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Labor unions cheer court ruling that blocks Trump's mass firings
Welcome to the Guardian’s rolling coverage of the second Donald Trump administration and US politics.
Labor unions were celebrating after a federal judge in California temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the US defense department and other agencies to carry out the mass firings.
Attorneys for the coalition cheered the order, although it does not mean that fired employees will automatically be rehired or that future firings will not occur.
“What it means in practical effects is the agencies of the federal government should hear the court’s warning that that order was unlawful,” said Danielle Leonard, an attorney for the coalition, after the hearing.
“This ruling by Judge Alsup is an important initial victory for patriotic Americans across this country who were illegally fired from their jobs by an agency that had no authority to do so,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
“These are rank-and-file workers who joined the federal government to make a difference in their communities, only to be suddenly terminated due to this administration’s disdain for federal employees and desire to privatize their work.”
Here are the rest of the headlines:
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The Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency.
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The Trump administration has taken down the online application form for several popular student debt repayment plans, causing confusion among borrowers and likely creating complications for millions of Americans with outstanding loans.
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The US justice department has released additional files related to the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
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New laws in Florida impose harsher penalties for offenses committed by people illegally in the US than for everyone else, with an automatic death sentence for anyone who is in the US illegally and is convicted of first-degree murder.
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Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected in Washington DC later today, where he and Donald Trump are expected to hold a joint press conference.
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Russia lauds 'substantive' talks with US in Istanbul
The Russian foreign ministry praised the latest round of talks with the United States in a statement on Friday, calling them “substantive and businesslike.”
Russian and US teams held six hours of talks in Turkey on Thursday to try to restore the normal functioning of their embassies, and President Vladimir Putin said initial contacts with Donald Trump’s administration had inspired hope.
The foreign ministry said the delegations had discussed issues related to what it said was the illegal confiscation of Russia’s diplomatic property in the US and had asked the Americans to consider restoring direct air links.
It said both sides had agreed on steps to restore the uninterrupted financing and normal operations of their respective embassies, Reuters reports.
Ex-Washington Post editor Marty Baron rebukes Bezos: ‘betrayal of free expression’
Anna Betts
Marty Baron, a highly regarded former editor of the Washington Post, has said that Jeff Bezos’s announcement that the newspaper’s opinion section would narrow its editorial focus was a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression” that had left him “appalled”.
In an interview with the Guardian, Baron also said: “I don’t think that [Bezos] wants an editorial page that’s regularly going after Donald Trump.”
On Wednesday, the billionaire newspaper owner and Amazon founder sent an email to Post staffers announcing that the newspaper’s editorial section would shift its editorial focus and that only opinions that support and defend “personal liberties” and “free markets” would be welcome, and other viewpoints “will be left to be published by others”.
Bezos’s announcement was met with criticism and resulted in the departure of the newspaper’s opinions editor, David Shipley. Baron, who was executive editor of the Washington Post from 2012 until 2021 and is one of the most esteemed figures in American journalism, blasted Bezos’s decision.
You can read the full report here:
Cardinal McElroy calls for compassion in Trump's immigration policy
Cardinal Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego who is preparing to take over as archbishop of Washington DC next month, has called for a compassionate approach toward refugees and immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
Associated Press reported that in a press conference in San Diego he said the removal of immunity for houses of worship from immigration enforcement is particularly problematic, and a “deep moral question.”
“When these places become targets of ICE raids, it strikes fear in everyone’s hearts, and it acts as a deterrent to people going to church and freely worshipping or going to schools,” he said. “That’s why it’s so deadly.”
“A nation needs to secure its borders and a strong immigration policy, but what we’re seeing is an effort to classify all of these people as criminals,” he said. “That casts them as the other or not having the same dignity.”
McElroy has previously stated that Trump’s threats of mass deportations of immigrants are “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”
McElroy, 70, is set to replace retiring Cardinal Wilton Gregory.
The Republican-controlled Congress has voted to repeal a federal fee on oil and gas producers who release high levels of methane, undoing a major piece of former President Joe Biden’s climate policy, Associated Press reports.
The Senate on Thursday voted along party lines 52-47 to repeal the fee, following a similar House vote Wednesday.
The American Petroleum Institute, the largest lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, applauded the move, calling the fee a “duplicative, punitive tax on American energy production that stifles innovation.”
“Republicans are helping out the absolutely worst offenders of methane leakage,'’ said Sen Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the environment panel. “The companies only pay the methane fee if they don’t meet their own industry standard for … avoiding leaks of a dangerous, explosive, poisonous greenhouse gas.”
China reacts to Trump tariff threat and Rubio comments on fentanyl
China’s foreign ministry has hit out at comments made by secretary of state Marco Rubio. Reuters reports that the ministry said Rubio’s comments that China may be flooding the US with fentanyl demonstrated a “cold war mentality.”
At a regular press conference, ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said China expressed strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to Rubio’s comments, adding: “The US keeps coercing and threatening China, which will only backfire on itself.”
The ministry also asserted that US criticism of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs were the “lies of the century”.
China’s commerce ministry has also commented on Donald Trump’s latest tariff announcement, vowing to retaliate, and accusing the US of “shifting the blame” on fentanyl flows.
Reuters quotes a statement from the ministry which urged Washington to “return to the right track of properly resolving differences through dialogue on an equal footing as soon as possible.”
RFK Jr criticised over failure to address measles outbreak in Texas
An official at the Health and Human Services agency (HHS) has criticised Robert F Kennedy’s failure to address a measles outbreak in Texas which has led to the first recorded measles death in the US since 2015.
Speaking to NBC News anonymously, the official told the news network Kennedy has done nothing about the outbreak, observing: “It’s almost like he’s still in campaign-mode rather than realizing he’s head of a large agency and workforce.”
It was reported that Kennedy has yet to issue any all staff emails or visit several HHS agencies.
Kennedy downplayed the measles outbreak yesterday, saying “There have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country so it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”
The Texas outbreak has affected more than 120 people and has led to the death of a school-age child.
Labor unions cheer court ruling that blocks Trump's mass firings
Welcome to the Guardian’s rolling coverage of the second Donald Trump administration and US politics.
Labor unions were celebrating after a federal judge in California temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the US defense department and other agencies to carry out the mass firings.
Attorneys for the coalition cheered the order, although it does not mean that fired employees will automatically be rehired or that future firings will not occur.
“What it means in practical effects is the agencies of the federal government should hear the court’s warning that that order was unlawful,” said Danielle Leonard, an attorney for the coalition, after the hearing.
“This ruling by Judge Alsup is an important initial victory for patriotic Americans across this country who were illegally fired from their jobs by an agency that had no authority to do so,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
“These are rank-and-file workers who joined the federal government to make a difference in their communities, only to be suddenly terminated due to this administration’s disdain for federal employees and desire to privatize their work.”
Here are the rest of the headlines:
-
The Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency.
-
The Trump administration has taken down the online application form for several popular student debt repayment plans, causing confusion among borrowers and likely creating complications for millions of Americans with outstanding loans.
-
The US justice department has released additional files related to the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
-
New laws in Florida impose harsher penalties for offenses committed by people illegally in the US than for everyone else, with an automatic death sentence for anyone who is in the US illegally and is convicted of first-degree murder.
-
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected in Washington DC later today, where he and Donald Trump are expected to hold a joint press conference.
