Federal judge blocks Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in US military

Federal judge blocks Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in military

A federal judge has granted an injunction that temporarily blocks the US military from enforcing Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from military service while a lawsuit by 20 current and would-be service members challenging the measure goes forward.

Judge Ana Reyes stayed her order from going into effect until Friday morning to give the government to seek an emergency appeal.

In an interview with Laura Ingraham broadcast on Tuesday evening, the Fox host coaxed Donald Trump into saying that he would not defy court orders and agreeing with her that attacks on Tesla dealerships are domestic terrorism.

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On both subjects, the pattern of the conversation was similar, with Ingraham, a die-hard Trump supporter, struggling to contain the president’s rambling answers to her questions and pushing him to agree with what seemed to be the positions she wanted him to take.

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When Ingraham asked, “Are there circumstances where you would defy a court order?” Trump used it as an opportunity to rehearse his grievances about having been prosecuted. “I think that number one, nobody’s been through more courts than I have,” Trump began. After the president began to talk about the judge who oversaw his conviction for scheming illegally influence the 2016 election through secret payments to a porn actor, Ingraham dragged him back to the point. “But going forward, would you – would you defy a court order?”

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“No, I never did defy a court order,” Trump said, although he had raged earlier on Tuesday against a federal judge who suggested that his administration had defied his order by deporting accused members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador last week.

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“And you wouldn’t in the future,” Ingraham, a trained lawyer who once clerked for supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, urged Trump to agree.

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“No, you can’t do that,” Trump said, before immediately launching into an attack on what he called the “rogue judge” who is pressing the administration to explain why it seemingly disregarded his order to not continue with a deportation flight to El Salvador.

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“We have very bad judges and these are judges that shouldn’t be allowed,” Trump said. “I think at a certain point, you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge? The judge that we’re talking about. Look at his other rulings, I mean rulings unrelated, but having to do with me: he’s a lunatic.”

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His response to her line of questioning about the vandalism of Tesla dealerships was similar.

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“Do you consider what’s happening an act of domestic political terrorism?” Ingraham asked.

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“I do,” Trump responded, before launching into an extended monologue about how he “hardly knew Elon” until the 2024 campaign, but it turned out “that he liked me … better than Kamala, better than Joe”.

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Ingraham interrupted to repeat her question: “But do you consider this an act of domestic terrorism?”

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“Sure, sure, I think – I think so,” Trump answered. He then went on to echo the baseless charge made by the attorney general, Pamela Jo Bondi, in a statement on Tuesday that unknown figures were “operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes” which are “nothing short of domestic terrorism”.

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Judge Ana Reyes stayed her order from going into effect until Friday morning to give the government to seek an emergency appeal.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has condemned the firing of two Democratic commissioners at the US Federal Trade Commission, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.

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“Donald Trump just illegally fired two independent commissioners at the FTC who fight big corporations that abuse consumers and workers,” Warren said in a statement. “Why? Trump’s billionaire donors expect a return on their investment. He works for them, not you. The courts must reinstate the commissioners”.

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“The FTC was created by Congress to stop greedy corporations from ripping off consumers,” Emma Lydon, the managing director of the Warren-aligned Progressive Change Institute, said in a statement. “By attempting to illegally fire the Democratic commissioners, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are revealing their true aim: ensuring that megacorporations can steal, cheat, and lie with no consequences. This is an abuse of power and reeks of corruption. We look forward to watching this Administration lose in court.”

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As Wired magazine first reported on Tuesday, more than 300 blog posts have been deleted from the FTC website, “including important consumer protection information related to artificial intelligence and the agency’s landmark privacy lawsuits under former chair Lina Khan against companies like Amazon and Microsoft”.

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A look at the FTC’s Business Blog reveals that the four most recent posts there now are three that were posted this month and one from December 2020. Current and former FTC employees, who spoke under anonymity for fear of retaliation, told Wired that the agency’s site “no longer includes any information published during former president Joe Biden’s administration”.

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Among the deleted items, Wired explains, are several that documented violations of consumer protection laws by tech giants including Amazon.

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One now deleted blog, titled “Hey, Alexa! What are you doing with my data?” explains how, according to two FTC complaints, Amazon and its Ring security camera products allegedly leveraged sensitive consumer data to train the ecommerce giant’s algorithms. (Amazon disagreed with the FTC’s claims.) It also provided guidance for companies operating similar products and services.

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Earlier on Tuesday, the two Democratic commissioners on the FTC revealed that they had been “illegally fired” by Donald Trump.

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In his first public remarks since being detained by federal immigration authorities, Palestinian activist and recent Columbia graduate, Mahmoud Khalil, spoke out against the conditions facing immigrants in US detention and said he was being targeted by the Trump administration for his political beliefs.

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“I am a political prisoner,” he said in a statement provided exclusively to the Guardian. “I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.”

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Khalil, a permanent US resident who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests last spring, was arrested and detained in New York on 8 March by federal immigration authorities who reportedly said that they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card.

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“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night,” Khalil added. “With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”

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Read the rest of Khalil’s statement:

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The two Democratic commissioners at the US Federal Trade Commission, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, both said on Tuesday that they were “illegally fired” by Donald Trump on Tuesday.

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Trump is already being sued for firing members of other independent regulatory agencies including the National Labor Relations Board.

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Bedoya posted a statement on X in which he said: “This is corruption plain and simple”.

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“The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists”, Bedoya wrote. “Now the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies”.

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Slaughter said in a statement to the American Prospect that Trump’s illegal action violated “the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent”.

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She added:

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The law protects the independence of the Commission because the law serves the American people, not corporate power. The reason that the FTC can be so effective for the American people is because of its independence and because its commissioners serve across political parties and ideologies. Removing opposition voices may not change what the Trump majority can do, but it does change whether they will have accountability when they do it. The administration clearly fears the accountability that opposition voices would provide if the President orders Chairman Ferguson to treat the most powerful corporations and their executives—like those that flanked the President at his inauguration—with kid gloves.

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I have served across administrations, including during the last Trump administration, and throughout my entire time as a commissioner I applied the same criteria in my work: that the law must be enforced without fear or favor. I have dedicated myself to executing the Commission’s statutory mandate to protect consumers and promote competition, fighting against illegal business practices that make groceries more expensive, healthcare inaccessible, and compromise people’s privacy and security; it has been my greatest honor to serve.

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As Deepak Gupta, former senior counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, explained recently on Slate’s Amicus podcast, in the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v United States, the US supreme court upheld a law that permitted FTC commissioners to be fired only for good cause, such as neglecting their duties. That ruling shields a number of independent, bipartisan multi-member agencies from direct control by the White House.

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As Gupta noted, the idea that government needed independent agencies and people with experts to solve complex problems was introduced during the New Deal era, to replace what was known as “the spoils system”, in which the incoming president rewarded friends, campaign staffers and other supporters with appointments to federal government positions for which they had no qualifications or expertise.

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A federal judge has ordered Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to stop their dismantling of USAid, saying their move to rapidly shut down the agency tasked with managing foreign assistance was likely illegal.

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“The court finds that defendants actions taken to shut down USAid on an accelerated basis, including its apparent decision to permanently close USAid headquarters without the approval of a duly appointed USAid Officer, likely violated the United States constitution in multiple ways, and that these actions harmed not only Plaintiffs, but also the public interest, because they deprived the public’s elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when, and how to close down an agency created by Congress,” wrote Maryland-based judge Theodore D. Chuang.

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He ordered Musk and Doge officials to halt any work meant to shut down USAid, reinstate email access for all USAid employees and contractors and not disclose any employees’ personal information publicly.

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He also said Musk and Doge have two weeks to either certify that USAid’s Washington DC headquarters has been reopened or have a top USAid official agree to close it down.

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Federal judge James Boasberg has given the Trump administration until noon tomorrow to provide answers to specific questions about three flights carrying suspected Venezuelan gang members that left the United States despite his order preventing their departure.

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Boasberg informed the justice department they have until 12pm ET tomorrow to answer the following questions:

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1) What time did the plane take off from U.S. soil and from where? 2) What time did it leave U.S. airspace? 3) What time did it land in which foreign country (including if it made more than one stop)? 4) What time were individuals subject solely to the Proclamation transferred out of U.S. custody? and 5) How many people were aboard solely on the basis of the Proclamation?

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The government, which has cited national security concerns in refusing to answer Boasberg’s questions, is allowed to reply under seal.

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The White House said in a statement that Trump and Putin “spoke about the need for peace and a ceasefire in the Ukraine war” in a phone call that lasted over an hour.

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“Both leaders agreed this conflict needs to end with a lasting peace,” reads the statement. “The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace.”

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Putin and Trump also discussed the Middle East, the “need to stop” the proliferation of strategic weapons, and Iran, according to the statement.

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The justice department told the judge considering the legality of deporting suspected Venezuelan gang members that they did not violate his order to stop the planes from departing, but refused to immediately offer more details of their itinerary.

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The filings came after judge James Boasberg yesterday gave the administration a deadline of today at noon to share details of how the three planes were allowed to fly to El Salvador even though he ordered that they not depart, and turn back if they were in the air.

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In response, Robert L. Cerna, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official based in Texas, said that two of the planes had already left US airspace by the time that Boasberg issued his order, while the third carried migrants who had been ordered deported through the typical legal process – not the Alien Enemies Act, which is at issue in the case Boasberg is considering.

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From Cerna’s filing:

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On March 15, 2025, after the Proclamation was publicly posted and took effect, three planes carrying aliens departed the United States for El Salvador International Airport (SAL). Two of those planes departed U.S. territory and airspace before 7:25 PM EDT. The third plane departed after that time, but all individuals on that third plane had Title 8 final removal orders and thus were not removed solely on the basis of the Proclamation at issue. To avoid any doubt, no one on any flight departing the United States after 7:25 PM EDT on March 15, 2025, was removed solely on the basis of the Proclamation at issue.

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Separately, attorney general Pam Bondi and other top justice department officials signed a notice to Boasberg in response to his demand for details about the planes and their departure time, essentially refusing to provide him with what he wanted:

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The Court also ordered the Government to address the form in which it can provide further details about flights that left the United States before 7:25 PM. The Government maintains that there is no justification to order the provision of additional information, and that doing so would be inappropriate, because even accepting Plaintiffs’ account of the facts, there was no violation of the Court’s written order (since the relevant flights left U.S. airspace, and so their occupants were “removed,” before the order issued), and the Court’s earlier oral statements were not independently enforceable as injunctions. The Government stands on those arguments.

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Here’s more on the legal wrangling over the deportations, and Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act:

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Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against the judicial branch, saying that a federal judge who attempted to block his deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members should be impeached. The comment prompted a rare public statement from John Roberts, the chief justice of the supreme court, who said impeachment “is not an appropriate response” and that appeals in the case should be allowed to play out. We expect to find out more today about the deportations of the undocumented immigrants to El Salvador, where the government released jarring video of them being manhandled off planes and having their heads shaved. The government continues to argue that the group belonged to Tren de Aragua, whose members Trump has designated for rapid deportation, but family members of some of the men told the Washington Post they had no association with the gang.

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Here’s what else has happened today so far:

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Despite the rhetoric, impeaching and removing federal judges is exceedingly rare, and Republicans don’t appear to have the votes in the Senate.

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Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, asked the Trump administration not to deport their citizens to a third country, or detain them in Guantánamo Bay.

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More documents related to the assassination of John F Kennedy Jr should be released today, Trump told reporters on Monday.

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Chief justice of the supreme court John Roberts has issued a rare public statement after Donald Trump this morning suggested a federal judge who attempted to block his administration’s deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members should be impeached.

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Without referencing the president, Roberts said:

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For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.

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Roberts is considered part of the court’s conservative bloc and has repeatedly joined rulings that Trump supports, perhaps most notably last year’s decision granting presidents immunity for official acts. However, Roberts also has a record of defending the judiciary from Trump’s attacks, such as this episode from his first term:

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Donald Trump said that his administration will release tens of thousands of records today related to the assassination of John F Kennedy Jr, which he does not expect to be redacted.

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“You got a lot of reading. I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything,” the president told reporters as he visited the Kennedy Center performing arts venue in Washington DC.

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He added that he expected about 80,000 pages to be released. “They’ve been waiting for that for decades, and I said during the campaign I’d release them and I’m a man of my word, so, tomorrow you have the JFK files.”

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Trump is indeed a man of his word in this respect, as was Joe Biden:

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Donald Trump has called for the impeachment of the judge handling lawsuits over his administration’s deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members, a significant escalation of rightwing attacks on the judiciary.

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While allies of the president such as Elon Musk have repeatedly said judges who rule against him should be impeached, this appears to be the first time the president has backed such calls publicly. Trump’s post on Truth Social does not name the judge, but seems to reference James Boasberg, the Washington DC-based justice who was appointed by Barack Obama and attempted to prevent the government from deporting the alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. Here’s what Trump wrote:

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This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President – He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING! I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY. I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

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The attacks on the judiciary have prompted US Marshals to up their protection of judges, amid fears they may prompt violence:

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The Trump administration faces a deadline of 12pm ET to provide federal judge James Boasberg with more information about the three flights carrying suspected Venezuelan gang members that were allowed to depart the United States over the weekend.

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The case is the latest instance of the Trump administration apparently defying a court order – something top administration officials are making no apologies for.

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In an interview with Fox News on Monday, attorney general Pam Bondi said that the White House was “absolutely” hoping to continue similar deportation flights. The suspected gang members were deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, which cuts through much of the usual due process required by immigration law.

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“These are foreign terrorists. The president has identified them and designated them as such, and we will continue to follow the Alien Enemies Act,” Bondi said.

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The Trump administration fired most of the board of the US Institute of Peace (USIP) and sent its new leader into the Washington DC headquarters of the independent organization on Monday in its latest effort targeting agencies tied to foreign assistance work.

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The remaining three members of the group’s board – defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio and national defense university president Peter Garvin – fired president and CEO, George Moose, on Friday, according to a document obtained by the Associated Press.

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An executive order that Donald Trump signed last month targeted the organization, which was created by Congress more than 40 years ago, and others for reductions.

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Current USIP employees said staffers from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” entered the building despite protests that the institute is not part of the executive branch. USIP called the police, whose vehicles were outside the building on Monday evening.

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Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will hold a phone call between 9am and 11am EDT on Tuesday to talk about settling the Ukraine conflict and normalising relations between Russia and the United States, the Kremlin said.

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Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said there was already a “certain understanding” between the two leaders, based on a phone call they held on 12 February and on subsequent high-level contacts between the two countries.

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“But there are also a large number of questions regarding the further normalisation of our bilateral relations, and a settlement on Ukraine. All of this will have to be discussed by the two presidents,” Peskov told reporters.

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“The leaders will speak for as long as they deem necessary,” he said.

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Donald Trump visited the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Monday for the first time since making himself its new chair, threatening to shutter an expensive new addition and describing the marble Washington landmark as being in “tremendous disrepair”.

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Trump presided over the center’s board meeting in a demonstration of his takeover of an institution that has long enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington, Reuters reported.

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Trump, a former real estate executive, criticised an expansive addition built on the Kennedy Center complex for lacking windows and suggested closing it.

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He said the center would improve physically over time, however, and he encouraged people to attend shows there.

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“This represents a very important part of DC, and actually our country,” he said when asked why he was making time to come to the Kennedy Center with so many other things on his plate. “I think it’s important to make sure that our country is in good shape and is represented well.”

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Last month, Trump became chair of the Kennedy Center after pushing out billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein. He fired its longtime president, Deborah Rutter, and installed his former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, as interim president.

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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next couple of hours.

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We start with news that a federal judge has given the Trump administration a deadline of today to provide details about plane loads of Venezuelans it deported despite orders not to, in a brewing showdown over presidential power.

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Donald Trump claims the deported Venezuelans are members of the prison gang Tren de Aragua, which he designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

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The White House on Saturday published a Trump proclamation that invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to declare the gang was conducting irregular warfare against the US, Reuters reported.

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Later on Saturday, US district judge James Boasberg issued an order blocking the deportations but the flights continued anyway and 261 people were flown to El Salvador.

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A Trump administration lawyer argued both that the judge’s initial oral ruling to block the flights was superseded by a more sparsely written order issued later and that the government had the legal right to continue with flights once they had left US airspace.

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Since taking office in January, Trump has sought to push the boundaries of executive power, challenging the historic checks and balances between the US branches of government.

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Read our latest story here:

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In other news:

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Trump announced on Truth Social that he was ending secret service protection for Joe Biden’s adult children, Ashley Biden and Hunter Biden.

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Trump also said the government would release all of the remaining classified documents related to the assassination of President John F Kennedy on Tuesday, something he had pledged to do during his campaign.

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Trump also said Joe Biden’s pardon of January 6 committee lawmakers was “void”, and his press secretary later said, without evidence, that the former president may not have been of sound mind when he gave it.

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Meanwhile, the CEO of the non-profit US Institute of Peace said Monday that employees of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” had “broken into our building” as part of an escalating standoff over the legal status of the institute and whether Musk has authority over it.

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Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, has reportedly cancelled a book tour as he faces protests from members of his own party for providing votes crucial to the passage of a Republican spending bill.

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Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, called the release of 1,123 documents related to the 1963 assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on Tuesday proof that the administration “is ushering in a new era of maximum transparency”.

While many of the documents appear to have been previously released, including by the Biden administration, some previously redacted passages have now been made public.

On Fox, Laura Ingraham coaxes Trump into saying he can’t defy court orders

“And you wouldn’t in the future,” Ingraham, a trained lawyer who once clerked for supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, urged Trump to agree.

His response to her line of questioning about the vandalism of Tesla dealerships was similar.

“Do you consider what’s happening an act of domestic political terrorism?” Ingraham asked.

Ingraham interrupted to repeat her question: “But do you consider this an act of domestic terrorism?”

Federal judge blocks Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in military

Judge Ana Reyes stayed her order from going into effect until Friday morning to give the government to seek an emergency appeal.

Senator Warren condemns FTC firings

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has condemned the firing of two Democratic commissioners at the US Federal Trade Commission, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.

Four years’ worth of consumer protection information deleted from FTC website

Among the deleted items, Wired explains, are several that documented violations of consumer protection laws by tech giants including Amazon.

One now deleted blog, titled “Hey, Alexa! What are you doing with my data?” explains how, according to two FTC complaints, Amazon and its Ring security camera products allegedly leveraged sensitive consumer data to train the ecommerce giant’s algorithms. (Amazon disagreed with the FTC’s claims.) It also provided guidance for companies operating similar products and services.

Earlier on Tuesday, the two Democratic commissioners on the FTC revealed that they had been “illegally fired” by Donald Trump.

‘I am a political prisoner,’ Mahmoud Khalil tells the Guardian in first public statement

Read the rest of Khalil’s statement:

Both Democrats on Federal Trade Commission say Trump ‘illegally fired’ them

Trump is already being sued for firing members of other independent regulatory agencies including the National Labor Relations Board.

Bedoya posted a statement on X in which he said: “This is corruption plain and simple”.

“The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists”, Bedoya wrote. “Now the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies”.

Slaughter said in a statement to the American Prospect that Trump’s illegal action violated “the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent”.

She added:

The law protects the independence of the Commission because the law serves the American people, not corporate power. The reason that the FTC can be so effective for the American people is because of its independence and because its commissioners serve across political parties and ideologies. Removing opposition voices may not change what the Trump majority can do, but it does change whether they will have accountability when they do it. The administration clearly fears the accountability that opposition voices would provide if the President orders Chairman Ferguson to treat the most powerful corporations and their executives—like those that flanked the President at his inauguration—with kid gloves.

I have served across administrations, including during the last Trump administration, and throughout my entire time as a commissioner I applied the same criteria in my work: that the law must be enforced without fear or favor. I have dedicated myself to executing the Commission’s statutory mandate to protect consumers and promote competition, fighting against illegal business practices that make groceries more expensive, healthcare inaccessible, and compromise people’s privacy and security; it has been my greatest honor to serve.

Ed Martin, the combative interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, and a 2020 election denier who helped lead the Stop the Steal movement, plans to use his office to investigate possible election law violations, according to an email seen by Bloomberg Law.

Martin, who publicly called the 2020 “rigged” in 2021, said in the office-wide email that he had established a “Special Unit: Election Accountability,” or SUEA.

The unit “has already begun one investigation and will continue to make sure that all the election laws of our nation are obeyed”, Martin wrote. “We have a special role at this important time.”

David Becker, the director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, told Talking Points Memo that Martin “seems to be misunderstanding his jurisdiction and the federal laws around elections and voting, and without more information, it’s unclear what is being done here other than furthering conspiracy theories that he’s embraced in the past”.

Martin is a veteran anti-abortion activist who has argued for a national ban without exceptions for rape or incest, falsely claimed that “no abortion is ever performed to save the life of the mother” and discussed the possibility of jailing doctors who perform abortions and women who get abortions.

Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, has criticized the chief justice of the supreme court, John Roberts, for defending the federal judge who tried to block the government’s showy deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.

After Donald Trump reacted to Judge James Boasberg’s ruling by calling for his impeachment, Roberts said in a statement: “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

Responding on X, the social network owned by Elon Musk, Lee wrote:

Impeachment is a non-justiciable political question assigned by the Constitution to Congress—one of the two political branches of the U.S. government—and not to the courts

Frankly, I’m surprised that Chief Justice Roberts is publicly opining on such matters

Musk himself had posted a similar comment hours earlier. Lee, a former critic of Trump who had called on him to drop out of the 2016 campaign before becoming a public convert, also shared Musk’s comment and added, of the arch-conservative Roberts, “This isn’t the first time he’s treaded on legislative power”.

Here is more from our colleagues Hugo Lowell and Joseph Gedeon on the Roberts intervention:

Marina Dunbar

Trump’s trade war has had an incredible impact on the popularity of Canada’s Liberal Party, as new polling suggests a stunning reversal of public opinion.

For the first time, projection shows the Liberals with a 55% chance of a majority government, according to the closely watched website 338Canada, which tracks and aggregates national polls, converting those figures into projected election results. In January, these odds stood at less than 1%.

The shifting polls reflect the outsized role played by a teetering and unpredictable US president, and it underscores the incentives for newly minted prime minister Mark Carney to call a snap election in the coming days.