Thursday, April 02, 2026
Trump Has Discussed Firing Attorney General Pam Bondi - The New York Times
Trump Has Discussed Firing Attorney General Pam Bondi
"President Trump has not made a final decision, but he has floated the idea of replacing Ms. Bondi with Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator.
President Trump has discussed firing Attorney General Pam Bondi in recent days as he grows frustrated with her leadership at the Justice Department and her handling of the Epstein files, according to four people familiar with the conversations.
Mr. Trump has floated the idea of replacing Ms. Bondi with Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations by the president.
Mr. Trump has not made a final decision, and Ms. Bondi’s allies pointed to photos of her and the president traveling to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to dispute the notion that the president is planning to fire her.
“Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” Mr. Trump said in a statement to The New York Times. A spokesman for Ms. Bondi referred to Mr. Trump’s statement.
But the president has been souring on Ms. Bondi for months. Among his top complaints is Ms. Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files, which has become a political liability for Mr. Trump among his supporters. He has also complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and vented about what he sees as the department’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his foes, according to people who have spoken to him recently.
The House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Ms. Bondi last month to compel her to testify about the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. Her deposition is scheduled for April 14, though she and Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s Republican chairman, have been working together to avoid the deposition, even though it is unclear whether it is legally possible to withdraw a subpoena.
Mr. Trump has also said the Justice Department under Ms. Bondi has not moved aggressively enough to prosecute his political enemies. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a social media post directed at Ms. Bondi in which he grumbled about the lack of indictments.
During his second term, Mr. Trump had been hesitant to oust members of his cabinet after his first term was marred by frequent firings and narratives of staff chaos. Some officials said Mr. Trump’s posture had shifted in recent weeks, buoyed by the smooth process of removing Kristi Noem from her role as secretary of homeland security and the straightforward confirmation process of Markwayne Mullin to replace her.
Mr. Trump has sent mixed signals about Ms. Bondi over the last year. He has complained about her privately, arguing that she has not been effective enough in pursuing his priorities. He has been particularly angry about the Justice Department’s failure to win cases involving his political opponents, including against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the New York attorney general, Letitia James.
At the same time, Mr. Trump has praised her loyalty in public and speaks with her often.
If Mr. Trump does fire Ms. Bondi, officials said, he has not made a final decision about who should replace her, though he has discussed elevating Mr. Zeldin.
Mr. Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York who unsuccessfully ran to be his state’s governor, has been one of Mr. Trump’s most reliable foot soldiers. As the administrator of the E.P.A., charged with ensuring the protection of human health and the environment, Mr. Zeldin has made it his mission to promote Mr. Trump’s vision of “energy dominance.”
“He’s our secret weapon,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Zeldin in February at a White House event promoting the coal industry, adding, “He’s getting those approvals done in record setting time.”
Representatives for the E.P.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Glenn Thrush, Katie Rogers, Lisa Friedman and Maxine Joselow contributed reporting.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration."
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
Analysis: Court appears skeptical of Trump's effort to limit birthright citizenship - YouTube
(Birthright citizenship—legally called ***jus soli*** (“right of the soil”)—means a child automatically becomes a citizen by being born in a country, regardless of the parents’ citizenship.
There are **two main types**:
* **Unrestricted jus soli** (almost anyone born there gets citizenship)
* **Restricted jus soli** (only under certain conditions, like parents’ legal status)
---
# 🌎 Countries with **Unrestricted Birthright Citizenship**
These countries grant citizenship to **nearly all people born on their soil**:
### Americas (the core region)
* United States
* Canada
* Mexico
### Caribbean & Central America
* Antigua and Barbuda
* Barbados
* Belize
* Dominica
* Grenada
* Jamaica
* Saint Kitts and Nevis
* Saint Lucia
* Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
* Trinidad and Tobago
### South America
* Argentina
* Brazil
* Chile *(with minor exceptions)*
* Peru
* Venezuela
* Uruguay
---
# ⚖️ Countries with **Restricted Birthright Citizenship**
These countries allow birthright citizenship **only if certain conditions are met** (such as a parent being a citizen or permanent resident):
### Europe
* United Kingdom
* Ireland
* France
* Germany
### Africa
* South Africa
* Lesotho
### Asia & Middle East
* Pakistan *(mostly jus soli with exceptions)*
* India *(restricted since 1987/2004 reforms)*
### Oceania
* Australia
* New Zealand
---
# ❗ Important Context
* **Most of the world does NOT have birthright citizenship.**
Countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa mainly follow ***jus sanguinis*** (“right of blood”), where citizenship depends on parents’ nationality.
* The **Americas are unique**—they have the strongest tradition of birthright citizenship). ChatGPT
Trump Signs Order Seeking Federal Control of Mail Voting as He Promotes False Claims
President Trump on Tuesday stepped up efforts to promote his false claims of widespread voting fraud, signing an executive order of questionable constitutionality seeking to create a national list of citizens that would determine voting eligibility and restrict mail ballots.
Mr. Trump acknowledged that the order, which comes as a bill he has been pushing to restrict mail voting has languished in Congress, could face legal hurdles.
“I believe it’s foolproof,” Mr. Trump said about the executive order before signing it in the Oval Office. “And maybe it’ll be tested. Maybe it won’t.”
The president has no explicit Constitutional authority over elections, and many aspects of the order appear difficult to enforce.
It directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a “state citizenship list” based on data from citizenship and naturalization records, Social Security records and other federal databases.
The order directs federal officials to send the list to state election officials, and orders the attorney general to prioritize prosecution of election officials who provide federal ballots to ineligible voters. It also directs the U.S. Postal Service not to transmit mail-in or absentee ballots from any individual not included on the “state citizenship list.”
Election experts and Democratic state election officials rejected the president’s directive as legally invalid. Officials in Arizona and Oregon pledged to fight the executive order in court. Marc Elias, a Democratic election lawyer, also vowed to file a lawsuit against the order.
“The Constitution doesn’t allow the executive to take over elections administration, that’s a job for the state legislatures or Congress, and so I don’t think this is going to pass any sort of judicial muster,” Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state, said in an interview. “So this is a big, giant waste of time, and it’s an attention grab from the Trump administration.”
He added: “The greatest threat to American elections is Donald Trump lying about them. Our elections are in good shape.”
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Mr. Trump has long fixated on mail-in voting to bolster his baseless claims of widespread fraud in elections. On Tuesday, he reiterated his false claims that “cheating among mail-in voting is legendary.” Voter fraud in the United States is extremely rare, and Trump’s continued claims about large-scale “cheating” in elections have never been proven or substantiated.
The Constitution grants no explicit authority to the executive branch regarding elections. It grants the states broad authority to conduct elections, including the “time, place and manner,” and it dictates that Congress may pass laws overseeing elections.
Courts have largely blocked Mr. Trump’s previous executive order, signed last year, seeking to require documentary proof of citizenship to vote, among other changes. And in January, a federal judge blocked the administration from withholding federal election funds to states that do not alter their voting procedures in line with the president’s demands.
Mr. Trump’s latest order attempts to harness the U.S. Postal Service to control who gets access to mail ballots.
“The states run these elections,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who joined Mr. Trump in the Oval Office Tuesday. “If they want to use the U.S. Postal Service, they are going to get a code, a bar code from the U.S. Postal Service, and they are going to put that on the envelope, and we will have one envelope per vote.”
A U.S. Postal Service spokesman said that agency was reviewing the order.
Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, said the executive order is “flatly illegal.” He added: “The president doesn’t have any authority to write the rules that govern our elections. The Constitution gives that power to Congress and to the states, not to the president.”
Mr. Trump’s announcement that the government is creating a “state citizenship list” comes as the administration has been largely stymied in its efforts to build a national voter database. The Justice Department has attempted to get the private, unredacted voter rolls from nearly every state in the country, but only about 12 states have agreed to provide the data, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Attempts to force at least 29 states to hand over their voter rolls through litigation have so far been unsuccessful. Some Republican-controlled states, including Utah, Oklahoma and West Virginia, have been among those that have resisted the Justice Department’s requests.
Election officials have said that any national voter list would likely be rife with errors because each state’s voter file is updated every day, changing as voters move away, naturalize, turn 18 or die. As soon as a national list were created, it would be out of date.
Mr. Trump has for weeks been pushing Congress to pass a bill that would impose restrictions on voting and mail-in ballots and would require states to turn over their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security for the agency to remove people flagged as noncitizens.
But that legislation has no clear path to passage, with Democrats unanimously opposing it and some Republican senators objecting to adding restrictions on voting by mail, which is a main method of voting in multiple states.
Lawmakers left Washington last Friday for a planned two-week recess with no significant progress toward passing the measure.
Some Republicans have committed to attaching Mr. Trump’s desired restrictions to a new bill they can push through on a party-line vote using a special process known as budget reconciliation. But that procedure has strict limits that may make it difficult to do so.
Though Mr. Trump has long been skeptical of voting by mail, criticizing the practice while a candidate during the 2016 election, it was not until it became a partisan liability that he took a far more aggressive posture.
During the 2020 election, Democrats began to vastly outpace Republicans in voting by mail, reaching a nearly 2-to-1 advantage in mail ballots, according to data from the M.I.T. Election Data and Science Lab. After his loss in 2020, Mr. Trump made mail voting a target of his attempts to subvert the election, making numerous false and unsubstantiated claims about voting by mail and filing multiple lawsuits challenging mail ballots.
As he has continued to criticize the process, Democrats have maintained an advantage in mail voting nationwide, though the gap has narrowed. During the 2024 election, 37 percent of Democrats reported voting by mail, compared to 24 percent of Republicans, according to the M.I.T. Election Data and Science Lab.
Overall, voting by mail was used by about one in three American voters in the 2024 election. And earlier this month, Mr. Trump cast a mail ballot for a special election in Florida.
Adam Sella contributed reporting.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight."
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Halts White House Ballroom Construction
Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Halts White House Ballroom Construction
What We’re Covering Today
“White House Ballroom: A federal judge ordered construction of President Trump’s White House ballroom halted on Tuesday, saying work must come to a stop “unless and until Congress blesses this project.” Mr. Trump quickly assailed the organization that sued over the project, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, calling it “a Radical Left Group of Lunatics” on social media. Read more ›
Public Media: The executive order Mr. Trump issued last year barring the federal government from funding NPR and PBS was unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. But the ruling’s effect will be limited: Congress cut off federal money for public broadcasters last year. Read more ›
Trump Library: A two-minute video with renderings of Mr. Trump’s planned presidential library in Miami shows a skyscraper with a golden escalator and airplanes in the lobby. The video appeared to include elements generated by artificial intelligence: In one scene, an enormous American flag on the outside of the tower appears to have 56 stars.”
‘Discriminatory’ Israeli death penalty law sparks international criticism Summary
‘Discriminatory’ Israeli death penalty law sparks international criticism
The Israeli Knesset passed a bill allowing the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism in the West Bank, sparking international condemnation. Critics, including the EU, Spain, and Germany, argue the law is discriminatory and a step towards apartheid, as it would not apply to Jewish extremists. The bill, which allows for executions within 90 days of sentencing, is facing legal challenges in Israel.
EU, Spain and Germany, as well as rights groups, condemn law to execute Palestinian convicted terrorists
A vote in the Israeli Knesset approving a bill sanctioning the execution of Palestinians convicted on terror charges for deadly attacks, but not Jewish extremists accused of similar crimes, has been greeted with widespread international condemnation.
“The death penalty bill in Israel is very concerning to us in the EU,” the EU spokesperson Anouar El Anouni said in Brussels. “This is a clear step backwards – the introduction of the death penalty, together with the discriminatory nature of the law.
The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, described the bill as “a step closer to apartheid”, joining rights groups and politicians in expressing his concern.
“It is an asymmetric measure that would not apply to Israelis who committed the same crimes. Same crime, different punishment. That is not justice. It is a step closer to apartheid,” Sánchez wrote on X.
Germany, traditionally one of Israel’s closest allies in Europe said it could not endorse the new law. “The German government views the law passed yesterday with great concern,” the government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said in a statement.
“The rejection of the death penalty is a fundamental principle of German policy,” Kornelius said, adding: “Such a law would likely apply exclusively to Palestinians in the Palestinian territories.”
The legislation makes the death penalty the default punishment for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank found guilty of intentionally carrying out deadly attacks deemed acts of terrorism by a military court.
According to the bill, those sentenced to death will be held in a separate facility with no visits except from authorised personnel, with legal consultations conducted only by video link. Executions will be carried out within 90 days of sentencing.
Israel has rarely used the death penalty, applying it only in exceptional cases. The Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was the last person to be executed, in 1962.
The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the bill’s strongest backers, has repeatedly worn a noose-shaped lapel pin, symbolising executions under the proposal.
A security committee made some amendments to the bill, which last week passed its first vote. Israel’s public broadcaster KAN reported that executions would be carried out by hanging.
The measure will allow courts to impose the death penalty without a request from prosecutors and without requiring unanimity, instead permitting a simple majority decision. Military courts in the occupied West Bank will also be empowered to hand down death sentences, with the defence minister able to submit an opinion.
Adam Coogle, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said: “Israeli officials argue that the imposing the death penalty is about security, but in reality it entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid.
“The death penalty is irreversible and cruel. Combined with its severe restrictions on appeals and its 90-day execution timeline, this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny.”
Shaista Aziz, Oxfam’s campaign engagement lead, said: “This bill is another horrifying act of violence. Israel is violating international law. This new law effectively ensures that the death penalty in Israel will apply only to Palestinians, even as the illegal Israeli occupation has lately seen a surge in the coordinated attacks and executions of Palestinians by settler militias and military.
“Israel holds more than 9,000 Palestinians in its jails – many unlawfully and subject to inhumane conditions, starvation and torture as state policy.”
In Israel, the new law is already facing legal challenges. Several Israeli human rights groups and three members of parliament filed petitions to the supreme court seeking to overturn it.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the law created “two parallel tracks, both designed to apply to Palestinians” and should be struck down on constitutional grounds.“
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