• Arthur Grand Technologies, a tech firm in northern Virginia, has agreed to pay $38,500 to settle claims of discrimination related to a job listing.
• The Justice Department said the company posted a job listing specifying a preference for white, US-born candidates.
• Arthur Grand Technologies attributed the posting to a “disgruntled recruiter in India,” claiming it was intended to embarrass the company.

A northern Virginia tech company is paying $38,500 to settle claims that it discriminated by posting a job listing seeking white, U.S.-born candidates for an opening as a business analyst.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that it had reached a settlement agreement with Arthur Grand Technologies, an information technology firm in Ashburn, Virginia.

The company listed the business analyst job online in March 2023, specifically seeking “Only Born US Citizens (White) who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX (Don’t share with candidates).”

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“It is shameful that in the 21st century, we continue to see employers using ‘whites only’ and ‘only US born’ job postings to lock out otherwise eligible job candidates of color” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s civil rights division in a statement. “I share the public’s outrage at Arthur Grand’s appalling and discriminatory ban on job candidates based on citizenship status, national origin, color and race.”

In the settlement agreement, the company said the ad was “generated by a disgruntled recruiter in India and was intended to embarrass the company,” and that it never intended to dissuade non-citizens from applying.

Arthur Grand did not return a call and email Tuesday seeking comment.

The settlement includes a $7,500 penalty to settle a Justice Department investigation and $31,000 as part of a settlement with the Labor Department to compensate individuals who filed complaints alleging they were discriminated against by the advertisement.

The agreement also requires Arthur Grand to train its personnel on the requirements of the federal hiring and discrimination laws and revise its employment policies.

In 2019, another northern Virginia tech firm, Cynet Systems, apologized after posting an online ad seeking “preferably Caucasian” applicants for an account manager job in Florida.

First-of-its-kind legislation that classifies two abortion-inducing drugs as controlled and dangerous substances was signed into law Friday by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.

The Republican governor announced his signing of the bill in Baton Rouge a day after it gained final legislative passage in the state Senate.

The measure affects the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, which are used in medication abortions, the most common method of abortion in the U.S.

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Opponents of the bill included many physicians who said the drugs have other critical reproductive health care uses, and that changing the classification could make it harder to prescribe the medications.

Supporters of the bill said it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions, though they cited only one example of that happening, in the state of Texas.

The bill passed as abortion opponents await a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on an effort to restrict access to mifepristone.

The new law will take effect on Oct. 1.

The bill began as a measure to create the crime of “coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud.” An amendment adding the abortion drugs to the Schedule IV classification of Louisiana’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law was pushed by Sen. Thomas Pressly, a Republican from Shreveport and the main sponsor of the bill.

“Requiring an abortion inducing drug to be obtained with a prescription and criminalizing the use of an abortion drug on an unsuspecting mother is nothing short of common-sense,” Landry said in a statement.

Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion, in most cases. The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills. Other Schedule IV drugs include the opioid tramadol and a group of depressants known as benzodiazepines.

Knowingly possessing the drugs without a valid prescription would carry a punishment including hefty fines and jail time. Language in the bill appears to carve out protections for pregnant women who obtain the drug without a prescription for their own consumption.

The classification would require doctors to have a specific license to prescribe the drugs, and the drugs would have to be stored in certain facilities that in some cases could end up being located far from rural clinics.

In addition to inducing abortions, mifepristone and misoprostol have other common uses, such as treating miscarriages, inducing labor and stopping hemorrhaging.

More than 200 doctors in the state signed a letter to lawmakers warning that the measure could produce a “barrier to physicians’ ease of prescribing appropriate treatment” and cause unnecessary fear and confusion among both patients and doctors. The physicians warn that any delay to obtaining the drugs could lead to worsening outcomes in a state that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country.

Pressly said he pushed the legislation because of what happened to his sister Catherine Herring, of Texas. In 2022, Herring’s husband slipped her seven misoprostol pills in an effort to induce an abortion without her knowledge or consent.

Special Counsel Jack Smith asked a federal judge Friday to bar former President Donald Trump from characterizing the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago as a threat to him and his family, arguing that the claims put law enforcement agents in danger.

In the motion filed to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the classified documents case in Florida, Smith requested Trump be prohibited from making statements that “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.” Trump claimed in a campaign appeal that FBI agents were “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

Court documents revealed this week that the FBI used its standard use-of-force policy that prohibits the use of deadly force except when the officer conducting the search has a reasonable belief that the “subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”

“These deceptive and inflammatory claims expose the law enforcement professionals who are involved in this case to unjustified and unacceptable risks,” Smith’s filing reads.

The FBI has said such contingencies are routine and that similar language was contained in an operational plan accompanying a subsequent search of President Biden’s properties in Delaware. 

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The Justice Department says the policy is routine and meant to limit, rather than encourage, the use of force during searches. Prosecutors noted that the search of the Florida property was intentionally conducted when Trump and his family were out of state and was coordinated in advance with the U.S. Secret Service. Still, the revelation that the dozens of agents sent to search the home were prepared for potential violence was jarring to Trump’s supporters, who say the two incidents don’t compare since the Justice Department is part of Biden’s own administration.

Smith’s filing cites Trump’s claim that the FBI “was authorized to shoot me,” and was “just itching to do the unthinkable.”

“They invite the sort of threats and harassment that have occurred when other participants in legal proceedings against Trump have been targeted by his invective,” Smith wrote. “Those risks have the potential to undermine the integrity of the proceedings as well as jeopardize the safety of law enforcement.”

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An aerial view of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is seen Aug. 10, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida.  (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

The operational plan was revealed when Trump’s legal team filed a motion asking that documents relating to the raid be made public. Smith says Trump’s attorneys omitted a key word —”only” in their motion earlier this week that prompted Trump to make the FBI accusations.

“Although Trump included the warrant and Operations Form as exhibits to his motion, the motion misquoted the Operations Form by omitting the crucial word “only” before “when necessary,” without any ellipsis reflecting the omission. The motion also left out language explaining that deadly force is necessary only “when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”

“Those statements create a grossly misleading impression about the intentions and conduct of federal law enforcement agents — falsely suggesting that they were complicit in a plot to assassinate him — and expose those agents, some of whom will be witnesses at trial, to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment,” prosecutors added.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that “repeated attempts to silence President Trump during the presidential campaign are blatant attempts to interfere in the election.”

Trump is accused of keeping at his estate classified documents that he took with him after he left the White House in 2021, and then obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. The FBI agents seized 33 boxes of documents in the raid.

The investigation is overseen by Smith, who Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed. Smith has charged Trump with 40 felony counts, including violating the Espionage Act, making false statements to investigators and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Trump has pleaded not guilty, and slammed the case as an “Election Inference Scam” promoted by the Biden administration and “Deranged Jack Smith.”

FILE – A police officer speaks with a woman outside former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after the FBI search, in Palm Beach, Florida, Aug. 8, 2022. (REUTERS/Marco Bello)

Earlier this month, Trump called for Smith’s arrest after the prosecutors handling the 45th president’s classified documents case admitted seized documents are no longer in their original order and sequence.  

Prosecutors admitted in a court filing that “there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” The prosecutors had previously told the court that the documents were “in their original, intact form as seized.”  

READ SMITH’S FILING – APP USERS CLICK HERE. 

Fox News’ Emma Colton and David Spunt, as well as The Associated Press contributed to this report.