Politics
U.S. Tells Court It Plans to Deport Scientist to Russia
Government lawyers told a federal judge on Wednesday that the Trump administration intends to deport a Harvard scientist back to Russia, a country she fled in 2022, despite her fear that she will be arrested there over her protest of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Kseniia Petrova, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, has been held in a Louisiana immigration detention facility since February, when she was detained at Boston’s airport for failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying in her luggage.
This is the first time the government has formally stated its plan to deport her to Russia.
In Wednesday’s hearing, Christina Reiss, chief judge of the United States District Court in Vermont, quizzed the government lawyers about their grounds for canceling Ms. Petrova’s visa and detaining her. Judge Reiss went on to schedule a bail hearing on May 28, potentially setting the stage for Ms. Petrova’s release.
The case has drawn the attention of elite scientists around the world, and sent a chill though the community of international academics that surrounded Ms. Petrova at Harvard. Several dozen Harvard students and faculty made the drive to Burlington, Vt., for the hearing.
“For every person that they detain, thousands of others are going to be scared of coming to the country,” said Leo Gerdén, a Harvard senior from Sweden.
Ms. Petrova was detained at Logan Airport on Feb. 16 as she returned from vacation in France, carrying with her sections of frog embryos from an affiliate laboratory, at the request of her supervisor at Harvard.
She has admitted that she failed to declare the samples, but her lawyer has argued that this would ordinarily be treated as a minor infraction, punishable with a fine. Instead, the customs official canceled Ms. Petrova’s J-1 visa on the spot and initiated deportation proceedings.
When Ms. Petrova explained that she had fled her native Russia for political reasons and could not return there, she was processed as an asylum seeker, and sent to Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, La., where she has remained for nearly three months.
In remarks from the bench, Judge Reiss seemed skeptical that the airport customs agent had possessed the authority to cancel Ms. Petrova’s visa.
“Where is that authority?” she asked. “Where does a customs and border patrol officer have the authority on his or her own to revoke a visa?” she said. “It’s got to be somewhere. Because there is no way that person has kind of an unlimited determination.”
The judge noted that the she had reviewed the statute laying out the grounds for customs officers to find someone inadmissible to the United States, and “I don’t see anything about customs violations.”
Jeffrey M. Hartman, an attorney representing the Department of Justice, said “it’s the secretary of state’s authority” to cancel a visa, and that the secretary has delegated that authority to customs officials.
Judge Reiss asked the government to clarify whether or not it planned to deport Ms. Petrova to Russia.
“You are asking for her removal to Russia?” she asked.
“Yes, your honor,” Mr. Hartman replied.
Ms. Petrova’s attorney filed a petition challenging her detention with the federal court in February, when she was held briefly at a Vermont detention center before being transferred to the immigration detention center in Louisiana.
Mr. Hartman argued that the federal court had no jurisdiction over Ms. Petrova’s detention. He said Ms. Petrova may contest her detention, but only in a Louisiana immigration court.
“It’s not something that a district court can entertain,” he said. “We think the proper venue for that question is Louisiana, where she is detained and where her custodian is.”
“But she is only detained there because you moved her,” said the judge.
Mr. Hartman said that when Ms. Petrova had been asked whether she was carrying biological materials, that she “failed to disclose their full contents,” and was carrying “a baggie with loose vials of this experimental material.”
“The C.B.P. office was our first line of defense against unknown biological materials from a foreign national out of a port of entry,” he said.
Over the past few weeks, federal courts in Vermont have handed down a series of decisions favoring noncitizen academics caught up in President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
On May 9, Tufts doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was released from detention on the orders of a judge, William K. Sessions III, who said that her continued detention could chill “the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”
And on April 30, Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a student organizer at Columbia University who was detained by immigration authorities during an interview for his naturalization. Both Ms. Ozturk and Mr. Mahdawi were singled out because they had vocally protested Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Ms. Petrova’s case has no apparent basis in any political activism. But the attorney general of Massachusetts, Andrea Joy Campbell, who filed an amicus brief in the case, said Ms. Petrova’s detention, like that of Ms. Ozturk, represented “reckless and cruel misuse of power to punish and terrorize noncitizen members of the academic community.”
Ms. Campbell argued that international students bring significant revenue into Massachusetts, and that by creating “an atmosphere of fear,” the Trump administration has threatened the state’s economy.
Ms. Petrova’s attorney, Gregory Romanovsky, has argued that customs officials overstepped their authority by revoking her visa.
Though Customs officials may, in some cases, determine that an individual is inadmissible, he said, they must identify the legal grounds for doing so, such as criminal activity or health concerns. He said failing to declare scientific samples did not meet that test.
“It shouldn’t make her any more inadmissible than cutting in front of the line when she was waiting to be inspected,” Mr. Romanovsky said. “What the government is doing is saying, ‘If you’re an immigrant or a noncitizen and you’re not on your best behavior, we will punish you. We are going to use various immigration provisions to get rid of you.’ ”
Adam Sychla, a postdoctoral research fellow who organized a group of roughly 20 Harvard students and faculty members who traveled from Cambridge to the courthouse in Burlington, Vt., said he had never met Ms. Petrova, but had immediately decided to make the drive.
“Whether I know her personally or not, is immaterial,” he added. “I easily could have met her last week to start a collaboration. Instead, Kseniia is being unfairly detained.”
Miles J. Herszenhorn contributed reporting from Cambridge, Mass.
Politics
Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf
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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.
Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.
Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
KHANNA AND MASSIE THREATEN TO FORCE A VOTE ON IRAN AS PROSPECT OF US ATTACK LOOMS
President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”
The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.
MASSIE, KHANNA TO VISIT DOJ TO REVIEW UNREDACTED EPSTEIN FILES
Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)
He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.
Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.
“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.
He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.
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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.
Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.
Politics
California Democrats launch pricey polling effort to winnow crowded gubernatorial field
As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.
The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.
“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.
As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.
The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.
That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.
The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.
Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.
Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.
Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.
The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.
“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.
Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.
The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.
“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.
Politics
Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’
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President Donald Trump outlined five key items he believes will tip the upcoming midterm elections in the GOP’s favor — if Republicans can muscle them through Congress.
“No transgender mutilation surgery for our children,” Trump told an audience at the Republican Members’ Issues Conference. “Voter ID, citizenship [verification], mail-in ballots, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports.”
“It’s the best of Trump. Those are the best of Trump. This is the number one priority, it should be, for the House,” Trump said.
Trump’s exhortations to Republican lawmakers come as the GOP wages an uphill campaign to hang on to a controlling majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He framed his legislative priorities as a way for Republicans to capitalize on popular demands within the GOP base that would increase their chances of preserving a Republican governing trifecta.
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH ELECTION OVERHAUL WITH VOTER ID, MAIL-IN BALLOT CHANGES AHEAD OF MIDTERMS
Currently, Republicans hold just four more seats than Democrats in the House of Representatives.
The GOP holds six more than Democrats in the Senate.
To keep the numbers in their favor, Republicans will need to beat historical trends. In the vast majority of past cases, parties that capture the White House in presidential elections face blowback in the midterms. Notably, the last time a majority party gained seats in both chambers of Congress in the midterms came under the Bush administration in 2002, following devastating attacks on the World Trade Center.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, left, and President Donald Trump shake hands during an Invest America roundtable in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, District of Columbia, on June 9, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
REPUBLICANS, TRUMP RUN INTO SENATE ROADBLOCK ON VOTER ID BILL
Trump said he believes Republicans have a shot at bucking the trend come November if they focus on his list.
“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of his legislative priorities.
Republicans have already taken strikes towards two of them through the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and cast a ballot. That bill cleared the House last month for a second time in the 119th Congress.
Its future is uncertain in the Senate, where Republicans would need the assistance of seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. Democrats, for their part, believe the legislation would disenfranchise voters who cannot readily provide documented proof of citizenship through a passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has promised a vote on the package despite its long odds.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during a “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Several members have introduced bills on transgender issues, although none of them have cleared either chamber.
“I’ve never been more confident that if we keep these promises and deliver on this popular agenda, the American people will stand with us in overwhelming numbers, just as they did in 2024,” Trump said.
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