US Catholic bishops condemn Trump administration’s immigration enforcement
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a rare condemnation of president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and advocated for “meaningful immigration reform”.
“We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools,” the bishops said in a special message, the first of its kind in 12 years.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration efforts, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The message echoes similar critiques made by Pope Leo, who has called for “deep reflection” about the way migrants are being treated in the US under Trump, Reuters reported.
The Trump administration has advanced an aggressive immigration agenda since taking office earlier this year. Trump has rescinded policy that limited immigration arrests near sensitive locations, including churches, hospitals and schools, and deployed federal agents across the US to ramp up such arrests.
In their message, the bishops expressed concern about what they described as “a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling” and immigration enforcement. They said they were saddened by the debate and vilification of migrants, and opposed “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”
The bishops also raised concerns about conditions in detention centers, and what they called the arbitrary removal of legal status of some migrants.
“We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good,” the bishops said.
In other developments:
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Donald Trump is facing the prospect of a politically damaging congressional vote on releasing the Jeffery Epstein files after attempts to press two female members of Congress to withdraw their backing for it appeared to have failed. The reported refusal of Lauren Boebert, a Republican representative from Colorado, and Nancy Mace, from South Carolina, to remove their names from a discharge petition to force a vote leaves Trump exposed on an issue that carries the possibility of turning segments of his Maga base against him.
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The justice department on Thursday joined a lawsuit brought by California Republicans to block the state’s new congressional map, escalating a legal battle over a redistricting effort designed to give Democrats a better chance of retaking the House of Representatives next year. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, challenges the congressional map championed by Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, in response to a Republican gerrymander in Texas, sought by Donald Trump.
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The BBC has apologised to Donald Trump over the editing of a Panorama documentary that led to the resignation of its director general, Tim Davie, and the BBC News chief, Deborah Turness. However, the corporation has rejected his demands for compensation, after lawyers for Trump threatened to sue for $1bn (£760m) in damages unless the BBC issued a retraction, apologised and settled with him.
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James Comey, the former FBI director, and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, asked a federal judge on Thursday to drop the criminal charges against them, arguing that Donald Trump’s hand-picked US attorney, who obtained the indictments against them, was unlawfully appointed. The hearing at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia in front of Judge Cameron Currie marked the first time a judge considered one of several efforts James and Comey have made to dismiss the indictments before trials.
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The Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell is the latest target of Trump’s retribution campaign against his critics, the congressman confirmed on Thursday. NBC News reports that Swalwell is facing a federal criminal investigation for alleged mortgage fraud, just as three other Democratic officials have faced in recent months.
Key events
As the Trump administration and Texas governor Greg Abbott restrict free speech on college campuses, two professors at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) are suing the university for retaliation stemming from 2024 arrests at a peaceful campus protest.
History professors Ben Wright and Rosemary Admiral argue they should not have been arrested in the first place at the 1 May 2024 demonstration, where they were standing between their students and heavily armed law enforcement.
Following the arrest, the professors say their university engaged in retaliation by severely restricting their access to campus, vaguely ordering that classroom instruction and “employment/research related activities” were the only permissible reasons for them to show up at work.
“UTD wrongly banned these plaintiffs from campus entirely at first, falsely claiming a court required that,” said the professors’ attorney, Christina Jump. “No court required that.”
The professors’ 29-page complaint, filed in a district court in Texas, names UTD and the University of Texas system as defendants, as well as former UTD president Richard Benson, current president Prabhas Moghe, Abbott and Ken Paxton, the attorney general.
In addition to allegations that the defendants violated their civil rights, the professors also claim violations of the fourth and first amendments, arguing that they were unlawfully arrested without probable cause and later faced retaliation for peacefully protesting.
Trump puts intense pressure on Republicans to block release of Epstein files
Lucy Campbell
Donald Trump has cranked up his intense pressure campaign on congressional Republicans to oppose the full release of the justice department’s files related to Jeffrey Epstein, before a crucial and long-awaited House vote on the matter next week that scores of Republicans are slated to support.
The belated swearing-in on Wednesday of the Democratic representative Adelita Grijalva – which the House speaker, Mike Johnson, had refused for almost two months during the government shutdown – brought the number of signatures on Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna’s discharge petition to the 218 needed to force a floor vote on legislation demanding the Department of Justice release all of its investigative files on Epstein within 30 days.
It is expected that dozens of Republicans will vote for it, with the knowledge that their constituents want greater transparency about the affair and want them to hold the line. Representatives Don Bacon of Nebraska, Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania have expressed they would do so.
CNN reported that top officials summoned representative Lauren Boebert – one of four Republicans in the House who have signed the petition – to a meeting in the White House Situation Room with the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and FBI director, Kash Patel, to discuss her demand to release the files. Trump had also telephoned her early on Tuesday morning, a day before Grijalva was due to be sworn in and provide the crucial final signature.
Trump also reached out to Representative Nancy Mace, another of the Republican caucus in the House who have signed the petition, but the two did not connect. Mace instead reportedly wrote the president a long explanation of her own personal experience as a survivor of sexual abuse and rape, and why it was impossible for her to change her position on the matter. She wrote on X that “the Epstein petition is deeply personal.”
Those failed lobbying attempts from the White House came as Democrats on the House oversight committee released three damning new emails that suggest Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct, including one in which the convicted paedophile said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls”. Another email described Trump as a “dog that hasn’t barked” and said he had “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.
The president’s team struck back, saying those documents had been cherrypicked, and Republican representatives followed up by releasing a much bigger trove of more than 20,000 files.
The US approved the sale of fighter jet and other aircraft parts to Taiwan for $330 million on Thursday, marking the first such transaction since president Donald Trump took office in January, Reuters reported.
“The proposed sale will improve the recipient’s capability to meet current and future threats by maintaining the operational readiness of the recipient’s fleet of F-16, C-130,” and other aircraft, the Pentagon said in a statement.
Washington has formal diplomatic ties with Beijing, but maintains unofficial ties with Taiwan and is the island’s most important arms supplier. The United States is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.
Taiwan’s presidential office, noting the arms sale was the first announced by the current administration, thanked the US government for continuing the policy of regularized arms sales to Taiwan and supporting Taiwan in enhancing its self-defense capabilities and resilience.
“The deepening of the Taiwan-US security partnership is an important cornerstone of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” presidential office spokesperson Karen Kuo said in a statement.
Just 29% of Americans support US military killing drug suspects, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
Only 29% of Americans support using the US military to kill suspected drug traffickers without a judge or court being involved, a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
The six-day poll, which closed on Wednesday as Washington continued a military buildup around Latin America that has focused especially on Venezuela, showed 51% were opposed to the killings of drug suspects and the rest were unsure where they stood.
In a sign of division within Trump’s party, 27% of Republicans in the poll opposed the practice, while 58% supported it, with the rest unsure. Three quarters of Democrats opposed the practice compared to one in 10 who supported it.
The Trump administration has ordered at least 20 military strikes in recent months against suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean and off the Pacific coasts of Latin America, killing at least 79 people.
Human rights groups including Amnesty International have condemned the strikes as illegal extrajudicial killings of civilians, and some US allies have expressed growing concerns that Washington may be violating international law.
US Catholic bishops condemn Trump administration’s immigration enforcement
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a rare condemnation of president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and advocated for “meaningful immigration reform”.
“We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools,” the bishops said in a special message, the first of its kind in 12 years.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration efforts, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The message echoes similar critiques made by Pope Leo, who has called for “deep reflection” about the way migrants are being treated in the US under Trump, Reuters reported.
The Trump administration has advanced an aggressive immigration agenda since taking office earlier this year. Trump has rescinded policy that limited immigration arrests near sensitive locations, including churches, hospitals and schools, and deployed federal agents across the US to ramp up such arrests.
In their message, the bishops expressed concern about what they described as “a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling” and immigration enforcement. They said they were saddened by the debate and vilification of migrants, and opposed “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”
The bishops also raised concerns about conditions in detention centers, and what they called the arbitrary removal of legal status of some migrants.
“We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good,” the bishops said.
In other developments:
-
Donald Trump is facing the prospect of a politically damaging congressional vote on releasing the Jeffery Epstein files after attempts to press two female members of Congress to withdraw their backing for it appeared to have failed. The reported refusal of Lauren Boebert, a Republican representative from Colorado, and Nancy Mace, from South Carolina, to remove their names from a discharge petition to force a vote leaves Trump exposed on an issue that carries the possibility of turning segments of his Maga base against him.
-
The justice department on Thursday joined a lawsuit brought by California Republicans to block the state’s new congressional map, escalating a legal battle over a redistricting effort designed to give Democrats a better chance of retaking the House of Representatives next year. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, challenges the congressional map championed by Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, in response to a Republican gerrymander in Texas, sought by Donald Trump.
-
The BBC has apologised to Donald Trump over the editing of a Panorama documentary that led to the resignation of its director general, Tim Davie, and the BBC News chief, Deborah Turness. However, the corporation has rejected his demands for compensation, after lawyers for Trump threatened to sue for $1bn (£760m) in damages unless the BBC issued a retraction, apologised and settled with him.
-
James Comey, the former FBI director, and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, asked a federal judge on Thursday to drop the criminal charges against them, arguing that Donald Trump’s hand-picked US attorney, who obtained the indictments against them, was unlawfully appointed. The hearing at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia in front of Judge Cameron Currie marked the first time a judge considered one of several efforts James and Comey have made to dismiss the indictments before trials.
-
The Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell is the latest target of Trump’s retribution campaign against his critics, the congressman confirmed on Thursday. NBC News reports that Swalwell is facing a federal criminal investigation for alleged mortgage fraud, just as three other Democratic officials have faced in recent months.
