WASHINGTON: The FBI will work to “zero out” the population of Americans detained or held hostage in foreign countries, Director Kash Patel said Thursday at a State Department ceremony honoring the hostage community and their families.
“My singular promise to you in this community is that I will do everything as the director of the FBI to marshal the resources necessary to make sure that no other American family feels that pain,” he said during the flag-raising event.
Patel spoke as the Trump administration is working to bring home Americans from multiple countries, including Russia and Venezuela. The government is also trying to secure the release of remaining American hostages held by Hamas, with Adam Boehler, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be special envoy for hostage affairs, leading direct talks with the militant group.
“We still don’t have everybody back,” Patel said. “Whatever lawful authorities we have at the FBI, we are going to give 24/7, 365 days to make sure that we zero out this number and to make sure we prevent others from going into situations that you are now all too familiar with.”
The FBI houses a multiagency fusion cell that handles hostage cases involving Americans in foreign countries. The State Department, meanwhile, relies on a special presidential envoy — the position for which Boehler has been tapped — to negotiate the release of Americans who are wrongfully detained.
“When the president asked me if there was any job that I thought that I wanted to focus on,” Boehler said Thursday, “I told him that this was the only one I would look at because I think there’s nothing more important for this country than for everyone to know that if they’re abroad and they’re taken, that the country has their back.”
The Trump administration last month returned home Marc Fogel, an American schoolteacher jailed in Russia on drug charges, as part of a prisoner swap.
FBI committed to bringing home American hostages held in foreign countries, director says
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FBI committed to bringing home American hostages held in foreign countries, director says
- Trump administration working to bring home Americans from multiple countries, including Russia and Venezuela
- US government also trying to secure the release of remaining American hostages held by Hamas
Trump approval rating dips; many wary of his wielding of power, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
- Fifty-seven percent - including one-third of Republicans - disagreed with the statement that "it's okay for a U.S. president to withhold funding from universities if the president doesn’t agree with how the university is run"
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump's public approval rating edged down to its lowest level since his return to the White House, as Americans showed signs of wariness over his efforts to broaden his power, a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday found.
Some 42% of respondents to the six-day poll approved of Trump's performance as president, down from 43% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted three weeks earlier, and from 47% in the hours after his January 20 inauguration.
The start of Trump's term has left his political opponents stunned as he has signed dozens of executive orders expanding his influence over both government departments and over private institutions such as universities and law firms.
While Trump's approval rating remains higher than the ratings seen during most of his Democratic predecessor's presidency, the results of the Reuters/Ipsos poll suggest many Americans are uncomfortable with his moves to punish universities he sees as too liberal and to install himself as the board chair of the Kennedy Center, a major theater and cultural institution in Washington.
Some 83% of the 4,306 respondents said that the U.S. president must obey federal court rulings even if he doesn't want to. Trump administration officials could face criminal contempt charges for violating a federal judge's order halting deportations of alleged members of a Venezuelan gang who had no chance to challenge their removals.
Fifty-seven percent - including one-third of Republicans - disagreed with the statement that "it's okay for a U.S. president to withhold funding from universities if the president doesn’t agree with how the university is run."
Trump, who has argued universities are failing to fight antisemitism on campus, has frozen vast sums of federal money budgeted for U.S. universities, including more than $2 billion for Harvard University alone.
A similar share of respondents - 66% - said they did not think the president should be in control of premier cultural institutions such as national museums and theaters. Trump last month ordered the Smithsonian Institution, the vast museum and research complex that is a premier exhibition space for U.S. history and culture, to remove "improper" ideology.
On a range of issues, from inflation and immigration to taxation and rule of law, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that Americans who disapproved of Trump's performance outnumbered those who approved on every issue in the poll. On immigration, his strongest area of support, 45% of respondents approved of Trump's performance but 46% disapproved.
The poll had a margin of error of about 2 percentage points.
Some 59% of respondents - including a third of Republicans - said America was losing credibility on the global stage.
Three-quarters of respondents said Trump should not run for a third term in office -- a path Trump has said he would like to pursue, though the U.S. Constitution bars him from doing so. A majority of Republican respondents -- 53% -- said Trump should not seek a third term.
Harvard sues Trump administration to stop the freeze of more than $2 billion in grants
- Harvard President Alan Garber said the university would not bend to the government’s demands
BOSTON: Harvard University announced Monday that it was suing the Trump administration to halt a freeze on more than $2.2 billion in grants after the institution said it would defy the Trump administration’s demands to limit activism on campus.
In a letter to Harvard earlier this month, Trump’s administration had called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university, as well as changes to its admissions policies. It also demanded the university audit views of diversity on campus, and stop recognizing some student clubs.
Harvard President Alan Garber said the university would not bend to the government’s demands. Hours later, the government froze billions of dollars in federal funding.
US Supreme Court appears likely to uphold Obamacare’s preventive care coverage mandate
- The plaintiffs argued that requirements to cover those medications and services are unconstitutional because a volunteer board of medical experts that recommended them should have been Senate- approved
WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court seemed likely to uphold a key preventive-care provision of the Affordable Care Act in a case heard Monday.
Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, along with the court’s three liberals, appeared skeptical of arguments that Obamacare’s process for deciding which services must be fully covered by private insurance is unconstitutional.
The case could have big ramifications for the law’s preventive care coverage requirements for an estimated 150 million Americans. Medications and services that could be affected include statins to prevent heart disease, lung cancer screenings, HIV-prevention drugs and medication to lower the chance of breast cancer for high-risk women.
The plaintiffs argued that requirements to cover those medications and services are unconstitutional because a volunteer board of medical experts that recommended them should have been Senate- approved. The challengers have also raised religious and procedural objections to some requirements.
The Trump administration defended the mandate before the court, though President Donald Trump has been a critic of the law. The Justice Department said board members don’t need Senate approval because they can be removed by the health and human services secretary.
A majority of the justices seemed inclined to side with the government. Kavanaugh said he didn’t see indications in the law that the board was designed to have the kind of independent power that would require Senate approval, and Barrett questioned the plaintiff’s apparently “maximalist” interpretation of the board’s role.
“We don’t just go around creating independent agencies. More often, we destroy independent agencies,” said Justice Elena Kagan said about the court’s prior opinions.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas seemed likely to side with the plaintiffs. And some suggested they could send the case back to the conservative US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That would likely leave unanswered questions about which medications and services remain covered.
A ruling is expected by the end of June.
The case came before the Supreme Court after the appeals court struck down some preventive care coverage requirements. It sided with Christian employers and Texas residents who argued they can’t be forced to provide full insurance coverage for things like medication to prevent HIV and some cancer screenings.
They were represented by well-known conservative attorney Jonathan Mitchell, who represented Trump before the high court in a dispute about whether he could appear on the 2024 ballot.
Not all preventive care was threatened by the ruling. A 2023 analysis prepared by the nonprofit KFF found that some screenings, including mammography and cervical cancer screening, would still be covered without out-of-pocket costs.
The appeals court found that coverage requirements were unconstitutional because they came from a body — the United States Preventive Services Task Force — whose members were not nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Homeland Security Secretary Noem’s purse stolen at DC restaurant, officials say
- The department said Noem had cash in her purse to pay for gifts, dinner and other activities for her family on Easter
WASHINGTON: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C. restaurant Sunday night, according to department officials.
The department in an email said Noem had money in her purse to buy gifts for her children and grandchildren and to pay for Easter dinner and other activities.
The department in an email didn’t specify what was stolen, but CNN — which was first to report the story — said the thief took about $3,000 in cash, as well as Noem’s keys, driver’s license, passport, checks, makeup bag, medication and Homeland Security badge. The department said Noem had cash in her purse to pay for gifts, dinner and other activities for her family on Easter.
The Homeland Security Secretary is protected by US Secret Service agents. The Secret Service referred questions about the incident to Homeland Security headquarters.
US lawmakers in new push to free wrongly deported migrant
- Yassamin Ansari: ‘I’m in El Salvador to shine a light on Kilmar’s story and keep the pressure on Donald Trump to secure his safe return home’
- Maxwell Frost: ‘Trump is illegally arresting, jailing, and deporting people with no due process’
SAN SALVADOR: A delegation of Democratic lawmakers arrived in El Salvador on Monday in a new push to secure the release of a wrongly deported US resident at the center of a mounting political row.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was sent back to his country and remains imprisoned despite the Supreme Court ordering the administration of President Donald Trump to facilitate the man’s return to the United States.
“I’m in El Salvador to shine a light on Kilmar’s story and keep the pressure on Donald Trump to secure his safe return home,” congresswoman Yassamin Ansari of Arizona said on social media.
“We want to make sure that Kilmar is still alive. We want to make sure that he has access to counsel,” added Ansari, who was accompanied by fellow US House Democrats Robert Garcia, Maxwell Frost and Maxine Dexter.
“Trump is illegally arresting, jailing, and deporting people with no due process,” Frost wrote on X.
“We must hold the Administration accountable for these illegal acts and demand Kilmar’s release. Today it’s him, tomorrow it could be anyone else,” the Florida representative added.
The visit comes days after Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen managed to meet with Abrego Garcia, though only after a considerable effort.
Van Hollen, who represents Maryland where Abrego Garcia and his family have lived for years, accused the Central American nation of staging a photo of him supposedly sipping margaritas with Abrego Garcia.
Trump’s administration has paid El Salvador President Nayib Bukele millions of dollars to lock up nearly 300 migrants it says are criminals and gang members — including Abrego Garcia.
The 29-year-old was detained in Maryland last month and expelled to El Salvador along with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans who were deported shortly after Trump invoked a rarely used wartime authority.
The Trump administration admitted that Abrego Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error,” and the Supreme Court ruled that the government must “facilitate” his return.
But Trump has since doubled down, insisting Abrego Garcia is in fact a gang member.
Bukele, who was hosted at the White House last week, said he did not have the power to return Abrego Garcia.
The migrant’s supporters note he had protected legal status and no criminal conviction in the United States.
“My parents fled an authoritarian regime in Iran where people were ‘disappeared’ — I refuse to sit back and watch it happen here,” Ansari said in a statement.
“What happened to Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not just one family’s nightmare — it is a constitutional crisis that should outrage every single one of us,” said Dexter, a congresswoman from Oregon.
Abrego Garcia told Van Hollen that he was initially imprisoned at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison for gang members, but was later transferred to a jail in the western department of Santa Ana.
