Today's recap
We’re ending our live coverage at this time. Here’s a rundown of what happened today:
A federal judge blocked immigration agents from conducting enforcement operations in houses of worship for some religious groups, the Associated Press reported. US district judge Theodore Chang found that the Trump administration policy could violate their religious freedom and should be blocked while a lawsuit challenging it plays out.
Trump said the US and Ukraine are “very close” to coming to terms on a rare earth minerals agreement, in comments made during a visit from French president Emmanuel Macron amid European concerns over the US position on Ukraine. Follow the latest from the leaders’ joint press conference here.
The Trump administration said it was placing all but a handful of USAid personnel around the world on paid administrative leave and eliminating about 2,000 of those positions in the US, as the rapid dismantling of the organization appears to move into its final phases.
Attorneys for federal workers said in a lawsuit that billionaire adviser to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, had violated the law with his weekend demand that employees explain their accomplishments or risk being fired. An updated lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in California and was provided to the Associated Press, is trying to block mass layoffs.
Many federal government departments, including the FBI, have told staff not to comply with the Musk directive to list their accomplishments in the past week by 11.59pm ET tonight. But the US transport department has told workers they should respond to the demand by the key Trump adviser.
The US office of personnel management has told government HR officials that employees should not feel obliged to respond to the email asking them to justify their jobs, undermining Musk’s ultimatum.
A federal judge has blocked the government downsizing team Doge from accessing sensitive data maintained by the US education department and the US office of personnel management. US district judge Deborah Boardman in Greenbelt, Maryland issued the temporary restraining order at the behest of a coalition of labor unions.
A federal judge has extended protections for trans women in prison. The judge, who blocked the Federal Bureau of Prisons from carrying out Donald Trump’s executive order that would transferred three incarcerated trans women into men’s facilities earlier this month, has extended protections for nine additional women.
As we’ve mentioned on the blog, a federal judge denied the Associated Press’s request to immediately restore its access to presidential events.
From the Guardian staff and agencies:
The US district judge Trevor McFadden declined to grant the AP’s request for a temporary injunction restoring its access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House. The Trump administration barred the outlet earlier this month for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage after the president renamed it the “Gulf of America”.
McFadden, a Trump appointee, said the restriction on “more private areas” used by Trump was different from prior instances in which courts have blocked government officials from revoking access to journalists.
“I can’t say the AP has shown a likelihood of success here,” McFadden said.
But he also described the ban as “problematic” and advised the government that “case law in this circuit is uniformly unhelpful to the White House”. McFadden said the issue required more exploration before ruling. Another hearing in the case has been set for next month.
The AP filed a lawsuit over the ban last week, in which it named three senior Trump aides and argued that the decision to block its reporters from certain locations violates the US constitution’s first amendment protections against government abridgment of speech by trying to dictate the language they use in reporting the news.
“The constitution prevents the president of the United States or any other government official from coercing journalists or anyone else into using official government vocabulary to report the news,” Charles Tobin, a lawyer for the AP, said during a court hearing.
The outlet’s attorneys argued the AP would face “irreparable harm” if the ban was not immediately lifted.
Updated
