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    How ICE Is Seeking to Ramp Up Deportations Through Courthouse Arrests

    Officials had largely steered clear of arrests at immigration courts out of concern that they would deter people from showing up for hearings.A hearing on Tuesday at immigration court in Van Nuys, Calif., was supposed to be routine for a young family from Colombia, the first step in what they hoped would be a successful bid for asylum.To their surprise, the judge informed the father, Andres Roballo, that the government wished to dismiss his deportation case. Taken aback, Mr. Roballo hesitated, then responded: “As long as I stay with my family.”Moments later, as they exited the courtroom into a waiting area, Mr. Roballo was encircled by plainclothes federal agents who ushered him into a side room. Other agents guided his shaken wife, Luisa Bernal, and their toddler toward the elevator.Outside the courthouse, Ms. Bernal collapsed on a bench. “They have him, they have him,” she wailed. “We didn’t understand this would happen.”Mr. Roballo’s arrest was part of an aggressive new initiative by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain migrants at immigration courts, the latest escalation by the Trump administration in its all-out effort to ramp up deportations.Agents have begun arresting migrants immediately after their hearings if they have been ordered deported or their cases have been dismissed, a move that enables their swift removal, according to immigration lawyers and internal documents obtained by The New York Times.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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    Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration, for Now, to End Biden-Era Migrant Program

    The Trump administration had asked the court to allow it to end deportation protections for more than 500,000 people facing dire humanitarian crises in their home countries.The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration, for now, to revoke a Biden-era humanitarian program intended to give temporary residency to more than 500,000 immigrants from countries facing war and political turmoil.The court’s order was unsigned and provided no reasoning, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, saying the majority had not given enough consideration to “the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”The ruling, which exposes some migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti to possible deportation, is the latest in a series of emergency orders by the justices in recent weeks responding to a flurry of applications asking the court to weigh in on the administration’s attempts to unwind Biden-era immigration policies.Friday’s ruling focused on former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s expansion of a legal mechanism for immigration called humanitarian parole, in which migrants from countries facing instability are allowed to enter the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they have a private sponsor to take responsibility for them.Earlier this month, the justices allowed the Trump administration to remove deportation protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the United States under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.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. Oil Companies Are ‘Battening Down the Hatches’

    The industry is bracing for the OPEC Plus oil cartel’s meeting on Saturday, which is widely expected to further increase oil production despite weak demand.U.S. oil companies are pulling back as lower commodity prices take a toll.After two months of crude oil prices hovering around $60 a barrel, companies are shutting down drilling rigs and laying off workers as they pare spending. It now appears very likely that U.S. oil production will not grow much this year, if at all.There are two main reasons for low oil prices. President Trump’s trade war is likely to slow the global economy, hurting demand for fuel. And OPEC Plus, an oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia, is increasing production of oil as demand is softening.On Saturday, eight members of the cartel are widely expected to announce plans to bring even more oil to market this summer, which could send prices lower still.American oil companies are not waiting to find out.While the oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron are maintaining their spending plans, smaller companies are pulling back. Those focused on drilling for oil now plan to spend around 3.5 percent less this year than previously planned, according to a BloombergNEF analysis of a dozen publicly traded companies. All things equal, more drilling tends to drive oil prices down and less drilling generally props them up.“We can’t run our program on hope,” Tom Jorden, chief executive of the oil and gas producer Coterra Energy, told analysts during an earnings call this month. “So we are battening down the hatches, expecting this to last for a while.”The Houston-based company said it would drill less in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, the top U.S. oil field, and more in the Northeast, which is rich in natural gas. Prices for that fuel, used in power plants and for heating, have been much more resilient.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 Nominates a Former Far-Right Podcast Host to Head an Ethics Watchdog

    The president picked Paul Ingrassia, the current White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which examines public corruption.President Trump on Thursday nominated Paul Ingrassia, a former far-right podcast host now serving as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, to a new key role: head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent corruption-fighting agency that safeguards federal whistle-blowers and enforces some ethics laws.The office has had a bumpy ride in the second Trump presidency. In February, Mr. Trump fired the office’s head, Hampton Dellinger. Mr. Dellinger sued to keep his job, was temporarily reinstated by a court order, began investigating complaints arising from the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal workers and was removed again in March after an appeals court ruled in the administration’s favor. The Office of Special Counsel dropped its inquiry into the mass firings in April.The office had annoyed Mr. Trump during his first term by pursuing allegations of misconduct, resulting in a finding that 13 senior aides had campaigned for his re-election in violation of the law known as the Hatch Act.Before working for Mr. Trump, Mr. Ingrassia, 30, hosted a podcast, “Right on Point,” with his sister, Olivia Ingrassia. In December 2020, as Mr. Trump was contesting his election loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr., the podcast posted on Twitter, “Time for @realDonaldTrump to declare martial law and secure his re-election.”Mr. Ingrassia has represented the “manosphere” influencer Andrew Tate, who is currently facing criminal charges in Romania and Britain, and pushed a false theory that Nikki Haley was ineligible to run for president. He graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile.In a Truth Social post on Thursday night, Mr. Trump called Mr. Ingrassia “a highly respected attorney, writer and Constitutional Scholar.”Mr. Ingrassia posted on X that as head of the office, he would “make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch — with priority on eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal workplace, and Revitalize the Rule of Law and Fairness in Hatch Act enforcement.” More

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    Musk Leaves Washington Behind but With Powerful Friends in Place

    The world’s richest man created disruption and fear before giving up on revamping government. But his companies will now face less oversight.Just three months ago, Elon Musk stood before a crowd of roaring conservatives and held up a chain saw. He was at the height of his influence, swaggering in a self-designed role with immense power inside and outside the government.“We’re trying to get good things done,” he said, using the chain saw as a metaphor for the deep cuts he was making in government. “But also, like, you know, have a good time doing it.”Mr. Musk’s time in government is over now. His good time ended long before.Mr. Musk is leaving his government position after weeks of declining influence and increasing friction with both President Trump and shareholders of his own private companies. But Mr. Trump on Thursday suggested that he was still aligned with one of his chief political patrons, saying that he would appear with Mr. Musk at the White House on Friday afternoon for a news conference. “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will always be with us, helping all the way,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his social media site. “Elon is terrific!”Mr. Musk’s time in Washington has brought significant benefits to his fastest-growing company, SpaceX, the rocket and satellite communications giant. Musk allies were chosen to run NASA and the Air Force — two of SpaceX’s key customers — and one of the company’s major regulators, the Federal Communications Commission.But Mr. Musk never came close to delivering on the core promise of his tenure: that he could cut $1 trillion from the federal budget.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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    Chinese Students Rattled by Trump Plan to ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas

    Students said the latest move had upended their plans and intensified their fears.It had been all figured out, Cici Wang said. Summer at home in China, then back to get her master’s degree in Chicago. After that, if she was lucky, a job in the United States.Now all of that is up in the air, she said, a potential casualty of a crackdown that has upended the future for more than 277,000 Chinese nationals studying in this country.“Hopefully, I’ll be fine,” said Ms. Wang, a 22-year-old aspiring computer scientist, sitting with her parents in the stately main quad of the University of Chicago on Thursday. “But I’m not sure.”Across the country, Chinese students reeled Thursday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that the Trump administration would begin “aggressively” revoking visas for Chinese students studying in the United States. More than two dozen students studying in the United States, most of whom did not want their names published for fear of retaliation, told The New York Times that they worried they could lose their academic opportunities in an instant, with little explanation.In a statement late Wednesday, the State Department announced it was focusing on those who were studying in “critical fields” or who had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The vague parameters had a chilling effect on Thursday as students wondered how broadly the Trump administration would apply its new criteria. Mr. Rubio did not define “critical fields,” but science students felt particularly vulnerable because American officials have expressed concerns about the recruiting of U.S.-trained scientists by China. Nor was it clear how American officials would determine which students had ties to the Communist Party.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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    S.E.C. Drops Lawsuit Against Binance, a Crypto Exchange

    The dismissal of charges against Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, is the Trump administration’s latest pullback in cryptocurrency enforcement.The Trump administration’s retreat on crypto enforcement continued on Thursday as the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was dismissing a lawsuit it filed two years ago against the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao.The S.E.C. had accused Binance and Mr. Zhao of lying to regulators about its operations in the United States and mishandling customer money.The commission, the nation’s top securities regulator, has moved to dismiss more than a dozen lawsuits or investigations against crypto firms. In February, it asked a federal judge to stay the litigation against Binance as it reassessed its approach to regulating the fast-growing crypto industry.In the four-page dismissal notice, the regulator said it was dropping the litigation “in the exercise of its discretion and as a policy matter.”The dismissal is a signature moment for the S.E.C.’s regulatory rollback given the prominence of Mr. Zhao, a multibillionaire, in the crypto industry.Mr. Zhao, a Chinese-born Canadian who is also known as C.Z., pleaded guilty in November 2023 to violating federal money-laundering charges. But he spent just four months in federal prison and emerged with most of his financial empire untouched.This month, World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm started by President Trump’s family, announced that it was helping to facilitate a $2 billion business deal between Binance and MGX, an Abu Dubai-backed fund. Executives for World Liberty Financial also met with Mr. Zhao.Mr. Trump, once a critic of the crypto industry, reversed his stance during last year’s presidential campaign and vowed to let the industry flourish and roll back much of the S.E.C.’s regulatory enforcement agenda.Mr. Trump and his family also have become major financial boosters of the crypto industry. Besides World Liberty Financial, they are backing a so-called memecoin that was introduced just days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January.Last week, the president hosted a dinner at his Virginia golf club, and among the guests were the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, known as $TRUMP. The event helped promote sales of the memecoin, which has become a vehicle for investors, including many foreigners, to funnel money to his family.American Bitcoin, a crypto firm co-founded by Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, said this month that it planned to go public.And this week, Mr. Trump’s social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, said it had raised $2.5 billion from investors to buy up Bitcoin, essentially as an investment strategy. Trump Media, a money-losing venture, is the parent company of Truth Social.Mr. Trump is the company’s largest shareholder, with a stake worth more than $2 billion. His shares are held in a trust managed by his eldest son, Donald Jr., who is a board member.Critics have said the Trump family’s involvement with crypto poses a potential conflict of interest given the S.E.C.’s moves easing the regulation of digital assets.David Yaffe-Bellany More

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    Youth Climate Activists Sue Trump Administration Over Executive Orders

    The complaint argues that orders aimed at increasing American fossil fuel production infringe on the rights of young people to a healthy environment.Young people who sued state governments over climate change have begun a legal challenge aimed at President Trump’s spate of executive orders on climate and the environment.The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Montana, argues that three of the executive orders are unconstitutional and would cripple the clean energy industry, suppress climate science and worsen global warming.The 22 plaintiffs, ranging in age from seven to 25 years old, are mostly from Montana, as well as Hawaii, Oregon, and other states, and are represented by the nonprofit legal group Our Children’s Trust. That group has notched two important legal victories in recent years, winning cases against the state of Montana and the Hawaii Department of Transportation.“Trump’s fossil fuel orders are a death sentence for my generation,” said Eva Lighthiser, 19, the named plaintiff. “I’m not suing because I want to. I’m suing because I have to. My health, my future, and my right to speak the truth are all on the line.”The plaintiffs argue that they are already experiencing harms from a warming planet in the form of wildfires, drought and hurricanes, and that Mr. Trump’s executive orders will make conditions even worse. They say the executive orders violate their Fifth Amendment rights to life and liberty by infringing on their health, safety and prospects for the future.Further, they argue that the orders constitute executive overreach, because the president cannot unilaterally override federal laws like the Clean Air Act.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