Parts of the nation's capital now look like occupied territory as President Donald Trump’s law-enforcement crackdown expands. Massive military transport vehicles dot the city and arrests are up by about 20%, not including the immigrants being taken away for deportation. When Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and top Trump aide Stephen Miller went to Union Station to praise soldiers for bringing “law and order back,” city residents met them with jeers, saying there's no reason to deploy troops in the streets.
Meanwhile, the national redistricting battle enters its next phase with California Democrats scheduled Thursday to pass a new congressional map for voters to consider in November that would create five more winnable seats for their party, a direct counter to the Republicans who are responding to Trump's call by imposing a new map on Texas voters.
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Ruling upholds leadership bans on Trump and his eldest sons
Thursday’s ruling spares Trump from a potential half-billion dollar fine while upholding other punishments, such as banning him and his two eldest sons from serving in corporate leadership for a few years. The panel was sharply divided, issuing a total of 323 pages of concurring and dissenting opinions with no majority.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has said the businessman-turned-politician engaged in “lying, cheating, and staggering fraud,” had no immediate comment.
Trump and his co-defendants have denied wrongdoing. In a six-minute summation of sorts after his trial, Trump proclaimed in January 2024 that he was “an innocent man” and the case was a “fraud on me.”
The split ruling leaves a pathway for more appeals
Engoron also imposed other punishments, such as banning Trump and his two eldest sons from serving in corporate leadership for a few years. Those provisions have been on pause during Trump’s appeal, and he was able to hold off collection of the money by posting a $175 million bond.
The appellate ruling split on the lawsuit’s merits and the lower court’s fraud finding, but dismissed the penalty Engoron imposed in its entirety while also leaving a pathway for further appeals to the state’s highest court.
“While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton wrote in one of several opinions shaping the appeals court’s ruling.
Appeals court throws out massive Trump civil fraud penalty
A panel of five judges in New York’s mid-level Appellate Division issued said the trial judge’s penalty against Trump for exaggerating his wealth was ‘excessive.’
After finding that Trump engaged in fraud by flagrantly padding financial statements that went to lenders and insurers, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him last year to pay $355 million in penalties. With interest, the sum has topped $515 million. Combined with penalties on other Trump Organization executives including sons Eric and Donald Jr., the total now exceeds $527 million.
Russian air strikes hit U.S. electronics plant
The missiles fired from inside Russia overnight reached deep into western Ukraine, far from the eastern and southern battlefronts where a grinding war of attrition has killed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides.
Also struck was the Flex electronics factory, one of the biggest American investments in Ukraine, where six of the 600 nightshift employees working at the time of impact were injured, according to Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine.
The Russian invasion has now damaged more than half the chamber’s approximately 600 member businesses, he said.
“The message is clear: Russia is not looking for peace. Russia is attacking American business in Ukraine, humiliating American business,” Hunder said.
Trump suggests Ukraine should attack inside Russia
Candidate Trump frequently criticized Joe Biden’s administration for spending too much U.S. taxpayer money to assist Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russia’s invasion. But after Russia launched massive aerial attacks on Ukraine overnight, President Trump said Biden didn’t give Kyiv the weaponry it needed to “fight back.”
“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders country,” Trump posted on social media. “It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offensive. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia.”
The Kremlin has yet to confirm that Russian President Vladimir Putin will take part in the face-to-face negotiations Trump has sought to arrange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy condemns latest Russian attacks as peace efforts drag on
Russia launched 574 drones and 40 ballistic and cruise missiles overnight, in one of its biggest aerial attacks on Ukraine of the year, the Ukrainian Air Force said Thursday, while a recent diplomatic push to stop the three-year war is trying to gain momentum.
The attack mostly targeted western regions of the country, the air force said, where much of the military aid provided by Ukraine’s Western allies is believed to be delivered and stored. The strikes intensified even after Trump’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House.
Zelenskyy said Russia carried out the attack “as if nothing were changing at all.”
Marco Rubio to host Ukraine security talks with Europe
The U.S. secretary of state will host a conference call Thursday with the national security advisers of European countries expected to play a role in future security guarantees for Ukraine, a senior U.S. official said.
One of Kyiv’s conditions for signing any peace deal is getting Western-backed military assurances to deter Russia from mounting another invasion in the coming years. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that making security arrangements for Ukraine without Moscow’s involvement is pointless.
It was not immediately clear which countries would be represented on the call with Rubio. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to outline a discussion that had not been publicly announced.
Michael Flynn called for federal custody of Colorado clerk
Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s first-term national security adviser, called Wednesday on Attorney General Pam Bondi to move Peters into federal custody, saying “she possesses critical information as a potential federal witness in the current investigation” of the 2020 election.
Jurors found Peters guilty for allowing a man to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa County election system and for being deceptive about that person’s identity.
The man was affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Trump warns ‘harsh measures’ for Colorado if convicted clerk isn’t freed
Mesa Country clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years behind bars for a data-breach scheme spawned from the rampant false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race. But Trump is calling her “a brave and innocent Patriot who has been tortured by Crooked Colorado politicians.”
“Let Tina Peters out of jail, RIGHT NOW. She did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat in the Election,” Trump posted Thursday on his Truth Social platform. “She is an old woman, and very sick. If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!”
Is empathy a sin? Some conservative Christians argue it can be
Empathy is usually regarded as a virtue key to human decency. Voices on the Christian right are preaching that it’s become a vice, a cudgel for the left that can manipulate caring people into accepting opposing views of abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration and opposing views of social and racial justice.
Pastor Joe Rigney, whose denomination includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, describes empathy as a sin. The idea is gaining traction as Trump issues executive orders denounced for lacking empathy. As foreign aid stopped and more deportations began, Trump’s then-adviser Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
And Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, framed it as his concept of ordo amoris, or order of love, putting immediate family first and the wider world last — an interpretation Pope Francis rejected.
▶ Read more about how Trump’s Christian base is being counseled against empathy
US-EU negotiators issue trade deal framework
Trump administration and European Union negotiators released on Thursday a bare-bones account of their trade deal imposing a stiff 15% import tax on 70% of European goods exported to the U.S. It leaves key areas blank, including wine and spirits and steel.
They called it just “a first step in a process” as they deal with a vast range of goods in the world’s largest bilateral trading relationship, involving $2 trillion in annual transatlantic business.
EU officials said Thursday the agreement brings stability and avoids a trade war with even higher tariffs, or import taxes.
▶ Read more about the US-EU trade deal framework
‘South Park’ continues its cartoon assault on the Trump administration
The Comedy Central show addressed the federal takeover of the Washington, D.C., police department, showing armed forces patrolling in front of the Supreme Court and a tank rolling by the White House. Wednesday’s episode also roasted world leaders and tech CEOs for kowtowing to Trump.
Earlier episodes depicted Trump lying in bed with Satan and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shooting puppies, a reference to her biography where she revealed that she killed her family’s dog. The show also showed Noem being trailed by a team of beauticians having to reattach her face.
“It’s so easy to make fun of women for how they look,” Noem told Glenn Beck. The White House called the show fourth-rate and irrelevant.
Trump escalates threats against California over transgender policies
“Any California school district that doesn’t adhere to our Transgender policies, will not be funded,” Trump said in a Thursday morning social media posting.
The new warning from Trump comes after his administration sued the California Department of Education last month for allowing transgender girls to compete on girls’ sports teams, alleging the policy violates federal law.
The lawsuit filed by the Justice Department says California’s transgender athlete policies violate Title IX, the federal law that bans discrimination in education based on sex.
California has sued the Trump administration for unlawfully intimidating health care providers into stopping gender-affirming care for transgender youth. That lawsuit was filed with attorneys general from 15 states and the District of Columbia, plus the governor of Pennsylvania.
State Department press officer fired after questioning talking points on Israel and Gaza
Officials said Shahed Ghoreishi, a contractor working for the Bureau of Near East Affairs, was terminated over the weekend following two incidents in which his loyalty to Trump administration policies was questioned.
He and two current U.S. officials say he drew ire for drafting a response to an Associated Press query related to discussions between Israel and South Sudan about the possible relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to South Sudan. The draft response included a line that said the U.S. does not support the forced relocation of Gazans, something that Trump and his special envoy Steve Witkoff have said repeatedly.
That line was rejected by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, according to Ghoreishi and the officials. He also questioned an embassy statement referring to the West Bank as the biblical “Judea and Samaria.”
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel changes.
Texas governor says new maps will ‘better reflect the actual votes of Texans’
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott says he’ll sign into the law the redrawn U.S. House districts that give his party five more winnable seats. He had put escalating pressure on Democrats to come home during their two-week walkout that had delayed the vote.
“While Democrats shirked their duty, in futility, and ran away to other states, Republicans stayed the course, stayed at work and stayed true to Texas,” he said.
Abbott spoke after the Texas Republicans used their majority in the House to approve the new congressional voting maps on Wednesday. Seconds later, House Speaker Dustin Burrows removed the “call of the House.” The chamber doors were unlocked and House members are now allowed to leave.
The Associated Press
