California
Appeals court blocks Trump administration from ending legal protections for 600,000 Venezuelans
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the United States.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status for Venezuelans while the case proceeded through court.
An email to the Department of Homeland Security for comment was not immediately returned.
The 9th Circuit judges found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior extension of temporary protected status because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit it. Then-President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration had extended temporary protected status for people from Venezuela.
“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” Judge Kim Wardlaw, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, wrote for panel. The other two judges on the panel were also nominated by Democratic presidents.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco found in March that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that President Donald Trump’s Republican administration overstepped its authority in terminating the protections and were motivated by racial animus in doing so. Chen ordered a freeze on the terminations, but the Supreme Court reversed him without explanation, which is common in emergency appeals.
It is unclear what effect Friday’s ruling will have on the estimated 350,000 Venezuelans in the group of 600,000 whose protections expired in April. Their lawyers say some have already been fired from jobs, detained in immigration jails, separated from their U.S. citizen children and even deported. Protections for the remaining 250,000 Venezuelans are set to expire Sept. 10.
Congress authorized temporary protected status, or TPS, as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to grant legal immigration status to people fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to that home country.
In ending the protections, Noem said that conditions in Venezuela had improved and that it was not in the U.S. national interest to allow migrants from there to stay on for what is a temporary program.
Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. Their country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.
Attorneys for the U.S. government argued the Homeland Security secretary’s clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program were not subject to judicial review. They also denied that Noem’s actions were motivated by racial animus.
New York
Doctor who sexually abused patients gets 24-year sentence
NEW YORK (AP) — A doctor who sexually abused sedated patients at a New York City hospital and raped women who were unconscious at his home has been sentenced to 24 years in prison.
Zhi Alan Cheng admitted abusing seven women, including three female patients he was treating at New York-Presbyterian Queens hospital, the Queens district attorney’s office said. He had pleaded guilty in June to four counts of rape and three counts of sexual abuse and was sentenced Thursday.
Prosecutors also alleged Cheng abused an eighth woman who was a patient at the hospital. He entered an Alford plea on that charge, meaning that he did not admit guilt but acknowledged that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict.
Most of the victims had no memory of the abuse and were sedated. One of the women woke up in the middle of an assault after she had been sedated for a gastrointestinal procedure, prosecutors said.
Cheng, 35, was arrested in 2022 after a female acquaintance discovered a video of him abusing her at his home while she was passed out. Searches of his home and devices uncovered video evidence of the doctor abusing women at his home and workplace, according to prosecutors. They also discovered liquid anesthesia.
Cheng has been barred from practicing medicine. Prosecutors have said that New York-Presbyterian officials cooperated in the criminal investigation.
Washington
Judge blocks Trump from removing Voice of America director
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from removing Michael Abramowitz as director of Voice of America, the government-run news outlet that the White House has targeted for deep staffing cuts.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan, ruled that Abramowitz cannot be removed from his position without the approval of the majority of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board.
In June, layoff notices were sent to more than 600 employees of Voice of America and the government agency that oversees it. Abramowitz was placed on administrative leave along with almost the entire Voice of America staff. He was told he would be fired effective Aug. 31.
Lamberth concluded that firing Abramowitz would be “plainly contrary to law.”
“The defendants’ own representations, in and out of court, indicate that they have already effectively removed Abramowitz from his role as director,” the judge wrote.
Kari Lake, whom President Donald Trump named as a senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, told a congressional panel that the agency is “rotten to the core.” The agency also houses Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba.
The networks, which together reach an estimated 427 million people, date to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations trying to extend U.S. influence and combat authoritarianism.
Georgia
Judge throws out campaign finance lawsuit between Republican rivals in governor’s race
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A federal judge last Thursday threw out a lawsuit by one of Georgia’s top Republican officials against his chief rival for the 2026 GOP nomination for governor that claimed the opponent had an unfair advantage in campaign fundraising.
The judge’s ruling allows Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones to continue raising unlimited campaign funds using a special leadership committee granted to a select group of Georgia officials under a 2021 law. The suit was filed by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, who says the committee gives Jones an edge that violates Carr’s constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection.
Carr filed suit as a candidate, not in his official capacity as attorney general, as he and Jones compete as leading candidates for the Republican nomination to succeed term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp. The GOP primary is next May.
Filed Aug. 7 in Atlanta, Carr’s lawsuit asked a U.S. District Court judge to cut off Jones’ ability to raise and spend money using his leadership committee. That’s a special fundraising vehicle that allows only the governor, lieutenant governor and a small group of legislative leaders to raise unlimited funds.
The law doesn’t give Carr access to that type of committee. Instead, he must rely on a regular campaign committee limited to raising $8,400 from each primary donor plus $4,200 for any primary runoff.
In her ruling Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Marie Calvert wrote that “it is undisputed” that Jones’ leadership committee gives him a fundraising advantage.
She still dismissed the lawsuit, noting that Carr wasn’t challenging the constitutionality of the law itself, but instead sued Jones and his campaign for “doing exactly what Georgia law allows them to do.”
By seeking to blame Jones for the disparity rather than the fundraising law, the judge wrote, Carr was asking the court “to twist itself into a logical pretzel.”
The favorable ruling for Jones comes two weeks after the lieutenant governor got a political boost from President Donald Trump, who endorsed Jones’ candidacy for governor.
Carr’s campaign spokesperson, Julia Mazzone, said the dismissal was based “on a procedural technicality, not on the merits.” She said the campaign was considering further legal options.
Jones’ campaign has called Carr a hypocrite because Carr’s office in 2022 defended the same finance law he sued to block Jones from using. Carr has said he’s obligated as attorney general to defend challenged laws even if he personally disagrees with them.
Carr announced his run for governor last year, saying he needed a head start raising money because he isn’t personally wealthy. Carr’s campaign has voiced concerns for months that Jones will use his leadership committee and family wealth to win the primary.
Jones has already made a $10 million loan to his leadership committee, which Carr’s campaign tried unsuccessfully to get the state Ethics Commission to investigate.
Carr’s lawsuit cited a 2022 federal judge’s ruling that Kemp’s leadership committee could not spend money to help him win the Republican primary that year. U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen found that the “unequal campaign finance scheme” violated challenger David Perdue’s free speech rights.
But Carr sought more extensive restrictions on Jones’ leadership committee than Cohen ordered, such as seeking to cut off both fundraising and spending by Jones’ committee until the primary is over.
New York
Saudi Arabia’s bid to dismiss claims it supported 9/11 hijackers rejected
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge in New York on Thursday rejected Saudi Arabia’s latest effort to dismiss civil claims that it supported the 9/11 hijackers.
Judge George B. Daniels said in a written opinion that his decision pertained to jurisdiction rather than the merits of the claims against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
However, he found the claims legally sufficient to proceed to trial, noting that an imam and an accountant’s employment by Saudi Arabia likely had some connection with their support of two al-Qaida members who came to the United States in early 2000 to study English and take flight lessons.
Lawyers for Saudi Arabia argued that the nation and the U.S. were partners in the 1990s against terrorism, al-Qaida and its founder, Osama bin Laden.
Lawyers for relatives of 9/11 victims claim that a group of extremist religious leaders in Saudi Arabia aided the 9/11 hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In lawsuits, hundreds of victims’ relatives and injured survivors, along with insurance companies and businesses, claim that employees of the Saudi government directly and knowingly assisted the airplane hijackers and plotters and fueled al-Qaida’s development into a terrorist organization by funding charities that supported them.
Some defendants, including Iran, the Taliban and al-Qaida, already have been found in default.
During oral arguments last year, attorney Michael Kellogg noted that Saudi Arabia in the 1990s stripped bin Laden of his citizenship and had taken more actions against him than any other country prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Appeals court blocks Trump administration from ending legal protections for 600,000 Venezuelans
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the United States.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status for Venezuelans while the case proceeded through court.
An email to the Department of Homeland Security for comment was not immediately returned.
The 9th Circuit judges found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior extension of temporary protected status because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit it. Then-President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration had extended temporary protected status for people from Venezuela.
“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” Judge Kim Wardlaw, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, wrote for panel. The other two judges on the panel were also nominated by Democratic presidents.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco found in March that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that President Donald Trump’s Republican administration overstepped its authority in terminating the protections and were motivated by racial animus in doing so. Chen ordered a freeze on the terminations, but the Supreme Court reversed him without explanation, which is common in emergency appeals.
It is unclear what effect Friday’s ruling will have on the estimated 350,000 Venezuelans in the group of 600,000 whose protections expired in April. Their lawyers say some have already been fired from jobs, detained in immigration jails, separated from their U.S. citizen children and even deported. Protections for the remaining 250,000 Venezuelans are set to expire Sept. 10.
Congress authorized temporary protected status, or TPS, as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to grant legal immigration status to people fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to that home country.
In ending the protections, Noem said that conditions in Venezuela had improved and that it was not in the U.S. national interest to allow migrants from there to stay on for what is a temporary program.
Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. Their country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.
Attorneys for the U.S. government argued the Homeland Security secretary’s clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program were not subject to judicial review. They also denied that Noem’s actions were motivated by racial animus.
New York
Doctor who sexually abused patients gets 24-year sentence
NEW YORK (AP) — A doctor who sexually abused sedated patients at a New York City hospital and raped women who were unconscious at his home has been sentenced to 24 years in prison.
Zhi Alan Cheng admitted abusing seven women, including three female patients he was treating at New York-Presbyterian Queens hospital, the Queens district attorney’s office said. He had pleaded guilty in June to four counts of rape and three counts of sexual abuse and was sentenced Thursday.
Prosecutors also alleged Cheng abused an eighth woman who was a patient at the hospital. He entered an Alford plea on that charge, meaning that he did not admit guilt but acknowledged that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict.
Most of the victims had no memory of the abuse and were sedated. One of the women woke up in the middle of an assault after she had been sedated for a gastrointestinal procedure, prosecutors said.
Cheng, 35, was arrested in 2022 after a female acquaintance discovered a video of him abusing her at his home while she was passed out. Searches of his home and devices uncovered video evidence of the doctor abusing women at his home and workplace, according to prosecutors. They also discovered liquid anesthesia.
Cheng has been barred from practicing medicine. Prosecutors have said that New York-Presbyterian officials cooperated in the criminal investigation.
Washington
Judge blocks Trump from removing Voice of America director
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from removing Michael Abramowitz as director of Voice of America, the government-run news outlet that the White House has targeted for deep staffing cuts.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan, ruled that Abramowitz cannot be removed from his position without the approval of the majority of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board.
In June, layoff notices were sent to more than 600 employees of Voice of America and the government agency that oversees it. Abramowitz was placed on administrative leave along with almost the entire Voice of America staff. He was told he would be fired effective Aug. 31.
Lamberth concluded that firing Abramowitz would be “plainly contrary to law.”
“The defendants’ own representations, in and out of court, indicate that they have already effectively removed Abramowitz from his role as director,” the judge wrote.
Kari Lake, whom President Donald Trump named as a senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, told a congressional panel that the agency is “rotten to the core.” The agency also houses Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba.
The networks, which together reach an estimated 427 million people, date to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations trying to extend U.S. influence and combat authoritarianism.
Georgia
Judge throws out campaign finance lawsuit between Republican rivals in governor’s race
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A federal judge last Thursday threw out a lawsuit by one of Georgia’s top Republican officials against his chief rival for the 2026 GOP nomination for governor that claimed the opponent had an unfair advantage in campaign fundraising.
The judge’s ruling allows Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones to continue raising unlimited campaign funds using a special leadership committee granted to a select group of Georgia officials under a 2021 law. The suit was filed by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, who says the committee gives Jones an edge that violates Carr’s constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection.
Carr filed suit as a candidate, not in his official capacity as attorney general, as he and Jones compete as leading candidates for the Republican nomination to succeed term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp. The GOP primary is next May.
Filed Aug. 7 in Atlanta, Carr’s lawsuit asked a U.S. District Court judge to cut off Jones’ ability to raise and spend money using his leadership committee. That’s a special fundraising vehicle that allows only the governor, lieutenant governor and a small group of legislative leaders to raise unlimited funds.
The law doesn’t give Carr access to that type of committee. Instead, he must rely on a regular campaign committee limited to raising $8,400 from each primary donor plus $4,200 for any primary runoff.
In her ruling Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Marie Calvert wrote that “it is undisputed” that Jones’ leadership committee gives him a fundraising advantage.
She still dismissed the lawsuit, noting that Carr wasn’t challenging the constitutionality of the law itself, but instead sued Jones and his campaign for “doing exactly what Georgia law allows them to do.”
By seeking to blame Jones for the disparity rather than the fundraising law, the judge wrote, Carr was asking the court “to twist itself into a logical pretzel.”
The favorable ruling for Jones comes two weeks after the lieutenant governor got a political boost from President Donald Trump, who endorsed Jones’ candidacy for governor.
Carr’s campaign spokesperson, Julia Mazzone, said the dismissal was based “on a procedural technicality, not on the merits.” She said the campaign was considering further legal options.
Jones’ campaign has called Carr a hypocrite because Carr’s office in 2022 defended the same finance law he sued to block Jones from using. Carr has said he’s obligated as attorney general to defend challenged laws even if he personally disagrees with them.
Carr announced his run for governor last year, saying he needed a head start raising money because he isn’t personally wealthy. Carr’s campaign has voiced concerns for months that Jones will use his leadership committee and family wealth to win the primary.
Jones has already made a $10 million loan to his leadership committee, which Carr’s campaign tried unsuccessfully to get the state Ethics Commission to investigate.
Carr’s lawsuit cited a 2022 federal judge’s ruling that Kemp’s leadership committee could not spend money to help him win the Republican primary that year. U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen found that the “unequal campaign finance scheme” violated challenger David Perdue’s free speech rights.
But Carr sought more extensive restrictions on Jones’ leadership committee than Cohen ordered, such as seeking to cut off both fundraising and spending by Jones’ committee until the primary is over.
New York
Saudi Arabia’s bid to dismiss claims it supported 9/11 hijackers rejected
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge in New York on Thursday rejected Saudi Arabia’s latest effort to dismiss civil claims that it supported the 9/11 hijackers.
Judge George B. Daniels said in a written opinion that his decision pertained to jurisdiction rather than the merits of the claims against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
However, he found the claims legally sufficient to proceed to trial, noting that an imam and an accountant’s employment by Saudi Arabia likely had some connection with their support of two al-Qaida members who came to the United States in early 2000 to study English and take flight lessons.
Lawyers for Saudi Arabia argued that the nation and the U.S. were partners in the 1990s against terrorism, al-Qaida and its founder, Osama bin Laden.
Lawyers for relatives of 9/11 victims claim that a group of extremist religious leaders in Saudi Arabia aided the 9/11 hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In lawsuits, hundreds of victims’ relatives and injured survivors, along with insurance companies and businesses, claim that employees of the Saudi government directly and knowingly assisted the airplane hijackers and plotters and fueled al-Qaida’s development into a terrorist organization by funding charities that supported them.
Some defendants, including Iran, the Taliban and al-Qaida, already have been found in default.
During oral arguments last year, attorney Michael Kellogg noted that Saudi Arabia in the 1990s stripped bin Laden of his citizenship and had taken more actions against him than any other country prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
