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Trump asks supreme court to halt ruling ordering the rehiring of federal workers
Stock Market News |
2025/03/25 05:57
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The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to halt a ruling ordering the rehiring of thousands of federal workers let go in mass firings aimed at dramatically downsizing the federal government.
The emergency appeal argues that the judge can’t force the executive branch to rehire more than 16,000 probationary employees. The California-based judge found the firings didn’t follow federal law, and he ordered reinstatement offers be sent as a lawsuit plays out.
The appeal also calls on the conservative-majority court to rein in the growing number of federal judges who have slowed President Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda.
“Only this Court can end the interbranch power grab,” the appeal stated.
The nation’s federal court system has become ground zero for pushback to Trump with the Republican-led Congress largely supportive or silent, and judges have ruled against Trump’s administration more than three dozen times after finding violations of federal law.
The rulings run the gamut from birthright citizenship changes to federal spending to transgender rights.
Trump’s unparalleled flurry of executive orders seems destined for several dates at a Supreme Court that he helped shape with three appointees during his first term, but so far the majority on the nine-member court has taken relatively small steps in two cases that have reached it.
The latest order appealed to the high court was one of two handed down the same day. While acknowledging the president can lay off employees, two judges found separate legal problems with the way the Republican administration’s firings of probationary employees were carried out.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled that the terminations were improperly directed by the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director. He ordered rehiring at six agencies: the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury.
His order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and nonprofit organizations that argued they’d be affected by the reduced manpower.
Alsup, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations by firing probationary workers with fewer legal protections.
He said he was appalled that employees were told they were being fired for poor performance despite receiving glowing evaluations just months earlier.
Attorney Norm Eisen, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, vowed to defend the order. “Our coalition remains committed to ensuring that justice prevails for every affected probationary worker,” he said.
The federal government, on the other hand, said the sweeping order requiring the employees to be rehired goes beyond the judge’s legal authority. The plaintiffs never had legal standing to sue and did not prove that the Office of Personnel Management wrongly directed the firings, the Justice Department argued on appeal.
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Supreme Court makes it harder for EPA to police sewage discharges
Stock Market News |
2025/03/07 07:24
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A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for environmental regulators to limit water pollution, ruling for San Francisco in a case about the discharge of raw sewage that sometimes occurs during heavy rains.
By a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservative majority ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority under the Clean Water Act with water pollution permits that contain vague requirements for maintaining water quality.
The decision is the latest in which conservative justices have reined in pollution control efforts.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that EPA can set specific limits that tell cities and counties what can be discharged. But the agency lacks the authority “to include ‘end-result’ provisions,” Alito wrote, that make cities and counties responsible for maintaining the quality of the water, the Pacific Ocean in this case, into which wastewater is discharged.
“When a permit contains such requirements, a permittee that punctiliously follows every specific requirement in its permit may nevertheless face crushing penalties if the quality of the water in its receiving waters falls below the applicable standards,” he wrote.
One conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett, joined the court’s three liberals in dissent. Limits on discharges sometimes still don’t insure water quality standards are met, Barrett wrote.
“The concern that the technology-based effluent limitations may fall short is on display in this case,” Barrett wrote, adding that “discharges from components of San Francisco’s sewer system have allegedly led to serious breaches of the water quality standards, such as ‘discoloration, scum, and floating material, including toilet paper, in Mission Creek.’”
The case produced an unusual alliance of the liberal northern California city, energy companies and business groups.
The EPA has issued thousands of the permits, known as narrative permits, over several decades, former acting general counsel Kevin Minoli said.
The narrative permits have operated almost as a backstop in case permits that quantify what can be discharged still result in unacceptable water quality, Minoli said.
With the new restrictions imposed by the court, “the question is what comes in place of those limits,” Minoli said.
Alito downplayed the impact of the decision, writing that the agency has “the tools needed” to insure water quality standards are met.
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Trump order aims to end federal support for gender transitions for those under 19
Stock Market News |
2025/01/29 08:21
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order aimed at cutting federal support for gender transitions for people under age 19, his latest move to roll back protections for transgender people across the country.
“It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” the order says.
The order directs that federally-run insurance programs, including TRICARE for military families and Medicaid, exclude coverage for such care and calls on the Department of Justice to vigorously pursue litigation and legislation to oppose the practice.
Medicaid programs in some states cover gender-affirming care. The new order suggests that the practice could end, and targets hospitals and universities that receive federal money and provide the care.
The language in the executive order — using words such as “maiming,” “sterilizing” and “mutilation” — contradicts what is typical for gender-affirming care in the United States. It also labels guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health as “junk science.”
On his Truth Social platform, Trump called gender-affirming care “barbaric medical procedures.”
Major medical groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics support access to care.
Young people who persistently identify as a gender that differs from their sex assigned at birth are first evaluated by a team of professionals. Some may try a social transition, involving changing a hairstyle or pronouns. Some may later also receive puberty blockers or hormones. Surgery is extremely rare for minors.
“It is deeply unfair to play politics with people’s lives and strip transgender young people, their families and their providers of the freedom to make necessary health care decisions,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson.
The order encourages Congress to adopt a law allowing those who receive gender-affirming care and come to regret it, or their parents, to sue the providers.
It also directs the Justice Department to prioritize investigating states that protect access to gender-affirming care and “facilitate stripping custody from parents” who oppose the treatments for their children. Some Democratic-controlled states have adopted laws that seek to protect doctors who provide gender-affirming care to patients who travel from states where it’s banned for minors. |
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New report outlines risks of artificial intelligence in early stages
Stock Market News |
2025/01/25 09:32
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Advanced artificial intelligence systems have the potential to create extreme new risks, such as fueling widespread job losses, enabling terrorism or running amok, experts said in a first-of-its-kind international report Wednesday cataloging the range of dangers posed by the technology.
The International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI is being released ahead of a major AI summit in Paris next month. The paper is backed by 30 countries including the U.S. and China, marking rare cooperation between the two countries as they battle over AI supremacy, highlighted by Chinese startup DeepSeek stunning the world this week with its budget chatbot in spite of U.S. export controls on advanced chips to the country.
The report by a group of independent experts is a “synthesis” of existing research intended to help guide officials working on drawing up guardrails for the rapidly advancing technology, Yoshua Bengio, a prominent AI scientist who led the study, told the Associated Press in an interview.
“The stakes are high,” the report says, noting that while a few years ago the best AI systems could barely spit out a coherent paragraph, now they can write computer programs, generate realistic images and hold extended conversations.
While some AI harms are already widely known, such as deepfakes, scams and biased results, the report said that “as general-purpose AI becomes more capable, evidence of additional risks is gradually emerging” and risk management techniques are only in their early stages.
It comes amid warnings this week about artificial intelligence from the Vatican and the group behind the Doomsday Clock.
The report focuses on general purpose AI, typified by chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT used to carry out many different kinds of tasks. The risks fall into three categories: malicious use, malfunctions and widespread “systemic” risks.
Bengio, who with two other AI pioneers won computer science’s top prize in 2019, said the 100 experts who came together on the report don’t all agree on what to expect from AI in the future. Among the biggest disagreements within the AI research community is the timing of when the fast-developing technology will surpass human capabilities across a variety of tasks and what that will mean.
“They disagree also about the scenarios,” Bengio said. “Of course, nobody has a crystal ball. Some scenarios are very beneficial. Some are terrifying. I think it’s really important for policymakers and the public to take stock of that uncertainty.”
Researchers delved into the details surrounding possible dangers. AI makes it easier, for example, to learn how to create biological or chemical weapons because AI models can provide step by step plans. But it’s “unclear how well they capture the practical challenges” of weaponizing and delivering the agents, it said.
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Appeals court overturns ex-49er Dana Stubblefield’s rape conviction
Stock Market News |
2024/12/26 19:49
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A California appeals court has overturned the rape conviction of former San Francisco 49er Dana Stubblefield after determining prosecutors made racially discriminatory statements during the Black man’s trial.
The retired football player was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in October 2020 after being convicted of raping a developmentally disabled woman in 2015 who prosecutors said he lured to his home with the promise of a babysitting job.
The Sixth Court of Appeals found Wednesday that prosecutors violated the California Racial Justice Act of 2020, a law passed during a summer of protest over the police killing of George Floyd. The measure bars prosecutors from seeking a criminal conviction or imposing a sentence on the basis of race.
Prior to the law, defendants who wanted to challenge their convictions on the basis of racial bias had to prove there was “purposeful discrimination,” a difficult legal standard to meet.
The appeals court said prosecutors used “racially discriminatory language” that required them to overturn Stubblefield’s conviction.
The case was “infected with tremendous error from the minute we started the trial,” said Stubblefield’s lead attorney, Kenneth Rosenfeld.
In April 2015, Stubblefield contacted the then-31-year-old woman on a babysitting website and arranged an interview, prosecutors said.
According to a report by the Morgan Hill Police Department, the interview lasted about 20 minutes. She later received a text from Stubblefield saying he wanted to pay her for her time that day, and she went back to the house.
The woman reported to the police that Stubblefield raped her at gunpoint, then gave her $80 and let her go. DNA evidence matched that of Stubblefield, the report said.
During the trial, prosecutors said police never searched Stubblefield’s house and never introduced a gun into evidence, saying it was because he was famous Black man and it would “open up a storm of controversy,” according to the appellate decision.
By saying Stubblefield’s race was a factor in law enforcement’s decision not to search his house, prosecutors implied the house would’ve been searched and a gun found had Stubblefield not been Black, the appeals court said. The reference to controversy also links Stubblefield to the events after the recent killing of Floyd based on his race.
Defense attorneys said there was no rape, and Stubblefield said the woman consented to sex in exchange for money.
“The trial had a biased judge who didn’t allow the evidence from the defense, the fact that she was a sex worker, to be heard in front of a jury,” Rosenfeld said. He called the incident a “transactional occasion” between Stubblefield and the woman.
He remains in custody until a hearing next week, during which his attorneys will ask a judge to approve a motion to release him. Prosecutors have several options, including asking the court to stay their decision so they can appeal to the state’s Supreme Court, or refile charges.
The Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office said it was “studying the opinion.”
Stubblefield began his 11-year lineman career in the NFL with the 49ers in 1993 as the league’s defensive rookie of the year. He later won the NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors in 1997 before leaving the team to play for Washington. He returned to the Bay Area to finish his career, playing with the 49ers in 2000-01 and the Raiders in 2003.
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Investment Fraud Litigation |
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Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a practice that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of the securities laws. Securities Arbitration. Generally speaking, securities fraud consists of deceptive practices in the stock and commodity markets, and occurs when investors are enticed to part with their money based on untrue statements.
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The content contained on the web site has been prepared by Securities Law News as a service to the internet community and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a substitute for consultation with a licensed legal professional in a particular case. | Affordable Law Firm Website Design by Law Promo |
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