Share this story

Trump fires Democrats on Federal Trade Commission

WASHINGTON (NYT) — President Donald Trump fired the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, a rejection of the corporate regulator’s traditional independence that will clear the way for the administration’s agenda and could draw a legal challenge.

ADVERTISING

The White House told the Democrats, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, that the president was terminating their roles. Congress created the FTC to enforce consumer protection and antitrust laws. It typically has five members, with the president’s party holding three seats and the opposing party two.

Trump’s maneuver is his latest attempt to assert the power of the presidency over independent regulators at agencies of U.S. government. Most of those regulators are presidential appointees who have traditionally had wide latitude to determine the direction of their agencies.

But the Trump administration has disregarded traditional protections for those presidential appointees.

US judge blocks Trump’s transgender military ban

(Reuters) — A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the U.S. military from enforcing President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from military service while a lawsuit by 20 current and would-be service members challenging the measure goes forward.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington found that Trump’s January 27 order, one of a several issued by the Republican president targeting legal rights for transgender Americans, likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on sex discrimination.

Reyes was appointed by President Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic predecessor.

In response to Trump’s order, the military said on February 11 that it would no longer allow transgender individuals to join the military and would stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender transition for service members. Later that month, the military said it would begin expelling transgender members.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit argued that the order was illegal, pointing to a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that employment discrimination against transgender people is a form of illegal sex discrimination.

Two convicted in smuggling death of 53 migrants in Texas in 2022

(Reuters) — A federal jury in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday convicted two Mexican men for their roles in the smuggling death of 53 migrants packed into a truck during sweltering heat in June 2022, the Justice Department said.

More than 60 migrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras were stuck in a tractor-trailer with malfunctioning air conditioning that was abandoned on the outskirts of San Antonio on June 27, 2022, a day when temperatures soared as high as 103 Fahrenheit (39.4 Celsius).

Forty-eight people were found dead at the scene and another five died in hospital. Among the dead were six children and a pregnant woman, the Justice Department said in a press release. Eleven others were hospitalized.

Some migrants inside the trailer lost consciousness, while others clawed at the walls trying to escape, the Justice Department said, citing court documents and evidence presented at trial.