Before the US launched military strikes on Yemen in March, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, sent detailed information about the planned attacks to a private Signal group chat that he created himself, which included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.

According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.

The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, was made public last month by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the group by Waltz.

The fact that Hegseth also shared the plans in a second Signal group chat, according to “people familiar with the matter” who spoke to the Times, is likely to add to growing criticism of the former Fox weekend anchor’s ability to manage the Pentagon, a huge organization which operates in matters of life and death around the globe.

According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information.

Hegseth has previously been criticized for including his wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, in sensitive meetings with foreign leaders, including a discussion of the war in Ukraine with Britain’s most senior defense officials at the Pentagon last month, during which she was pictured sitting directly behind her husband. Phil Hegseth, the secretary’s younger brother, is a podcast producer who was recently hired as a Department of Homeland Security liaison to the Pentagon. It is unclear why either would need to know the details of strike plans in advance.

According to the Times, Hegseth used his private phone, rather than a government device, to access the Signal chat with his family and friends.

CNN reported later on Sunday that three sources familiar with Hegseth’s private Signal group confirmed to the broadcaster that he had used it to share Yemen attack plans before the strikes were launched.

The same information was also confirmed to the Associated Press by a source familiar with the group chat who said that it included 13 people.

Shortly after the news of the second Signal chat broke, Politico published an opinion article by Hegseth’s former press secretary, John Ullyot, which began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership.”

The US vice-president, JD Vance, has arrived in India for talks with the prime minister, Narendra Modi, on a bilateral trade deal as the US tariff war with China escalates and the US global economic alliances fray.

Vance, joined by the second lady, Usha Vance, and their three children, Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel, landed in Delhi on Monday for a four-day visit that blends high-level negotiations with a family sightseeing tour. The Vance family was greeted at the airport by railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. They stood under a red canopy that shielded them from the blazing sun as soldiers stood in salute and a military band played the US anthem.

The White House described the visit as focused on “shared economic and geopolitical priorities”, while India said Vance’s stay would “provide an opportunity for both sides to review the progress in bilateral relations”.

Talks will centre on fast-tracking a trade pact amid Washington’s global tariff offensive, even as farmer protests and tensions over US immigration threaten to overshadow the trip.

India was hit with 26% tariffs by Donald Trump on 2 April despite his good relations with Modi. A 90-day pause has offered temporary relief but Delhi remains wary.

To head off further economic fallout, officials in the Indian capital have been working overtime to hammer out the first tranche of the trade deal that both sides hope to have completed by autumn. India has already slashed tariffs on some US goods and further sweeping cuts are expected.

The US is India’s top trading partner, with two-way trade surpassing $190bn (£144bn). That relationship was boosted after Modi paid a goodwill visit to Washington after Trump’s return to the White House. Both leaders pledged to more than double bilateral trade to $500bn – a “mega partnership”, as Modi called it.

But not everyone is happy. On 21 April, the day of Vance’s arrival, India’s biggest and oldest farmers’ union, the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), has called for nationwide protests to oppose a trade deal. The union says trade liberalisation could devastate farm incomes, particularly in the dairy sector.

The AIKS, affiliated with the Communist party of India, claims more than 16 million members and has accused the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, of “coercion” in demanding that India’s heavily subsidised agriculture sector be part of the deal.

Meanwhile, memories are still fresh in the Modi government of large-scale farmer protests in 2020–21 that forced the repeal of controversial farm laws.

Tensions are also flaring over student and H-1B visas, often awarded to tech workers. The Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has flagged US data showing that of 327 recent visa revocations for international students, half involved Indian nationals.

“The reasons for revocation are random and unclear. There is growing fear and apprehension,” Ramesh said, urging the external affairs minister to “raise the concern” with the US.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association says US immigration officials are “aggressively targeting international students”, including those with no protest history.

Concerns over H-1B visas, long vital for Indian tech workers in the US, are mounting, too. Indians accounted for 70% of all H-1B visas last year, more than 200,000. Uncertainty over re-entry is prompting many to cancel visits home.

The ministry of external affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the government was “very positive” that Vance’s visit would “further boost” ties and promised “all relevant issues” would be discussed.

Vance’s time as vice-president has been marked by his assertive “America First” foreign policy. On a European tour, he raised tempers by criticising allies’ defence spending. In March, during a Greenland stop, he caused consternation by saying: “We have to have Greenland. It’s not a question of ‘Do you think we can do without it?’”

Vance’s India visit comes just after the head of US intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, was in Delhi to bolster the Quad – the four-nation security grouping of the US, India, Japan, and Australia – seen as a counterweight to China’s growing clout.

Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, has also been on a south-east Asia charm offensive, promoting Beijing as a steadier and more dependable economic ally than Washington.

Although Vance is primarily on a working visit, his trip will have a strong personal element. The family will tour the royal palaces of Jaipur and the iconic Taj Mahal. Officials say the “private component” underscores Usha Vance’s Indian roots – she was born in the US to Indian immigrants – and deep ties to India.

A draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality.

The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft. The New York Times first reported on the draft.

The US state department disputed the report, with a spokesperson telling Newsweek that the reporting is “entirely based on a fake document”.

Earlier on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, called the reported overhaul “fake news” in a post on X. “The ⁦nytimes falls victim to another hoax.”

The proposals reportedly also include the elimination of the Bureau of International Organizations, which liaises with the United Nations and a cut in diplomatic operations in Canada.

Under the changes, the sprawling state department would be reorganized into four regional bureaus covering Indo-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Eurasia. But an unspecified number of “non-essential” embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa would be closed.

The New York Times said the proposed executive order could be signed by Donald Trump this week and the changes would take effect by 1 October.

The order is designed to impose “a disciplined reorganization” of the state department and “streamline mission delivery” while cutting “waste, fraud and abuse”, the outlet quoted from the document.

If the proposals happened, they would be a significant rejection of the US commitment to a multilateral world order.

A senior diplomatic official in Africa said information circulating within the state department about foreign service reforms that are set to be announced would be less sweeping than those described in the document.

One poster on a US foreign service-dedicated Reddit page said they doubted that the changes would go as far as the draft order. “I suspect this is being leaked as a red herring designed to make us grateful for a more modest but still unpopular reorganization,” wrote one user. “It will be basically immediately challenged and enjoined, and then ‘implementation’ will be dragged out until Trump is voted out.”

Still, any radical reorganization of the US foreign operations comes after the Trump administration moved to fold the US Agency for International Development (USAID) into the state department, cut operations, and then reinstate some, including programs for emergency food assistance.

The bureau of humanitarian affairs would “assume any mission-critical duties previously carried out by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)”, the order reads.

The draft order leaked on Sunday would eliminate the Bureau of African Affairs, the special envoy for climate, the Bureau of International Organizations and the Office of Global Women’s Issues.

“Diplomatic relations with Canada shall fall under a significantly reduced team delegated as the North American Affairs Office (NAAO) within the Office of the Secretary,” according to the document. That includes a substantial downsizing of the US embassy in the capital, Ottawa.

The shake-up would also see US diplomatic staff assigned to regions for the duration of their careers rather than be deployed in rotations around the world. State department-awarded Fulbright scholarships would be reformed as “solely for master’s-level study in national security-related disciplines” with emphasis placed in “critical” languages.

Fellowships associated with historically Black Howard University in Washington, would also be cancelled as part of the administration’s effort to end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

“All positions and duties must receive explicit written approval from the President of the United States,” according to the order, which also calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats. The new criteria for hiring, it said, included “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision”.

But the order is not the only internal document circulating to propose changes to US diplomatic operations. Another proposes a 50% reduction in the state department budget, and a third calls for cutting 10 embassies and 17 consulates.

The US state department workforce includes 13,000 members of the foreign service, 11,000 civil service employees, and 45,000 locally employed staff at more than 270 diplomatic missions worldwide, according to its website.

Hundreds of marches, pickets and cleanup events are taking place across the US in the run-up to Earth Day on Tuesday, as environmental and climate groups step up resistance to the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and its “war on the planet”.

A fortnight after the “Hands Off” mobilization brought millions to the streets, national and grassroots organizers are teaming up with pro-democracy groups for “All Out on Earth Day” – a wave of actions to demand the right to live free, healthy lives.

In New York, thousands of people gathered in lower Manhattan on Saturday for the “Hands Off Migrants march” endorsed by dozens of climate and migrant justice groups, calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to get out of New York – and New York to get out of fossil fuels. The two movements converged amid Trump’s crackdown on migrants and embrace of fossil fuels – which will drive further climate collapse and forced migration.

Meanwhile in Milwaukee, a Stop the Cuts march organized by Indivisible and 50501 called out Republican lawmakers backing the unprecedented cuts to healthcare, education, environmental protections and climate funding.

“Trump is attacking migrants and the planet by aligning himself with big oil and eroding hard won protections. Climate change is the leading cause of global displacement, these are connected issues,” said Renata Pumarol, the deputy director of the Climate Organizing Hub, which coordinated the New York march. “As we fight the authoritarianism of Trump, climate groups need to be part of the resistance because we are all under threat.”

Trump and his billionaire mega-donor Elon Musk have directed the dismantling of federal offices that oversee clean air, drinking water, national parks and forests, conservation, climate smart farming, and environmental justice at dizzying speed, as well as pushing through mass layoffs at core climate and environmental agencies including the National Weather Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Forest Service.

Meanwhile, regulatory standards for fossil fuels, petrochemical plants, mining and other polluting industries have been slashed – along with an unprecedented crackdown on free speech, migrants and universities.

Trump is also rumoured to be mulling an executive order that removes tax-exempt status for some climate groups, which could prove devastating for smaller grassroots organizations. Meanwhile the White House is also pushing the Republican-controlled Congress to pass a budget reconciliation bill that cancels billions of dollars of Biden-era grants for clean energy and environmental protection investments.

The response from the environmental and climate movement to the Trump agenda has, until now, been mostly confined to the courts, with an array of lawsuits challenging everything from mass layoffs, suspended environmental justice funds and the erasure of climate change from federal government websites.

According to some advocates, the resistance on the streets had been somewhat underwhelming – in part down to shock at the scale and pace of Trump’s attacks, as well as efforts by some green groups to stay apolitical to appease funders and the administration. Protest fatigue, they say, may also have played a role, given that the social uprisings in response to the murder of George Floyd and Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, has led to little sustained political change.

Now, three months into a Trump presidency and the capitulation of Congress to his assault on the planet, many in the environmental and climate justice movement will begin rallying behind three major demands: to defend workers and democracy; lower costs for communities and end handouts for corporations and billionaires; and make polluters pay.

“The mobilizations … are the start of something: a wave from below with winnable demands to meet and inspire people where they are,” said Kaniela Ing, the national director of the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of frontline communities, labor organizers, and climate activists. “Rallies, protests, clean-ups … rising up takes many forms, and it all helps, as we need consistent mass non-cooperation to fight against authoritarianism and ensure a livable world.”

On Tuesday, the Planet over Profit and #teslatakedown coalition will picket the New York home of billionaire James Murdoch, a Tesla board member. The Trump mega-donor Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company has faced allegations of air and water pollution around its factories in the US, “and because there’s no greater threat to our ability to live rich, dignified lives on a safe, stable planet than the Trump/Musk regime,” according to organisers.

In Michigan, Jewish organizers are running a phone bank to turn out climate and environmental voters ahead of the 6 May municipal elections. In Duluth, Minnesota, traditional Ojibwe blessings for Mother Earth will open an event featuring students spearheading efforts to install solar energy in local schools and environmental scientists on the need to protect the local EPA water lab.

This year’s Earth Day, which includes climate education in schools and universities, beach-clean ups, and tree planting in the US and globally, is the 55th, but thanks to Trump, it is like no other.

The first Earth Day took place on 22 April 1970, when 20 million Americans participated in nationwide events, protests and teach-ins about pollution, the loss of wildlife and pillaging of natural resources – bringing together disparate issues under the broad banner of what then became the US environmental movement.

This was followed with a campaign to oust 12 members of Congress with terrible environmental voting records in the midterms, with seven of the so-called dirty dozen incumbents losing their seats – including the powerful chair of the public works committee.

The success sent shockwaves across Washington, and a month later, Congress passed the clean air act by an overwhelming majority, followed by slew of laws that formed the bedrock of environmental protections including the clean water, endangered species, and national marine sanctuaries acts – and Richard Nixon created the EPA.

“For about six years the environmental movement was unstoppable, as we pushed to make the world a healthy place for humans and all diversity of life. There’s always been a pendulum in American politics but nothing like the assault on the environment – and social security, education, health and economy – we see today,” said Denis Hayes, the organizer of the first Earth Day.

“In 2026 we will need to organize aggressively for the election, but this Earth Day is about people with shared values coming together looking for local solutions, some introspection on what we did wrong that allowed Trump to get elected, and finding strategies on how to overcome him.”

A new review of 50 recent studies found that protests tend to sway media coverage and public opinion toward the climate cause – even when disruptive tactics are used. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication researchers found that collective action can also shift people’s voting behavior. In one study in Germany, the Green Party received proportionally more votes in areas where climate protests took place, Grist reported.

The GNDN and the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate justice group, were among those that campaigned to secure the Inflation Reduction and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 and 2022 – now under threat by Trump’s pro-fossil fuel, anti-climate action agenda.

“Just three months into the Trump presidency, the damage has already been catastrophic,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, the executive director of the Sunrise Movement. “This Earth Day, we stand united in defiance of their greed and fight for a future that prioritizes people and the planet over profits.”

Fears of a new wave of deportations and student visa cancellations are rising at a number of Florida’s most diverse universities after administrators signed agreements recasting campus police as federal immigration agents.

Miami’s Florida International University (FIU) is one of at least 11 state colleges to enroll in the top tier of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) 287(g) program that trains local police departments for “limited” involvement in immigration operations.

The partnerships give campus officers broad new powers to stop, question and detain students about their immigration status, and share information directly with Ice, which students and faculty members believe could escalate the Trump administration’s assault on those studying in the US from abroad.

Nationally, more than 1,400 international students and recent graduates perceived by the government to be pro-Palestinian have had their F-1 or J-1 visas canceled by the homeland security department, according to a tally by Inside Higher Ed, with the Miami New Times reporting dozens in Florida.

Additionally, a series of prominent arrests, detentions and deportations of students, alumni and scholars have sparked outrage and protests on campuses nationwide. They include Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi.

At the University of Florida (UF), which confirmed its collaboration with Ice earlier this month, students have organized several demonstrations against the agreement, and in support of Felipe Zapata Velázquez, a Colombian third-year student deported after he was arrested last month by local police for alleged traffic offenses and handed over into Ice custody.

Maxwell Frost, a Democratic Florida congressman, decried what he called Velázquez’s “government-funded kidnapping”. Protesters say his deportation is part of an ongoing Trump administration purge of overseas students, many for minor infractions.

Earlier this year, the government reactivated the taskforce model of the Ice partnership program that was discontinued by Barack Obama in 2012 for racial profiling, and which the American Civil Liberties Union has argued is unconstitutional.

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s rightwing Republican governor, directed state law enforcement agencies in February to sign up, and the Miami Herald reported on Thursday that almost every college with its own campus law enforcement agency is enrolled.

“That the University of Florida has signed on to the highest level of these agreements is atrocious,” Stephen Sykes, the chair of the UF chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, said.

“There’s no rule in Florida that any group sign on at this level, which effectively makes the police force a wing of Ice itself.”

Sykes continued: “Even across activist communities at UF that generally don’t have the best relationships with police, they were seen as kind of the good people. They protected activists during our Palestine encampment, they were just there hanging out. It felt more like they were protecting us than trying to box us in. Now a lot of that trust is definitely gone.

“Students are scared to come out now, because to even speak up is to risk deportation.”

Activists at FIU share Sykes’s concerns that international students in particular will be reluctant to seek help from campus law enforcement, or to report crimes.

“What will they do with any information they receive? Who will they send it to?” said Bayan Abedulazis, the president of FIU’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.

“Things are very uncertain, and there is a lot of fear, just because of the fact that FIU is an international university. Most students either have a background of family not coming from the US or are directly coming from out of the country, and they’ve just kind of detached from a lot of these spaces, like SJP or the like, because they don’t want to be caught or have risk for themselves or their families.”

FIU has almost 3,800 international students from more than 142 countries, according to its website. Madeline Baró, the senior director of media relations, told the Guardian that the visas of 18 students had been revoked, but would not comment about the university’s agreement with Ice.

There was a “no Ice on campus” protest on Tuesday, but Abedulazis said her group had advised international students not to take part.

“For SJP specifically, Palestine is such a big international issue, and we have a lot of international students that have wanted to be involved, or have been involved in the past,” she said.

“This past semester we’ve advised students not to attend any kind of public demonstrations, specifically in regards to Palestine, or just in the general sense, because of the kind of risk that it’s been posing for students to speak out publicly in any kind political manner.”

Educators joined the midweek protest at FIU, with members of its Union Faculty of Florida chapter displaying placards opposing the Ice agreement.

“Universities have usually been considered free spaces, open spaces,” Terrence Peterson, a history professor, told WLRN.

“ We want our students to show up. It’s hard enough to get them to show up anyways if they’re afraid to come because they might be arrested and deported.”

Rogelio Tovar, the chair of FIU’s board of trustees, defended the agreement to colleagues during their meeting on Tuesday, WLRN reported.

“No student should be fearful if they’re here legally and they’re in compliance with the law,” he said.

The university recently acceded to a request from DeSantis to appoint Jeanette Nuñez, a close political ally and his former lieutenant governor, as interim president, sparking allegations of cronyism.

The activist group Florida Student Power Network has also been helping organize campus resistance to Ice integration with university administrators, and lobbying Florida’s state legislators in Tallahassee.

“University campuses do not have to comply to these agreements,” the group said in a statement ahead of a protest at Boca Raton’s Florida Atlantic University (FAU).

“It is clear that schools are bowing down to a racist agenda rather than prioritizing the safety of their students. This won’t stop at FAU. We need to fight back.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US.

The White House has claimed Ábrego García is a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang-related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.

But in an interview with ABC’s This Week, Van Hollen, a Maryland senator, stressed that the government had presented no evidence linking Ábrego García to MS-13 in federal court. “Mr President,” the senator said, “take your facts to court, don’t put everything out on social media.”

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Van Hollen contested Trump’s “argument that you can’t fight gang violence and uphold people’s constitutional rights at the same time. That’s a very dangerous view. If we deny the constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens the constitutional rights of everyone in America.”

Van Hollen, who returned to the US on Friday after meeting with Ábrego García, has accused administration officials of lying about Ábrego García’s case in an attempt to distract from questions about whether his rights were violated when he was deported to El Salvador last month.

“I’m for whatever gives him his due process rights,” Van Hollen told the outlet. “An immigration judge in 2019 said he should not be deported to El Salvador because that would put his life at risk from gang members like MS-13.

“The Trump administration did not appeal that immigration judge’s order to keep him in the United States. He is here legally now, has a work permit, is a sheet metal worker, has a family, and three kids,” he said.

“I am fine with whatever result happens as long as he is given his due process rights under the constitution,” Van Hollen added. The administration has said Ábrego García’s deportation was an “administrative error” and the supreme court has ordered that the government “facilitate” his return, setting up a contentious debate of what that means in practical terms.

As Van Hollen made the rounds of political shows on Sunday, he expanded on the theme of a constitutional crisis. On NBC’s Meet the Press he was asked if the US was in constitutional crisis with the Trump administration.

“Oh, yes, we are. They are very much flouting the courts as we speak. As the courts have said, facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing. Yes, they’re absolutely in violation of the court’s orders as we speak,” he said.

“My whole point here is that if you deprive one man of his constitutional rights, you threaten the constitutional rights of everybody,” Van Hollen said later to the Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream. “I would hope that all of us would understand that principle – you’re a lawyer. I’m not vouching for the individual, I’m vouching for his rights.”

On ABC’s This Week, Van Hollen was asked if he had walked into a trap when García was brought to his hotel for an hour-long meeting and the pair were pictured with margaritas. The senator said the drinks were placed there by a government official for the photos, and not touched, and added that the trip wasn’t a trap because his purpose had been to meet with García so he could “tell his wife and family he was OK”.

“That was my goal. And I achieved that goal,” he said.

But he added that “the Salvadorian authorities tried to deceive people. They tried to make it look like he was in paradise. They actually wanted to have the meeting by the hotel pool originally.”

The senator also accused Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, of “lying through his teeth” about Ábrego García, and strongly rejected comments by Gavin Newsom, the California governor seen as a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, who said that it was politically dangerous for Democrats to defend the wrongly deported man.

“I think what Americans are tired of, is people who want to put their finger to the wind to see what’s going on,” the senator said. “I would say that anyone that’s not prepared to defend the constitutional rights of one man, when they threaten the constitutional rights of all, doesn’t deserve to lead.”

After the meeting, President Nayib Bukele posted the image on X, writing that García “miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Senator Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!”

Van Hollen said the venue for the meeting and the subsequent picture “just goes to show the lengths that Bukele and Trump will go to try to deceive people about what this case is all about”.

On Friday, the White House mocked Van Hollen by annotating a headline about his Thursday meeting with García. “Fixed it for you, New York Times,” the White House X account shared. “Oh, and by the way, Chris Van Hollen – he’s NOT coming back.”

The annotated headline changes “Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador” included crossing out “Wrongly” in red ink and replacing the words “Maryland Man” with “MS-13 Illegal Alien”. They also added “Who’s Never Coming Back.”

But Ábrego García’s deportation was also facing opposition from Republicans. On Sunday, the Louisiana senator John Kennedy was asked on Meet The Press if Ábrego García should be returned to the US.

Kennedy said that Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador and calls for Ábrego García to be returned to the US were “utterly and gloriously wrong” and said that “most of this gauzy rhetoric is just rage bait. Unless you’re next-level obtuse, you know that Mr García is never coming back to the United States, ever.”

But Kennedy conceded that Ábrego García’s deportation “was a screw-up”, adding that “the administration won’t admit it, but this was a screw-up. Mr García was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador. He was sent to El Salvador.” But he said Democrats’ response was typical.

“The Democrats say, ‘Look, you know, we told you, Trump is a threat to democracy.’ This is going to happen every other Thursday afternoon. I don’t see any pattern here. I mean, you know, some day pigs may fly, but I doubt it,”” he added.

Ukraine issued air raid alerts for Kyiv and the country’s eastern half as blasts shook the city of Mykolaiv early on Monday, authorities said, hours after the one-day Easter “ceasefire” declared by Vladimir Putin came to an end.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the Russian president’s unilateral Easter ceasefire declaration as a fake “PR” exercise and said Russian troops had continued their drone and artillery attacks across many parts of the frontline on Sunday.

Washington said it would welcome an extension of the truce, and Zelenskyy reiterated several times Ukraine’s willingness to pause strikes for 30 days in the war.

Putin ordered on Saturday the halt in all military activity along the frontline until midnight Moscow time on Sunday. He did not give orders to extend it.

“There were no other commands,” Russia’s Tass state news agency cited Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying when asked whether the ceasefire could be prolonged.

Some regions in eastern Ukraine were under air raid alerts starting minutes after midnight on Monday, according to data from the Ukrainian air force, with the alerts gradually extending towards the central regions of the country.

“We urge city residents to immediately go to the nearest shelters and remain there until the alert is over,” Kyiv’s military administration said in a social media post at 4.41am local time.

Blasts shook the Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv, said its mayor, Oleksandr Senkevich. He did not say whether it was air defence systems in operation or bombs landing.

Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Sergiy Lysak said on Telegram: “The Russian army has launched drones at the region.”

He said a home was damaged and a fire broke out at a food establishment but no injuries had been reported.

There were no air raid alerts in Ukraine on Sunday but Ukrainian forces reported nearly 3,000 violations of Russia’s own ceasefire with the heaviest attacks and shelling seen along the Pokrovsk part of the frontline, Zelenskiy said on Monday.

Russia’s Voronezh region bordering Ukraine was also under air raid alerts for two hours, the region’s governor said. Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had shot at Russian positions 444 times and it had counted more than 900 Ukrainian drone attacks, with deaths and injuries among the civilian population. Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.

Donald Trump, hoping to clinch a lasting peace deal, struck an optimistic note on Sunday, saying that “hopefully” the two sides would make a deal “this week” to end the conflict.

On Friday, the US president and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the US would walk away from peace efforts without clear signs of progress soon.

Rubio met European leaders in Paris last week to discuss how to end the war. Leaks suggest the White House is pushing for a Kremlin-friendly deal that would freeze the conflict along the existing 1,000km-long frontline.

Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has suggested that Crimea and four other Ukrainian provinces could be given to Russia. The US is considering recognising Crimea as Russian and offering Moscow other incentives such as sanctions relief, Bloomberg reported.

The Kremlin insists its original war goals must be achieved. They include the removal of Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s president, as well as the country’s “demilitarisation” and a guarantee of its non-Nato “neutral” status.

Since their disastrous meeting in February in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy has been seeking to improve relations with Washington. Last month, Ukraine accepted a 30-day US ceasefire proposal and it is poised to sign an agreement on Thursday giving the US access to minerals.

There are hints, however, that Zelenskyy is growing frustrated at the White House’s pro-Putin rhetoric. Trump has piled pressure on Ukraine – in effect cutting off military aid and temporarily pausing intelligence sharing – while taking no corresponding measures against Russia.

On Sunday, Zelenskyy appeared to take a swipe at Fox Television Stations after its Live Now network broadcast live coverage of Putin attending an Orthodox Easter service in Moscow with Russia’s patriarch, while incorrectly labelling Kyiv as part of Russia.

“Instead of broadcasting religious service from Moscow, the focus should be on pressuring Moscow to genuinely commit to a full ceasefire and to maintain it for at least 30 days after Easter – to give diplomacy a real chance,” Zelenskyy posted.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said it had asked for an explanation. “If this was a mistake rather than a deliberate political statement, there should be an apology and an investigation into who made the mistake,” a ministry spokesperson said.

With Reuters

A US man serving in various administrative roles for the Jehovah’s Witnesses sexually molested a child whom he met while working for the Christian religious sect in New Orleans – then continued his career virtually unimpeded and moved to North Carolina after completing a disciplinary suspension of less than a year, he has admitted in writing and in a sworn deposition.

The stunning revelations about Joseph Fitzgerald Hall and how he has been managed by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York that runs the Jehovah’s Witnesses are contained in a lawsuit that the abuse survivor has been pursuing against both the group and the administrator.

In a recent interview, the survivor, Barry Davis, explained that one of his main reasons for coming forward was to ensure the congregation that Hall later joined in Charlotte, North Carolina, knew the full truth about him. Hall, while testifying under oath in the course of the lawsuit, acknowledged that“there is no requirement to tell someone why you were disfellowshipped”, which is the term to describe the suspension he served over his abuse of Davis.

“They should know out there,” Davis said. “This needs to be exposed to anybody it needs to be exposed to.”

Davis, now 46, also said he shed his anonymity to support others who for years have been speaking out about child abuse within the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He contended that the evidence in his case “just kind of drives the nail in” about the reality of the issue.

In his opinion, he said: “Nothing’s changed.”

About 8.5 million people globally are active members of the denomination, a primary tenet of which is that the world’s destruction is imminent.

Hall, now 60, did not respond to requests for comment about his admissions. In a statement, an attorney representing the Watchtower Society, Billy Gibbens, maintained “the actions of the accused in this lawsuit were his own and contrary to the beliefs and practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses”.

“The alleged criminal acts occurred outside the scope of any religious activities assigned to the accused by the local congregation,” Gibbens’ statement said.

Gibbens said his side could not elaborate while the case was pending in court. But he also wrote: “It is deeply distressing whenever anyone falls victim to such a heinous crime and sin. My clients deeply empathize with all victims of abuse.”

As he tells it, Davis was about nine when he met Hall, roughly aged 24, through a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation in New Orleans’s Central City neighborhood. Hall promised Davis that he would mold him into one of the so-called Dryades congregation’s “next great” leaders if the boy listened properly, according to the plaintiff’s lawsuit.

But instead, the lawsuit argued, Hall exploited his positions as a ministerial servant and later as an elder within the congregation to get close to Davis. Hall held private Bible studies with Davis, brought him along as he proselytized to potential new converts and shared religious articles from the Watchtower Society with him.

The lawsuit said Hall ultimately took advantage of that proximity to rape Davis and inflict other sexually abusive acts on him from 1990 to 1996, beginning when the boy was 11. Hall would tell Davis that 12 “was the age of accountability”, and therefore the boy bore fault for his molestation, the lawsuit said.

Davis recalled disclosing his abuse to his mother – who was a single parent – along with another elder at their congregation – by 1998. In February of that year, the elder initiated a type of disciplinary hearing that the Jehovah’s Witnesses refer to as a “judicial committee”.

Multiple congregation elders who formed part of the committee heard Davis deliver an account of the molestation he endured at the hands of Hall. The committee subsequently disfellowshipped Hall for 11 months – during which time he was in effect suspended from the congregation – before he was allowed to return, the lawsuit said.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit added, the committee instructed Davis to “repent” and quit his “homosexual lifestyle”. The group prohibited Davis from carrying the microphone at congregation gatherings, working behind the literature counter or leading trips to proselytize to prospective new members, along with other privileges.

And crucially, the lawsuit said, it ordered Davis to cooperate with the Jehovah’s Witnesses in keeping what Hall had done to him secret because it would impugn the sect if word got out. The lawsuit asserted such an instruction violated laws in Louisiana which require religious organizations such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses to report any suspected child abuse to state authorities.

Davis said he complied with the committee’s wishes for years – even after he was kicked out of standing in a friend’s wedding when news of his having tried to hold Hall accountable circulated among the congregation.

But Davis said he eventually left the Jehovah’s Witnesses and moved to the Dallas area in Texas. There, in 2014, about six years after his mother died, he decided to revisit Hall’s abuse and the resulting treatment he got from the Jehovah’s Witnesses after seeing a local news story about an attorney filing a lawsuit against the sect on behalf of five clients with their own abuse allegations.

Davis said he reached out to that lawyer, who could not assist him because his case unfolded in Louisiana rather than in Texas. Then, in 2019, he contacted New Orleans-based attorney Kristi Schubert, who has represented a number of religious abuse survivors – but, initially, she couldn’t help because Louisiana laws in effect at the time meant Davis had only until his 28th birthday to sue over his molestation by Hall.

Davis was about 40 at the time.

Nonetheless, in 2021, Louisiana’s legislature enacted a law that in part temporarily allowed child molestation victims to file lawsuits seeking damages for their abuse no matter how long they had waited.

The law’s constitutionality was challenged. But Louisiana’s supreme court upheld it as constitutional on 12 June 2024.

That very same day, Schubert filed a lawsuit in New Orleans’s civil district courthouse on Davis’s behalf. It demanded damages from Hall and the Watchtower Society, including for the mental and physical trauma with which the plaintiff was left.

The lawsuit has generated exceptionally compelling evidence against Hall, who – as of a deposition in March – said he was representing himself without an attorney.

In his mandatory response to the lawsuit, Hall wrote that he is “guilty of have [sic] an inappropriate relationship” with Davis.

“We fondled each other and played with each other sex organs and laid on each other buttocks,” said Hall’s response, which was replete with typos. He added that he and Davis engaged in oral sex, though the plaintiff at the time could not legally give consent to that act or any of the others Hall mentioned.

Furthermore, Hall wrote that a book which Davis authored and self-published about his abuse “speaks truthfully to a large degree about [the] encounters”.

Schubert interrogated Hall under oath during a 27 March videoconference deposition. Hall invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination – colloquially known as pleading the fifth amendment – at least 48 times.

But he did answer when Schubert asked him if the letter was true and whether he wrote it of his “own free accord”. Hall’s answer to both questions: “Yes.”

Hall additionally testified about how he had a wife as well as a son – and how since 2003 he had belonged to a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation on Monroe Road in Charlotte. He said he was considered what is known as a regular “publisher”, by which he was regularly participating in organized preaching at his congregation.

Despite his being disfellowshipped after Davis reported his molestation, Hall said he does not “know of any rule” prohibiting from proselytizing around children. He also said there was no mandate for him to disclose the reason for his disfellowship to anyone, including fellow members of his congregation.

Speaking in the weeks after the deposition, Davis said Hall’s statements evidently contradict the Jehovah’s Witnesses claims in their policies that “children are a sacred trust” – and their “protection … is of utmost concern and importance”.

Davis said he hopes Hall and the Jehovah’s Witnesses make him whole for his ordeal. But furthermore, he said he hopes the Jehovah’s Witnesses rethink the way they have let Hall carry on his business within the denomination.

“It’s upsetting – it’s infuriating,” Davis said. “I just think that is ludicrous.”

A US man serving in various administrative roles for the Jehovah’s Witnesses sexually molested a child whom he met while working for the Christian religious sect in New Orleans – then continued his career virtually unimpeded and moved to North Carolina after completing a disciplinary suspension of less than a year, he has admitted in writing and in a sworn deposition.

The stunning revelations about Joseph Fitzgerald Hall and how he has been managed by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York that runs the Jehovah’s Witnesses are contained in a lawsuit that the abuse survivor has been pursuing against both the group and the administrator.

In a recent interview, the survivor, Barry Davis, explained that one of his main reasons for coming forward was to ensure the congregation that Hall later joined in Charlotte, North Carolina, knew the full truth about him. Hall, while testifying under oath in the course of the lawsuit, acknowledged that“there is no requirement to tell someone why you were disfellowshipped”, which is the term to describe the suspension he served over his abuse of Davis.

“They should know out there,” Davis said. “This needs to be exposed to anybody it needs to be exposed to.”

Davis, now 46, also said he shed his anonymity to support others who for years have been speaking out about child abuse within the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He contended that the evidence in his case “just kind of drives the nail in” about the reality of the issue.

In his opinion, he said: “Nothing’s changed.”

About 8.5 million people globally are active members of the denomination, a primary tenet of which is that the world’s destruction is imminent.

Hall, now 60, did not respond to requests for comment about his admissions. In a statement, an attorney representing the Watchtower Society, Billy Gibbens, maintained “the actions of the accused in this lawsuit were his own and contrary to the beliefs and practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses”.

“The alleged criminal acts occurred outside the scope of any religious activities assigned to the accused by the local congregation,” Gibbens’ statement said.

Gibbens said his side could not elaborate while the case was pending in court. But he also wrote: “It is deeply distressing whenever anyone falls victim to such a heinous crime and sin. My clients deeply empathize with all victims of abuse.”

As he tells it, Davis was about nine when he met Hall, roughly aged 24, through a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation in New Orleans’s Central City neighborhood. Hall promised Davis that he would mold him into one of the so-called Dryades congregation’s “next great” leaders if the boy listened properly, according to the plaintiff’s lawsuit.

But instead, the lawsuit argued, Hall exploited his positions as a ministerial servant and later as an elder within the congregation to get close to Davis. Hall held private Bible studies with Davis, brought him along as he proselytized to potential new converts and shared religious articles from the Watchtower Society with him.

The lawsuit said Hall ultimately took advantage of that proximity to rape Davis and inflict other sexually abusive acts on him from 1990 to 1996, beginning when the boy was 11. Hall would tell Davis that 12 “was the age of accountability”, and therefore the boy bore fault for his molestation, the lawsuit said.

Davis recalled disclosing his abuse to his mother – who was a single parent – along with another elder at their congregation – by 1998. In February of that year, the elder initiated a type of disciplinary hearing that the Jehovah’s Witnesses refer to as a “judicial committee”.

Multiple congregation elders who formed part of the committee heard Davis deliver an account of the molestation he endured at the hands of Hall. The committee subsequently disfellowshipped Hall for 11 months – during which time he was in effect suspended from the congregation – before he was allowed to return, the lawsuit said.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit added, the committee instructed Davis to “repent” and quit his “homosexual lifestyle”. The group prohibited Davis from carrying the microphone at congregation gatherings, working behind the literature counter or leading trips to proselytize to prospective new members, along with other privileges.

And crucially, the lawsuit said, it ordered Davis to cooperate with the Jehovah’s Witnesses in keeping what Hall had done to him secret because it would impugn the sect if word got out. The lawsuit asserted such an instruction violated laws in Louisiana which require religious organizations such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses to report any suspected child abuse to state authorities.

Davis said he complied with the committee’s wishes for years – even after he was kicked out of standing in a friend’s wedding when news of his having tried to hold Hall accountable circulated among the congregation.

But Davis said he eventually left the Jehovah’s Witnesses and moved to the Dallas area in Texas. There, in 2014, about six years after his mother died, he decided to revisit Hall’s abuse and the resulting treatment he got from the Jehovah’s Witnesses after seeing a local news story about an attorney filing a lawsuit against the sect on behalf of five clients with their own abuse allegations.

Davis said he reached out to that lawyer, who could not assist him because his case unfolded in Louisiana rather than in Texas. Then, in 2019, he contacted New Orleans-based attorney Kristi Schubert, who has represented a number of religious abuse survivors – but, initially, she couldn’t help because Louisiana laws in effect at the time meant Davis had only until his 28th birthday to sue over his molestation by Hall.

Davis was about 40 at the time.

Nonetheless, in 2021, Louisiana’s legislature enacted a law that in part temporarily allowed child molestation victims to file lawsuits seeking damages for their abuse no matter how long they had waited.

The law’s constitutionality was challenged. But Louisiana’s supreme court upheld it as constitutional on 12 June 2024.

That very same day, Schubert filed a lawsuit in New Orleans’s civil district courthouse on Davis’s behalf. It demanded damages from Hall and the Watchtower Society, including for the mental and physical trauma with which the plaintiff was left.

The lawsuit has generated exceptionally compelling evidence against Hall, who – as of a deposition in March – said he was representing himself without an attorney.

In his mandatory response to the lawsuit, Hall wrote that he is “guilty of have [sic] an inappropriate relationship” with Davis.

“We fondled each other and played with each other sex organs and laid on each other buttocks,” said Hall’s response, which was replete with typos. He added that he and Davis engaged in oral sex, though the plaintiff at the time could not legally give consent to that act or any of the others Hall mentioned.

Furthermore, Hall wrote that a book which Davis authored and self-published about his abuse “speaks truthfully to a large degree about [the] encounters”.

Schubert interrogated Hall under oath during a 27 March videoconference deposition. Hall invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination – colloquially known as pleading the fifth amendment – at least 48 times.

But he did answer when Schubert asked him if the letter was true and whether he wrote it of his “own free accord”. Hall’s answer to both questions: “Yes.”

Hall additionally testified about how he had a wife as well as a son – and how since 2003 he had belonged to a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation on Monroe Road in Charlotte. He said he was considered what is known as a regular “publisher”, by which he was regularly participating in organized preaching at his congregation.

Despite his being disfellowshipped after Davis reported his molestation, Hall said he does not “know of any rule” prohibiting from proselytizing around children. He also said there was no mandate for him to disclose the reason for his disfellowship to anyone, including fellow members of his congregation.

Speaking in the weeks after the deposition, Davis said Hall’s statements evidently contradict the Jehovah’s Witnesses claims in their policies that “children are a sacred trust” – and their “protection … is of utmost concern and importance”.

Davis said he hopes Hall and the Jehovah’s Witnesses make him whole for his ordeal. But furthermore, he said he hopes the Jehovah’s Witnesses rethink the way they have let Hall carry on his business within the denomination.

“It’s upsetting – it’s infuriating,” Davis said. “I just think that is ludicrous.”

A Boeing jet intended for a Chinese airline landed back at the planemaker’s US production hub on Sunday, a victim of the tit-for-tat bilateral tariffs launched by Donald Trump.

The 737 MAX, which was meant for China’s Xiamen Airlines, landed at Seattle’s Boeing Field at 6.11pm, according to a Reuters witness. It was painted with Xiamen livery.

The jet, which made refuelling stops in Guam and Hawaii on its 5,000-mile (8,000-km) return journey, was one of several 737 MAX jets – Boeing’s bestselling model – that had been waiting at Boeing’s Zhoushan completion centre for final work and delivery.

Trump this month raised baseline tariffs on Chinese imports to 145%. In retaliation, China imposed a 125% tariff on US goods.

A Chinese airline taking delivery of a Boeing jet could be crippled by the tariffs, given that a new 737 MAX has a market value of around $55m, according to IBA, an aviation consultancy. Beijing is reportedly considering ways to support airlines that lease Boeing jets and are facing higher costs.

Last week it was reported that China’s government had asked Chinese airlines to pause purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from American companies like Boeing. China holds about 20% of the expected global demand for aircraft over the next two decades.

Boeing’s order book had 130 planes scheduled for deliver to Chinese companies at the end of March for both commercial airlines and leasing firms, Airways Mag reported.

It was not clear which party made the decision for the aircraft to return to the US. Boeing and Xiamen had not responded to Reuters requests for comment at time of publication.

Just hours before Trump detailed his so-called “liberation day” tariffs, Boeing chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, told a US Senate hearing that the company sold about 80% of its planes overseas and wanted to avoid getting into a situation where “certain markets become closed to us”.

Ortberg said there was about half a trillion dollars in backlogged orders at the time.

Confusion over changing tariffs could leave many aircraft deliveries in limbo, with some airline CEOs saying they would defer delivery of planes rather than pay duties, analysts say.

Michael O’Leary, the group chief executive of budget airline Ryanair, told the Financial Times last week that the company was due to receive 25 Boeing aircraft from August but “we might delay them and hope that common sense will prevail”.

With Reuters in Seattle

An Indigenous campaigner and women’s leader from the Peruvian Amazon has been awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activists, after leading a successful legal campaign that led to the river where her people, the Kukama, live being granted legal personhood.

Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, 57, from the village of Shapajila on the Marañon River, led the Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana (HKK) women’s association, supported by lawyers from Peru’s Legal Defence Institute, in a campaign to protect the river. After three years, judges in Loreto, Peru’s largest Amazon region, ruled in March 2024 that the Marañon had the right to be free-flowing and free of contamination, respecting an Indigenous worldview that regards a river as a living entity.

It was a landmark ruling in Peru. The court in Iquitos, Loreto’s capital city, found the Peruvian government had violated the river’s inherent rights, and ordered it to take immediate action to prevent future oil spills into the waterway. The court also ruled that the government must mandate the creation of a protection plan for the entire river basin and recognise the Kukama community as its stewards. The government appealed against the decision, but the court upheld the ruling in October 2024.

“She is the ‘mother of rivers’, the Marañon is born in the Andes and flows downstream to become the Amazon River,” Canaquiri said. The Kukama believe the river is sacred and that their ancestors’ spirits reside in its bed. for four decades, however, the Kukama have endured scores of oil spills which destroy fish stocks, damage the ecosystem and contaminate the water with heavy metals.

The Peruvian state oil company Petroperú began building the the Northern Peruvian pipeline in 1970s, and the region around the Marañon River has accounted for 40% of the county’s oil production since 2014 – with devastating effects. There have been more than 60 oil spills along the river since 1997, some of them catastrophic.

“My grandparents taught me that there is a giant boa that lives in the river, Puragua, the ‘mother of the river’,”said Canaquiri. The spirit represents the health of the river and its personhood, according to the Kukama’s cosmovision.

In practical terms, the Kukama depend on the river for transport, agriculture, water and fish, which is their main protein source. As a result of the the oil drilling, however, they have become highly vulnerable to water contamination.

Local people have suffered from fevers, diarrhoea, skin rashes and miscarriages after oil spills, and elevated levels of lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium were found in the blood of river community members in a 2021 study.

Canaquiri, a mother of four with six grandchildren, remembers a blissful childhood with abundant fish and animals before the oil drilling began. “There was plenty of food. We shared everything, worked on each other’s farms and celebrated the festivals together,” she said.

Despite the ruling, the river is not out of danger and Canaquiri and the HKK are asking the Peruvian government to implement the court’s ruling. The fight continues.

Peru’s congress passed an anti-NGO law last month, which the country’s president, Dina Boluarte, approved last week. The law prevents civil society organisations from taking legal action or even giving legal counsel in cases against the state over human rights abuses.

Canaquiri says the law could cripple their legal battle. “It is worrying because it means lawyers cannot take our cases to enforce our fundamental rights,” she said.

“It is not just for us, it is also for the country and the world. Who can live without breathing? If it wasn’t for the Amazon, the forest, the rivers, we wouldn’t have clean air to breathe. How would we get food to eat every day, our fruits, our vegetables, our animals, our fish?”

She says she and the HKK are motivated by the future of their children and grandchildren,: “The government needs to understand that it should not kill nature but protect it. Otherwise, what hope will our children, the next generation, have?

The Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US was “getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis”, but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off.

“I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the Congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold,” Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union, adding “but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis.”

Klobuchar said the US supreme court should hold Trump administration officials in contempt if they continue to ignore a court order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Ábrego García from El Salvador, the Maryland resident the government admitted in court it had deported by mistake.

Klobuchar said the court could appoint a special prosecutor, independent of Trump’s Department of Justice, to uphold the rule of law and charge any officials who are responsible for Ábrego García’s deportation, or have refused to facilitate his return.

The senator’s comments came hours after supreme court released justice Samuel Alito’s dissenting opinion on the court’s decision to block the Trump administration from deporting more Venezuelans held in north Texas’s Bluebonnet detention center.

In his dissent, Alito criticized the decision of the seven-member majority, saying the court had acted “literally in the middle of the night” and without sufficient explanation. The “unprecedented” relief was “hastily and prematurely granted”, Alito added.

Alito, whose dissent was joined by his fellow conservative justice Clarence Thomas, said there was “dubious factual support” for granting the request in an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union to block deportations of accused gang members that the administration contends are legal under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The majority did not provide a detailed explanation for the order released early on Saturday, only that the administration should not to remove Venezuelans held “until further order of this court”.

The court has said previously that deportations under the 1798 law can only proceed if those scheduled to be removed are offered a chance to argue their case in court and were given “a reasonable time” to contest their pending removals.

Alito further wrote that both “the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law”, but it was not clear whether the supreme court had jurisdiction until legal avenues had been pursued through lower courts. He also objected to the fact that the justices had not had the chance to hear the government’s side.

“The only papers before this Court were those submitted by the applicants,” Alito wrote. “The Court had not ordered or received a response by the Government regarding either the applicants’ factual allegations or any of the legal issues presented by the application. And the Court did not have the benefit of a Government response filed in any of the lower courts either,” Alito said.

In his dissent, Alito said the applicants had not shown they were in “imminent danger of removal”.

“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order,” Alito wrote.

“I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate,” Alito added.

A number of MPs and peers have called for Donald Trump to be blocked from addressing parliament when he visits the UK.

The US president has suggested Buckingham Palace is “setting a date for September” for him to come to Britain.

But some parliamentarians have voiced concerns that it would be “inappropriate” for him to speak in the Palace of Westminster as his predecessors Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton did.

First reported in the Times, a message sent to Lord McFall of Alcluith, the lord speaker, said: “If it is suggested that he be invited to address both Houses of Parliament, I hope that you and Lindsay will suggest that would be inappropriate on this occasion because of his attitude towards and comments about the UK, parliamentary democracy, the Nato alliance and Ukraine.”

Efforts to prevent Trump addressing parliamentarians are being co-ordinated by Lord Foulkes, a minister in Sir Tony Blair’s former government.

Foulkes said: “While the government is obliged to deal with governments of all kinds, parliament should not welcome a leader who is anti-democratic and flouts the courts and the rule of law.

“He also fails to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which all parties in the UK parliament have done.”

Meanwhile, the Labour MP Kate Osborne is said to have asked the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, to follow his predecessor John Bercow in opposing an address from the president.

In a letter to Hoyle, she reportedly said: “I am asking you as the speaker to agree it would be inappropriate and mirror the previous speaker’s recommendation.”

Osborne has been contacted for comment.

Precedent for second-term US presidents who have already made a state visit is usually tea or lunch with the monarch at Windsor Castle, as was the case for George W Bush and Obama.

Keir Starmer handed Trump what he described at the time as a “truly historic” personal invitation from the king for a second state visit when they met at the White House in February.

However, reports suggest that the venue for the trip is now expected to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House, as previously thought.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office last week, Trump said: “They’re going to do a second, as you know, a second fest … that’s what it is: a fest, and it’s beautiful, and it’s the first time it’s ever happened to one person.

“And the reason is we have two separate terms, and it’s an honour … I’m a friend of Charles, I have great respect for King Charles and the family, William, we have really just a great respect for the family.”

When Sarah Palin arrived at a federal court on Monday, her appearance promised little in the way of legal fireworks.

Palin was in downtown Manhattan for a retrial in her defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. She lost her first trial against the newspaper in 2022 and the legal basis of Palin’s civil claim – that an incorrect editorial unlawfully smeared her – remains the same.

The retrial granted to the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential contender stems from procedural errors rather than factual questions. The US second circuit court of appeals revamped Palin’s case in 2024, having determined that Judge Jed Rakoff wrongly intruded on jurors’ decision-making.

While the jury was originally deliberating, Rakoff decided that if they delivered a verdict in Palin’s favor, he would set aside this decision. Rakoff, who stated that he presumed Palin would appeal what he expected to be an unfavorable verdict, told both sides that an appeals court “would greatly benefit from knowing how the jury would decide it”, according to NBC News.

Some jurors received push notifications on their phones about Rakoff’s decision while they were actually deliberating. The second circuit also found that Rakoff erred by keeping information from jurors potentially showing that James Bennet, then the editorial page editor at the New York Times, knew this piece was incorrect.

While trial proceedings that started last week are largely a replay of Palin’s initial trial, first amendment constitutional advocates contend that they reflect a troubling trend. Politicians and public figures – especially Donald Trump and his allies – are waging campaigns against US media organisations that are critical of them.

Many of these lawsuits are unlikely to pass legal muster: public figures have a high burden in proving defamation. But many outlets lack the resources to fight a costly years-long legal battle against defamation claims in a culture that’s increasingly media-averse, suppressing free expression.

“Every libel case these days feels like it has significant implications because of the fear and concern that the supreme court might ultimately want to change the legal standards for public officials and public figures,” Roy S Gutterman, the director of the Newhouse School’s Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University, said.

That said, Palin’s case might not be a referendum on the first amendment outright as “the actual malice standard, which requires the plaintiff to prove that the false information published about them was done either knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth, is not an easy standard, which is why plenty of libel plaintiffs like Governor Palin do not win defamation lawsuits”, he added.

If Palin loses again, however, this does not equate to an automatic victory for first amendment rights. “She will almost certainly appeal again and keep appealing,” Gutterman said. “Appellate courts set precedent, so we might still be a ways away from seeing how strong the first amendment ultimately is these days.”

And if Palin were to land a shocking win, “it would not be great for the New York Times or the free press altogether. Even if she wins a nominal amount of money, both sides might still keep appealing,” Gutterman said.

Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), said the Palin proceedings hinge on procedural issues rather than a referendum on the first amendment. Philadelphia-based Fire is defending Iowa pollster J Ann Selzer from the US president, who is suing her over a poll which concluded that he was trailing Kamala Harris in the state just before his decisive victory in Iowa as well as nationally in the 2024 election.

“The retrial is more of a standard defamation claim,” Corn-Revere said. “The question is whether or not Sarah Palin will meet the very high bar that is required for a public figure deflation case.”

That said, the case is unfolding in a time where there is “contempt for constitutional norms”.

“People who want to bring some kind of action will do so regardless of whether or not they have some kind of valid claim, or whether or not such a claim even exists,” Corn-Revere said.

The 2017 editorial referred to the 2011 mass shooting that gravely injured then Arizona Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords and left six people dead. Prior to this attack, Palin’s political action committee (Pac) published an ad, featuring cross-hairs, spanning over several congressional districts led by Democrats.

The editorial article in question erroneously associated the Pac’s political rhetoric with the mass shooting. Asked about Palin’s claims, the Times said: “This case revolves around a passing reference to an event in an editorial that was not about Sarah Palin. That reference contained an unintended error that was corrected within 18 hours.”

Tom Spiggle, the founder of the Spiggle Law Firm, said that the retrial presents a “second bite at the apple” for Palin but “it really comes down to a factual issue at this point”.

“Can they show actual malice?” Spiggle said. “That’s going to be a jury question.”

Although the legal question is very specific, the case does speak to broader ongoing public discourse about free speech in the Trump era. “Trump has in the past made statements that he would like to reform defamation law and make it easier for people to win defamation cases,” he said.

But if Palin loses again, this could make an important statement for free speech.

“I think it does send a message that just because you’re angry at the New York Times – or insert your media source here – doesn’t mean you’re going to prevail. The standards are still high,” Spiggle said. “Actual malice is tough to prove, and there’s a reason for that, right? It’s because we want these reporters … not [to] be on pins and needles every time they publish a story.”

Lawyers for Palin did not respond to a request for comment.

The retrial is scheduled to resume on Monday. Jurors are expected to start deliberating midweek.