Trump demands ‘full throated apology’ from Maine governor over trans athlete dispute: Live updates

Trump has issued a presidential memo asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to “take all appropriate action” against law firms to file challenges to the Trump administration’s actions.

In the memo, Trump said the lawyers and law firms engage in “unethical” behavior by filing frivolous lawsuits that seek to delay the president’s agenda – rather than challenge its legality.

He asked Bondi to investigate these and refer attorneys to disciplinary action whether it’s terminating a federal contract with a law firm, reassessing security clearances, bringing claims of unethical behavior and more.

Lawyers for Donald Trump’s administration are considering whether his invocation of an 18th-century wartime law allows federal law enforcement officers to enter homes without a warrant.

The president has deployed the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport, without due process, alleged members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, designated a foreign terrorist organization. Officials, however, have admitted that many of the immigrants flown to a prison in El Salvador last weekend don’t have criminal records.

Trump is relying on the law for only the fourth time in U.S. history. It was most recently used to detain Japanese Americans, including U.S. citizens, during the Second World War.

“Terrorists don’t get to hide behind closed doors,” said an official with the Department of Justice in a statement to The Independent from the White House.

Companies that speak out about social justice or protecting the environment are under threat like never before, writes Alan Rusbridger. With Trump in charge, we need to celebrate dissenting voices – not silence them

President Trump demanded that Maine Governor Janet Mills apologize to him after she clashed with him during a governors’ meeting at the White House over allowing transgender athletes to compete.

“While the State of Maine has apologized for their Governor’s strong, but totally incorrect, statement about men playing in women’s sports while at the White House House Governor’s Conference, we have not heard from the Governor herself, and she is the one that matters in such cases,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The Department of Education found that Maine violated Title IX protections by allowing a transgender girl to play in women’s and girls’ sports. It comes after Trump signed an executive order banning trans athletes from competing on the team that aligns with their gender identity.

At the heated meeting last month, Mills told the president, “we’ll see you in court” after clashing over the issue.

“Therefore, we need a full throated apology from the Governor herself, and a statement that she will never make such an unlawful challenge to the Federal Government again, before this case can be settled,” Trump wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security said it would revoke legal protections for approximately 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who have come to the United States since October 2022 under a humanitarian parole program.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said they would lose legal protections on April 24 – 30 days after the publication of the notice in the Federal Register.

Under the humanitarian program, migrants could come to the U.S. legally if they were from war-torn countries or those facing political instability.

Here are some highlights:

During a high-stakes hearing over Donald Trump’s use of a centuries-old wartime law to swiftly deport suspected Venezuelan gang members, a federal judge rebuked lawyers for the Department of Justice for their “intemperate and disrespectful language” in their responses to court orders.

Trump and his allies have threatened to impeach Judge James Boasberg after he temporarily blocked the administration from deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act and questioned whether the government intentionally defied his court orders to turn planes around before they emptied out dozens of people into a prison in El Salvador last week.

Despite the pressure food banks find themselves under, with funding down from pandemic highs and inflation high, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has chosen to pause and review existing programs, canceling some $500 million in deliveries.

Such an interruption can have serious consequences for people reliant on food banks — one in every six Americans — and especially those in rural areas.

Food banks across the country — already facing huge cuts to locally grown food assistance — learned this week that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is canceling $500 million in expected food deliveries, further disrupting help at a time when need continues to rise.

Vince Hall, chief government relations officer at Feeding America, the country’s largest hunger-relief organization, said some local food banks and food pantries were told that USDA deliveries of commodities such as cheese and meat are being canceled at least temporarily. Many others were not notified by federal officials that their deliveries were not coming, he said.

Hall characterized the USDA’s decision as a pause to review existing programs and said his organization is hoping the administration will resume purchases and deliveries “with minimum disruption on the flow of food.” Groups working in rural areas, which rely more on government food than gleaning, would be especially hard hit by a lack of commodities, he said.

But rather, Trump received praise from almost all Republican lawmakers despite the fact that he subverted their power and took away their authority.

Only a few, like Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, who helped put Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary over the finish line, alluded to proposing legislation.

But it’s just the latest example of Congress utterly abdicating its duties in the name of Trump.

Alex Woodward listened in.