The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Thursday in its first case stemming from the blitz of actions that have marked the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Before the court are the Trump administration’s emergency appeals of lower court orders putting nationwide holds on the Republican president’s push to deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally.

Birthright citizenship is among several issues, many related to immigration, that the administration has asked the court to address on an emergency basis, after lower courts acted to slow the president’s agenda.

The justices are also considering the administration’s pleas to end humanitarian parole for more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela and to strip other temporary legal protections from another 350,000 Venezuelans. The administration remains locked in legal battles over its efforts to swiftly deport people accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act.

In Thursday’s arguments, the justices will be weighing whether judges have the authority to issue what are called nationwide, or universal, injunctions. The Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, has complained that judges are overreaching by issuing orders that apply to everyone instead of just the parties before the court.

Yet in discussing the limits of a judge’s power, the court almost certainly will have to take up the change to citizenship that Trump wants to make, which would upset the settled understanding of birthright citizenship that has existed for more than 125 years.

The first sentence of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The Citizenship Clause, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, was included to ensure that formerly enslaved people would be citizens. It effectively overturned the notorious Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court held that Black people, no matter their status, were not citizens.

Since at least 1898 and the Supreme Court case of Wong Kim Ark, the provision has been widely interpreted to make citizens of everyone born on U.S. soil except for the children of diplomats, who have allegiance to another government; enemies present in the U.S. during hostile occupation; and, until a federal law changed things in 1924, sovereign Native American tribes.

Trump’s executive order would deny citizenship to children if neither parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident. Those categories include people who are in the country illegally or temporarily because, the administration contends, they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

Almost immediately, states, immigrants and rights groups sued to block the executive order, accusing the Republican administration of trying to unsettle the understanding of birthright citizenship. Every court to consider the issue has sided with the challengers.

The administration is asking for the court orders to be reined in, not overturned entirely, and spends little time defending the executive order. The Justice Department argues that there has been an “explosion” in the number of nationwide injunctions issued since Trump retook the White House. The far-reaching court orders violate the law as well as long-standing views on a judge’s authority, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on behalf of the administration.

Courts typically deal only with the parties before them. Even class actions reach only the people who are part of a class certified by a judge, though those can affect millions of people, Sauer wrote.

The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to strip temporary legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to being deported.

The Justice Department asked the high court to put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelans that would have otherwise expired last month.

The status allows people already in the United States to live and work legally because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.

A federal appeals court had earlier rejected the administration’s request.

President Donald Trump’s administration has moved aggressively to withdraw various protections that have allowed immigrants to remain in the country, including ending TPS for a total of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians. TPS is granted in 18-month increments.

The emergency appeal to the high court came the same day a federal judge in Texas ruled illegal the administration’s efforts to deport Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law. The cases are not related.

The protections had been set to expire April 7, but U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ordered a pause on those plans. He found that the expiration threatened to severely disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and could cost billions in lost economic activity.

Chen, who was appointed to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama, found the government hadn’t shown any harm caused by keeping the program alive.

But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on behalf of the administration that Chen’s order impermissibly interferes with the administration’s power over immigration and foreign affairs.

In addition, Sauer told the justices, people affected by ending the protected status might have other legal options to try to remain in the country because the “decision to terminate TPS is not equivalent to a final removal order.”

Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife.

A budget airline that serves mostly small U.S. cities began federal deportation flights Monday out of Arizona, a move that’s inspired an online boycott petition and sharp criticism from the union representing the carrier’s flight attendants.

Avelo Airlines announced in April it had signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to make charter deportation flights from Mesa Gateway Airport outside Phoenix. It said it will use three Boeing 737-800 planes for the flights.

The Houston-based airline is among a host of companies seeking to cash in on President Donald Trump’s campaign for mass deportations.

Congressional deliberations began last month on a tax bill with a goal of funding, in part, the removal of 1 million immigrants annually and housing 100,000 people in U.S. detention centers. The GOP plan calls for hiring 10,000 more U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and investigators.

Avelo was launched in 2021 as COVID-19 still raged and billions of taxpayer dollars were propping up big airlines. It saves money mainly by flying older Boeing 737 jets that can be bought at relatively low prices. And it operates out of less-crowded and less-costly secondary airports, flying routes that are ignored by the big airlines. It said it had its first profitable quarter in late 2023.

Andrew Levy, Avelo’s founder and chief executive, said in announcing the agreement last month that the airline’s work for ICE would help the company expand and protect jobs.

“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic,” said Levy, an airline industry veteran with previous stints as a senior executive at United and Allegiant airlines.

Avelo did not grant an interview request from The Associated Press.

Financial and other details of the Avelo agreement — including destinations of the deportation flights — haven’t publicly surfaced. The AP asked Avelo and ICE for a copy of the agreement, but neither provided the document. The airline said it wasn’t authorized to release the contract.

Several consumer brands have shunned being associated with deportations, a highly volatile issue that could drive away customers. During Trump’s first term, authorities housed migrant children in hotels, prompting some hotel chains to say that they wouldn’t participate.

Avelo was launched in 2021 as COVID-19 still raged and billions of taxpayer dollars were propping up big airlines. It saves money mainly by flying older Boeing 737 jets that can be bought at relatively low prices. And it operates out of less-crowded and less-costly secondary airports, flying routes that are ignored by the big airlines. It said it had its first profitable quarter in late 2023.

Andrew Levy, Avelo’s founder and chief executive, said in announcing the agreement last month that the airline’s work for ICE would help the company expand and protect jobs.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday urged California cities to clear homeless encampments, escalating once again his efforts to address an intractable issue of his time in office: the makeshift tent camps that line underpasses, parks and local streets up and down the state.

Newsom’s administration drafted a local law that counties, cities and towns can directly adopt or modify to achieve the Democratic governor’s goals. He’s also releasing $3.3 billion in voter-approved funds to expand housing and treatment options for homeless residents.

“The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses,” Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco, made tackling homelessness a priority of his administration when he took office in 2019 and since then, Democratic leaders in the state have moved toward cracking down on encampments. The state accounts for nearly a third of the homeless population in the United States. More than 187,000 Californians are in need of housing.

With tents lining streets and disrupting businesses in cities and towns across the state, homelessness has become one of the most pressing public health and safety issues in California and one sure to dog Newsom if he runs for national office.

His declaration comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for officials to ban homeless people from camping outside. It was a ruling welcomed by many Democratic leaders, including Newsom, despite pushback from homeless people and their advocates that the decision by the conservative court was cruel.

The key provisions of the model ordinance announced Monday include prohibitions on “persistent camping” in one location, a ban on encampments that block sidewalks and a requirement that local officials provide notice and make every reasonable effort to identify and offer shelter prior to clearing an encampment. Providing a ready-made local law could bring uniformity to how cities and counties deal with encampments though Newsom is urging local officials to modify his proposal as needed.

Major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have already started clearing out encampments, saying they are not fair to children, seniors and disabled people who need access to parks and sidewalks.

San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, pledged to clean up city sidewalks while in San José, Mayor Matt Mahan has proposed arrests if a person refuses shelter three times.

In 2024, voters approved a measure that imposes strict requirements on counties to spend on housing and drug treatment programs to tackle the homelessness crisis. It was a signature proposal for Newsom, who campaigned for the measure’s passage.

Under the measure, counties are required to spend about two-thirds of the money from a voter-approved tax enacted in 2004 on millionaires for mental health services on housing and programs for homeless people with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse problems.

The governor has also pushed for laws that make it easier to force people with behavioral health issues into treatment. And he has repeatedly threatened to withhold state money from cities and counties that do not step up to address homelessness.

But despite the roughly billions of dollars spent on more than 30 homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, California does not have reliable data needed to fully understand why the problem didn’t improve in many cities, according to a 2024 state audit.

The audit found California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over the previous five years but did not consistently track whether the huge outlay of public money actually improved the situation.

The military services scrambled Friday to nail down details and put together new guidance to start removing transgender troops from the force.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a memo released late Thursday, reinstated orders issued earlier this year that said “expressing a false gender identity divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”

His new order gives active duty troops until June 6 to identify themselves as transgender and voluntarily begin to leave the service. National Guard and Reserve troops have until July 7.

Army Maj. Alivia Stehlik, who served in the infantry and is now a physical therapist, will be eligible to retire in three years but doesn’t want to be forced out for being a transgender service member.

“I still have a job to do,” she said. “My command expects me to show up and be an officer and do my job because I’m the only person at my unit who can do what I do.”

The military services were rushing to put out new guidance to help commanders work through the process, including what to do in more complex situations, such as if any of the troops are deployed, at sea or may require special orders or funding to meet the deadlines.

In 2015, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter broached the idea of lifting the ban on transgender troops and allowing them to serve openly, which raised concerns among military leaders. He set up a study, and in June 2016 announced the ban was over.

Reinstating that ban has long been a goal for President Donald Trump.

Six months into his first term, Trump announced he was not going to allow transgender people to serve in the military “in any capacity.” That set off a roughly two-year struggle to hammer out the complex details of how that would work, even as legal challenges poured in.

The Pentagon eventually laid out a policy that allowed those currently serving to stay and continue with plans for hormone treatments and gender transition if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. But it barred new enlistments of anyone with gender dysphoria who was taking hormones or had transitioned to another gender.

Gender dysphoria occurs when a person’s biological sex does not match up with their gender identity.

That ban was overturned by then-President Joe Biden. When Trump took office again this year, he directed Hegseth to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender troops.

In late February, Pentagon leaders ordered the services to set up procedures to identify troops diagnosed with or being treated for gender dysphoria by March 26. And it gave them 30 days to begin removing those troops from service.

A flurry of lawsuits stalled the ban. But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration could enforce the ban, while other legal challenges proceed.

The Trump administration must halt much of its dramatic downsizing of the federal workforce, a California judge ordered Friday.

Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the emergency order in a lawsuit filed last week by labor unions and cities, one of multiple legal challenges to Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of a federal government he calls bloated and expensive.

“The Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime,” Illston wrote in her order.

The temporary restraining order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Personnel Management.

The order, which expires in 14 days, does not require departments to rehire people. Plaintiffs asked that the effective date of any agency action be postponed and that departments stop implementing or enforcing the executive order, including taking any further action.

They limited their request to departments where dismantlement is already underway or poised to be underway, including at the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March it will lay off 10,000 workers and centralize divisions.

Illston, who was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, said at a hearing Friday the president has authority to seek changes in the executive branch departments and agencies created by Congress.

“But he must do so in lawful ways,” she said. “He must do so with the cooperation of Congress, the Constitution is structured that way.”

Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped billionaire Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE.

Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave as a result of Trump’s government-shrinking efforts. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation, and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.

In her order, Illston gave several examples to show the impact of the downsizing. One union that represents federal workers who research health hazards faced by mineworkers said it was poised to lose 221 of 222 workers in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, office; a Vermont farmer didn’t receive a timely inspection on his property to receive disaster aid after flooding and missed an important planting window; a reduction in Social Security Administration workers has led to longer wait times for recipients.

All the agencies impacted were created by Congress, she noted.

Lawyers for the government argued Friday that the executive order and memo calling for large-scale personnel reductions and reorganization plans provided only general principles that agencies should follow in exercising their own decision-making process.

“It expressly invites comments and proposals for legislative engagement as part of policies that those agencies wish to implement,” Eric Hamilton, a deputy assistant attorney general, said of the memo. “It is setting out guidance.”

But Danielle Leonard, an attorney for plaintiffs, said it was clear that the president, DOGE and OPM were making decisions outside of their authority and not inviting dialogue from agencies.

The Pentagon will immediately begin moving as many as 1,000 openly identifying transgender service members out of the military and give others 30 days to self-identify under a new directive issued Thursday.

Buoyed by Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender individuals in the military, the Defense Department will begin going through medical records to identify others who haven’t come forward.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who issued the latest memo, made his views clear after the court’s decision.

“No More Trans @ DoD,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X. Earlier in the day, before the court acted, Hegseth said that his department is leaving wokeness and weakness behind.

“No more pronouns,” he told a special operations forces conference in Tampa. “No more dudes in dresses. We’re done with that s---.”

Department officials have said it’s difficult to determine exactly how many transgender service members there are, but medical records will show those who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, who show symptoms or are being treated.

Those troops would then be involuntarily forced out of the service. And no one with that diagnosis will be allowed to enlist. Gender dysphoria occurs when a person’s biological sex does not match up with their gender identity.

Officials have said that as of Dec. 9, 2024, there were 4,240 troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the active duty, National Guard and Reserve. But they acknowledge the number may be higher.

There are about 2.1 million total troops serving.

The memo released Thursday mirrors one sent out in February, but any action was stalled at that point by several lawsuits.

The Supreme Court ruled that the administration could enforce the ban on transgender people in the military, while other legal challenges proceed. The court’s three liberal justices said they would have kept the policy on hold.

Neither the justices in the majority or dissent explained their votes, which is not uncommon in emergency appeals.

When the initial Pentagon directive came out earlier this year, it gave service members 30 days to self-identify. Since then, about 1,000 have done so.

In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the 1,000 troops who already self-identified “will begin the voluntary separation process” from the military.

Under the new guidelines, active duty troops will have until June 6 to voluntarily identify themselves to the department, and troops in the National Guard and Reserve will have until July 7.

While it may be difficult to see which troops have changed their gender identity in their military records, it will be easier to determine who has gotten a gender dysphoria diagnosis because that will be part of their medical record, as will any medication they are taking.

Between 2015 and 2024, the total cost for psychotherapy, gender-affirming hormone therapy, gender-affirming surgery and other treatment for service members is about $52 million, according to a defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

Pentagon officials in an earlier memo defended the ban, saying that “the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”

The new Pentagon policy would allow for limited exemptions.

That includes transgender personnel seeking to enlist who can prove on a case-by-case basis that they directly support warfighting activities, or if an existing service member diagnosed with gender dysphoria can prove they support a specific warfighting need, never transitioned to the gender they identify with and proves over 36 months they are stable in their biological sex “without clinically significant distress.”

If a waiver is issued, the applicant would still face a situation where only their biological sex was recognized for bathroom facilities, sleeping quarters and even in official recognition, such as being called “Sir” or “Ma’am.”

Jurors began deliberating Thursday in the case of two men charged with cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree that once stood along the ancient Hadrian’s Wall in northern England.

Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, have pleaded not guilty to two counts each of criminal damage. The former friends each testified that they were at their separate homes that night and not involved.

Justice Christina Lambert told jurors in Newcastle Crown Court to take as long as they need to reach unanimous verdicts in the trial that began April 28.

The tree was not Britain’s biggest or oldest, but it was prized for its picturesque setting along the ancient wall built by Emperor Hadrian in A.D. 122 to protect the northwest frontier of the Roman Empire.

The tree was long known to locals but achieved international fame in Kevin Costner’s 1991 film “Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.” It sat symmetrically between two hills along the historic wall and was a draw for tourists, landscape photographers and those taking selfies for social media.

Prosecutors said the tree’s value exceeded 620,000 pounds ($830,000) and damage to the wall, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was assessed at 1,100 pounds. Andrew Gurney, a lawyer for Carruthers, said Graham’s story didn’t add up and he was projecting his guilt on his former friend.

“Is that a plausible chain of events or is that the desperate story of a man caught out?” Gurney said.

Wright mocked the duo’s defense, saying common sense and a trail of evidence should lead jurors to convict them for their “moronic mission.”

Prosecutors showed grainy video from Graham’s phone of the tree being cut down — a video sent shortly afterward to Carruthers’ phone. Metadata showed it was taken at the tree’s location in Northumberland National Park. Data showed Graham’s Range Rover had traveled there.

Wright said he couldn’t say who cut the tree and who held the phone, but the two were the only people in the world who had the video on their devices.

Text and voice messages exchanged the following day between Carruthers and Graham captured their excitement as the story went viral.

Citizen activists supporting a public vote on important issues could have to brush up on their reading, writing and arithmetic if they want to get their initiatives on next year’s ballot in some states.

A new Arkansas law will bar initiative ballot titles written above an eighth-grade reading level. And canvassers will have to verify that petition signers have either read the ballot title or had it read aloud to them.

In South Dakota, sponsors will need to make sure their petition titles appears in 14-point type on the front page and 16-point font on the back, where people typically sign.

And in Florida, volunteers will have to register with the state if they gather more than 25 petition signatures from outside their family or risk facing felony charges punishable by up to five years in prison.

Across about dozen states, roughly 40 bills restricting or revamping the citizen initiative process have passed at least one legislative chamber this year, according to a review by The Associated Press. Many already have been signed into law. Some advocates for the initiative process are alarmed by the trend.

“Globally, as there’s movements to expand direct democracy. In the United States it’s contracting,” said Dane Waters, chair of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, who has advised ballot campaigns in over 20 nations.

Most of the new restrictions come from Republican lawmakers in states where petitions have been used to place abortion rights, marijuana legalization and other progressive initiatives on the ballot. GOP lawmakers contend their measures are shielding state constitutions from outside interests.

“This is not a bill to restrict. It is a bill to protect — to make sure that our constitutional system is one of integrity, and that it’s free of fraud,” said state Sen. Jennifer Bradley of Florida, where the new initiative requirements already have been challenged in court.

Since Oregon voters first used the process in 1904, a total of 2,744 citizen initiatives have appeared on statewide ballots, with 42% wining approval, according to the Initiative and Referendum Institute.

But the process has long caused tension between voters and their elected representatives.

Lawmakers often perceive the initiative process as “an assault on their power and authority, and they want to limit it,” Waters said. “They view it, in my opinion, as a nuisance – a gnat that keeps bothering them.”

Because initiative petitions require thousands of signatures to qualify for the ballot, groups sponsoring them often pay people to solicit signatures outside shopping centers and public places. Some states now prohibit payments based on the number of signatures gathered.

States also are trying to restrict who can circulate petitions. A new Arkansas law requires paid petition canvassers to live in the state. And a new Montana law will make petition circulators wear badges displaying their name and home state.

The new Florida law expanding registration requirements for petition circulators also requires them to undergo state training and bars canvassers who are noncitizens, nonresidents or felons without their voting rights restored.

In addition to providing their name, address and birth date, people signing initiative petitions in Florida also will have to provide either their Florida driver’s license, state identification card or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

That information is not required in other states, said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a progressive group that has backed dozens of ballot initiatives in states. Hall said people concerned about privacy might hesitate to sign petitions.

“I work in ballot measures, and I deeply support many of the things that folks have tried to put on the ballot in Florida, ” Hall said, “and I don’t know if I could bring myself to do that – that’s a very prohibitive requirement.”

Many states already prescribe a particular format for initiative petitions. South Dakota’s new mandate for specific font sizes was prompted by allegations that some people got duped into signing a petition for abortion rights last year, said sponsoring state Sen. Amber Hulse, a Republican.

Printing the ballot title in large type “might make it harder for some issues to get on the ballot if people know what they’re signing. But that’s actually a good thing,” Hulse said.
More power for elected officials

Before they can collect signatures, petition sponsors must get approval from state officials. New measures in several states give those officials greater authority.

New Arkansas laws allow the attorney general to reject initiatives written above an eighth-grade reading level or which conflict with the U.S. Constitution or federal law. Utah’s lieutenant governor, who already can reject unconstitutional petitions, now also will be able to turn away petitions that are unlikely to provide adequate funding for their proposed laws.

A new Missouri law gives greater power to the secretary of state, instead of judges, to rewrite ballot summaries struck down as being insufficient or unfair.

Wall Street is pointing toward losses Tuesday ahead of a two-day meeting of the Federal Reserve, which is facing the diametrically opposed challenges of potential inflation and a softening employment landscape.

Futures for the S&P 500 lost 0.7% and futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 0.6%. Nasdaq futures slid 1%.

The Fed is expected to hold its benchmark interest rate steady for the third consecutive meeting after trimming them three times to close out 2024. Uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s trade policy — namely tariffs — has officials concerned about a potential resurgence of inflation, which has been hovering just above the Fed’s target rate of 2%.

The U.S. economy shrank 0.3% in the first quarter, the first drop in three years.

After enormous sell-offs with the market roiling from back-and-forth tariff announcements from the White House, Wall Street had been on a nine-day winning streak, its longest since 2004. That momentum lost steam Monday and the S&P 500 fell 0.6%.

This week’s pause coincides with a growing number of U.S. corporations pulling guidance do to uncertainty about what the tariffs will bring, and spelling out the economic hits they’ll take.

Shares of Ford Motor Co. fell 2.5% before the bell after the automaker said Monday it expects to take a $1.5 billion hit to its operating profit from tariffs this year. That followed General Motors, which last week trimmed its 2025 guidance and said it was anticipating a potential $5 billion tariff impact

Clorox sank 3.2% after it missed sales and profit targets in its most recent quarter and lowered its forecast to reflect “macroeconomic uncertainty” related to tariffs.

DoorDash tumbled more than 5% in premarket after the food delivery app said it was acquiring Britain’s Deliveroo for 2.9 billion pounds ($3.9 billion) in cash, expanding its business in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

In reporting its most recent financial results, DoorDash said demand for deliveries remained strong in the first quarter, even as more Americans feel increasingly uneasy about the U.S. economy.

Elsewhere, markets in China advanced after reopening from “Golden Week” holidays.

When asked at a routine briefing about comments Trump’s comments on NBC that he won’t cancel tariffs on China to pave the way for trade talks, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson reiterated Beijing’s stance that the U.S. “should stop threatening and pressuring and engage in dialogue with China on the basis of equality, respect, and mutual benefit.”

“If they want to fight, we will fight to the end; if they want to talk, the door is open,” Lin Jian said.

Late last week, China’s Commerce Ministry said it was evaluating various U.S. missives about holding talks.

The Shanghai Composite index added 1% to 3,311.89, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong was up 0.7% at 22,651.65.

A monthly survey measuring future activity in China’s services sector fell to its lowest level ever, excluding the pandemic, in a further sign the escalation of Trump’s trade war is hitting the world’s second-largest economy.

A federal judge on Thursday barred the Trump administration from deporting any Venezuelans from South Texas under an 18th-century wartime law and said President Donald Trump’s invocation of it was “unlawful.”

U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is the first judge to rule that the Alien Enemies Act cannot be used against people who, the Republican administration claims, are gang members invading the United States. Rodriguez said he wouldn’t interfere with the government’s right to deport people in the country illegally through other means, but it could not rely on the 227-year-old law to do so.

“Neither the Court nor the parties question that the Executive Branch can direct the detention and removal of aliens who engage in criminal activity in the United States,” wrote Rodriguez, who was nominated by Trump in 2018. But, the judge said, “the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”

In March, Trump issued a proclamation claiming that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was invading the U.S. He said he had special powers to deport immigrants, identified by his administration as gang members, without the usual court proceedings.

“The Court concludes that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” Rodriguez wrote.

In an interview on Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said the administration will be “aggressively appealing” the ruling and others that hem in the president’s deportation power.

“The judge doesn’t make that determination, whether the Alien Enemies Act can be deployed,” Vance said. “I think the president of the United States is the one who determines whether this country is being invaded.”

The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., said in a statement the judge had made clear “what we all knew to be true: The Trump administration illegally used the Alien Enemies Act to deport people without due process.”

The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times before in U.S. history, most recently during World War II, when it was cited to intern Japanese-Americans.

The proclamation triggered a flurry of litigation as the administration tried to ship migrants it claimed were gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Rodriguez’s ruling is significant because it is the first formal permanent injunction against the administration using the AEA and contends the president is misusing the law. “Congress never meant for this law to be used in this manner,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer who argued the case, in response to the ruling.

Rodriguez agreed, noting that the provision has only been used during the two World Wars and the War of 1812. Trump claimed Tren de Aragua was acting at the behest of the Venezuelan government, but Rodriguez found that the activities the administration accused it of did not amount to an invasion or “predatory incursion,” as the statute requires.

“The Proclamation makes no reference to and in no manner suggests that a threat exists of an organized, armed group of individuals entering the United States at the direction of Venezuela to conquer the country or assume control over a portion of the nation,” Rodriguez wrote. “Thus, the Proclamation’s language cannot be read as describing conduct that falls within the meaning of ‘invasion’ for purposes of the AEA.”

If the administration appeals, it would go first to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That is among the nation’s most conservative appeals courts and it also has ruled against what it saw as overreach on immigration matters by both the Obama and Biden administrations. In those cases, Democratic administrations had sought to make it easier for immigrants to remain in the U.S.

Guacamole has been spared from tariffs for now. But salsa may not be so lucky.

While President Donald Trump put threatened tariffs on Mexican avocados on pause, the U.S. government plans to put a nearly 21% duty on fresh Mexican tomatoes starting July 14. A duty — like a tariff — is a tax on imports, and this one would impact the 4 billion pounds of tomatoes the U.S. imports from Mexico each year.

Proponents say the import tax will help rebuild the shrinking U.S. tomato industry and ensure the produce eaten in the U.S. is also grown there. Mexico currently supplies around 70% of U.S. tomato market, up from 30% two decades ago, according to the Florida Tomato Exchange.

“Unless we even the playing field in terms of fair pricing, you’re not going to have a domestic industry for fresh tomatoes in the very near future,” Robert Guenther, the trade group’s executive vice president, said. Florida and California are the top U.S. producers of tomatoes, but most of California’s crop is turned into sauces and other products.

Opponents say the duty will make fresh tomatoes more expensive for U.S. buyers. NatureSweet, a San Antonio-based company that grows tomatoes in Mexico as well as the U.S., said it will be paying millions of dollars each month in duties if the decision isn’t reversed.

“We will look for ways to adapt or streamline our operations, but the truth is, we are always doing that so we run an efficient business already,” said Skip Hulett, NatureSweet’s chief legal officer. “Produce is not a large-margin business. We’re determining what portion of the cost we could absorb, but these added costs will most certainly need to be passed on to the consumer.”

Tim Richards, a professor at the Morrison School of Agribusiness at Arizona State University, expects U.S. retail prices for tomatoes to rise by around 10.5% if the duty goes through. Mexico’s government said last month it was convinced it could negotiate over the issue. But if the tomato tax takes effect, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has hinted her country may impose duties on chicken and pork legs imported from the U.S.

The tug-of-war over tomatoes has a long history. In 1996, shortly after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, the U.S. Department of Commerce investigated allegations that Mexico was exporting tomatoes to the U.S. at artificially low prices, a practice known as dumping.

The U.S. government agreed to suspend the investigation if Mexico met certain rules, including selling its tomatoes at a minimum price. Since then, the agreement has been subject to periodic reviews, but the two sides always reached an agreement that avoided duties.

But last month, the Commerce Department announced its withdrawal from the latest agreement, saying it had been “flooded with comments” from U.S. tomato growers who want better protection from Mexican imports.

Tomatoes are a labor-intensive crop, Guenther said, and the U.S. industry typically relies on immigrant workers through the H-2A visa program. That program required farmers to pay workers an average of $16.98 per hour last year, an amount that has jumped as labor has become harder to find. Richards estimates that workers on Mexican tomato farms earn about one-tenth that rate.

NatureSweet acknowledges that it’s more cost-effective to grow tomatoes in Mexico, but says climate is one of the biggest reasons. The company’s Mexican greenhouses don’t need lighting, heating or cooling systems because of the year-round weather conditions.