A federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to overhaul elections in the U.S., siding with a group of Democratic state attorneys general who challenged the effort as unconstitutional.

The Republican president’s March 25 executive order sought to compel officials to require documentary proof of citizenship for everyone registering to vote for federal elections, accept only mailed ballots received by Election Day and condition federal election grant funding on states adhering to the new ballot deadline.

The attorneys general said the directive “usurps the States’ constitutional power and seeks to amend election law by fiat.” The White House defended the order as “standing up for free, fair and honest elections” and called proof of citizenship a “commonsense” requirement.

Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts said in Friday’s order that the states had a likelihood of success as to their legal challenges.

“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Casper wrote.

Casper also noted that, when it comes to citizenship, “there is no dispute (nor could there be) that U.S. citizenship is required to vote in federal elections and the federal voter registration forms require attestation of citizenship.”

Casper cited arguments made by the states that the requirements would “burden the States with significant efforts and substantial costs” to update procedures.

The ruling is the second legal setback for Trump’s election order. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., previously blocked parts of the directive, including the proof-of-citizenship requirement for the federal voter registration form.

The order is the culmination of Trump’s longstanding complaints about elections. After his first win in 2016, Trump falsely claimed his popular vote total would have been much higher if not for “millions of people who voted illegally.” Since 2020, Trump has made false claims of widespread voter fraud and manipulation of voting machines to explain his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

He has said his executive order secures elections against illegal voting by noncitizens, though multiple studies and investigations in the states have shown that it’s rare and typically a mistake. Casting a ballot as a noncitizen is already against the law and can result in fines and deportation if convicted.

The order also would require states to exclude any mail-in or absentee ballots received after Election Day and puts states’ federal funding at risk if election officials don’t comply. Currently, 18 states and Puerto Rico accept mailed ballots received after Election Day as long they are postmarked on or before that date, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Oregon and Washington, which conduct their elections almost entirely by mail, filed a separate lawsuit over the ballot deadline, saying the executive order could disenfranchise voters in their states. When the lawsuit was filed, Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs noted that more than 300,000 ballots in the state arrived after Election Day in 2024.

Trump’s order has received praise from the top election officials in some Republican states who say it could inhibit instances of voter fraud and will give them access to federal data to better maintain their voter rolls. But many legal experts say the order exceeds Trump’s power because the Constitution gives states the authority to set the “times, places and manner” of elections, with Congress allowed to set rules for elections to federal office. As Friday’s ruling states, the Constitution makes no provision for presidents to set the rules for elections.

During a hearing earlier this month on the states’ request for a preliminary injunction, lawyers for the states and lawyers for the administration argued over the implications of Trump’s order, whether the changes could be made in time for next year’s midterm elections and how much it would cost the states.

Justice Department lawyer Bridget O’Hickey said during the hearing that the order seeks to provide a single set of rules for certain aspects of election operations rather than having a patchwork of state laws and that any harm to the states is speculation.

O’Hickey also claimed that mailed ballots received after Election Day might somehow be manipulated, suggesting people could retrieve their ballots and alter their votes based on what they see in early results. But all ballots received after Election Day require a postmark showing they were sent on or before that date, and that any ballot with a postmark after Election Day would not count.

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling President Donald Trump’s military intervention at protests over federal immigration policy in Los Angeles an assault on democracy and has sued to try to stop it. Meanwhile, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is putting the National Guard on standby in areas in his state where demonstrations are planned.

The divergent approaches illustrate the ways the two parties are trying to navigate national politics and the role of executive power in enforcing immigration policies.

In his live TV address this week, Newsom said that Trump’s move escalated the situation — and for political gain.

All 22 other Democratic governors signed a statement sent by the Democratic Governors Association on Sunday backing Newsom, calling the Guard deployment and threats to send in Marines “an alarming abuse of power” that “undermines the mission of our service members, erodes public trust, and shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement.”

The protests in Los Angeles have mostly been contained to five blocks in a small section of downtown; nearly 200 people were detained on Tuesday and at least seven police officers have been injured.

In Republican-controlled states, governors have not said when or how they’re planning to deploy military troops for protests.

Since Trump’s return to office, Democratic governors have been calculating about when to criticize him, when to emphasize common ground and when to bite their tongues.

The governors’ responses are guided partly by a series of political considerations, said Kristoffer Shields, director of the Eagleton Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University: How would criticizing Trump play with Democrats, Republicans and independent voters in their states? And for those with presidential ambitions, how does that message resonate nationally?

Democratic governors are weighing a number of considerations.

“There probably is some concern about retributions — what the reaction of the administration could be for a governor who takes a strong stance,” Shields said.

And in this case, polling indicates about half of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling immigration, though that polling was conducted before the recent military deployment.

On other issues, Democratic governors have taken a variety of approaches with Trump.

At a White House meeting in February, Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills told Trump, “ we’ll see you in court ” over his push to cut off funding to the state because it allowed transgender athletes in girls’ school sports. Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, publicly sparred with Trump during his first term but this time around, has met with him privately to find common ground.

Initially, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green referred to Trump as a “straight-up dictator,” but the next month he told a local outlet that he was treading carefully, saying: “I’m not going to criticize him directly much at all.”

Democratic governors called to testify before a House panel Thursday on so-called sanctuary policies blasted the use of military troops in the Los Angeles area.

Gov. JB Pritzker said Illinois complies with all laws when it comes to immigration while honoring First Amendment rights. “We will not take away people’s rights to peacefully protest,” Pritzker said. “It’s wrong to deploy the National Guard and active duty Marines in an American city over the objection of local law enforcement just as it’s wrong to tear children away from their homes.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told committee members that the focus should be on comprehensive immigration reform. “As we speak, an American city has been militarized over the objections of their governor,” she said. “This is a flagrant abuse of power and nothing short of an assault on our American values.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, in an interview Wednesday in The Washington Post, said Trump should not send troops to a weekend protest scheduled in Philadelphia.

“He’s injected chaos into the world order, he’s injected it into our economy, he is trying to inject chaos into our streets by doing what he did with the Guard in California,” Shapiro said.

As state attorney general during Trump’s first term, Shapiro routinely boasted that he sued Trump over 40 times and won each time. As governor he has often treaded more carefully, by bashing Trump’s tariffs, but not necessarily targeting Trump himself.

Protests that sprang up in Los Angeles over immigration enforcement raids and prompted President Donald Trump to mobilize National Guard troops and Marines have begun to spread across the country, with more planned into the weekend.

From Seattle and Austin to Chicago and Washington, D.C., marchers have chanted slogans, carried signs against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and snarled traffic through downtown avenues and outside federal offices. While many have been peaceful, some have resulted in clashes with law enforcement as officers made arrests and used chemical irritants to disperse crowds.

Activists are planning more and even larger demonstrations in the coming days, with “No Kings” events across the country on Saturday to coincide with Trump’s planned military parade through Washington.

The Trump administration said it would continue its program of raids and deportations despite the protests.

“ICE will continue to enforce the law,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted Tuesday on social media.

About 150 protesters gathered outside the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon and marched to ICE headquarters for speeches and then back to the detention center, according to Philadelphia police.

A group then walked though what police called major roads using bicycles to obstruct officers, prompting police to issue several orders for people to disperse. Police said demonstrators ignored the orders and things escalated when officers started arresting people.

Fifteen people were arrested, one on allegations of aggravated assault on police, and the rest for disorderly conduct, police said. Several officers used force during the arrests and their conduct will be reviewed, police said. Police didn’t say specifically what kind of force was used. Two officers had minor injuries and were treated at a hospital. Two females who were arrested reported minor injuries and were receiving medical attention, police said.

About 20 people remained peacefully gathered outside the detention center as of Tuesday night, police said. About 200 protesters gathered outside the San Francisco Immigration Court on Tuesday after activists said several arrests were made there.

That gathering came after protests on Sunday and Monday swelled to several thousand demonstrators and saw more than 150 arrests with outbreaks of violence that included vandalized buildings, and damaged cars, police vehicles and buses. Police said two officers suffered non-life threatening injuries.

“Individuals are always free to exercise their First Amendment rights in San Francisco, but violence, especially against SFPD officers, will never be tolerated,” San Francisco police posted on social media.

Police described Monday’s march as “overwhelmingly peaceful,” but said “two small groups broke off and committed vandalism and other criminal acts.” Several people were detained or arrested, police said.

A judge on Monday dismissed the lawsuit that actor and director Justin Baldoni filed against his “It Ends With Us” costar Blake Lively after she sued him last year for sexual harassment and retaliation.

U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Liman’s decision is the latest development in the bitter legal battle surrounding the dark romantic film.

Baldoni and production company Wayfarer Studios countersued in January for $400 million, accusing Lively and her husband, “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds, of defamation and extortion.

The New York judge ruled that Baldoni can’t sue Lively for defamation over claims she made in her legal claim, because allegations made in a lawsuit are exempt from libel claims. Liman also ruled that Baldoni’s claims that Lively stole creative control of the film didn’t count as extortion under California law.

The judge, however, said Baldoni could revise the lawsuit if he wanted to pursue different claims related to whether Lively breached or interfered with a contract. His legal team indicated it planned to do so.

“Ms. Lively and her team’s predictable declaration of victory is false,” one of Baldoni’s lawyers, Bryan Freedman, said in a statement. He said that Lively’s claims that she was sexually harassed on the film set, and then subjected to a secret smear campaign intended to taint her reputation, were “no truer today than they were yesterday.”

“It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel that begins as a romance but takes a dark turn into domestic violence, was released in August, exceeding box office expectations with a $50 million debut. But the movie’s release was shrouded by speculation over discord between Lively and Baldoni.

The judge also dismissed Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, which had reported on Lively’s sexual harassment allegations.

“Today’s opinion is a total victory and a complete vindication for Blake Lively, along with those that Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer Parties dragged into their retaliatory lawsuit, including Ryan Reynolds, (publicist) Leslie Sloane and The New York Times,” Lively’s attorneys, Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb, said in a prepared statement.

The lawyers said they “look forward to the next round” of seeking attorneys’ fees, treble damages and punitive damages.

A spokesperson for The New York Times said they were “grateful to the court for seeing the lawsuit for what it was: a meritless attempt to stifle honest reporting.”

“Our journalists went out and covered carefully and fairly a story of public importance, and the court recognized that the law is designed to protect just that sort of journalism,” Charlie Stadtlander said in an emailed statement.

Lively appeared in the 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and the TV series “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012 before starring in films including “The Town” and “The Shallows.”

Baldoni starred in the TV comedy “Jane the Virgin,” directed the 2019 film “Five Feet Apart” and wrote “Man Enough,” a book challenging traditional notions of masculinity.

Getty Images is facing off against artificial intelligence company Stability AI in a London courtroom for the first major copyright trial of the generative AI industry.

Opening arguments before a judge at the British High Court began on Monday. The trial could last for three weeks.

Stability, based in London, owns a widely used AI image-making tool that sparked enthusiasm for the instant creation of AI artwork and photorealistic images upon its release in August 2022. OpenAI introduced its surprise hit chatbot ChatGPT three months later.

Seattle-based Getty has argued that the development of the AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, involved “brazen infringement” of Getty’s photography collection “on a staggering scale.”

Tech companies have long argued that “fair use” or “fair dealing” legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Getty was among the first to challenge those practices when it filed copyright infringement lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom in early 2023.

“What Stability did was inappropriate,” Getty CEO Craig Peters told The Associated Press in 2023. He said creators of intellectual property should be asked for permission before their works are fed into AI systems rather than having to participate in an “opt-out regime.”

Getty’s legal team told the court Monday that its position is that the case isn’t a battle between the creative and technology industries and that the two can still work together in “synergistic harmony” because licensing creative works is critical to AI’s success.

“The problem is when AI companies such as Stability AI want to use those works without payment,” Getty’s trial lawyer, Lindsay Lane, said.

She said the case was about “straightforward enforcement of intellectual property rights,” including copyright, trademark and database rights.

Getty Images “recognizes that the AI industry is a force for good but that doesn’t justify those developing AI models to ride roughshod over intellectual property rights,” Lane said.

Stability AI had a “voracious appetite” for images to train its AI model, but the company was “completely indifferent to the nature of those works,” Lane said.

Stability didn’t care if images were protected by copyright, had watermarks, were not safe for work or were pornographic and just wanted to get its model to the market as soon as possible, Lane said.

“This trial is the day of reckoning for that approach,” she said.

Stability has argued that the case doesn’t belong in the United Kingdom because the training of the AI model technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon.

The judge’s decision is unlikely to give the AI industry what it most wants, which is expanded copyright exemptions for AI training, said Ben Milloy, a senior associate at UK law firm Fladgate, which is not involved in the case.

But it could “strengthen the hand of either party – rights holders or AI developers – in the context of the commercial negotiations for content licensing deals that are currently playing out worldwide,” Milloy said.
In the years after introducing its open-source technology, Stability confronted challenges in capitalizing on the popularity of the tool, battling lawsuits, misuse and other business problems.

Stable Diffusion’s roots trace back to Germany, where computer scientists at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich worked with the New York-based tech company Runway to develop the original algorithms. The university researchers credited Stability AI for providing the servers that trained the models, which require large amounts of computing power.

Stability later blamed Runway for releasing an early version of Stable Diffusion that was used to produce abusive sexual images, but also said it would have exclusive control of more recent versions of the AI model.

Stability last year announced what it described as a “significant” infusion of money from new investors including Facebook’s former president Sean Parker, who is now chair of Stability’s board. Parker also has experience in intellectual property disputes as the co-founder of online music company Napster, which temporarily shuttered in the early 2000s after the record industry and popular rock band Metallica sued over copyright violations.

The Senate has set an ambitious timeline for passing President Donald Trump’s sweeping legislation to cut taxes and spending. But getting it on the Republican president’s desk by July 4 will require some big decisions, and soon.

Republican senators are airing concerns about different parts of the legislation, including cuts to Medicaid, changes to food aid and the impact on the deficit. To push the bill to passage, Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and other negotiators will need to find a compromise that satisfies both ends of their conference — and that can still satisfy the House, which passed the bill last month by only one vote.

A look at some of the groups and senators who leaders will have to convince as they work to push Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill toward a Senate vote:

Every Republican senator represents a state with a rural constituency — and some of their states are among the most rural in the country. Many in those less-populated areas rely heavily on Medicaid for health care, leading several of them to warn that the changes to the program in the bill could be devastating to communities that are already struggling.

Of particular concern is a freeze on a so-called provider tax that some states use to help pay for large portions of their Medicaid programs. The extra tax often leads to higher payments from the federal government, which critics say is a loophole that allows states to inflate their budgets. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and several others have argued that freezing that tax revenue would hurt rural hospitals, in particular.

“Hospitals will close,” Hawley said last month. “It’s that simple. And that pattern will replicate in states across the country.”

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said Thursday that provider taxes in his state are “the money we use for Medicaid.”

“You start cutting that out, we’ve got big problems,” Tuberville said. Eliminating those taxes “might lose some folks.”

At the same time, Republican senators have little interest in a House-passed provision that spends more money by raising a cap on state and local tax deductions, known as SALT. The higher cap traditionally benefits more urban areas in states with high taxes, such as New York and California.

The House included the new cap after New York Republicans threatened to oppose the bill, but Senate Republicans uniformly dislike it. “I think there’s going to have to be some adjustment” on the SALT provision, Thune said Wednesday, noting that “senators are just in a very different place” from the House.

The House-passed bill would also shift some Medicaid and food stamp costs to states, a change that has the former governors in the Senate, in particular, worried.

West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice, who was governor of his state for eight years before his election to the Senate last year, said he favors many aspects of the bill. He supports the new work requirements for Medicaid and food stamp recipients, the restrictions on benefits for immigrants who are in the country illegally and the efforts to cut down on fraud. “There’s real savings there,” Justice said. “But then we ought to stop.”

“We’re on our way to cannibalizing ourselves,” Justice said. “We don’t want to hurt kids and hurt our families.”

The provision stirring the most unease would shift 5% of administrative costs to the state for administering food stamps — known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. States that have high error rates in the program would have to take on an even higher percentage of federal costs.

North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, also a former governor, said senators are working to get feedback from current governors and may propose some “incentive-oriented ideas” instead of a penalty for the high error rates.

“We don’t know if the states have really looked at the impacts of some of this yet,” Hoeven said.

Tuberville, who is running for governor of Alabama next year, said the program should be reformed instead of shifting costs.

As President Donald Trump builds a crypto empire — including hosting a private dinner with top investors at his golf club — Democrats have united in condemning what they call blatant corruption from the White House.

But the Democratic Party’s own relationship with the emerging crypto industry is far less cut and dried.

Work in the Republican-led Senate to legitimize cryptocurrency by adding guardrails has drawn backing from some Democrats, underscoring growing support for the industry in the party. But divisions have opened over the bill, with many demanding it prevent the Republican president and his family from directly profiting from cryptocurrency.

“I’m all on board with the idea of regulating crypto,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “But at this moment, when cryptocurrency is being so clearly used by Donald Trump to facilitate his corruption, I don’t think you can close your eyes to that when you’re legislating.”

The legislation is moving ahead more rapidly than Congress usually acts when an industry is new. But the big money and campaign donations flowing from cryptocurrency firms have made them a new powerhouse on the political scene, one that’s increasingly gaining allies and capturing the attention of lawmakers.

A look at what to know about the industry’s clout and the political fight over what’s known as the GENIUS Act.

To understand the growing clout of the crypto industry, look no further than the 2024 election. Fairshake, a crypto super political action committee, and its affiliated PACs spent more than $130 million in congressional races.

Fairshake spent roughly $40 million supporting Republican Bernie Moreno in Ohio in an effort to defeat Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. Brown, who lost to Moreno by more than 3 percentage points, was seen as a chief critic of the industry as the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

“DC received a clear message that being anti-crypto is a good way to end your career, as it doesn’t represent the will of the voters,” Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, wrote in a social media post the day after the 2024 election.

Coinbase — the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. and biggest contributor to Fairshake — does not view support for its industry as partisan, according to Kara Calvert, the company’s vice president of U.S. policy. The industry also spent heavily to support Democrats Ruben Gallego and Elissa Slotkin in their races for open Senate seats in battleground states.

Fairshake spent $10 million in support of Slotkin during her successful Senate run against Republican Mike Rodgers, and Slotkin, who won the Michigan race by fewer than 20,000 votes, spoke in favor of crypto on the campaign trail.

Similar dynamics are setting up ahead of 2026 in contested House and Senate races. Fairshake said in January that it already had $116 million in cash on hand aimed at the 2026 midterm elections.

There was a notable absence last week when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a 58-second video that the government would no longer endorse the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children or pregnant women.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the person who typically signs off on federal vaccine recommendations — was nowhere to be seen.

The CDC, a $9.2 billion-a-year agency tasked with reviewing life-saving vaccines, monitoring diseases and watching for budding threats to Americans’ health, is without a clear leader.

“I’ve been disappointed that we haven’t had an aggressive director since — February, March, April, May — fighting for the resources that CDC needs,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, who served as CDC director under the first Trump administration and supported Kennedy’s nomination as the nation’s health secretary.

$9.2 billion-a-year agency without leader as nomination awaits

The leadership vacuum at a foremost federal public health agency has existed for months, after President Donald Trump suddenly withdrew his first pick for CDC director in March. A hearing for his new nominee — the agency’s former acting director Susan Monarez — has not been scheduled because she has not submitted all the paperwork necessary to proceed, according to a spokesman for Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who will oversee the nomination.

HHS did not answer written questions about Monarez’s nomination, her current role at the CDC or her salary. An employee directory lists Monarez, a longtime government employee, as a staffer for the NIH under the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

Redfield described Kennedy as “very supportive” of Monarez’s nomination.

Instead, a lawyer and political appointee with no medical experience is “carrying out some of the duties” of director at the agency that for seven decades has been led by someone with a medical degree.

Matthew Buzzelli, who is also the chief of staff at the CDC, is “surrounded by highly qualified medical professionals and advisors to help fulfill these duties as appropriate,” Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson said in a statement.

Adding to the confusion was an employee-wide email sent last week that thanked “new acting directors who have stepped up to the plate.” The email, signed by Monarez, listed her as the acting director. It was was sent just days after Kennedy said at a Senate hearing that Monarez had been replaced by Buzzelli.

The lack of a confirmed director will be a problem if a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic or a rapid uptick in measles cases hits, said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.

“CDC is a crisis, waiting for a crisis to happen,” said Osterholm. “At this point, I couldn’t tell you for the life of me who was going to pull what trigger in a crisis situation.”

At CDC headquarters in Atlanta, employees say Monarez was rarely heard from between late January – when she was appointed acting director – and late March, when Trump nominated her.

She also has not held any of the “all hands” meetings that were customary under previous CDC chiefs, according to several staffers.

One employee, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media and fears being fired if identified said Monarez has been almost invisible since her nomination, adding that her absence has been cited by other leaders as an excuse for delaying action.

The United States on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza because it was not linked to the release of hostages, saying it would embolden Hamas militants.

All 14 other members of the council voted in favor of the resolution, which described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “catastrophic” and called on Israel to lift all restrictions on the delivery of aid to the 2.1 million Palestinians in the territory.

The resolution before the U.N.'s most powerful body also did not fulfill two other U.S. demands: It did not condemn Hamas’ deadly attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which ignited the war, or say the militant group must disarm and withdraw from Gaza.

Acting U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea, speaking to the council immediately before the vote, said the resolution would undermine the security of Israel. a close U.S. ally, and diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire “that reflects the realities on the ground.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the resolution would only have empowered Hamas. “Hamas could end this brutal conflict immediately by laying down its arms and releasing all remaining hostages,” he said in a statement.

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon thanked the United States for refusing to abandon the hostages. He said the resolution’s failure to make the release of hostages a condition for a ceasefire would have put all the pressure on Israel and handed Hamas “time, leverage and political cover.”

But the U.S. veto of the resolution — its fifth since the start of the war — was roundly criticized by other members of the council, who accused the United States of providing Israel with impunity. The Chinese ambassador to the U.N. said Israel’s actions have “crossed every red line” of international humanitarian law and seriously violated U.N. resolutions. “Yet, due to the shielding by one country, these violations have not been stopped or held accountable,” Ambassador Fu Cong said.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward, a usual U.S. ally, lashed out at Israel. “This Israeli government’s decisions to expand its military operations in Gaza and severely restrict aid are unjustifiable, disproportionate and counterproductive, and the U.K. completely opposes them,” she said.

Pakistan’s Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said the U.S. veto “will be remembered as a complicity, a green light for continued annihilation. A moment where the entire world was expecting action. But yet again, this council was blocked and prevented by one member from carrying out its responsibility.”

Slovenia’s U.N. Ambassador Samuel Žbogar, the coordinator for the council’s 10 elected members, stressed that it was never the intention to provoke a veto and therefore the resolution focused on the humanitarian crisis and the urgent need for unimpeded access to deliver aid.

Congressional Republicans are investigating Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s response to federal immigration arrests during hundreds of traffic stops over several days in May.

Rep. Andy Ogles is leading the charge, pitting the Republican who represents part of the Democratic-leaning city against a progressive mayor who has criticized immigration officials after they arrested nearly 200 people in the greater Nashville area.

The dayslong presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sent chills through well-known Nashville immigrant neighborhoods. Many Republicans, meanwhile, applauded ICE’s enforcement focus in the city.

Republicans have criticized Nashville officials for publicly documenting interactions between local authorities and federal immigration agents on an official city government website. Some of the entries included authorities’ names before city officials removed them. They have also blasted O’Connell for promoting a fundraiser for families affected by the ICE activity.

O’Connell has said the arrests caused long-lasting trauma for families and were led by people who don’t share Nashville’s values of safety and community.

ICE has said that it arrested 196 people alongside the Tennessee Highway Patrol during a weeklong effort in and around Nashville. ICE said 95 had criminal convictions, were facing criminal charges or both, but didn’t provide a more detailed breakdown, including the type of crimes. It said about 30 had entered the country after previously being deported, some of whom are included in the 95.

The Highway Patrol said it made more than 580 traffic stops in the joint operation with ICE. ICE highlighted seven cases, including two gang members, one of whom was wanted in an El Salvador killing, and people with convictions such as drug offenses, rape or assault.

Lisa Sherman Luna of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition criticized the effort as “at a scale we’ve never seen before.” She said officers were arresting some people who were going home to their children or heading to work.

Early into ICE’s operation in Nashville, the mayor held a news conference to assure that Nashville’s police force was not involved in the immigration crackdown.

He said the immigration enforcement approach “is not our understanding of what a Nashville for all of us looks like.”

At the news conference, the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee also announced the fundraising effort to provide child care, transportation, housing aid, food and more for families impacted by the ICE activity.

O’Connell’s administration has sent letters asking Tennessee Highway Patrol and ICE to identify those arrested and their charges. He told the Nashville Rotary Club this week he still hasn’t received that information.

O’Connell is facing particular scrutiny because of a policy requiring city agencies to report communications with federal immigration authorities to the mayor’s office. Nashville has had similar orders under two prior mayors, and O’Connell added quicker reporting deadlines last month. He said the goal is transparency.

Congressman Ogles declared that House committees would be investigating O’Connell during a Memorial Day news conference at Tennessee’s Capitol in Nashville — a venue that raised eyebrows because it’s closed to the public on the holiday. Noise from protesters carried from outside the building.

A subsequent letter signed by Ogles and three other House committee and subcommittee chairmen requests documents and communications about O’Connell’s executive order and the ICE enforcement efforts. Ogles and others have also cried foul that the names of some immigration officials in the Nashville operation were made public. The agents’ names were removed, with O’Connell saying it wasn’t the intent of the executive order to release them.

O’Connell has said Nashville isn’t trying to obstruct federal or state laws, and has no reason to be concerned about the congressional investigation.

The White House on Tuesday officially asked Congress to claw back $9.4 billion in already approved spending, taking funding away from programs targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

It’s a process known as “rescission,” which requires President Donald Trump to get approval from Congress to return money that had previously been appropriated. Trump’s aides say the funding cuts target programs that promote liberal ideologies.

The request, if it passes the House and Senate, would formally enshrine many of the spending cuts and freezes sought by DOGE. It comes at a time when Musk is extremely unhappy with the tax cut and spending plan making its way through Congress, calling it on Tuesday a “disgusting abomination” for increasing the federal deficit.

White House budget director Russ Vought said more rescission packages and other efforts to cut spending could follow if the current effort succeeds.

“We are certainly willing and able to send up additional packages if the congressional will is there,” Vought told reporters.

Here’s what to know about the rescissions request:

Will the rescissions make a dent in the national debt?

The request to Congress is unlikely to meaningfully change the troublesome increase in the U.S. national debt. Tax revenues have been insufficient to cover the growing costs of Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the government is on track to spend roughly $7 trillion this year, with the rescission request equaling just 0.1% of that total.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing that Vought — a “well-respected fiscal hawk,” she called him — would continue to cut spending, hinting that there could be additional efforts to return funds.

“He has tools at his disposal to produce even more savings,” Leavitt said.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.

“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.

“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.
Vought said he can send up additional rescissions at the end of the fiscal year in September “and if Congress does not act on it, that funding expires.”

“It’s one of the reasons why we are not putting all of our expectations in a typical rescissions process,” he added.

What programs are targeted by the rescissions?

A spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview some of the items that would lose funding, said that $8.3 billion was being cut from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. NPR and PBS would also lose federal funding, as would the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR.

The spokesperson listed specific programs that the Trump administration considered wasteful, including $750,000 to reduce xenophobia in Venezuela, $67,000 for feeding insect powder to children in Madagascar and $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia.

Is the rescissions package likely to get passed?

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., complimented the planned cuts and pledged to pass them.

“This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity,” Johnson said. “Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.”

Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.

“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.

“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has a message for environmentalists who despair at the the approach of President Donald Trump’s administration: “Stop whining and get to work.”

The new U.S. administration has taken an ax to Biden-era environmental ambitions, rolled back landmark regulations, withdrawn climate project funding and instead bolstered support for oil and gas production in the name of an “American energy dominance” agenda.

Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California, has devoted time to environmental causes since leaving political office in 2011.

He said Tuesday he keeps hearing from environmentalists and policy experts lately who ask, “What is the point of fighting for a clean environment when the government of the United States says climate change is a hoax and coal and oil is the future?”

Schwarzenegger told the Austrian World Summit in Vienna, an event he helps organize, that he responds: “Stop whining and get to work.” He pointed to examples of local and regional governments and companies taking action, including his own administration in California, and argued 70% of pollution is reduced at the local or state level.

“Be the mayor that makes buses electric; be the CEO who ends fossil fuel dependence; be the school that puts (up) solar roofs,” he said.

“You can’t just sit around and make excuses because one guy in a very nice White House on Pennsylvania Avenue doesn’t agree with you,” he said, adding that attacking the president is “not my style” and he doesn’t criticize any president when outside the U.S.

“I know that the people are sick and tired of the whining and the complaining and the doom and gloom,” Schwarzenegger said. “The only way we win the people’s hearts and minds is by showing them action that makes their lives better.”