(NEW YORK) — Astronomers have confirmed the existence of four planets orbiting a star less than 6 light-years away with help from some of the world’s most powerful telescopes.
Research published in October 2024 revealed that one planet was rotating around Barnard’s Star, the second-closest single star system to Earth. But a combination of telescopes all over the world confirmed the presence of four small exoplanets, according to a study published last week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Gemini Telescope in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope in Chile were used to detect the additional rocky planets, the astronomers said.
“It’s signaling a breakthrough with the precision of these new instruments from previous generations,” said Ritvik Basant, Ph.D student at the University of Chicago and lead author of the paper, in a statement.
The first planet was detected using a 27-foot diameter telescope at the European Space Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile and a spectrograph that could quickly detect changes in the star’s velocity, according to the 2024 paper, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Barnard’s Star, a low-mass red dwarf, was discovered in 1916. Since then, astronomers have discovered that at least 70% of all stars in the Milky Way are this type of star, which is why researchers want to know about the types of planets that orbit them, according to the University of Chicago.
“It’s a really exciting find — Barnard’s Star is our cosmic neighbor, and yet we know so little about it,” Basant said.
The planets are 20% to 30% the mass of Earth and make a full orbit around the sun in days, according to the paper. They are likely rocky planets, rather than gas.
Since they are so close to Barnard’s Star, they are likely too hot to sustain life. The researchers ruled out the existence of other planets within the habitable zone of Barnard’s Star.
The planets are difficult to detect because their stars shine so brightly next to them, the researchers said.
Scientists from the Gemini Observatory, National Science Foundation NOIRLab, Heidelberg University and the University of Amsterdam calibrated and analyzed data taken during 112 different nights over three years, where they found “solid evidence” to the existence of the additional planets orbiting Barnard’s Star, according to the paper.
“We observed at different times of night on different days,” Basant said. “They’re in Chile; we’re in Hawaii. Our teams didn’t coordinate with each other at all.”
He added, “That gives us a lot of assurance that these aren’t phantoms in the data.”
(NEW YORK) — A man has been arrested in a woman’s 1979 cold case murder after investigators used genetic genealogy to zero in on his identity, police in Maryland announced.
On March 3, 1979, the body of 31-year-old secretary Kathryn Donohue was discovered in a parking lot in Glenarden, Maryland, the Prince George’s County Police Department said.
The Arlington, Virginia, resident was beaten, raped and killed in a “brutal murder,” Bill DelBagno, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office, said during a news conference on Tuesday.
No suspects were identified and the case went unsolved for decades, leaving Donohue’s family waiting for answers, authorities said.
But police said DNA was left on her body.
In 2024, police said they identified a relative of the suspect through genetic genealogy, an investigative tool in which the unknown DNA from the crime scene is identified by comparing it to family members who voluntarily submit DNA samples to a database.
“Additional investigation ultimately led” police to identify the suspect as Rodger Zodas Brown, who lived in Prince George’s County at the time of the murder, police said.
Brown, now 82, was arrested last week at his home in Pinehurst, North Carolina, police said. He was “solemn,” “cold” and showed “no reaction” when he was arrested, police said.
There’s no apparent connection between Donohue and Brown, police said.
Brown was charged with first-degree murder, rape and related charges. He’s in custody in North Carolina awaiting extradition to Maryland, police said. It wasn’t immediately clear if Brown had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
In a statement released by police, Donohue’s family thanked the investigators, saying their “relentless pursuit of the truth” “has finally given us a sense of closure that we never thought possible after all this time.”
“This case serves as a reminder that we will never give up seeking the truth no matter how much time has passed,” Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz said.
The investigation remains active. Police asked anyone with information to call the department at 301-516-2512.
(LUBBOCK, Texas) — The measles outbreak in western Texas is continuing to grow with 20 additional cases confirmed, bringing the total to 279 cases, according to new state data published Tuesday.
Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). Just two cases are among fully vaccinated individuals. At least 36 people have been hospitalized so far, the state said.
In the Texas outbreak, children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases, at 120, followed by children ages 4 and under making up 88 cases, the DSHS data shows.
“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in the outbreak area and the surrounding communities,” the DSHS said in its update.
The number of measles cases in Texas is close to the number confirmed for the entirety of last year in the U.S., which saw 285 cases nationwide, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Two likely measles deaths have been reported so far in the U.S. this year. The first reported death was in Texas, according to the DSHS. The child did not have any known underlying conditions, according to the department.
The death was the first U.S. measles death recorded in a decade, according to data from the CDC.
A possible second measles death was recorded after an unvaccinated New Mexico resident tested positive for the virus following their death. The New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) said the official cause of death is still under investigation.
New Mexico has reported a total of 33 measles cases so far this year, according to the NMDOH. Many of the cases have been confirmed in Lea County, which borders western Texas.
Health officials suspect there may be a connection between the Texas and New Mexico cases, but a link has not yet been confirmed.
The CDC has confirmed 301 measles cases in at least 14 states so far this year, including Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont and Washington, according to new data published Friday.
The majority of nationally confirmed cases are in people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, the CDC said. Of those cases, 3% are among those who received just one dose of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) inoculation and 2% are among those who received the required two doses, according to the CDC.
The CDC recommends that people receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second dose between ages 4 and 6 years old.
One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective, the CDC says. Most vaccinated adults don’t need a booster, per the health agency.
In the face of the growing measles outbreak, the federal health agency issued an alert on March 7 saying parents in the outbreak area should consider getting their children an early third dose of the MMR vaccine. Texas health officials have also recommended early vaccination for infants living in outbreak areas.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud and Sony Salzman contributed to this report.
(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) — Two Tesla Cybertrucks caught on fire at a dealership in Kansas City, Missouri, on Monday evening, the latest in a wave of similar incidents seemingly directed toward the electric vehicle company, according to the Kansas City Police Department.
Tesla vehicles, dealerships and charging stations have been vandalized, suffered arson and faced protests in recent weeks since the company’s CEO Elon Musk began his work at the White House spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
In this latest incident, a Kansas City Police officer in the area spotted smoke coming from one Cybertruck at a Tesla dealership on State Line Road shortly before midnight. The officer attempted to put out the flames using a fire extinguisher, but the fire spread to a second Cybertruck parked next to the original one, police said.
The Kansas City Fire Department ordered the bomb and arson unit to assist on the scene, the fire department said. Officials were able to put out the flames and the vehicles were “covered with a fire blanket to prevent reignition,” the fire department said.
“The circumstances are under investigation but preliminarily the fire is being investigated for the potential of being an arson,” police said in a statement on Monday.
There have been no arrests made for this incident, police said.
This follows a spree of similar incidents that have occurred across the country in the last few weeks.
Another fire was started at a Tesla Collision Center in Las Vegas on Tuesday, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Officials received notice that an individual had “set several vehicles on fire in the parking lot and caused damage to the property.”
Last week, “more than a dozen” shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Tigard, Oregon, according to Kelsey Anderson, the public information officer at the Tigard Police Department.
Additionally, three Teslas were vandalized in Dedham, Massachusetts on March 11, according to the Dedham Police Department. Officials said “words had been spray-painted” on two Tesla Cybertrucks, with all four tires of the trucks and a Tesla Model S being “reportedly damaged.”
Protests against the company have also occurred at dealerships nationwide. Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs told ABC News the demonstrations and the company’s plummeting stocks — which have tumbled nearly 48% this year — can all “be tied to [Musk’s] time at DOGE.”
“It has been a distraction for the company and it’s been a problem for the brand,” Frerichs said.
In recent weeks, four top officers at the company have sold off $100 million in stock, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk, the owner of X, said on Monday that his companies “make great products that people love and I’ve never physically hurt anyone, so why the hate and violence against me?”
“Because I am a deadly threat to the woke mind parasite and the humans it controls,” Musk said on X.
Musk has also reposted reactions that criticized previous Tesla attacks, calling an incident earlier this month in Seattle “crazy.”
A spokesperson for Tesla did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(LUBBOCK, Texas) — The measles outbreak in western Texas is continuing to grow with 20 additional cases confirmed, bringing the total to 279 cases, according to new state data published Tuesday.
Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). Just two cases are among fully vaccinated individuals. At least 36 people have been hospitalized so far, the state said.
In the Texas outbreak, children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases, at 120, followed by children ages 4 and under making up 88 cases, the DSHS data shows.
“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in the outbreak area and the surrounding communities,” the DSHS said in its update.
Two likely measles deaths have been reported so far in the U.S. The first reported death was an Texas, according to the DSHS. The child did not have any known underlying conditions, according to the department.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended his choice to vote with the minority of his party to keep the government open last week and his position as leader in an appearance on “The View” on Tuesday.
His comments come as some Democrats have publicly raised questions about their confidence in Schumer’s role as party leader following his move to allow Republicans to advance their led funding bill.
Schumer doubled down on the assertion he made on the Senate floor ahead of Friday’s closely watched vote: The Republican funding bill, called a continuing resolution or CR, was bad, but a government shutdown would have been worse.
“I knew it was a difficult choice, and I knew I’d get a lot of criticism or my choice, but I felt as a leader I had to do it,” Schumer told “The View” hosts.
Schumer said he and fellow Democrats “hated” the funding bill because it creates a “slush fund” for President Donald Trump, his adviser Elon Musk and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to “push around.”
But a shutdown, Schumer said “would have devastation like we have never seen.”
He said it would have given the Trump administration the freedom to slash programs it views as nonessential, with little to no recourse for Democrats to pursue. Programs like Medicaid and SNAP or funding for mass transit could have been indiscriminately slashed, he said.
“You have two choices: one bad, the other devastating,” Schumer said. “One chops off one of your fingers, the other chops off your arm.”
He said he was being “trolled” by Trump when the president congratulated him for passage of the bill on Trump’s Truth Social platform.
“He was trolling me. I know this guy. He’s trying to confuse people he always tries to confuse people,” Schumer said.
As a leader, Schumer said he had to act to avert a crisis down the road that would have been caused by a shutdown. But his position has not quelled calls within his own party for new leadership after Democrats appeared to some to be lacking in a strategy during Friday’s vote.
Schumer defended his role atop the caucus from ongoing criticism.
Responding to concerns that the party is somewhat aimless without an official leader, Schumer said Democrats have many talented leaders.
“When we don’t have a president, there is a lot of leaders. We have a great bench,” he said. “As for the Senate caucus, of which I am the leader, I should be the leader.”
Schumer touted his ability to recruit talent to win seats in the Senate, pointing to the 2020 election when Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff successfully claimed both seats in Georgia.
He also likened himself to an “orchestra leader” conducting his caucus to help their talents come through.
“We have a load of talent in our caucus, and I’ll tell you one thing: We are united in going after Trump and showing the American people that he is making the middle class pay for the tax cuts on the rich.”
Schumer also promoted his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A warning.”
He encouraged a number of individuals to read the book, including the president.
“He doesn’t understand what Jewish people are like. And he does things that can lead to antisemitism,” Schumer said. “He should read the book. He could learn something.”
He also warned against the left “sliding into” antisemitism.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg; Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back against President Donald Trump’s call to impeach a judge whose ruling conflict with his administration’s priorities.
In a statement on Tuesday, Roberts issued a rare statement after Trump hurled insults at the federal judge who conducted a “fact-finding” hearing on Monday over whether the Trump administration knowingly violated a court order when it handed over more than 200 alleged gang members to El Salvadoran authorities over the weekend.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote. “WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY.”
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in the statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
The statement signals a stark difference in opinion between the judicial and executive branches.
Trump argued on Tuesday that he should not be prevented from carrying out his immigration agenda, saying “I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do.”
Trump’s comments about Boasberg came after the federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting any noncitizens after the president’s recent proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Boasberg, in verbal instructions during a hearing on Saturday, gave orders to immediately turn around two planes carrying noncitizens if they are covered by his order, including one that potentially took off during a break in the court’s hearing. However, sources said top lawyers and officials in the administration made the determination that since the flights were over international waters, Boasberg’s order did not apply, and the planes were not turned around.
On Monday, Boasberg questioned whether the Trump administration ignored his orders to turn the planes around, saying it was “heck of a stretch” for them to argue that his order could be disregarded.
Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli argued Monday during the “fact-finding” hearing convened by Boasberg that the judge’s directive on Saturday evening to turn around the flights did not take effect until it was put in writing later that evening.
Boasberg ordered the Justice Department to submit, by noon Tuesday, a sworn declaration of what they represented in a filing Monday — that a third flight that took off after his written order on Saturday carried detainees who were removable on grounds other than the Alien Enemies Act.
ABC News’ Devin Dwyer and Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. military is tracking strong early-year recruiting figures across the services, a signal it will meet or exceed 2024 performances, military officials told ABC News.
The Army and Navy, the two largest services and the most ailing from recruiting challenges, both say they’ve recruited at promising rates in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, which began on Oct. 1. However, neither the Army nor the Navy could readily point out a reason, and the Navy said it is too early in the fiscal year to evaluate.
“We’ve seen momentum unlike anything we’ve [had] in a decade,” said Gen. James Mingus, the Army’s vice chief of staff, at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, March 12 — when he disclosed that five months into its recruiting year the Army had already signed up close to 73% of the year’s annual goal of 61,000 recruits.
The upward recruiting trends for the military services began last summer and have continued at a high pace. Some service chiefs projected then that the numbers would quickly surpass this year’s annual recruiting goals and build up the pool of recruits needed to start off the new recruiting year in October.
From 2023 to 2024, during the final year of the Biden administration, recruitment across the services jumped 12.5%, according to the Department of Defense.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said increased recruitments after President Donald Trump’s election were a reflection of a new mindset the Pentagon would promote to service members — a “warrior ethos” that Hegseth has said would focus away from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives he said were a distraction from a focus on military lethality.
“I think we’ve seen enthusiasm and excitement from young men and women who want to join the military actively because they are interested in being a part of the finest fighting force the world has to offer and not doing a lot of other things that serve oftentimes, too often, to divide or distract,” Hegseth said after becoming secretary.
At his confirmation hearing to be secretary, Hegseth said the military’s strongest recruiting asset was the commander in chief himself. “There is no better recruiter in my mind for our military than President Donald Trump,” he told senators.
One commanding general of recruitment, Air Force Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, told ABC News that “there is no one silver bullet” for recruiting, but he said the Air Force had “honed in on the right ingredients, and they’re all working.”
Alex Wagner, a former senior Pentagon official in the Biden administration, said Hegseth’s conception of recruiting by promoting a warrior ethos amounted to “little more than a restatement, not even a rebranding, of existing efforts.”
Hegseth’s approach brings “nothing new of any substance,” said Wagner, who, as Air Force assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, was a civilian leader in recruiting.
“People want to come into the military for a number of reasons, but one of the key reasons is to be something bigger than yourself and to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he added. “I think we’ve long been building a warrior ethos.”
In his address to a joint session of Congress earlier this month, Trump said the U.S. Army “had its single best recruiting month in 15 years.”
That claim may be a reference to the Army’s recruiting success this past January. A defense official told ABC News that in January, the Army recorded the highest average growth in contracts per day since January 2010.
Mingus attributed the turnaround to changes in “who you recruit, where you recruit, how we recruit, more professionalizing of our recruit[ing] force [and] expanding the population.”
“All of those things [that] we’ve been working [on] for the last 18 to 24 months, we believe are coming to fruition,” he said.
The president took the credit for steady recruiting gains among the services, falsely claiming in the address to Congress that “it was just a few months ago where the results were exactly the opposite.”
“I’m straight-up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles — it hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” Hegseth said on the “Shawn Ryan Podcast” in November.
Critics have worried it could have a chilling effect on recruitment for groups including women and non-white men.
“In recent weeks, for the very first time, I’ve heard from a number of women, both in the service and who would consider the service, questioning whether or not the military is a place for them,” Wagner said. “Clearly this stems from the secretary’s firing of the military’s two most senior women, who earned their positions — and the respect of their peers — based solely on merit.”
Asked for demographic data on the first quarter 2025 figures, only the Air Force was able to answer ABC News’ query. A spokesperson said Air Force officials “weren’t tracking any significant demographic change” at this point.
A Navy spokesperson said it was “too early to tell” about demographics but pointed to successful early-year figures. Comparing the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 to that of fiscal year 2024, the Navy contracted 4,000 new sailors and shipped 5,000 more to boot camp, the spokesperson said.
It set its recruiting goal at its highest in 20 years, a turnaround from the pandemic era, when benchmarks and enlistments slumped.
“We are on pace to exceed recruiting goals in 2025,” said Adm. James Kilby, the Navy’s vice chief of naval operations, in the congressional hearing on Wednesday, March 12. “We’ve made some progress in the Navy, as the other services have. We have stopped the problem.”
The Navy spokesperson said the service makes assessments on figures on an annual basis but noted that some policies that enlarged the pool of recruits, including a preparatory course that helps potential sailors meet Navy academic and physical standards, have helped the effort.
The Navy’s prep course followed the success of the Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course that contributed close to a quarter of last year’s Army recruiting goal of 55,000 recruits.
“We did open up the aperture a little bit for people that want to serve in uniform, and we expanded various policies to increase opportunities for qualified candidates,” the spokesperson said.
Policies that open the aperture enable services to tap into a wider range of potential recruits — and the prep courses are intended to help them reach the academic or physical shape to meet standards.
Katherine Kuzminski, the director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, said the Army and Navy prep courses act as a sort of “pre-basic training” program.
Only 23% of youth are eligible based on service standards to serve in the military, and 9% of youth are interested in signing up, Kuzminski said, narrowing the pool to a “Venn diagram [that] does not necessarily overlap.”
The Air Force has also had a recruiting success story, said an Air Force Accessions Center spokesman, due largely to more recruiters in the field. The Air Force, under which the tiny Space Force is folded, has hiked its recruiting goals by 20% in 2025.
Wagner said the Biden administration had “initiate[d] a comprehensive review of military [entry] standards to ensure they made sense in the year 2025,” paving the way for it to meet its 2024 goals and even adjust them higher before the fiscal year ended.
Part of the approach was “making sure that our requirements were realistic, rather than an outdated vestige of a different era,” said Wagner, who also served under secretaries of defense in the Obama administration.
The Air Force during the Biden administration loosened body fat standards, which were stricter than the Army and Navy standards, he said, and it lifted a lifetime ban for airmen who tested positive for THC, as other military services had after recreational marijuana was legalized in parts of the United States.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, in a March 3 post on X, said recruitment for December, January and February were at 15-year highs and that the delayed entry program, or the DEP, is at its largest in nearly 10 years.
The DEP, which allows services to recruit future service members and ship them to boot camp at a later date, is a product of sustained work, Wagner said.
“I mean, you don’t build the healthiest DEP in a decade over the course of five weeks, right?” he added.
It’s unclear whether early success for military recruiters is a consequence of Biden administration policies such as the prep courses or enthusiasm for the new president — or a combination of both.
It is too early to assign credit, Kuzminski said.
“We can’t dismiss the fact that perhaps [the current administration] did affect either American youth’s decision to join the military or, more likely, their parents’ willingness to let them go into the military, for some portion of those folks,” she said.
“But the reality is that over the last three years, we’ve seen a lot of structural changes that improved the recruiting enterprise as a whole,” she added.
The smallest military service, the U.S. Marine Corps, has been historically resilient to recruiting shocks like the pandemic.
A Marine official said in a statement to ABC News that the Marine Corps “consistently meets its required accession mission.” That “enduring success,” the official said, “is directly attributed to the hard work of our Marine Recruiters.”
(NEW YORK) — More than 20 million Americans in eight states were under red flag warnings Tuesday morning as severe winds and dry conditions have elevated the threat of fire danger.
The alarming forecast comes in the wake of a deadly tornado outbreak over the weekend in the Midwest and South, and wind-whipped wildfires that destroyed hundreds of homes in Oklahoma.
The National Weather Service on Tuesday issued red flag warnings for a large portion of Oklahoma — including Oklahoma City, Stillwater and Wichita Falls. The NWS office in Norman, Oklahoma, said possible wind gusts of up to 45 mph combined with low relative humidity and dry conditions are producing “critical to extreme” fire danger in Oklahoma and North Texas.
Extremely critical fire danger is also forecast Tuesday for the entire state of Kansas, parts of Arizona, a major portion of Missouri, eastern Colorado and West Texas, including the Texas Panhandle.
Other major cities under red flag warnings on Tuesday are Denver; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri; and the Texas cities of Austin, San Antonio and El Paso.
The areas under red flag warnings are being warned that the conditions are rife for fires to spread rapidly, which makes them extremely hard to contain.
Relative humidity across the alert areas is 15% to as low as 6%, and wind gusts are forecast to be between 40 and 75 mph.
The critical fire danger comes just as people are beginning to recover from devastating wildfires in Oklahoma and a series of tornadoes.
At least 42 people were killed amid more than 970 severe storm reports — including tornadoes, severe storms, dust storms and fires — across more than two dozen states over the weekend. A three-day tornado outbreak tore through at least nine states.
Raging wildfires in Oklahoma over the weekend left four people dead and more than 140 others injured, according to the state’s medical examiner.
The Oklahoma wildfires destroyed more than 400 homes and structures and burned at least 170,000 acres, prompting evacuations amid extreme fire weather conditions.
Wildfires also raged in Texas over the weekend. The biggest blaze was the Windmill Fire that ignited in Roberts County and quickly spread to 21,000 acres, the Texas A&M Forest Service said. The fire was 95% contained on Monday.
Parts of Gray County were temporarily under a mandatory evacuation due to the Rest Area Fire, the Texas A&M Forest Service said. The fire has burned an estimated 3,000 acres and was 30% contained as of Friday evening, according to the forest service.
ABC News’ Kenton Gewecke contributed to this report.
Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump hurled insults at the federal judge who conducted a “fact-finding” hearing on Monday over whether the Trump administration knowingly violated a court order when it handed over more than 200 alleged gang members to El Salvadoran authorities over the weekend.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote. “WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY.”
President Donald Trump hurled insults at the federal judge who conducted a “fact-finding” hearing on Monday over whether the Trump administration knowingly violated a court order when it handed over more than 200 alleged gang members to El Salvadoran authorities over the weekend.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote. “WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY.”
Boasberg, in verbal instructions during a hearing on Saturday, gave orders to immediately turn around two planes carrying noncitizens if they are covered by his order, including one that potentially took off during a break in the court’s hearing. However, sources said top lawyers and officials in the administration made the determination that since the flights were over international waters, Boasberg’s order did not apply, and the planes were not turned around.
On Monday, Boasberg questioned whether the Trump administration ignored his orders to turn the planes around, saying it was “heck of a stretch” for them to argue that his order could be disregarded.
Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli argued Monday during the “fact-finding” hearing convened by Boasberg that the judge’s directive on Saturday evening to turn around the flights did not take effect until it was put in writing later that evening.
Boasberg ordered the Justice Department to submit, by noon Tuesday, a sworn declaration of what they represented in a filing Monday — that a third flight that took off after his written order on Saturday carried detainees who were removable on grounds other than the Alien Enemies Act.
