TV News LIES

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Friday halted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's attempt to lay off the vast majority of its employees and gut the agency.

Her order comes after the CFPB had sent reduction-in-force notices to more than 1,400 staffers across the agency on Thursday.

The CFPB had proceeded with layoffs after a three-judge panel last week had ruled the agency could conduct a reduction in force if it made "a particularized assessment" to determine which employees were "unnecessary" for the bureau's performance of its statutory duties.

But the CFPB's union immediately took legal action seeking to halt the mass layoffs, saying the agency had not in fact conducted the thorough assessment required by that three-judge panel.

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The justice department’s civil rights division is shifting its focus away from its longstanding work protecting the rights of marginalized groups and will instead pivot towards Donald Trump’s priorities including hunting for noncitizen voters and protecting white people from discrimination, according to new internal mission statements seen by the Guardian.

The new priorities were sent to several sections of the civil rights division this week by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who was confirmed a little more than two weeks ago to lead the division. Several of them only give glancing mention to the statutes and kinds of discrimination that have long been the focus of the division, which dates back to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Several of the mission statements point to Trump’s executive orders as priorities for the section.

A federal judge on Friday ordered that a Turkish Tufts University student detained by immigration authorities in Louisiana to be brought to Vermont by 1 May for a hearing over what her lawyers say was apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.

US district judge William Sessions said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention. Her lawyers had requestthat she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont.

The 30-year-old doctoral student was taken by immigration officials as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on 25 March. After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana. An immigration judge denied her request for bond Wednesday.

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The American Civil Liberties Union asked the US supreme court to block what the group called the imminent deportation of a new group of Venezuelan men detained in Texas without the judicial review previously ordered by the court.

In an emergency Friday court filing, ACLU lawyers said dozens of Venezuelan men held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Bluebonnet detention center in Texas were given notices indicating they were classified as members of the Tren de Aragua gang and would be deported under the Alien Enemies Act, and were told “that the removals are imminent and will happen tonight or tomorrow”.

The ACLU has already sued to block deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of two Venezuelans held in the Texas detention center and is asking a judge to issue an order barring removals of any immigrants in the region under the law.

U.S. strikes on Yemen's Ras Isa fuel terminal on the Red Sea coast have killed at least 74 people in the deadliest attack since the U.S. started its bombing campaign against the Houthis last year, according to the Houthi-run health ministry.

President Donald Trump ordered the intensification of strikes last month in the biggest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since he took office in January. Washington has vowed to keep attacking the Iran-aligned Houthis until the group halts attacks on Red Sea shipping.

Health ministry spokesperson Anees al-Asbahi said 171 people were injured in the strikes on April 17, according to preliminary figures, with rescue teams continuing efforts to search for victims.

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A divided federal appeals court panel on Friday temporarily halted U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s contempt proceedings against the Trump administration over its deportation flights to El Salvador last month.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit indicated its order is intended to provide “sufficient opportunity” for the court to consider the government’s appeal and “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.”

• The acting commissioner of the IRS was fired Friday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly complained to President Donald Trump that DOGE cost-cutter in chief Elon Musk did not ask for approval to name Gary Shapley as the agency’s leader.

• Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Michael Faulkender is expected to take Shapley’s place. Shapley, a longtime IRS agent, was nominated Tuesday after former interim leader Melanie Krause resigned because the IRS was required to disclose taxpayer information to immigration officials

The interim commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service was ousted Friday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly complained to President Donald Trump that the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, had instituted the new leader without his knowledge, five unnamed people told the New York Times.

Although the tax-collection agency reports to Bessent, the Treasury secretary felt that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had gone behind his back to put Gary Shapley in power as acting head of the IRS. While DOGE pushed Shapley’s nomination through the White House, Bessent was not consulted for his approval, the people said.

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