Published Tue, Mar 31 2026 3:07 PM EDT Updated 6 Min Ago A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday blocked, for now, the construction of the new White House ballroom, which President Donald Trump has heavily touted. District Court Judge Richard Leon, in his order, said construction of the planned $400 million ballroom "must stop" because no law "comes close" to giving Trump legal authority to build such a structure at the White House without authorization by Congress ...

March 31, 2026 Updated 3:41 p.m. ET The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday. The government's investigation had unified Penn leaders with Jewish students and faculty in opposition to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's subpoena. Many on campus drew parallels between the government's appro ...

March 31, 2026 7:43 PM ET President Trump has escalated his efforts to reshape American elections, signing an executive order that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state, and instructs the U.S. Postal Service to play a larger role in states' mail voting programs. Trump said in the Oval Office Tuesday that he believes the order is "foolproof" and may or may not be tested in court. But election experts said the order was unconstitutional and prom ...

Updated 2:28 PM EDT, March 31, 2026 WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Tuesday agreed to permanently block the Trump administration from implementing a presidential directive to end federal funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington ruled that President Donald Trump's executive order to cease funding for NPR and PBS is unlawful and unenforceable. The judge said the First Amendment right to free speech "does no ...

Donald Trump has launched a tirade against European countries that refused to join his war against Iran, calling out the United Kingdom and France, as transatlantic relations sour from the spiralling conflict that has wreaked havoc on the global economy. On his Truth Social website, the US president told governments worried about fuel prices to “go get your own oil” by force from the Gulf, comments that sent oil prices soaring even higher. [.....] In his Tuesday posts, Trump said “all of thos ...

(ProPublica) In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. The DOJ routinely declines to prosecute cases for any number of reasons, including insufficient evidence or because a case is not a priority for enforcement. But the number of declinations under Bondi marks a striking departure not only from the Biden administration but also the first Trump term. In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004.

(Bloomberg) Some of the country’s wealthiest corporations are calculating they owe far less to the Internal Revenue Service as a result of President Donald Trump’s overhauled tax code, underscoring how a law billed as a middle‑class cut also turned out to be a big win for Corporate America. Nearly a dozen of the 50 biggest US-listed companies attributed a drop in federal cash income taxes last year as a direct result of Trump’s $3.4 trillion sweeping tax law, according to a Bloomberg analysis of regulatory filings. In all, annual corporate tax revenues dropped by $65 billion following the law’s passage.

(Alternet) "The House has met a prospective resolution of the DHS shutdown with the very same brand of legislative wishcasting that provoked the funding impasse in the first place," [The Nation's editor Chris] Lehmann wrote. "Then, naturally, Johnson gaveled his own chamber into a two-week recess of its own. It’s hard to imagine how one could draw up a more farcical parody of legislative governance."

(Washington Post) Attorneys for Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-California) demanded Monday in a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel that the bureau refrain from releasing decade-old investigative files involving the congressman’s purported ties to a suspected Chinese intelligence operative. Swalwell was not accused of any wrongdoing when the FBI investigated him and the suspected spy, Christine Fang, a decade ago. Swalwell’s congressional office said it had immediately cut ties with Fang when federal agents informed him in 2015 that they were concerned she might be an intelligence operative. Swalwell’s attorneys said in their letter that there was no justification for releasing the files, especially since the congressman had assisted the FBI in its investigation.

(NBC News) ICE agents will be stationed outside graduation events for the nation’s newest Marines to identify whether any of their family members are undocumented, according to the Marine Corps. Undocumented immigrants are generally ineligible for federal REAL IDs and don’t have U.S. passports or birth certificates. So people without identifying documents who arrive at the gate of Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island in Beaufort, South Carolina, for recruit family days and graduation events this week may now have to answer to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, the Marine Corps said.