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    Man Who Shot at Pipeline and Power Station Gets 25 Years in Prison

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    Cameron M. Smith, 50, a Canadian who wanted to bring more attention to climate change, was also ordered to pay $2.1 million in restitution for damage he caused in the Dakotas.A Canadian man who, in an attempt to raise awareness about climate change, used a high-powered rifle to fire shots at a pipeline in South Dakota in 2022 and a power station in North Dakota in 2023 was sentenced on Monday to 25 years in federal prison.The man, Cameron M. Smith, 50, who pleaded guilty last September in U.S. District Court in Bismarck, N.D., to two counts of destruction of an energy facility for the vandalism, was also ordered to pay $2.1 million in restitution.In July 2022, Mr. Smith used a high-powered Bushmaster rifle to fire rounds into a transformer and pump station that was part of the Keystone Pipeline in Clark County, in eastern South Dakota, according to court records. The act caused about $500,000 in damage and disrupted the pipeline, which carries oil from Canada through the United States, records show. Electrical service to some customers in North Dakota was also disrupted, prosecutors said.Ten months later, in May 2023, Mr. Smith again used a Bushmaster rifle to shoot at the Wheelock electric substation near Ray, in northwest North Dakota, causing about $1.2 million in damage, court records show. All energy facilities are federally protected, and damaging them can be deemed an act of terrorism if an attack is intended to “affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate,” according to the Justice Department. Judge Daniel Traynor of U.S. District Court in Bismarck, N.D., found that Mr. Smith’s actions had met that definition — a finding reflected in the sentence he handed down.Mr. Smith, whose lawyer said he is autistic, was an online marketer who was renting a small home on the Oregon coast at the time of his arrest. He was not working at the time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Pulled $400 million From Columbia. Other Schools Could Be Next.

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      The administration has circulated a list that includes nine other campuses, accusing them of failure to address antisemitism.The Trump Administration’s abrupt withdrawal of $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University cast a pall over at least nine other campuses worried they could be next.The schools, a mix that includes both public universities and Ivy League institutions, have been placed on an official administration list of schools the Department of Justice said may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty.Faculty leaders at many of the schools have pushed back strongly against claims that their campuses are hotbeds of antisemitism, noting that while some Jewish students complained that they felt unsafe, the vast majority of protesters were peaceful and many of the protest participants were themselves Jewish. The Trump administration has made targeting higher education a priority. This week, the president threatened in a social media post to punish any school that permits “illegal” protests. On Jan. 30, his 10th day in office, he signed an executive order on combating antisemitism, focusing on what he called anti-Jewish racism at “leftists” universities. Then, on Feb. 3, he announced the creation of a multiagency task force to carry out the mandate.The task force appeared to move into action quickly after a pro-Palestinian sit-in and protest at Barnard College, a partner school to Columbia, led to arrests on Feb. 26. Two days later, the administration released its list of 10 schools under scrutiny, including Columbia, the site of large pro-Palestinian encampments last year.It said it would be paying the schools a visit, part of a review process to consider “whether remedial action is warranted.” Then on Friday, it announced it would be canceling millions in grants and contracts with Columbia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Officials Take Down List of Federal Properties for Possible Sale

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      On Tuesday, the Trump administration identified more than 440 federal properties that could be sold off, a list that included high-profile buildings like the headquarters of the F.B.I., Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services.By Wednesday morning, the entire inventory had been taken down, replaced by an agency web page that said the list of properties was “coming soon.”The General Services Administration, an agency that manages the federal real estate portfolio, had already revised the list at least once. In the hours after it was published, about 100 properties, including many in the Washington, D.C., area, were removed.The changes stirred up confusion over the Trump administration’s plan to offload a vast amount of federal property. Officials at the General Services Administration said the “disposal” of the buildings could help save hundreds of millions of dollars and ensure that taxpayers do not have to pay for “underutilized federal office space.” But the list swiftly came under criticism by some Democratic lawmakers and others who worried about the potential impact on government services across the country.The agency did not immediately respond to inquiries as to why the list had been removed. More

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      Justice Dept. Signals It Will End Challenge to Idaho Abortion Ban

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      The Trump administration is poised to roll back a Biden-era legal effort to blunt the effects of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.The Justice Department plans to drop a Biden-era challenge to Idaho’s law banning abortion in nearly all circumstances, a move that could end access to most abortions for women in the state whose pregnancy poses serious health risks, according to a court filing on Tuesday.The decision represents one of the first major steps under President Trump to roll back former Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s efforts to blunt the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.The Trump administration plans to “dismiss its claims in the above case, without prejudice” as early as Wednesday, a lawyer with the department’s civil division wrote in an email to lawyers for the state’s largest hospital system.The action would effectively lift a federal appellate court’s hold on parts of the near-total ban, which was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature in 2020 in anticipation of the nullification of the national right to an abortion.Excerpts from the government’s email were included in a request in Federal District Court by the Boise-based St. Luke’s Health System for a new temporary freeze to give it time to adjust to the law, which bans all abortions other than those required to prevent a woman’s death, or in certain cases of rape or incest.Hospitals in Idaho need the temporary delay “to train their staff about the change in legal obligations” and to arrange logistics “to airlift patients out of state” if they require an abortion rendered illegal in Idaho, wrote Wendy J. Olson, a lawyer for the system.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justice Dept. to Review Election Tampering Conviction of Pro-Trump Clerk

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      The decision, revealed in a filing in a Colorado clerk’s bid to overturn her conviction, marks another example of President Trump’s Justice Department intervening to aid supporters or go after foes.The Justice Department said on Monday that it would review the conviction of the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., who was found guilty of state charges last summer of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against President Trump.The decision was the latest example of the Justice Department under Mr. Trump’s control seeking to use its powers to support those who have acted on his behalf and to go after those who have criticized or opposed him. It also played into the president’s effort to rewrite the history of his efforts to overturn the results of the election.Three weeks ago, the former clerk, Tina Peters, who was sentenced to nine years in prison on the state election tampering charges, filed a long-shot motion in Federal District Court in Denver effectively challenging the guilty verdict she received in August at the end of a trial in Grand Junction.But, in a surprise move, Yaakov M. Roth, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, filed a court brief known as a statement of interest on Monday, declaring that “reasonable concerns have been raised about various aspects of Ms. Peters’s case.” In the filing, Mr. Roth said the federal judge who received Ms. Peters’s petition this month should give it “prompt and careful consideration.”Mr. Roth said that the Justice Department was concerned, among other things, about “the exceptionally lengthy sentence” imposed on Ms. Peters by the judge in Grand Junction. He also questioned a decision by state prosecutors to deny her bail as she appeals her conviction as “arbitrary or unreasonable.”The review of Ms. Peters’s case was part of a larger examination of cases “across the nation for abuses of the criminal justice process,” Mr. Roth wrote. The scrutiny of Peters case, he added, was being conducted under the aegis of an executive order that Mr. Trump issued seeking to end the “weaponization of the federal government.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      2 Democrats Begin Investigation of Move to Drop Adams Charges

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      In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the lawmakers, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Jasmine Crockett of Texas, accused the Justice Department of a coverup.Two top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have begun an investigation into the Justice Department’s request to drop federal criminal charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York.They accused the department of covering up a quid pro quo agreement between the Trump administration and the mayor.In a letter on Sunday to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the lawmakers, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Jasmine Crockett of Texas, cited an account provided by Danielle Sassoon, who resigned as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan over the department’s request. They said her resignation letter indicated that the administration may have agreed to “a blatant and illegal quid pro quo” with Mr. Adams: It would seek to have the case dropped, and Mr. Adams would assist in carrying out the administration’s immigration policy.“Not only did the Department of Justice attempt to pressure career prosecutors into carrying out this illegal quid pro quo; it appears that Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove was personally engaged in a cover-up by destroying evidence and retaliating against career prosecutors who refused to follow his illegal and unethical orders,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter.They added, “We write to demand that you immediately put an end to the cover-up and retaliation and provide documents and information about these disturbing accounts to Congress.”Ms. Sassoon was one of seven federal prosecutors who resigned over the department’s move to drop the corruption charges against Mr. Adams. A federal judge delayed a ruling on the request last month.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Attorney Rebuffed by Justice Dept. in Push to Escalate Inquiry into Schumer

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      Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, has been blocked so far in seeking a grand jury investigation into remarks made by Senator Chuck Schumer about Supreme Court justices.Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has been quietly pushing to present evidence against Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, to a federal grand jury over comments he made about Supreme Court justices in 2020, according to people with knowledge of the situation.Justice Department officials have thus far rebuffed the unusual request by Mr. Martin, a partisan ally of President Trump with no previous prosecutorial experience, one of those people said.Mr. Martin has made clear his hopes of investigating whether the remarks made five years ago by Mr. Schumer amounted to threats against Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Bringing such a case is highly unusual and winning a conviction would be difficult, according to current and former prosecutors.Last month, Mr. Martin signaled his intention to take an aggressive approach, writing Mr. Schumer a letter demanding “information and clarification” of remarks he made at a rally on March 4, 2020.“You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” Mr. Schumer said at the rally, addressing his remarks to Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. Mr. Schumer’s staff retracted his statement and the senator apologized a day later, taking to the floor of the Senate to say, “I should not have used the words I used.”Mr. Schumer added that he had been referring to “political consequences” rather than violent retribution, chalking up his phrasing to his upbringing in Brooklyn.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      F.B.I. Returns Materials Taken From Mar-a-Lago to Trump

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      Among the items taken from the president’s Florida residence were files that investigators said contained classified material and formed the central evidence in one of the criminal cases against him.The F.B.I. on Friday gave President Trump the boxes of materials the bureau had seized during a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in 2022, the White House announced.Files that investigators said contained classified material were among the thousands of items taken in the search, and they had formed the central evidence in a criminal case charging Mr. Trump with illegally taking them when he left office after his first term and blocking the government’s efforts to retrieve them.But a judge unexpectedly threw out the charges last year, and prosecutors dropped their appeal to reinstate them after Mr. Trump was re-elected in November. Jack Smith, the special counsel in the case, said at the time that the charges had been dismissed because of a department policy that barred filing charges against a sitting president.Mr. Trump repeatedly argued that he had a legal right to the documents despite their classification. After the case was dropped, the president and his allies said they would seek the return of the files that had been seized.Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said that happened Friday afternoon.“The F.B.I. is giving the president his property back that was taken during the unlawful and illegal raids,” Mr. Cheung said. “We are taking possession of the boxes today and loading them onto Air Force One.”Mr. Cheung told reporters that the boxes of materials taken from Mar-a-Lago were loaded onto Air Force One before the president’s departure for Mar-a-Lago on Friday evening. Alina Habba, the counselor to the president, told reporters that the boxes included personal items from Mr. Trump and his family.In his own statement, the president said he wanted to make the materials “part of the Trump Presidential Library.”“The Department of Justice has just returned the boxes that deranged Jack Smith made such a big deal about,” he said, adding, “I did absolutely nothing wrong.” More

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      Trump Has the Same Idea in Mind for Ukraine and the Department of Justice

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      I grew up a Reagan Republican in the middle of the Cold War, and I never thought I’d see the day when the president of the United States became the world’s most prominent and effective Russian propagandist.Yet that’s exactly what happened last week, when President Trump began a diplomatic offensive against the nation of Ukraine and the person of President Volodymyr Zelensky.This month, the administration couldn’t seem to get its message straight. First it seemed to want to offer unilateral concessions to the Russian government — including by taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table and recognizing Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine — only to walk back the concessions days (or hours) later.The cumulative effect was confusing. What was the administration’s position on Ukraine? Last week, however, the words and actions of the administration left us with no doubt — the United States is taking Russia’s side in the conflict.What other conclusion should we draw when Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, begins peace negotiations with Russia without Ukraine or any of our NATO allies at the table, dangling “historic economic and investment opportunities” for Russia if the conflict ends?What other conclusion should we draw when Trump demands ruinous economic concessions from Ukraine to compensate America for its prior aid? He’s demanding a higher share of gross domestic product from Ukraine than the victorious Allies demanded from Germany after World War I.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More