father, were indeed who they said they were, saying they have not provided identification to ICE in support of releasing the child into their custody.

In Friday’s order, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty — appointed by Trump in 2018 — said that V.M.L. is “ostensibly” a 2-year-old United States citizen.

“Of course, ‘It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen,”” Doughty concluded.

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Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump‘s top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., has sent a letter to the nonprofit behind Wikipedia — the free online encyclopedia “anyone can edit,” according to the website — accusing it of “masking propaganda that influences public opinion” and “permitting information manipulation” in benefit of “foreign powers,” the letter says.

Ed Martin, who is the president’s nominee to oversee the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, wrote that the Justice Department would be probing the “content manipulation” to see if Wikimedia Foundation was “engaging in a series of activities” that could violate its “obligations under Section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code,” which is what ultimately gives the organization its ability to operate as a nonprofit exempt from paying taxes.

“Wikipedia is permitting information manipulation on its platform, including the rewriting of key, historical events and biographical information of current and previous American leaders, as well as other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States,” Martin alleged.

“Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material is antithetical to Wikimedia’s ‘educational’ mission,” the interim U.S. attorney said. “In addition, Wikipedia’s operations are directed by its board that is composed primarily of foreign nationals, subverting the interests of American taxpayers. Again, educational content is directionally neutral; but information received by my Office demonstrates that Wikipedia’s informational management policies benefit foreign powers.”

A federal judge in Louisiana known for his rulings that tend to align with causes championed by Donald Trump says that the president’s administration may have deported a 2-year-old girl who is a U.S. citizen, and has ordered the government to explain itself.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, appointed by Trump in 2018, issued a memorandum order Friday setting a hearing to address the apparent deportation of a 2-year-old identified only as V.M.L. According to a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, or a request that court determine whether a person’s detention is unlawful, V.M.L. was born in 2023 in Baton Rouge, as indicated on her birth certificate.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday halted key sections of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order purporting to unilaterally change the rules regarding how federal elections are run, finding that the plaintiffs in the case were “substantially likely to prevail” on the merits.

In a 120-page order, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a preliminary injunction blocking the president’s measure that would require amending the national voter registration form to require proof of U.S. citizenship as well as a provision ordering federal agencies to “assess the citizenship” of individuals who receive public assistance before they are provided a voter registration form.

Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, wrote that allowing those measures to be implemented would cause “irreparable harm” to the plaintiffs and “would not be in the public interest.”

“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections,” the order states. “Consistent with that allocation of power, Congress is currently debating legislation that would effect many of the changes the President purports to order. And no statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”

The court noted that the legislation in Congress is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility [SAVE] Act, a Republican-backed measure critics have said could potentially disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. Many provisions of the SAVE Act are encompassed by Trump’s executive order.