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    US citizen arrested during Ice raid in what family describes as ‘kidnapping’

    A US citizen was arrested during an immigration raid in downtown Los Angeles this week in what her family described as a “kidnapping” by federal immigration agents.Andrea Velez, 32, had just been dropped off at work by her mother and sister, the pair said, when they saw agents grab her.“My mom looked at the rear mirror and she saw how my sister was attacked from the back,” Estrella Rosas told ABC7. “She was like: ‘They’re kidnapping your sister.’”Velez, a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona, was taken into custody during an immigration raid on Tuesday. In video captured from the scene, agents can be seen surrounding her as a crowd gathers in the street and police officers stand by. Meanwhile, Rosas and her mother, who has residency but is not a citizen, screamed from a nearby vehicle for help.“She’s a US citizen,” Rosas said through tears. “They’re taking her. Help her, someone.”In other video, an agent can be seen lifting Velez off the ground and carrying her away. Witnesses told media, including CBS Los Angeles, that the agents never asked Velez for identification, and that she did nothing wrong.“The only thing wrong with her … was the color of her skin,” Velez’s mother, Margarita Flores, told CBS Los Angeles.The incident comes as numerous US citizens have been swept up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. People have reported they are being targeted for their skin color and for attempting to aid immigrants being detained by immigration agents.While it’s not yet clear how many citizens have been affected by the administration’s attack on immigrant communities, a government report found that between 2015 and 2020, Ice erroneously deported at least 70 US citizens, arrested 674 and detained 121.Velez’s family was unaware of her whereabouts for more than a day until attorneys for the family tracked her down. “It took us four hours to find her and we’re attorneys. That’s crazy,” attorney Dominique Boubion told ABC7.“Just to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and you have the full weight of the federal government against you and your family can’t find you – it is very scary.”Authorities have not told lawyers what charges Velez faces, but an official with the Department of Homeland Security told media that she was arrested for assaulting an Ice officer. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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    Plan to open California’s largest immigration jail sparks outrage

    Plans to open an enormous federal immigration processing center in a California desert community have sparked outrage among advocacy groups who argue it will come at a “long-term cost” and “fuel harm”.US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has partnered with CoreCivic, a private prison contractor that operates several facilities in California, to transform a shuttered 2,500-bed prison in California City into the state’s largest immigrant detention center.The site, built by CoreCivic in 1999 as a federal prison, operated as a state prison from 2013 to March 2024. This year, as Donald Trump’s administration has sought to dramatically increase detention capacity as part of its crackdown on immigration, the company has received $10m in initial funding as part of a six-month contract, the Los Angeles Times reported.A new sign has been placed outside the facility and CoreCivic has listed two dozen jobs for the site on its website, including psychologists, nurses and maintenance workers.The development has fueled concern among some southern California residents and advocacy groups. This week, people packed a city council meeting to voice their feelings in California City, a remote desert community of 14,000 people with historically high unemployment and poverty rates and limited economic opportunities. The issue was not on the agenda, but people traveled from as far as Los Angeles to express opposition.The Dolores Huerta Foundation shared a letter with the council urging the community to “make its voice heard and refuse to be complicit in a system built on incarceration, dehumanization, and profit from suffering”.“We urge you not to mistake short-term job offers for long-term economic health. California City deserves real investment – in housing, healthcare, education, and job training – not a facility that profits only when people are detained, dehumanized, and separated from their families,” said Camila Chávez, the executive director of the foundation.“ICE detention centers don’t exist in isolation. Every bed built becomes justification for more raids, more deportations, and more broken families. Expanding detention in California City directly fuels that harm.”Most people in attendance spoke in opposition to the project, KERO 23ABC reported, although John Fischer, a California City resident and retired police officer, argued that the site had been previously used as an Ice facility and significantly boosted the local economy.“What most people don’t know is the facility here started off as an Ice prison and it was very good for this town. It brought jobs to the economy. It brought other businesses into the economy,” he told the outlet. “Why do people support these criminal illegal aliens and allow them to remain here, costing us precious tax dollars?”The city’s mayor, Marquette Hawkins, has told media that he recently toured the facility and emphasized the city’s desire to have oversight.“From an economic standpoint, I’m told that it does have some benefits there,” he told the Bakersfield Californian. “However, we understand that 40% of our residents are Latino. We want to make sure there is fairness, there. We talked about oversight and my office having the ability to do that.”Hawkins has encouraged people to continue sharing their perspectives on the facility at city council meetings. More

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    Manzanar teaches about Japanese American incarceration in the US. That’s in jeopardy under Trump

    At the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, more than 200 miles (320km) outside Los Angeles, in what feels like the middle of nowhere, is Manzanar national historic site. It marks the place where more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during the second world war, crowded into barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers with searchlights, and patrolled by military police.Since then, Manzanar, which now has a museum and reconstructed barracks that visitors can walk through, has been transformed into a popular pilgrimage destination for Japanese Americans to remember and teach others about this history. (Manzanar was one of 10 concentration camps where the US government forcibly relocated and held more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent during the second world war.)But recently, under the direction of the Trump administration, National Park Service (NPS) employees have hung new signs at Manzanar that historians and community advocates say will undermine these public education efforts. The notices encourage visitors to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features” via a QR code. The signs, which have been posted at all national parks, monuments and historic sites, were displayed in support of Donald Trump’s executive order Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.Historians, national park advocates and community leaders say they’re alarmed by the move, in what they see as the most recent example of the Trump administration’s attempt to “whitewash” US history.View image in fullscreen“Any attempt to constrain or sanitize the stories that are told at Manzanar should concern every American,” said Naomi Ostwald Kawamura, executive director of Densho, an organization that documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were held in concentration camps. “I’m incredibly disappointed that this is happening in the United States because museums, monuments and memorials are public spaces where we can explore difficult history, confront our past, engage with what’s uncomfortable and then be able to imagine the future that we want to collectively share.”Earlier this year, government agencies compiled hundreds of words to be erased from federal recognition such as “diversity”, “cultural heritage”, “marginalized”, “racial inequality” and “ethnicity”.“I think the sign is clearly trying to create a chilling effect in the telling of these stories,” said Dennis Arguelles, the southern California director of the National Parks Conservation Association, which supports national parks and opposes planned changes to alter historical facts. “These are moments in our history and it’s very dangerous for us to try to pretend it didn’t happen.”The NPS, which has already been under pressure due to funding cuts, hiring freezes and forced resignations, has a legal mandate to preserve, protect and interpret American history. By posting the new signs across all 433 parks, monuments and historic sites, park visitors can act as government informants, although Arguelles said he has heard anecdotally that people have used the QR code to express support for Manzanar and ask that the administration let park rangers do their jobs.View image in fullscreenNPS units have been tasked with reviewing all “inappropriate content” on display by 18 July, and parks will receive direction about what to do with it by 18 August.Arguelles said that fears of public education at Manzanar being stifled are not unfounded. The park service has already stripped the contributions of transgender people from the Stonewall national monument’s website. And the US army deleted a webpage dedicated to the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the nation’s most decorated military unit, which was composed of thousands of Japanese Americans whose families were forcibly incarcerated by their own government. After public outcry, the page was partially restored.The Trump administration has also threatened funding for colleges and universities offering ethnic studies programs as part of their DEI purge. Cultural institutions such as the Japanese American National Museum that focus on education, culture and storytelling have lost grants (some have since been temporarily restored). Among the cuts was a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that funded a workshop that helped teachers build a curriculum about the history of Japanese incarceration that benefitted roughly 20,000 students a year.“As a historian, you can see a pendulum swing between a very narrow and exclusive vision of America as a white Christian nation and a more open, multi-ethnic America,” said Duncan Ryūken Williams, director of the University of Southern California’s Shinso Ito Center and co-founder of of the Irei Project, which, for the first time, compiled the names of 125,284 people of Japanese ancestry who were unjustly incarcerated during the second world war. “We’re obviously in one part of that spectrum now.”The preservation of this part of Japanese American history is about more than remembering the past. In March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act – the very law that served as the basis for some of the arrests and roundups of Japanese Americans during the second world war – against Venezuelan nationals as young as 14 whom the administration claims are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. In cases challenging the executive order, every judge except one has found the Trump administration’s use of the act to deport people without due process to be illegal.When the US last invoked the Alien Enemies Act, it began a period of escalation that resulted in the supreme court deferring to unsubstantiated claims from the executive branch, which led to everyday people, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, losing their families, jobs, homes and freedoms. (It wasn’t just the Alien Enemies Act; most people of Japanese descent were detained, under the auspices of martial law in Hawaii and otherwise under Executive Order 9066.)Williams said that, like today, the way the Alien Enemies Act was used during the second world war was prejudicial since people of Japanese heritage were seen at the time as being “unassimilable racially and religiously”, recalling racist tropes from the era of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.View image in fullscreen“Currently, we are seeing people being picked up and detained and moved immediately away from their families,” said Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, one of 60 Asian American organizations that filed an amicus brief supporting the fight against Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act. “We’re hearing reports of even green card holders having been deported without any process, without a hearing. It’s really, really disturbing.”She connects the lack of due process many immigrants are experiencing today to what most Japanese Americans experienced during the second world war. “This is the same playbook,” Kohli said. “The government suppressed evidence and made false claims to justify incarceration in WWII and today’s administration is doing the same thing. They’re invoking this law with no evidence.”While it remains to be seen how the courts will rule on the Alien Enemies Act and how the NPS will handle complying with the administration’s orders about the content at sites like Manzanar, Japanese American community organizations are determined to teach the lessons of the past to show how quickly civil liberties can be taken away, particularly for communities of color.“The slogan Make America Great Again is sort of calling back to the past that didn’t exist,” said Densho’s Kawamura. “We’re going to do our best to protect and safeguard this history so that young people still have access to it even if the federal government itself is making it more difficult for us to do our work.” More

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    Trump officials cite ‘new intelligence’ to back president’s claims of success in strikes on Iran

    Donald Trump’s administration ratcheted up its defence of the US’s weekend attacks on Iran, citing “new intelligence” to support its initial claim of complete success and criticising a leaked intelligence assessment that suggested Tehran’s nuclear programme had been set back by only a few months.The growing row came amid reports that the White House will to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, according to the Washington Post and the Associated Press.“This was a devastating attack, and it knocked them for a loop,” Trump said on Wednesday, apparently backing away from comments he’d made earlier in the day, that the intelligence was “inconclusive”.Senior Trump officials publicly rejected the leaked initial assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which concluded key components of the nuclear programme were capable of being restarted within months. Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that “new intelligence confirms” what Trump has stated.“Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she said.CIA director John Ratcliffe in a statement said that new intelligence from a “historically reliable” source indicated that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”During a news conference at the Nato summit, Trump briefly ceded the stage to defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who lashed out at the media and claimed reporters were using the leaked intelligence assessment to politically damage Trump. “They want to spin it to try to make him look bad,” he said.In the wake of the leaked DIA report, the White House will reportedly to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, a senior official told the Associated Press.Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticised the reported decision to limit information sharing, saying “senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad”.Classified briefings for lawmakers had been scheduled to take place on Tuesday, but were postponed, prompting outrage from members of Congress. The briefings are now expected to take place on Thursday and Friday.The leaked DIA assessment also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which would provide the fuel for making any future nuclear warhead, had been moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran. That claim was backed up by the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – which said it lost “visibility” of the material when “hostilities began”.However, in an interview with French television, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi said: “I don’t want to give the impression that it’s been lost or hidden.”View image in fullscreenOn Wednesday, the White House pushed back on those claims, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling Fox News the US had “no indication that that enriched uranium was moved prior to the strikes, as I also saw falsely reported”.“As for what’s on the ground right now, it’s buried under miles and miles of rubble because of the success of these strikes on Saturday evening,” she said.The US military said it dropped 14 GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs – powerful 13,600kg (30,000lb) weapons – on three Iranian nuclear sites. Since the attacks, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the sites were “obliterated”.The White House highlighted an Israeli statement that Iran’s nuclear efforts were delayed by years, while a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry also said the facilities have suffered significant damage.On Wednesday evening, Trump said that Hegseth – whom he dubbed “war” secretary – would hold a news conference at 8am EST on Thursday to “fight for the dignity of our great American pilots”, referring to the pilots of the B2 bombers that carried out the strikes. He said that “these patriots were very upset” by “fake news” reports about the limited impact of the strikes.As the row grew over how much the strikes set back Tehran’s nuclear programme, diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from rebuilding the programme also gathered pace.Trump said US and Iranian officials would meet soon, resuming a dialogue that was interrupted by the nearly two week war, even as he suggested that negotiations were no longer necessary.
    “I don’t care if I have an agreement or not,” Trump said, because Iran was too badly damaged to even consider rebuilding its programme. “They’re not going to be doing it anyway. They’ve had it.”View image in fullscreenThe IAEA has rejected an “hourglass approach” involving different assessments of how many months or years it would take Iran to rebuild, saying it distracts from finding a long-term solution to an issue that had not been resolved.“In any case, the technological knowledge is there and the industrial capacity is there. That, no one can deny. So we need to work together with them,” Grossi said, adding that his priority was the return of IAEA inspectors to the nuclear sites, the only way he said they could be properly assessed.Meanwhile, Iranian authorities are pivoting from their ceasefire with Israel to intensifying an internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions and military deployments, according to officials and activists.Iran’s intelligence services have arrested 26 people, accusing them of collaborating with Israel, state media Fars news agency reported.Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the 12-day military campaign, which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.While numerous Iranians expressed anger at the government, there has been no sign yet of any significant protests against the authorities.With the Associated Press and Reuters More

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    Trump news at a glance: ‘Daddy’ Trump showered with praise on triumphant lap through Nato summit

    On the back of hailing US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities as a “victory for everybody”, president Trump has claimed success at the Nato summit in The Hague, praising the commitment by Nato allies to boost defence spending to 5% of GDP.The US president described the summit as “a very historic milestone”. It was, he said, “something that no one really thought possible. And they said: ‘You did it, sir, you did it’. Well, I don’t know if I did it … but I think I did.”The US president also received sycophantic praise from Nato secretary general Mark Rutte who, referring to Trump’s foul mouthed outburst about Iran and Israel a day earlier, said rather remarkably: “Daddy sometimes has to use strong language”.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump hails ‘big win’ as Nato raises defense spendingA relaxed Donald Trump said Nato’s decision to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP was a “big win” for western civilisation in a digressive press conference at a summit in The Hague where he reaffirmed the US’s commitment to the military alliance.Read the full storyTrump and Hegseth admit doubts about damage levels in IranDonald Trump and the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, have admitted to some doubt over the scale of the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites by the US bombing at the weekend, after a leaked Pentagon assessment said the Iranian programme had been set back by only a few months.Read the full storyVOA aired Trump’s message to Iran during US bombingsVoice of America (VOA) may have been used to broadcast Donald Trump’s message to Iranians in Farsi during weekend military strikes, the president’s senior adviser told Congress on Wednesday, revealing how the crumbling, traditionally independent news service is possibly functioning as a conduit for presidential messaging.Read the full storyBondi denies knowing Ice agents wear masks despite evidenceThe attorney general, Pam Bondi, professed ignorance of reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with masks during round-ups of undocumented people, despite widespread video evidence and reports that they are instilling pervasive fear and panic.Read the full storyCosta Rican court orders migrants deported by US to be freedA court in Costa Rica has ordered authorities to release foreign migrants who were locked up in a shelter after being deported by the US. About 200 people from Afghanistan, Iran, Russia as well as from Africa and some other Asian countries, including 80 children, were brought to the Central American nation in February under an agreement with the US administration of Donald Trump, a move criticized by human rights organizations.Read the full storyPlan to open California’s largest immigration jail sparks outragePlans to open a massive federal immigration processing center in a California desert community has sparked outrage among advocacy groups who argue it will come at a “long-term cost” and “fuel harm”.Read the full storyFirst meeting of new CDC vaccine panel reveals policy chaos sown by RFK JrThe first meeting of a critical federal vaccine panel was a high-profile display of how the US health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr has injected chaos into vaccine policy infrastructure.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    Donald Trump and CBS could settle their legal battle over a contested interview with Kamala Harris for $20m as the dispute continues to shadow a major media merger.

    The New Jersey Democratic representative who is facing felony charges after a recent incident during a visit to an Ice detention facility pleaded not guilty in federal court.

    The vice-mayor of a small California city is under fire after appearing to call on street gangs to organize in the face of immigration sweeps by federal agents in Los Angeles.

    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 24 June 2025. More

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    California violated Title IX by allowing trans athletes on girls’ teams, Trump administration says

    The Trump administration has found that the California department of education and the state’s high school sports federation violated civil rights law by allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams.The federal education department announced the finding Wednesday and proposed a resolution that would require California to bar transgender women from women’s sports and strip transgender athletes of records, titles and awards. It’s the latest escalation in the Republican administration’s effort to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports teams nationwide.If California rejects the proposal, the education department could move to terminate the state’s federal education funding.“The Trump administration will relentlessly enforce Title IX protections for women and girls, and our findings today make clear that California has failed to adhere to its obligations under federal law,” Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said. “The state must swiftly come into compliance with Title IX or face the consequences that follow.Title IX is a 1972 law forbidding sex discrimination in education.California education and sports officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.Federal officials opened an investigation into the California Interscholastic Federation in February after the organization said it would abide by a state law allowing athletes to compete on teams consistent with their gender identity. That followed an executive order signed by Donald Trump that was intended to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls and women’s sports.In April, McMahon’s department opened an investigation into the California department of education over the same issue.Both investigations concluded that state policies violated Title IX. The administration has been invoking the law in its campaign against transgender athletes, launching scores of investigations into schools, colleges and states. It’s a reversal from the Joe Biden administration, which attempted to expand Title IX to provide protections for transgender students. A federal judge struck down the expansion before Trump took office in January.The administration’s proposed resolution would require California to notify schools that transgender athletes should be barred from girls athletic teams and that all schools must “adopt biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’”. The state would also have to notify schools that any conflicting interpretation of state law would be considered a violation of Title IX.Athletes who lost awards, titles or records to transgender athletes would have their honors restored under the proposal, and the state would be required to send personal apology letters to those athletes.A similar resolution was offered to Maine’s education agency in a separate clash with the administration over transgender athletes. Maine rejected the proposal in April, prompting a justice department lawsuit seeking to terminate the state’s federal education funding.Under federal guidelines, California’s education office and the sports federation have 10 days to come into compliance or risk enforcement action.The federation separately tested a pilot policy at a state track meet in May, allowing one extra competitor in three events featuring high school junior AB Hernandez, who is trans. The organization announced the change after Trump took to social medial to criticize Hernandez’s participation. The justice department said it would investigate Hernandez’s district and the state to determine if Title IX was being violated. More

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    Usha Vance: husband’s pick as Trump running mate came ‘like a bolt of lightning’

    Usha Vance learned her husband, JD, had been selected to be Donald Trump’s running mate “maybe five minutes” before the news was made public – and just about an hour before he was formally nominated.“It really was like a bolt of lightning,” Vance said during an interview on Meghan McCain’s podcast, Citizen McCain. Nearly a year later, seated in the vice-president’s residence on the grounds of the US naval observatory, Vance reflected on how significantly her life has changed in ways big and small. “People call you ma’am,” she said. “No one’s ever called me ma’am before this.”Until last summer, Vance, the daughter of immigrants and a one-time Democrat, worked as a lawyer at a progressive law firm, raising her three young children in Ohio. Now, as second lady, she is escorted by Secret Service and can’t leave a gym class without being recognized in Washington.During the nearly hour-long interview, Vance was not asked to weigh in on the political or policy agenda of the Trump administration – the president’s decision to strike Iran, the immigration raids that have roiled her native California or the crackdown on colleges and law firms.Instead, Vance spoke about how the second couple is working to create a sense of normalcy for their three young children, and how she hopes to use her role to “make things just a little bit better for other people”. She talked about missing Ohio, trying to keep her kids off screens, her husband’s love for baking, and losing “that sense of being anonymous in public”.Asked about being a first – Vance is the nation’s first south Asian and Hindu second lady – she said it has “not been something that people are hyper-focused on”.“Maybe we’ve just sort of moved beyond trying to count firsts of everything,” she said, while also noting that many people have told her “how proud they are and how excited they are for this”.“That does give me a little bit of a sense of purpose,” she said.At the end of the interview, McCain, a former host of The View and daughter of the late Republican senator John McCain, raised what she called the “elephant in the room” and asked whether Vance had considered the prospect “that you could be our first lady in a few years”.“I’m not plotting out next steps or really trying for anything after this,” Vance said. “In a dream world, eventually, I’ll be able to live in my home and kind of continue my career and all those sorts of things. And if that happens in four years, I understand. If that happens at some other point in the future, I understand. [I’m] just sort of along for the ride and enjoying it while I can.”Vance so far refrained from choosing a single social cause or project to champion, as her predecessors have done, worried that the response would be to “attribute some kind of political motive or start to polarize around it”. Still, she offered a glimpse of the issues that she may want to focus on in her role. Her office is hosting the “Second Lady’s 2025 Summer Reading Challenge”, which she described as “the first of many small attempts” to encourage reading and help draw “children into the world of things and not of devices”.At one point in the conversation, McCain revealed that she was expecting a third child – a boy – and asked Vance to “share with me and women in America why having three kids is good”. Vance congratulated McCain warmly, and described how her children operated as a “pack”, playing together and taking care of each other. She assured McCain that the transition from two to three children was “shockingly, the easiest of all”. More

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    Trump DoJ ally denies claim he urged defying court orders on immigration

    Emil Bove, a top justice department official and former defense attorney for Donald Trump, denied to senators on Wednesday a whistleblower’s claim that he suggested prosecutors ignore orders from judges who ruled against the president’s immigration policy.In a hearing before the Senate judiciary committee to consider his nomination to serve as a federal appeals court judge, Bove, currently the principal associate deputy attorney general at the justice department, also rejected assertions from Democrats that corruption charges against New York City mayor, Eric Adams, were dropped in order to secure his cooperation with the president’s immigration enforcement agenda.The hearing convened hours after reports emerged that former justice department attorney Erez Reuveni filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging that Bove said prosecutors “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’” in instances when they rule against Trump’s immigration policies.“I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” Bove said in response to questions from the committee’s chair, Chuck Grassley.A former New York City-based federal prosecutor, Trump hired Bove as an attorney to defend him against the four state and federal indictments he faced before winning re-election last year. He then appointed Bove as acting justice department deputy attorney general his first weeks back in the White House, during which time he fired prosecutors who brought charges against January 6 rioters and requested a list of FBI agents who worked on the cases. He also oversaw legal motions to drop charges against Adams, which prompted the resignation of seven veteran prosecutors in New York who refused to cooperate.During his confirmation hearing for a seat on the appeals court overseeing New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the US Virgin Islands, Republican lawmakers signaled no objections to moving his nomination to the Senate floor, while Bove described himself as unfairly maligned.“There is a wildly inaccurate caricature of me in the mainstream media,” Bove said in his opening remarks. “I am not anybody’s henchman. I’m not an enforcer. I’m a lawyer from a small town who never expected to be in an arena like this.”Democrats described Bove as exactly what he claims not to be, with the committee’s ranking member, Dick Durbin, saying he “led the effort to weaponize the Department of Justice against the president’s enemies. Having earned his stripes as a loyalist to this president, he’s been rewarded with this lifetime nomination.”Durbin went on to allege that ending Adams’s prosecution amounted to “a quid pro quo” arrangement in which a federal judge “foiled your plans” by ordering the charges dismissed with prejudice, meaning they could not be brought again.“In order to get Mayor Adams to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration policy, you were prepared to drop the charges against him?” Durbin asked.Bove, who showed little emotion in responding to Democrats’ skeptical questioning, replied: “That’s completely false.”Durbin demanded details of Bove’s decision to fire prosecutors who worked on January 6 case, noting that in a memo, he echoed Trump’s words in describing the prosecutions as “a grave national injustice”.“I did and continue to condemn unlawful behavior, particularly violence against law enforcement. At the same time, I condemn heavy handed and unnecessary tactics by prosecutors and agents. Both of those things I submit are characteristic of these events,” Bove said, adding that the prosecutors were fired because they were specifically tasked with working on January 6 cases.Asked if he condemned Trump’s decision to pardon all those who were convicted or prosecuted over the insurrection, Bove replied: “It’s not for me to question president Trump’s exercise of the pardon power any more than it would be for me to question president Biden’s commutation of death sentences or his pardons of drug traffickers.”Republicans often angled their questions toward standing up Trump’s claim that he faced unfair prosecutions by a justice department that had become “weaponized” under Biden. Senator John Kennedy asked Bove to detail a time he saw a justice department employee act “predominantly on the basis of his or her political beliefs”.Bove replied that he witnessed such conduct only while serving as a defense attorney for Trump, where he alleged that members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team took “positions about the need to go to trial quickly … that I found, in my experience, to be completely inconsistent with normal practice, which led me to draw in inferences of the nature that you’re suggesting”.None of the two federal indictments Smith secured against Trump went to trial prior to his election victory last November. More