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      In Texas Borderland, Trump’s Immigration Push Suffers Its Worst Legal Defeat Yet

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      Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is a Trump nominee with conservative credentials. But he found White House claims about a Venezuelan gang “invasion” went too far.Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a bespectacled, soft-spoken 56-year-old nominated by President Trump, turned his high-backed leather chair toward a government lawyer at the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas, and asked a question. Can the president define what counts as an invasion, then declare that an invasion is happening, and then use a 1798 war powers law to expel the so-called invaders?“Yes,” answered Michael Velchik, a Justice Department lawyer.Judge Rodriguez followed up: Wouldn’t that make Mr. Trump’s powers under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, “effectively limitless?”The question hinted at a groundbreaking ruling that Judge Rodriguez issued on Thursday when he found that Mr. Trump was wrong to claim that the activities of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang in the United States, amounted to an “invasion” that justified invoking the wartime law.The decision was the most sweeping ruling issued so far by a federal judge blocking the most aggressive prong of Mr. Trump’s effort, one that was already used to deport nearly 140 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador on March 15. It comes after a Supreme Court decision in early April that Venezuelan detainees facing potential deportation under the Alien Enemies Act could file lawsuits in the district courts where they were being held.Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017.C-SPANThe result of the court’s order has been that challenges to a key piece of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, which began in Washington, are spreading around the country, filling the dockets of federal judges and drawing tough and skeptical questioning — even from jurists with impeccable conservative credentials.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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      Microsoft Drops Simpson Thacher & Bartlett Law Firm

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      The tech giant instead engaged a firm that is fighting the president’s executive orders, Jenner & Block, in a sign that those firms can still attract clients.When big law firms attacked by President Trump decided to make a deal with him rather than fight, many did so because their leaders feared that clients would abandon a firm caught on the administration’s bad side.Now that logic may be getting less compelling. A major company, Microsoft, has dropped a law firm that settled with the administration in favor of one that is fighting it.Large companies like Microsoft often farm out legal work to dozens or even hundreds of firms and may move business depending on circumstances, like pricing, expertise or potential conflicts. Microsoft declined to comment on why it changed law firms in a significant case last week, but the switch suggests that a firm that chose to fight the Trump administration could still attract an important client.On April 22, several attorneys at the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett informed the Delaware Court of Chancery that they would no longer be representing Microsoft in a case related to the company’s 2023 acquisition of the video game giant Activision Blizzard, according to court filings.Simpson Thacher reached a deal with the White House last month in which the firm committed to perform $125 million in free legal work for causes acceptable to the Trump administration. In a joint statement with other firms making similar agreements, Simpson Thacher said the pro bono work would be on behalf of “a wide range of underserved populations.”On the same day that the Simpson Thacher lawyers filed paperwork withdrawing from the Microsoft case, at least three partners at the firm Jenner & Block informed the court that they would be representing Microsoft in the case. Jenner is fighting in court to permanently block a Trump administration executive order targeting its business.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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      Judge Rebukes Apple and Orders It to Loosen Grip on App Store

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      The ruling was a stinging defeat for Apple in a long-running antitrust case brought by Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, on behalf of app developers.A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Apple must loosen its grip on its App Store and stop collecting a commission on some app sales, capping a five-year antitrust case brought by Epic Games that aimed to change the power that Apple wields over a large slice of the digital economy.The judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, rebuked Apple for thwarting a previous ruling in the lawsuit and said the company needed to be stopped from further disobeying the court. She criticized Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, and accused other executives at the company of lying.In her earlier ruling, Judge Gonzales Rogers ordered Apple to allow apps to provide users with external links to pay developers directly for services. The apps could then avoid the 30 percent commission that Apple charges in its App Store and potentially charge less for services.Instead, Judge Gonzalez Rogers said on Wednesday, Apple created a new system that forced apps with external sales to pay a 27 percent commission to the company. Apple also created pop-up screens that discouraged customers from paying elsewhere, telling them that payments outside the App Store may not be secure.“Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this court’s injunction,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers wrote.In response, she said Apple could no longer take commissions from sales outside the App Store. She also restricted the company from writing rules that would prevent developers from creating buttons or links to pay outside the store and said it could not create messages to discourage users from making purchases. In addition, Judge Gonzalez Rogers asked the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate the company for criminal contempt.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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      Eight Charts That Sum Up Trump’s First 100 Days

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      <!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> –>He issued more executive orders than any modern president …<!–> –><!–> [!–> <!–> Executive orders [!–><!–> –> <!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>On his first day in office, Mr. Trump signed a record 26 executive orders — and he didn’t stop there. The executive order has become something of […] More

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      How California Sanctuary Policies Are Faring Under Pressure From Trump

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      State and city officials in California are vowing to uphold protections for immigrants, even as President Trump threatens more action against their jurisdictions.In 1971, Berkeley, Calif., became the first place in the nation to deem itself a sanctuary city, at the time to provide refuge for sailors who protested the Vietnam War.Today, at least 25 cities and counties in California have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants by passing laws that limit how much they will cooperate with federal efforts to deport people.Those policies could soon make California a greater target for the Trump administration as federal officials try to punish governments with sanctuary policies.President Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Monday night directing federal officials to publish a list of all jurisdictions that have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants in the United States. It is unclear how Mr. Trump intends to use the list, but it is possible that he may try to cut funding or take legal action against the governments that are identified.California has long been home to more undocumented immigrants than any other state and currently has about 1.8 million undocumented residents, according to the Pew Research Center. Amid threats of mass deportations during Mr. Trump’s first term, California declared itself a sanctuary state in 2017.Here is how local policies in California are playing out during the second Trump administration:What does it mean to be a sanctuary?Oakland, Sacramento and San Diego are among the California cities that have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for undocumented immigrants.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. Reverses Itself, Saying U.N.’s Gaza Agency Can Be Sued in New York

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      The Justice Department and the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office told a judge that an immunity law did not apply. A group of Israelis had accused the agency of assisting Hamas.Reversing a Biden administration position, President Trump’s Justice Department argued that a lawsuit could proceed in Manhattan that accuses a United Nations agency of providing more than $1 billion that helped to enable Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.The lawsuit says that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency allowed Hamas to siphon off the organization’s funds to help build a terrorist infrastructure that included tunneling equipment and weapons that supported the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and roughly 250 were taken hostage.The Biden administration argued last year that UNRWA could not be sued because it was part of the United Nations, which enjoys immunity from such lawsuits.But the Justice Department told a federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday that neither UNRWA nor the agency officials named in the lawsuit were entitled to immunity.“The complaint in this case alleges atrocious conduct on the part of UNRWA and its officers,” the department wrote in a letter to Judge Analisa Torres of Federal District Court, adding, “The government believes they must answer these allegations in American courts.”“The prior administration’s view that they do not was wrong,” the department said.The letter was submitted by Yaakov M. Roth, a senior Justice Department official, and Jay Clayton, the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.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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      Forced Labor Taints Brazilian Coffee, Say Complaints to U.S. Authorities

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      Two legal actions seeking U.S. government intervention say that some of the coffee bought by major American retailers is harvested in conditions that amount to slavery.Tariffs are not the only threat to business for big companies selling coffee in the United States. On Thursday, a watchdog group petitioned the Trump administration to block coffee imports that it says are produced with forced labor akin to modern-day slavery in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee grower.The petition to Customs and Border Protection, filed by the nonprofit Coffee Watch, names Starbucks, by far the largest coffee retailer in the country, as well as Nestle, Dunkin’, Illy, McDonald’s and Jacobs Douwe Egberts, the owner of Peet’s, as companies that rely on potentially dubious sources. It asks the Trump administration not to allow distribution of any imports from Brazil that “wholly or in part” rely on human trafficking and forced labor.“This isn’t about a few bad actors,” Etelle Higonnet, the founder and director of Coffee Watch, said in a statement. “We’re exposing an entrenched system that traps millions in extreme poverty and thousands in outright slavery.”The request for U.S. action was filed a day after another group, International Rights Advocates, sued Starbucks in federal court on behalf of eight Brazilians who were trafficked and forced to toil in “slavery-like conditions,” said Terry Collingsworth, a human rights lawyer and the founder of the group.The suit seeks certification as a class action representing thousands of workers who it says have faced the same plight while harvesting coffee for a major Starbucks supplier and regional growers’ cooperative in Brazil called Cooxupé.“Starbucks needs to be accountable,” Mr. Collingsworth said in an interview, adding that “there is a massive trafficking and forced labor system in Brazil” that the company benefits from.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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      12 States Sue Trump Over His Tariffs

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      A dozen states, most of them led by Democrats, sued President Trump over his tariffs on Wednesday, arguing that he has no power to “arbitrarily impose tariffs as he has done here.”Contending that only Congress has the power to legislate tariffs, the states are asking the court to block the Trump administration from enforcing what they said were unlawful tariffs.“These edicts reflect a national trade policy that now hinges on the president’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority,” said the lawsuit, filed by the states’ attorneys general in the U.S. Court of International Trade.The states, including New York, Illinois and Oregon, are the latest parties to take the Trump administration to court over the tariffs. Their case comes after California filed its own lawsuit last week, in which Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state attorney general accused the administration of escalating a trade war that has caused “immediate and irreparable harm” to that state’s economy.Officials and businesses from Oregon, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed Wednesday, have also expressed concerns about the vulnerability of the state’s trade-dependent economy, as well as its sportswear industry, as a result of the tariffs.“When a president pushes an unlawful policy that drives up prices at the grocery store and spikes utility bills, we don’t have the luxury of standing by,” said Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, in a statement. “These tariffs hit every corner of our lives — from the checkout line to the doctor’s office — and we have a responsibility to push back.”Asked about the latest lawsuit, Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, called it a “witch hunt” by Democrats against Mr. Trump. “The Trump administration remains committed to using its full legal authority to confront the distinct national emergencies our country is currently facing,” he said, “both the scourge of illegal migration and fentanyl flows across our border and the exploding annual U.S. goods trade deficit.”The other states in the suit are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Vermont. All of the states have Democratic attorneys general, though Nevada and Vermont have Republican governors.Mr. Trump’s tariffs have shocked and upended the global trade industry. He set a 145 percent tariff on goods from China, 25 percent on Canada, and 10 percent on almost all imports from most other countries.The moves have drawn legal challenges from other entities as well, including two members of the Blackfeet Nation, who filed a federal lawsuit in Montana over the tariffs on Canada, saying they violated tribal treaty rights. Legal groups like the Liberty Justice Center and the New Civil Liberties Alliance have also sued. “I’m happy that Oregon and the other states are joining us in this fight,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, who is working on the Liberty Justice Center’s lawsuit. More