An executive order signed by President Donald Trump late Thursday aims to give political appointees power over the billions of dollars in grants awarded by federal agencies. Scientists say it threatens to undermine the process that has helped make the U.S. the world leader in research and development.

The order requires all federal agencies, including FEMA, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to appoint officials responsible for reviewing federal funding opportunities and grants, so that they “are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.”

It also requires agencies to make it so that current and future federal grants can be terminated at any time — including during the grant period itself.

Agencies cannot announce new funding opportunities until the new protocols are in place, according to the order. The Trump administration said these changes are part of an effort to “strengthen oversight” and “streamline agency grantmaking.” Scientists say the order will cripple America’s scientific engine by placing control over federal research funds in the hands of people who are influenced by politics and lack relevant expertise.

“This is taking political control of a once politically neutral mechanism for funding science in the U.S.,” said Joseph Bak-Coleman, a scientist studying group decision-making at the University of Washington.

The changes will delay grant review and approval, slowing “progress for cures and treatments that patients and families across the country urgently need,” said the Association of American Medical Colleges in a statement.

The administration has already terminated thousands of research grants at agencies like the NSF and NIH, including on topics like transgender health, vaccine hesitancy, misinformation and diversity, equity and inclusion.

The order could affect emergency relief grants doled out by FEMA, public safety initiatives funded by the Department of Justice and public health efforts supported by the Centers for Disease Control. Experts say the order is likely to be challenged in court.

Two Colorado deputies have been disciplined for violating state law by helping federal agents make immigration arrests, and their sheriff says officers from other agencies have done the same.

One of the deputies, Alexander Zwinck, was sued by Colorado’s attorney general last week, after his cooperation with federal immigration agents on a drug task force was revealed following the June arrest of a college student from Brazil with an expired visa.

Following an internal investigation, a second Mesa County Sheriff’s Office deputy and task force member, Erik Olson, was also found to have shared information. The two deputies used a Signal chat to relay information to federal agents, according to documents released Wednesday by the sheriff’s office.

Zwinck was placed on three weeks of unpaid leave, and Olson was given two weeks of unpaid leave, Mesa County Sheriff Todd Rowell said in a statement. Both were removed from the task force.

Two supervisors also were disciplined. One was suspended without pay for two days, and another received a letter of reprimand. A third supervisor received counseling.

State laws push back against Trump crackdown

The lawsuit and disciplinary actions come as lawmakers in Colorado and other Democratic-led states have crafted legislation intended to push back against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Since Trump took office, pro-immigrant bills have advanced through legislatures in Illinois, Vermont, California, Connecticut and other states. The measures include stronger protections for immigrants in housing, employment and police encounters.

Trump has enlisted hundreds of state and local law enforcement agencies to help identify immigrants in the U.S. illegally and detain them for potential deportation. The Republican also relaxed longtime rules restricting immigration enforcement near schools, churches and hospitals.

Zwinck was sued under a new state law signed by Gov. Jared Polis about two weeks before the arrest of the student from Brazil. It bars local government employees including law enforcement from sharing identifying information about people with federal immigration officials. Previously, only state agencies were barred from doing that. It’s one of a series of laws limiting the state’s involvement in immigration enforcement passed over the years that has drawn criticism and a lawsuit from the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Justice has also sued Illinois and New York, as well as several cities in those states and New Jersey, alleging their policies violate the U.S. Constitution or federal immigration laws.

Officers say they were following established procedures

Zwinck and Olson told officials they thought they were operating according to long-standing procedures.

However, the internal investigation found they had both received and read two emails prior to the passage of the new law about previous limits on cooperation with immigration officials. The most recent was sent on Jan. 30, 2025, after an official for Homeland Security Investigations, part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had asked state and local law enforcement officers at a law enforcement meeting to contact HSI or ICE if they arrested a person for a violent crime who was believed not to be a citizen, the investigation documents said. The email said not to contact HSI or ICE.

Zwinck said he didn’t know about the new law and was not interested in immigration enforcement.

“When I was out there, I wanted to find drugs, guns and bad guys,” Zwinck said at a July 23 disciplinary hearing. “And sending that information to HSI they provided the ability to give me real time background information on the person I was in contact with,” he said.

Olson, who said he had been with the sheriff’s office 18 years, testified at his disciplinary hearing that it was “standard practice” to send information up to federal agents during traffic stops.

“It was routine for ICE to show up on the back end of a traffic stop to do their thing,” Olson said. “I truly thought what we were doing was condoned by our supervision and lawful.”

A lawyer at a law firm listed as representing both deputies, Michael Lowe, did not immediately return a telephone call or email seeking comment.

Rowell said drug task force members from other law enforcement agencies, including the Colorado State Patrol, also shared information with immigration agents on the Signal chat. The state patrol denied the claim.

The sheriff faulted Attorney General Phil Weiser for filing the lawsuit against Zwinck before a local internal investigation was complete. He called on the Democrat, who is running for governor, to drop it.

“As it stands, the lawsuit filed by the Attorney General’s Office sends a demoralizing message to law enforcement officers across Colorado — that the law may be wielded selectively and publicly for maximum political effect rather than applied fairly and consistently,” he said.

Weiser said last week that he was investigating whether other officers in the chat violated the law.

Spokesperson Lawrence Pacheco said Weiser was presented with evidence of a “blatant violation of state law” and had to act.

“The attorney general has a duty to enforce state laws and protect Coloradans and he’ll continue to do so,” Pacheco said.

Federal immigration judges fired by the Trump administration are filing appeals, pursuing legal action and speaking out in an unusually public campaign to fight back.

More than 50 immigration judges — from senior leaders to new appointees — have been fired since Donald Trump assumed the presidency for the second time. Normally bound by courtroom decorum, many are now unrestrained in describing terminations they consider unlawful and why they believe they were targeted.

Their suspected reasons include gender discrimination, decisions on immigration cases played up by the Trump administration and a courthouse tour with the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat.

“I cared about my job and was really good at it,” Jennifer Peyton, a former supervising judge told The Associated Press this week. “That letter that I received, the three sentences, explained no reason why I was fired.”

Peyton, who received the notice while on a July Fourth family vacation, was appointed judge in 2016. She considered it her dream job. Peyton was later named assistant chief immigration judge in Chicago, helping to train, mentor and oversee judges. She was a visible presence in the busy downtown court, greeting outside observers.

She cited top-notch performance reviews and said she faced no disciplinary action. Peyton said she’ll appeal through the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent government agency Trump has also targeted.

Peyton’s theories about why she was fired include appearing on a “bureaucrat watchdog list” of people accused by a right-wing organization of working against the Trump agenda. She also questions a courthouse tour she gave to Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois in June.

Durbin blasted Peyton’s termination as an “abuse of power,” saying he’s visited before as part of his duties as a publicly-elected official.

The nation’s immigration courts — with a backlog of about 3.5 million cases — have become a key focus of Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement efforts. The firings are on top of resignations, early retirements and transfers, adding up to 106 judges gone since January, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents judges. There are currently about 600 immigration judges.

Several of those fired, including Peyton, have recently done a slew of interviews on local Chicago television stations and with national outlets, saying they now have a platform for their colleagues who remain on the bench.

“The ones that are left are feeling threatened and very uncertain about their future,” said Matt Biggs, the union’s president.

Carla Espinoza, a Chicago immigration judge since 2023, was fired as she was delivering a verdict this month. Her notice said she’d be dismissed at the end of her two-year probationary period with the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

President Donald Trump says he is considering “taking away” the U.S. citizenship of a longtime rival, actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits such an action by the government.

“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. He added that O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland in January, should stay in Ireland “if they want her.”

The two have criticized each other publicly for years, an often bitter back-and-forth that predates Trump’s involvement in politics. In recent days, O’Donnell on social media denounced Trump and recent moves by his administration, including the signing of a massive GOP-backed tax breaks and spending cuts plan.

It’s just the latest threat by Trump to revoke the citizenship of people with whom he has publicly disagreed, most recently his former adviser and one-time ally, Elon Musk.

But O’Donnell’s situation is notably different from Musk, who was born in South Africa. O’Donnell was born in the United States and has a constitutional right to U.S. citizenship. The U.S. State Department notes on its website that U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization may relinquish U.S. nationality by taking certain steps – but only if the act is performed voluntary and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship.

Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, noted the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the Fourteen Amendment of the Constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.

“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born U.S. citizen,” Frost said in an email Saturday. “In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”

O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to win his second term. She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage.

Responding to Trump Saturday, O’Donnell wrote on social media that she had upset the president and “add me to the list of people who oppose him at every turn.”

The Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear an appeal from Chevron, Exxon and other oil and gas companies that lawsuits seeking compensation for coastal land loss and environmental degradation in Louisiana should be heard in federal court.

The companies are appealing a 2024 decision by a federal appeals court that kept the lawsuits in state courts, allowing them to move to trial after more than a decade in limbo.

A southeast Louisiana jury then ordered Chevron to pay upwards of $740 million to clean up damage to the state’s coastline. The verdict reached in April was the first of dozens of lawsuits filed in 2013 against leading oil and gas companies in Louisiana alleging they violated state environmental laws for decades.

While plaintiffs’ attorneys say the appeal encompasses at least 10 cases, Chevron disagrees and says the court’s ruling could have broader implications for additional lawsuits.

Chevron argues that because it and other companies began oil production and refining during World War II as a federal contractor, these cases should be heard in federal court, perceived to be friendlier to businesses.

But the plaintiffs’ attorneys — representing the Plaquemines and Jefferson Parish governments — say the appeal is the companies’ latest stall tactic to avoid accountability. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit already rejected similar arguments from Chevron.

“It’s more delay, they’re going to fight till the end and we’re going to continue to fight as well,” said John Carmouche, a trial attorney in the Chevron case who is behind the other lawsuits. He noted that the companies’ appeal “doesn’t address the merits of the case.”

Chevron’s counsel, Paul Clement said in a statement that the company was “pleased” with the Supreme Court’s decision. Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The court’s decision to hear the appeal offers the chance for “fair and consistent application of the law” and will “help preserve legal stability for the industry that fuels America’s economy,” said Tommy Faucheux, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, in an emailed statement.

In April, jurors in Plaquemines Parish — a sliver of land straddling the Mississippi River into the Gulf — found that energy giant Texaco, acquired by Chevron in 2001, had for decades violated Louisiana regulations governing coastal resources by failing to restore wetlands impacted by dredging canals, drilling wells and billions of gallons of wastewater dumped into the marsh.

“No company is big enough to ignore the law, no company is big enough to walk away scot-free,” Carmouche told jurors during closing arguments.

Louisiana’s coastal parishes have lost more than 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of land over the past century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which has also identified oil and gas infrastructure as a significant cause. The state could lose another 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) in the coming decades, its coastal protection agency has warned.

Chevron’s attorneys had argued that land loss in Louisiana was caused by other factors and that the company should not be held liable for its actions prior to the enactment of a 1980 environmental law requiring companies to obtain permits and restore land they had used.

The fact that the lawsuits had been delayed for so long due to questions of jurisdiction was “bordering on absurd,” the late-federal judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman remarked in 2022 during oral arguments in one of the lawsuits, according to court filings. He added: “Frankly, I think it’s kind of shameful.”

Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime oil and gas industry supporter, nevertheless made the state a party to the lawsuits during his tenure as attorney general.

“Virtually every federal court has rejected Chevron’s attempt to avoid liability for knowingly and intentionally violating state law,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement. “I’ll fight Chevron in state or federal court—either way, they will not win.”

A unanimous Supreme Court made it easier Thursday to bring lawsuits over so-called reverse discrimination, siding with an Ohio woman who claims she didn’t get a job and then was demoted because she is straight.

The justices’ decision affects lawsuits in 20 states and the District of Columbia where, until now, courts had set a higher bar when members of a majority group, including those who are white and heterosexual, sue for discrimination under federal law.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court that federal civil rights law draws no distinction between members of majority and minority groups.

“By establishing the same protections for every ‘individual’ — without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group — Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” Jackson wrote.

The court ruled in an appeal from Marlean Ames, who has worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services for more than 20 years.

Though he joined Jackson’s opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a separate opinion that some of the country’s “largest and most prestigious employers have overtly discriminated against those they deem members of so-called majority groups.”

Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, cited a brief filed by America First Legal, a conservative group founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller, to assert that “American employers have long been ‘obsessed’ with ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives and affirmative action plans.”

Two years ago, the court’s conservative majority outlawed consideration of race in university admissions. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has ordered an end to DEI policies in the federal government and has sought to end government support for DEI programs elsewhere. Some of the new administration’s anti-DEI initiatives have been temporarily blocked in federal court.

Jackson’s opinion makes no mention of DEI. Instead, she focused on Ames’ contention that she was passed over for a promotion and then demoted because she is heterosexual. Both the job she sought and the one she had held were given to LGBTQ people.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars sex discrimination in the workplace. A trial court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ames.

The 6th circuit is among the courts that had required an additional requirement for people like Ames, showing “background circumstances” that might include that LGBTQ people made the decisions affecting Ames or statistical evidence of a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group.

The appeals court noted that Ames didn’t provide any such circumstances.

But Jackson wrote that “this additional ‘background circumstances’ requirement is not consistent with Title VII’s text or our case law construing the statute.”

Financial markets welcomed a U.S. court ruling that blocks President Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law.

U.S. futures jumped early Thursday and oil prices rose more than $1. The U.S. dollar rose against the yen and euro.

The court found the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Trump has cited as his basis for ordering massive increases in import duties, does not authorize the use of tariffs.

The White House immediately appealed and it was unclear if Trump would abide by the ruling in the interim. The long term outcome of legal disputes over tariffs remains uncertain. But investors appeared to take heart after the months of turmoil brought on by Trump's trade war.

The future for the S&P 500 was up 1.5% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.2%.

In early European trading, Germany's DAX gained 0.5% to 24,160.75. The CAC 40 in Paris jumped 0.9% to 7,860.67. Britain's FTSE was nearly unchanged at 8,722.63.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.9% to 38,432.98. American's largest ally in Asia has been appealing to Trump to cancel the tariffs he has ordered on imports from Japan and to also stop 25% tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection technician examines overseas parcels after they were scanned at the agency's overseas mail inspection facility at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Feb. 23, 2024.

The ruling also pushed the dollar sharply higher against the Japanese yen. It was trading at 145.40 yen early Thursday, up from 144.87 yen late Wednesday.

A three-judge panel ruled on several lawsuits arguing Trump exceeded his authority, casting doubt on trade policies that have jolted global financial markets, frustrated trade partners and raised uncertainty over the outlook for inflation and the global economy.

Many of Trump's double-digit tariff hikes are paused for up to 90 days to allow time for trade negotiations, but the uncertainty they cast over global commerce has stymied businesses and left consumers wary about what lies ahead.

"Just when traders thought they'd seen every twist in the tariff saga, the gavel dropped like a lightning bolt over the Pacific," Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

The ruling was, at the least, "a brief respite before the next thunderclap," he said.

Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 1.3% to 23,561.86, while the Shanghai Composite index gained 0.7% to 3,363.45.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.2% to 8,409.80.

In South Korea, which like Japan relies heavily on exports to the U.S., the Kospi surged 1.9% to 2,720.64. Shares also were helped by the Bank of Korea's decision to cut its key interest rate to 2.5% from 2.75%, to ease pressure on the economy.
Taiwan's Taiex edged 0.1% lower, and India's Sensex lost 0.2%.

On Wednesday, U.S. stocks cooled, with the S&P 500 down 0.6% but still within 4.2% of its record after charging higher amid hopes that the worst of the turmoil caused by Trump's trade war may have passed. It had been roughly 20% below the mark last month.

The Dow industrials lost 0.6% and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.5%.

Trading was relatively quiet ahead of a quarterly earnings release for Nvidia, which came after markets closed.

The bellwether for artificial intelligence overcame a wave of tariff-driven turbulence to deliver another quarter of robust growth thanks to feverish demand for its high-powered chips that are making computers seem more human. Nvidia's shares jumped 6.6% in afterhours trading.

Like Nvidia, Macy's stock also swung up and down through much of the day, even though it reported milder drops in revenue and profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its stock ended the day down 0.3%.

The bond market showed relatively little reaction after the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its latest meeting earlier this month, when it left its benchmark lending rate alone for the third straight time. The central bank has been holding off on cuts to interest rates, which would give the economy a boost, amid worries about inflation staying higher than hoped because of Trump's sweeping tariffs.