Politics
Border Patrol commander vows continued tear gas use after Minnesota fedreal judge’s order
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One of President Donald Trump’s most prominent immigration enforcers vowed Saturday to continue using tear gas during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, after a Minnesota federal judge Friday barred federal officers from using it against peaceful protesters.
Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino said federal agents would continue deploying tear gas against violent protesters who “cross the line” amid ongoing unrest and heightened tension across the Twin Cities.
“We’re going to continue to use that minimum amount of force necessary to accomplish our mission,” Bovino said Saturday on “Fox News Live,” adding that immigration officers have never used tear gas against “peaceful protesters.”
“We always support the First Amendment, but when they cross the line and they’re violent, we will use those less lethal munitions because it keeps them safe, it keeps our officers safe, and it keeps the public safe,” Bovino said.
THREE VENEZUELAN ILLEGALS ARRESTED AFTER ICE OFFICER ‘AMBUSHED AND ATTACKED’ DURING TRAFFIC STOP: NOEM
U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino joins federal agents at the scene of a shooting, Jan. 7, in Minneapolis. (Ellen Schmidt/MinnPost via AP)
Bovino’s comments after U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez issued a ruling Friday in a case filed in December on behalf of six Minnesota activists, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, barring federal officers from detaining or deploying tear gas against peaceful protesters who are not obstructing authorities while participating in Operation Metro Surge.
The ruling prohibits federal agents from retaliating against peaceful protesters or observers, adding that federal agents must show probable cause or reasonable suspicion that someone has committed a crime or is interfering with law enforcement operations.
Federal agents cannot use pepper spray or other non-lethal munitions and crowd-dispersal tools against peaceful protesters, according to the ruling, and peacefully following officers “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop.”
MINNEAPOLIS MAYOR WHO TOLD ICE TO ‘GET THE F— OUT’ NOW CALLS FOR PEACE AFTER ANOTHER SHOOTING INCIDENT
Law enforcement officers stand amid tear gas at the scene of a reported shooting in Minneapolis on Jan. 14. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
The order came as tensions escalated in Minneapolis after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good earlier this month during a federal immigration enforcement operation. Menendez noted in her ruling that the immigration crackdown by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Minnesota appears to be escalating.
“There is no sign that this operation is winding down—indeed, it appears to still be ramping up,” she wrote.
The City of Minneapolis applauded the court’s decision, while urging community members to be “peaceful and lawful” around immigration agents.
TRUMP SAYS NO NEED TO INVOKE INSURRECTION ACT ‘RIGHT NOW’ AMID ANTI-ICE UNREST IN MINNESOTA
“As this is a federal court order, we expect the federal administration to change course and comply for the safety of all,” the City wrote Saturday on X.
“We applaud the court’s decision in the ACLU’s lawsuit, which prohibits federal immigration agents from targeting or retaliating against those peacefully and lawfully protesting or observing Operation Metro Surge operations.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison reacted to the ruling, saying that “this preliminary win matters for every Minnesotan exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest and witness.”
Federal agents deploy tear gas as anti-ICE agitators move through a smoke-filled street during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, Jan. 13. (Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Thank you to the ACLU and the plaintiffs for standing firm in defense of this bedrock freedom,” he added.
After the ruling, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that the First Amendment does not protect “rioting,” adding that DHS is “taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters.”
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“We remind the public that rioting is dangerous—obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime and assaulting law enforcement is a felony,” McLaughlin said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Rioters and terrorists have assaulted law enforcement, launched fireworks at them, slashed the tires of their vehicles, and vandalized federal property. Others have chosen to ignore commands and have attempted to impede law enforcement operations and used their vehicles as weapons against our officers.”
McLaughlin added that law enforcement has followed their training and has “used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public, and federal property.”
Politics
Virginia Court Strikes Down Redistricted Voting Map in a Huge Blow to Democrats
Virginia’s top court on Friday struck down a congressional map drawn by Democrats and recently approved by voters, dealing a major blow to the party as it struggles to keep pace with Republicans in the nation’s redistricting battle.
The ruling will wipe out four newly drawn Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts in Virginia and means that Republicans will enter the midterm elections with a structural advantage from their moves to carve out more red districts across the country.
Congressional maps have for generations been drawn once a decade, after the census, to account for population shifts. But last year, President Trump started a rare, mid-decade gerrymandering war when he persuaded Texas officials to draw a new map to help Republicans as they face midterm headwinds. California countered with a map favoring Democrats. Other red and blue states followed.
After the Virginia map passed in a statewide referendum late last month, Democrats thought that they had battled Republicans to a draw, or that they had even eked out a small advantage. Then a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court prompted several Southern states to work to pass new maps, which will favor Republicans.
Now, the rejection of the new Virginia map means that across the country, Democrats stand to lose half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more, from redistricting alone.
Still, Republicans face a challenging political environment in their bid to retain control of their slim House majority, including worries about the economy, the unpopular war with Iran, high gas prices and Mr. Trump’s sagging approval ratings.
In its 4-to-3 decision, the Virginia Supreme Court wrote that Democratic legislators had violated the state’s constitution with their move to enact a new map meant to give their party 10 out of the state’s 11 U.S. House seats, up from the six it currently controls. Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment to allow for the map in a referendum.
The problem, the court’s majority suggested, was that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would authorize Democrats to redraw the map, occurred days before last fall’s legislative elections — meaning that some Virginians who cast their ballots early did so without knowing how their state lawmakers would vote on the new map.
That, the justices wrote, violated the process in the State Constitution.
“This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the majority wrote.
Mr. Trump and Republicans celebrated the decision.
“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” the president posted on his social media site.
Democrats seemed despondent over the decision after eight months and nearly $70 million invested in passing the referendum.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, who lobbied Virginia legislators to advance their redistricting push and then campaigned for the referendum, said that “the decision to overturn an entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic action that cannot stand.”
He added: “We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision.”
What those options are was not clear in the immediate aftermath of the decision.
Some legal experts believe that the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling may be the final word on the state’s maps before the election. That is because the case involved a state law challenge about whether state lawmakers had followed rules laid out in the Virginia Constitution, not a question of federal law or the U.S. Constitution.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, said in a statement that “I am disappointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia’s ruling, but my focus as governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling late last month that further weakened the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana have taken steps to draw new maps before the midterms. Those efforts could net Republicans a handful of additional safe seats before voters cast a ballot in November. South Carolina is also exploring a new map before November.
While Democrats have themselves grown more ruthless about gerrymandering, they are broadly struggling to keep up.
In part that is because years ago, some Democratic-controlled states like Virginia installed independent commissions to oversee their map-drawing process in an effort to insulate it from politics. But Republicans kept the power in state legislatures, allowing states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri to enact partisan maps with few logistical hurdles.
In Virginia, voters approved the amendment to override the independent commission by about three percentage points after the General Assembly had passed it twice. But Republicans challenged nearly every aspect of the process. Most of these lawsuits were filed before in a county court in the rural southwestern corner of the state, where a judge repeatedly ruled in the Republicans’ favor. These rulings were appealed to the State Supreme Court.
In lawsuits, Republicans argued that the language in the amendment was misleading, that the new districts were not drawn compactly, that it was improper to vote on redistricting at a legislative session that had convened to discuss budget issues and that a state law required county clerks to post notices about the amendment months before it was actually voted on.
One of the most critical questions concerned the sequence of events in Virginia’s complex amendment process. Before voters weigh in on an amendment to the State Constitution, the General Assembly must approve it twice, with an election for the state’s House of Delegates taking place between the two votes. The first vote for this amendment was on Oct. 31, just days before the state election. With hundreds of thousands of Virginians having already voted, Republicans argued that the legislative action had come too late.
The court sided with that argument.
“Early Virginia voters unknowingly forfeited their constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or against delegates who favor or disfavor amending the Constitution by not anticipating a legislative vote on a constitutional amendment four days before the last day of voting,” the court’s majority wrote in its ruling.
But Democrats’ loss in Virginia is likely to only further stoke more redistricting battles. Already, the party’s lawmakers in New York and Colorado have signaled a desire to try and redraw their maps before the 2028 elections, and Virginia Democrats are likely to be in a similar position, since the court mainly took issue with the process, not with the resulting map.
Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.
Politics
Gorsuch says ideological divides on Supreme Court come down to ‘how you read law,’ not politics
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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said differences among his colleagues on the high court are often less about politics than they are about diverging approaches to constitutional interpretation — a dynamic, he said, that influences both the court’s rulings and its internal relations.
“That has nothing to do with politics,” Gorsuch told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. “That has to do [with] how you read law. Interpretive methodologies.”
Gorsuch, who was nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017, has described himself as a “textualist,” noting his approach focuses on interpreting legal texts based on the ordinary meaning of the words as written. The philosophy is linked to originalism — or the view that the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original public meaning when it was adopted.
Other justices have different interpretations, including ones that allow for evolving interpretations over time. Gorsuch stressed that differences, while significant, are not inherently personal.
JUSTICE THOMAS WARNS PROGRESSIVISM IS A THREAT TO AMERICA IN RARE PUBLIC REMARKS
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch speaks at the Reagan Library on May 5, 2026, in Simi Valley, Calif. (Getty Images)
“At the end of the day, you’re trying to get to the right answer under the law,” he said, adding that disagreement is an expected, and healthy, part of the process.
His remarks come as the federal judiciary and members of the Supreme Court have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, including by Trump and his allies, who have criticized the courts for impinging on what they see as the duties of the executive branch.
Trump took to Truth Social last month to criticize the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for showing him “very little loyalty” in blocking his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs in February.
He also suggested they might block his executive order seeking to end so-called “birthright citizenship” in the U.S.
“Certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad, completely violating what they ‘supposedly’ stood for,” Trump said.
JUSTICE GORSUCH HIGHLIGHTS HUMANITY, HISTORY IN CHILDREN’S BOOK CELEBRATING AMERICA’S 250TH ANNIVERSARY
President Donald Trump greets Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts as he arrives to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress in 2025. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
He contrasted this with liberal justices on the court, whom Trump said “stick together like glue, totally loyal to the people and ideology that got them there.”
Gorsuch, for his part, stressed that the justices often share plenty of common ground, even if their interpretation of the Constitution prompts them to reach different conclusions.
That approach, he suggested, carries over into how the justices work together behind closed doors — where collaboration and debate are central to the high court to perform its constitutional duties.
FEDERAL JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP BAN FOR ALL INFANTS, TESTING LOWER COURT POWERS
The U.S. Supreme Court building is shown in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13, 2023, as the court unveiled a new ethics code following scandals involving gifts and vacations received by some justices. (Mandel Ngan/AFP)
“The framers understood that people would come to the table with different views,” Gorsuch told Fox News Digital. “The goal is to reason together.”
While ideological divides can be sharp, Gorsuch emphasized that culture at the high court is built on mutual respect.
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“If you sit and listen to someone long enough, you’re going to find something you can agree on,” he added. “Maybe you start there.”
Politics
Press freedom groups allege Larry Ellison promised to fire CNN anchors
Two press freedom groups that own shares in Paramount Skydance are demanding to see the company’s books and internal documents, citing allegations that the company’s leaders may have promised favors to the White House to win approval for Paramount’s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
The letter, sent Thursday to Paramount chief legal officer Makan Delrahim, says that media reports alleging that Paramount owner David Ellison and others promised favors to the Trump administration “create credible concern that Paramount leadership has offered, solicited, or effectuated a corrupt exchange,” which the groups argue would “constitute a breach of fiduciary duties” and open the company up to a “range of potential civil and criminal penalties.”
The letter cites Delaware law that allows stockholders to inspect the company’s books and records “for any proper purpose.”
Paramount declined to comment on the letter.
Among the issues raised in the letter are promises reportedly made by David Ellison and his father, Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, that they would make “sweeping” changes at the news network CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Ellison family acquired Paramount, which includes CBS and the storied Melrose Avenue film studio, last summer.
The letter cites changes implemented in CBS since their acquisition, including their decision to end late night television house Stephen Colbert’s show days after he characterized a settlement Paramount reached with Trump as a “big fat bribe.”
Under Ellison’s ownership, the letter says, numerous high-profile reporters have left the network and its ratings have dropped to “historic lows.”
Larry Ellison, who is backing the financing of Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner, reportedly told White House officials that Paramount would “implement the CBS playbook” at CNN if the merger is approved, and remove anchors and commentators at the cable news network that Trump doesn’t like, according to the letter.
The effort comes just two weeks after Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders overwhelmingly approved the proposed merger. Investors have supported the Larry Ellison family takeover, which would become the biggest Hollywood merger in nearly a decade. The deal would pay Warner stockholders $31 per share — four times the stock price a year ago.
The letter was written on behalf of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which develops secure communication tools for journalists and tracks violations of press freedom, and Reporters Without Borders, which tracks press freedom globally.
The organizations are being represented by former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou, who established the Public Integrity Project this year to challenged alleged government corruption, as well as Delaware attorney Ronald Poliquin.
The missive, which could be a precursor to a lawsuit, opens another avenue of attack against the controversial $111-billion deal, which would transform the smaller Paramount into an industry titan.
With Warner Bros. Discovery, the Ellisons would also control HBO, TBS and the vast film and TV library of Warner Bros., which includes the Harry Potter, DC Comics, and Scooby-Doo, in addition to CNN.
Paramount, led 43-year-old David Ellison, wants to finalize its Warner Bros. takeover by the end of September. President Trump favors the deal; he has long agitated for changes at CNN.
But the proposed merger would saddle the combined company with $79 billion in debt, stoking fears that Paramount would be forced to make steep cost cuts to juggle such a large debt load.
Politicians, unions and progressive groups separately have pressed California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to scrutinize the proposed merger, hoping that he brings an antitrust lawsuit in an attempt to upend the deal.
More than 4,000 film industry workers, including Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston, Ted Danson, J.J. Abrams, Jane Fonda and Kristen Stewart, have signed an open letter imploring Bonta and other regulators to block the merger. The group lamented the proposed tie-up, saying it “would reduce the number of major U.S. film studios to just four.”
Opponents fear the consolidation would lead to massive layoffs and diminish the quality of programming that Warner Bros., CNN and HBO are known for.
Hollywood has sustained thousands of layoffs over the last seven years since Walt Disney Co. swallowed Fox’s entertainment assets in another huge merger. In addition, the film production economy hasn’t recovered from shutdowns during the 2023 labor strikes. An estimated 42,000 entertainment industry jobs were lost from 2022 and 2024.
On Thursday, 34 California Democrats in Congress also sent a letter to Bonta, encouraging him to look closely at the merger.
The deal is expected to become one of the largest leveraged buyouts ever.
Ballou, who is working with the press freedom groups, previously served as a Justice Department special counsel with expertise in private equity transactions.
He resigned from the Justice Department in January 2025 when Trump returned to office. In his book, “Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America,” Ballou examined large leveraged buyouts and found that many of which resulted in bankruptcies.
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