Group that defended undocumented migrants cuts dozens of attorneys and staff
CNN
With Trump back in the White House after having promised during the campaign to unleash “the largest deportation operation in American history,” the cadre of attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center who amounted to a first line of legal defense for undocumented immigrants is no more.
Isabel Zelaya was beginning his shift at a beef slaughterhouse in rural Tennessee on a spring day in 2018 when agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement burst into the processing area and, with guns drawn, ordered him and others to toss their tools to the ground. Zelaya, who was in his 60s at the time of the raid, explained that he had legal status to live and work in the US, but agents nonetheless zip-tied his hands and led him into a van, according to court records. He and about 100 other Latino workers were shuttled to a nearby National Guard Armory for processing. The operation, at the time the largest workplace immigration raid in at least a decade, sent a signal that then-President Donald Trump’s tough talk on illegal immigration would be matched by hard-nosed action. The move triggered a swift response by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil-rights nonprofit with a long history of using the legal system to defend vulnerable groups. Days after the raid, the Alabama-based organization dispatched a team of lawyers to the small towns where the workers lived and were being detained.
According to an unsealed federal criminal complaint filed against seven Chilean men allegedly involved in the crime spree, investigators used cell phone records, GPS and iCloud data to link the suspects to the theft of almost $3 million in luxury goods from professional athletes.
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell is announcing on Thursday that he won’t seek reelection next year, ending a decadeslong tenure as a power broker who championed conservative causes but ultimately ceded ground to the fierce GOP populism of President Donald Trump.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could soon move to fire more than half a dozen generals and flag officers, according to two sources familiar with the matter, part of an effort to purge the department of senior leaders perceived as either too political or too close to former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
A Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis crashed, turned upside down and caught fire on the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport while attempting to land Monday, the latest in a string of passenger plane crashes since December.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election this spring will decide just one seat, but the contest already is shaping up as one of the most costly and contentious battles of the new year – with the control of the seven-member court and the fate of a 19th century abortion ban hanging in the balance.
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As the long-fraught relationship between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky ripped apart Wednesday, a question that lingered among allies of both men was whether the fight would dash hopes for a US-brokered peace — or, potentially, help it along.
The Trump administration and Elon Musk have insisted that they are carefully purging the federal workforce by firing only low-performing employees serving in non-critical roles, or recent hires on probationary status.
At the one-month mark of Donald Trump’s second term as president, his approval rating in a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS tilts negative but still lands above the level he reached at any point in his first four years in office.
In speeches, interviews, exchanges with reporters and posts on social media, the president filled his public statements not only with exaggerations but outright fabrications. As he did during his first presidency, Trump made false claims with a frequency and variety unmatched by any other elected official in Washington.
A grand jury recommended abolishing a small Alabama police department because of a “rampant culture of corruption” after charging five officers with a variety of crimes, officials announced Wednesday.
As the long-fraught relationship between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky ripped apart Wednesday, a question that lingered among allies of both men was whether the fight would dash hopes for a US-brokered peace — or, potentially, help it along.
Whitley Award-winning biologist Fernanda Abra’s Reconecta Project is building canopy bridges across highways in Brazil to protect endangered primates.