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The Republican-led US Congress delivered President Donald Trump an early victory in his promised crackdown on illegal immigration Wednesday as lawmakers green-lit a bill to expand pretrial incarceration for foreign criminal suspects.The Laken Riley Act — which mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes — is named for a 22-year-old student murdered by a Venezuelan man with no papers who was wanted for shoplifting.”Criminal illegal aliens must be detained, deported, and NEVER allowed back into our country,” Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said on X.”The American people demand and deserve safety and security.”The law passed the upper chamber in a comfortable 64-35 vote earlier this week after sailing through the House of Representatives, with Republicans keen to highlight what they described as weak border security policies from Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.But the newly inaugurated Senate — which flipped from Democratic to Republican control after November’s election — added a tweak that expands mandatory detention to “crimes resulting in death or serious bodily injury.”That meant it had to go back to the House for one last vote but it cleared that hurdle easily as 46 Democrats joined the Republicans, and it will now be the first piece of legislation Trump signs into law.The 78-year-old has promised to crack down on illegal border crossings and carry out mass deportations. He has named Tom Homan, a veteran hardline immigration official, as his border chief.The Republican president repeatedly spotlighted Laken Riley’s case during his election campaign as he railed against undocumented migrants, blaming them for “poisoning the blood” of the country.Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was convicted of her murder after she was found dead in a wooded area at the University of Georgia in Athens.”We will no longer prioritize dangerous criminal illegal aliens over the lives of Americans,” Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa said in a statement.”The era of open borders and lawless chaos is over. Republicans are securing the border and putting the safety and well-being of US citizens first.”Democrats complained, however, that it would cost $83 billion to implement the new law in the first three years — more than the Homeland Security Department’s annual budget — and flies in the face of due process.New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a speech on the House floor that detaining people accused, but not convicted, of a crime would be a “fundamental suspension of a core American value.”And she accused Republicans of hypocrisy on law and order for failing to oppose Trump’s pardon of hundreds of violent criminals who stormed the Capitol in 2021 — “unleashing people who attacked police officers here on this Capitol.”

Three federal judges on Wednesday strongly condemned President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons of supporters who stormed the US Capitol four years ago in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”No pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021,” District Judge Tanya Chutkan said in an order dismissing the charges against a Capitol riot defendant.”It cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake,” Chutkan said. “And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”Trump, just hours after taking office on Monday, granted pardons to more than 1,500 of his supporters who stormed the Capitol in a bid to halt congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.In doing so, he also commuted the sentences of 14 members of the far-right Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia.Chutkan presided over the criminal case filed against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith accusing him of seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The case never came to trial, and it was dismissed after Trump won the November election, in line with a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.Two other Washington-based federal judges who presided over cases involving Capitol riot defendants also dismissed the charges on Wednesday with strongly worded condemnations of the pardons.District Judge Beryl Howell said there was no factual basis for dismissing the charges against two of the defendants before her court, only an assertion by the Trump White House that a “grave national injustice” had been done.”No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” Howell said, adding that “poor losers” cannot be allowed to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power “with impunity.””That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law,” she said.- ‘Will not change the truth’ -District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotel said the dismissal of charges and pardons “will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021.””What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions,” Kollar-Kotel said.”Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”Trump, whose first term as president ended under the cloud of the Capitol assault, has repeatedly played down the violence of January 6, even going so far as to describe it as a “day of love.”More than 140 police officers were injured in hours of clashes with rioters wielding flagpoles, baseball bats, hockey sticks and other makeshift weapons along with Tasers and canisters of bear spray.Trump repeatedly pledged during his election campaign to pardon those who took part in the Capitol assault, calling them “patriots” and “political prisoners.”The Capitol assault followed a fiery speech by then-president Trump to tens of thousands of his supporters near the White House in which he repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 race.He then encouraged the crowd to march on Congress.

For years, as disputes over names on the map riled up nationalist passions in several parts of the world, US policymakers have watched warily, trying to stay out or to quietly encourage peace.Suddenly, the United States has gone from a reluctant arbiter to a nomenclature belligerent, as President Donald Trump declared that the Gulf of Mexico will henceforth be called the “Gulf of America.”In an executive order signed hours after he returned to the White House, Trump called the water body an “indelible part of America” critical to US oil production and fishing and “a favorite destination for American tourism and recreation activities.”The term Gulf of America was soon used by the US Coast Guard in a press release on enforcing Trump’s new crackdown on migrants, as well as Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, when discussing a winter storm.Deep-sea ecologist Andrew Thaler said Trump’s declaration was “very silly” and would likely be ignored by maritime professionals.A president has the authority to rename sites within the United States — as Trump also did.”The Gulf of Mexico, however, is a body of water that borders several countries and includes pockets of high seas,” said Thaler, founder of Blackbeard Biologic Science and Environmental Advisors.”There really isn’t any precedent for a US president renaming international geologic and oceanographic features. Any attempt to rename the entire Gulf of Mexico would be entirely symbolic,” he said.- Mexico hits back -Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has cheekily suggested calling the United States “Mexican America,” pointing to a map from well before Washington seized one-third of her country in 1848.”For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico,” she said Tuesday.The International Hydrographic Organization, set up a century ago, works to survey the world’s seas and oceans and is the closest to an authority on harmonizing names for international waters.The United Nations also has an expert group on geographical names, which opens its next meeting on April 28.Martin H. Levinson, president emeritus of the Institute of General Semantics, said it was unknown how much political capital Trump would invest in seeking name recognition by other countries.”Does he really want to strong-arm them for something as minor as this?” Levinson asked.”I think the political benefit is to the domestic audience that he’s playing to — saying we’re patriotic, this is our country, we’re not going to let the name be subsumed by other countries,” he said.He doubted that other countries would change the name but said it was possible Google Earth — a more ready reference to laypeople — could list an alternative name, as it has in other disputes.- ‘Geopolitics of spectacle’ -Among the most heated disputes, South Korea has long resented calling the body of water to its east the Sea of Japan and has advocated for it to be called the East Sea.The United States, an ally of both countries, has kept Sea of Japan but Korean-Americans have pushed at the local level for school textbooks to say East Sea.In the Middle East, Trump in his last term angered Iranians by publicly using the term Arabian Gulf for the oil-rich water body historically known as the Persian Gulf but which Arab nationalists have sought to rename.The United States has also advocated maintaining a 2018 deal where Greece agreed for its northern neighbor to change its name to North Macedonia from Macedonia, but Athens ulitmately rejected due to historical associations with Alexander the Great.Gerry Kearns, a professor of geography at Maynooth University in Ireland, said that Trump’s move was part of the “geopolitics of spectacle” but also showed his ideological bent.With Trump also threatening to take the Panama Canal and Greenland, Trump is seeking to project a new type of Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 declaration by the United States that it would dominate the Western Hemisphere, Kearns said.”Names work because they are shared; we know we are talking about the same thing,” he wrote in an essay.”In claiming the right to force others to use the name of his choosing, Trump is asserting a sort of sovereignty over an international body of water.” 

A new wildfire erupted north of Los Angeles on Wednesday, exploding in size and sparking thousands of evacuation orders in a region already staggering from the effects of huge blazes.Ferocious flames were devouring hillsides near Castaic Lake, spreading rapidly to cover 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) in just over two hours.The fire was being fanned by strong, dry Santa Ana winds that were racing through the area, pushing a vast pall of smoke and embers ahead of the flames.Evacuations were ordered for 19,000 people all around the lake, which sits around 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, and close to the city of Santa Clarita.”I’m just praying that our house doesn’t burn down,” one man told broadcaster KTLA as he packed his car.The fire came with the greater Los Angeles area still suffering after two enormous fires that killed more than two dozen people and destroyed thousands of structures.Robert Jensen from Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department urged everyone in the impacted area of the new blaze — dubbed the Hughes Fire — to leave immediately.”We’ve seen the devastation caused by people failing to follow those orders in the Palisades and Eaton fires,” he said.”I don’t want to see that here in our community as well. If you’ve been issued an evacuation order, please get out.”Television footage showed police driving around the neighborhood urging people to get out.There are four county jails in the Lake Castaic area, housing 4,700 people, the American Civil Liberties Union said.”We have long opposed the expansion of the jail system especially in dangerous fire zones and we are gravely concerned for the safety of people incarcerated in those jails,” said Melissa Camacho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU SoCal.”We urge our county supervisors to direct the LA Sheriff’s Department to immediately organize the transportation needed to evacuate the jails without delay.”California Highway Patrol said the fire was impacting traffic on the I5, a major artery that runs the length of the US West Coast.Helicopters and planes were on the scene dropping water and retardant on the blaze.That fleet included two Super Scoopers, enormous amphibious planes that can carry hundreds of gallons (liters) of water.Crews from Los Angeles County Fire Department and Angeles National Forest were also attacking the blaze from the ground.It was not immediately clear what sparked the fire, but it occurred during red flag fire conditions — when meteorologists say strong winds and low humidity create conditions ripe for rapid fire spread.Smoke was visible southwest of the fire as far away as Thousand Oaks and west as far as Ventura on the Pacific Coast.

Donald Trump’s recent threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico are a negotiating tactic, the president’s long-time informal economic advisor argued Wednesday.”Donald Trump is doing exactly what any rational person would do understanding economics,” Arthur Laffer, one of the godfathers of supply-side economics, told AFP in an interview.”He’s using trade as a tool to exact other policies. It’s his leverage,” said Laffer, 84, who was an economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan and has long informally advised Trump, but is not part of his administration.”In order for that leverage to be true, in order for that leverage to really work, you have to be convinced that you will put those tariffs on,” he added.  Shortly after taking the oath of office on Monday, Trump said he was mulling new tariffs of 25 percent against the two close US allies starting February 1, accusing them of failing to tackle illegal immigration and drug trafficking.”I think President Trump believes that they could easily solve the immigration problem for the US, and they could make a big dent in the fentanyl problem,” Laffer said. Trump also threatened to impose a 10 percent tariff on China which, he said, had not done enough to tackle the flow of the synthetic opioid to Canada and Mexico, from where it is trafficked into the United States. Trump’s comments drew condemnation from Beijing and Ottawa, while Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said it was important to “keep a cool head and refer to signed agreements, beyond actual speeches.”Trump’s tariff and immigration proposals — which include the mass deportation of millions of undocumented workers — have been criticized as inflationary by many economists, who see these policies putting pressure on the Fed to pause interest rate cuts. Supporters such as Laffer and Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent have asserted the president’s planned supply-side tax and deregulation reforms should help counteract any temporary inflationary pressures from tariffs.Asked what economic policies he hoped Trump would enact, Laffer named a wish list of measures he wanted to see.  “I hope we get tariffs reduced dramatically, and non-tariff barriers reduced, and quotas reduced,” he said.”I hope we get the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act re-upped,” he added, referring to Trump’s 2017 package of tax cuts, some of which is set to expire at the end of this year. “And I hope we get deregulation, we get cutting in government spending, and we go to a supply-side economy where we have a low rate broad-based flat tax, spending restraint, sound money, minimal regulations, free trade,” he added.

President Donald Trump has halted arrivals of refugees already cleared to enter the United States, according to a memo seen Wednesday, as he quickly pursues a sweeping crackdown on migration.Following an executive order signed Monday hours after Trump took office, “all previously scheduled travel of refugees to the United States is being canceled,” said a State Department email to groups working with new arrivals.The memo asked the UN International Organization for Migration not to move refugees to transit centers and said that all processing on cases has also been suspended.Refugees already resettled in the United States will continue to receive services as planned, it said.Trump in each of his presidential campaigns has run on promises to crack down on undocumented immigration.But the refugee move also targets a legal pathway for people fleeing wars, persecution or disasters.In his executive order, he said he was suspending refugee admissions as of January 27 and ordered a report on how to change the program, in part by giving “greater involvement” to states and local jurisdictions, which he said were being “inundated.”It also revoked his predecessor Joe Biden’s decision to consider the impact of climate change in refugee admissions.Trump said during his election campaign that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and earlier rose to prominence questioning the citizenship of Barack Obama, the first African-American president.- Shift at State Department -New Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said Wednesday that the State Department will “no longer undertake any activities that facilitate or encourage mass migration. ””Our diplomatic relations with other countries, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, will prioritize securing America’s borders, stopping illegal and destabilizing migration and negotiating the repatriation of illegal immigrants,” Rubio said in a statement.Biden had embraced the refugee program as a way to support people in need through legal means.In the 2024 fiscal year, more than 100,000 refugees resettled in the United States, the most in three decades.The Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar have been among the top sources of refugees in recent years.Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voiced alarm at Trump’s moves and said that acceptance of refugees was “a core American value.””The US Refugee Admissions Program has a long history of bipartisan support and is a life-saving tool for the most vulnerable refugees, all while making Americans safer by promoting stability around the world,” she said.The State Department memo said that Afghans who worked with the United States until the collapse of the Western-backed government in 2021 could still arrive through their separate resettlement program.But Shaheen voiced concern that Afghans were also being left in limbo with flights cancelled.The UN high commissioner for refugees estimates that there are 37.9 million refugees in the world, among some 122.6 million displaced people.Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, which advocates for refugees, said that Trump’s decision was “devastating” to people who had already lost so much.”Refugees go through one of the most rigorous vetting processes in the world, and it’s heartbreaking to see their dreams of safety derailed just days before, or in some cases, just hours before they were set to begin their new lives here,” she said.

Tech titan Elon Musk cast doubt Wednesday on a $500 billion AI project announced by US President Donald Trump, saying the money promised for the investment actually wasn’t there.The comments marked a rare instance of a split between the world’s richest man and Trump, with Musk playing a key role in the newly installed administration after spending $270 million on the election campaign.In his first full day in the White House, Trump on Tuesday announced a major investment to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence led by Japanese giant SoftBank and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.Trump said the venture, called Stargate, “will invest $500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure in the United States.”But in a post on his social media platform X, Musk said the main investors “don’t actually have the money.””SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” Musk added in a subsequent post.- ‘Wrong’ -Musk’s swipe could be particularly targeted at OpenAI, the world’s leading AI startup that Musk helped found before leaving in 2018.The Tesla boss and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who was present at the White House on Tuesday, have been mired in a serious feud with Musk opening repeated lawsuits against the company behind ChatGPT.”Wrong, as you surely know. Want to come visit the first site already under way?” Altman replied to Musk on X.”This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you’ll mostly put (country) first,” he added.OpenAI is one of the world’s highest valued startups but loses money on the high costs of turning out its expensive technology.According to the Wall Street Journal, cloud giant Oracle, which is also involved, has about $11 billion in cash and securities. SoftBank has roughly $30 billion of cash on hand.”The American people should take President Trump and those CEOs words for it. These investments are coming to our great country and American jobs are coming along with them,” Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.The Stargate project is committed to invest an initial $100 billion in the project, and up to $500 billion over the next four years.Abu Dhabi’s AI-focused state fund MGX and Oracle are also providing funding for the project, while SoftBank-owned Arm, Microsoft and Nvidia will be technology partners.According to the companies, the project is initially building a data center operation in Texas, where construction is already underway.Ahead of taking office, Trump this month unveiled a $20 billion Emirati investment in US data centers, as well as a previous investment pledge from SoftBank.

Elon Musk said Tuesday he was exploring a presidential pardon for “Bitcoin Jesus,” who was arrested last year on fraud and tax evasion charges, after applauding Donald Trump for exonerating the founder of a dark web drug marketplace.In a sign of the tech billionaire’s influence over the new US administration, Musk said he was “honored to be in the Oval Office” when Trump granted a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the man behind the “Silk Road” platform that facilitated the sale of illegal narcotics using cryptocurrency.Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was sentenced to two life terms in prison after being convicted of charges including conspiracy to distribute narcotics, money laundering and computer hacking.The FBI described Silk Road as a “digital bazaar for illegal goods and services” that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, as well as commissions in bitcoin.Prosecutors also alleged that Ulbricht solicited six murders-for-hire.Trump on Tuesday said he called Ulbricht’s mother to inform her that he had granted him an unconditional pardon, honoring a pledge he made during last year’s presidential campaign, while slamming the “scum” who prosecuted him.Musk, a confidant of Trump, hinted that Roger Ver, a former California resident who calls himself “Bitcoin Jesus,” could be next.The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX wrote on his platform X that pardoning him was up to Trump, but he had “asked whether this is possible.”The Bitcoin investor and promoter was arrested in Spain last April based on US criminal charges including fraud and evading capital gains taxes. The Department of Justice’s indictment claimed that Ver — who had renounced his US citizenship and became a citizen of the Caribbean island of St. Kitts — sold tens of thousands of bitcoins on cryptocurrency exchanges for around $240 million in cash in 2017.He did not report his gains, losing the US Treasury $48 million in tax money, the indictment said.The United States has sought Ver’s extradition to stand trial in the country.There was no immediate comment from Trump about Ver.Trump has courted his conservative base that catapulted him to power by pardoning his supporters and targeting opponents in a shock-and-awe start to his second presidency. Hours after being sworn in on Monday, Trump granted pardons to more than 1,500 people who stormed the US Capitol in 2021 including those convicted of assaulting police officers.Musk shares Trump’s hard-right politics and put millions of dollars into supporting his presidential campaign.Trump has tapped Musk to lead an advisory commission aiming to slash federal spending and bureaucracy, which while dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” will not be an official US agency.

A bid to get five elephants released from a US zoo has failed after judges ruled the animals are not people so laws on unlawful imprisonment do not apply.Animal rights campaigners acting on behalf of elderly African elephants Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou and Jambo wanted a court to free them from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado.The Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) said the creatures should be moved instead to an elephant sanctuary.But Colorado’s supreme court on Tuesday ruled that only people are covered by the state’s habeas corpus laws.”Colorado’s habeas statute only applies to persons, and not to nonhuman animals, no matter how cognitively, psychologically, or socially sophisticated they may be,” a panel of judges ruled.”It bears noting that the narrow legal question before this court does not turn on our regard for these majestic animals generally or these five elephants specifically.”Instead, the legal question here boils down to whether an elephant is a person… and because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim.”NRP has previously failed in legal efforts to get an elephant named Happy freed from a New York zoo, when another court agreed that the animal was not human.Habeas corpus is a fundamental principle in legal systems around the world, which holds that no person can be imprisoned illegally.It has its origins in Magna Carta, a royal charter agreed in 1215 by King John of England, a document widely seen as the first brake on the absolute monarchies dominant in medieval Europe.

US President Donald Trump’s threat to seize the Panama Canal over alleged undue Chinese influence may really be aimed at limiting Beijing’s growing diplomatic and economic presence in Latin America, experts say.Actually using force to take the interoceanic waterway, which carries five percent of world maritime trade and 40 percent of US container traffic, seems an unlikely endeavor, they concur. Here’s what we know:Who owns the canal?Constructed by the United States mainly with Afro-Caribbean labor and opened in 1914, the canal was administered by America until 1977, when treaties were signed under then-US president Jimmy Carter for its handover to Panama.Since the handover in 1999, the canal has been managed by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) — an autonomous entity whose board of directors is appointed by the legislature and president of Panama.The government has granted concessions to private company Hutchinson Ports — a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings — to operate ports on either extreme of the 82-kilometer (51-mile) waterway.According to Rebecca Bill Chavez of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, “Panama has honored the canal treaties by maintaining the canal’s operations efficiently and ensuring its neutrality.”Yet Trump, in his inaugural address Monday, complained that “China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama.””China does not operate or control the Panama Canal,” said Chavez.- Could this change? -In the eye of the storm is Hutchinson Ports, which has operated the Balboa and Cristobal ports since 1997.Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has questioned whether Chinese companies could take control of the ports under orders of Beijing and “shut it down or impede our transit.”Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino has insisted his country operates the canal on a principle of neutrality, as per the treaties.”There are reasonable concerns related to the presence of a Chinese company,” Benjamin Gedan, director of the Washington-based Wilson Center’s Latin America program, told AFP.”The channel is of enormous value to the United States, both commercially and strategically,” Gedan said, adding it is a potential target were China to exert influence over Hutchinson Ports, or even nationalize it.Beijing said Wednesday it has “never interfered” and “does not participate in the management and operation” of the canal, of which the United States is the biggest user, followed by China.Hutchinson Ports said audits a few years ago by the office of the comptroller, which oversees public spending, and the Panama Maritime Authority, found the company was in “full compliance” with its contractual obligations.The comptroller has announced another audit since Trump’s threats.- The art of the deal? -Trump has complained that American ships — including US Navy vessels —  are “severely overcharged” for using the port.But for Euclides Tapia, professor of international relations at the University of  Panama, this appears to be “a false argument” to conceal Trump’s real goal: “for Panama to reduce its relations with China to a minimum.”Panama broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of Beijing in 2017, much to Washington’s dismay.Since then, China’s footprint has expanded greatly in Panama as in the rest of Latin America, mainly through infrastructure projects.The United States remains Panama’s main political and commercial partner, but subsidiaries of Chinese companies have in recent years built a $206-million port at the Pacific entrance to the canal, and are spending some $1.4 billion on a bridge over it.”He (Trump) is definitely trying to frighten Panama,” said University of Essex international relations expert Natasha Lindstaedt.She added that “this is a negotiation tool or a distraction, or both.”- Is force likely? -Under the 1977 treaties, Panama committed to ensuring the canal is open to all countries equally.Nothing “mentions, let alone authorizes, the United States recovering or reclaiming the canal,” said Julio Yao, a former government policy advisor who was part of the Panamanian team that negotiated the treaties.According to Tapia, the international relations professor, Washington introduced amendments to the treaties that allow for unilateral US military force to defend the canal against threat of closure.”Only the fabrication of a false flag operation… could justify the use of military force in Panama” under existing conditions, said Tapia.And that could only happen “to keep the channel open, not to take it and exploit it economically,” the analyst added.The Wilson Center’s Gedan sees a military intervention as “unlikely,” but noted Trump could put pressure on Panama through tariffs, for example.