Saturday, Jun 14th
Last update07:39:45 AM GMT
Elon Musk arrived in Washington, D.C., with high hopes. He left with a literal and reputational black eye.
President Donald Trump marked the end of Musk's tenure as a government employee with an event in the Oval Office May 30, where he thanked the billionaire for his work leading the Department of Government Efficiency and gave him a golden key.
“Elon’s delivered a colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington,” Trump declared.
The Supreme Court on May 30 said the Trump administration can revoke for now the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans living in the United States.
Two of the court’s three liberal justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor – dissented.
Jackson wrote that the court "plainly botched" its assessment of whether the government or the 532,000 migrants would suffer the greater harm if their legal status ends while the administration's mass termination of that status is being litigated.
Jackson said the majority undervalued "the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending."
Colombian President Gustavo Petro's government officially appointed Jorge Ivan Ospina as the country’s first ambassador to the State of Palestine on Monday.
The move formalizes Colombia's diplomatic presence with an embassy established in Ramallah.
Ospina, the former mayor of Cali, the third most populous city in Colombia, publicly acknowledged his appointment on his X account.
In his post, he thanked President Petro and Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia and outlined his commitment to "denouncing the genocide that the Palestinian people are suffering today" and working toward the "freedom of those who live there."
The appointment, signed by Foreign Minister Sarabia, marks a significant step in building on Colombia's official recognition of the State of Palestine in 2018. Previously, relations with Palestine were primarily conducted through multilateral organizations.
A ceasefire proposal with Israel tabled by the administration of United States President Donald Trump is “still under discussion” by Hamas, but in its current form will only result in “the continuation of killing and famine” in Gaza, an official from the Palestinian group has said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that Israel had “signed off” on the ceasefire proposal, and the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, had submitted it to Hamas for consideration.
Hamas political bureau member Basem Naim told the Reuters news agency that the deal “does not meet any of our people’s demands, foremost among them, halting the war”.
Russia on Thursday accused Serbia of exporting arms to Ukraine, saying it’s a stab in the back by its longtime Slavic Balkan ally.
“Serbian defense enterprises, contrary to the ‘neutrality’ declared by official Belgrade, continue to supply ammunition to Kyiv,” the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, SVR, said in a statement.
The statement alleged that the export of the Serbian arms to Ukraine are going through NATO intermediaries, “primarily the Czech Republic, Poland and Bulgaria. Recently, exotic options involving African states have also been used for this purpose.”
Serbia's populist President Aleksandar Vucic told the state RTS television that he has recently discussed the issue of the arm exports to Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that it was agreed that the two countries form a “working group” to establish how Serbian-made weapons reach the Ukrainian frontlines.
A woman has brought the first-ever wrongful death lawsuit against big oil, claiming fossil fuel companies’ climate negligence caused her mother’s death during a major heatwave.
Juliana Leon died of hyperthermia in Seattle at age 65 during the 2021 Pacific north-west heat dome – an event that killed nearly 200 people, and which meteorologists say would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused global warming.
“The day Julie died was the hottest day ever recorded in Washington with temperatures in Seattle, where Julie died, peaking around 108F,” reads the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday by Misti Leon, Juliana Leon’s daughter
Because they failed to warn the public about the dangers of planet-heating emissions, major fossil fuel companies should be held accountable for that death, the case argues.
The Democratic Minnesota governor had a pretty clever response to news on Wednesday that Musk was exiting the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In a simple, six-word response to an Associated Press report breaking the news, Walz hilariously said:
“finally rooting out waste and abuse.”
Musk had initially promised his department would cut $2 trillion from the $7 trillion federal budget by identifying what the White House described as “waste, fraud and abuse.”
A second federal court blocked the bulk of President Trump’s tariffs on Thursday, ruling he cannot claim unilateral authority to impose them by declaring emergencies over trade deficits and fentanyl.
The ruling from U.S District Judge Rudolph Contreras, an appointee of former President Obama who serves in the nation’s capital, comes hours after the U.S. Court of International Trade similarly blocked a series of Trump’s tariff announcements.
The administration quickly appealed both rulings.
Since February, Trump has attempted to impose tariffs by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). The law authorizes the president to impose necessary economic sanctions during an emergency to combat an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” but a series of businesses and plaintiffs have argued the law doesn’t authorize tariffs.
President Trump denounced a court ruling blocking his tariffs in a lengthy Truth Social post Thursday night that targeted Leonard Leo, who played a central role in shaping Trump’s judicial picks during his first term.
“Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY. Backroom ‘hustlers’ must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!” Trump wrote.
Trade block the bulk of Trump’s tariffs before an appeals court lifted the order. The tariffs were also blocked by a separate court, but that ruling doesn’t go into effect for two weeks.
Alongside his condemnation of the ruling, Trump went after Leo, who spent decades forming a conservative judicial pipeline as a longtime leader of the Federalist Society and advised Trump on judge selections during his first stint in the White House.
“I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges,” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.
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