Judge in Alien Enemies Act case says ‘willful disobedience’ of court orders would make mockery of US constitution – live | US news

We have an update on the delayed $380m in energy aid owed to the states – money appropriated by Congress to help low income households pay energy bills but which is currently in limbo after the Trump administration eliminated the office that oversees the bipartisan program and fired the entire staff.

The Guardian has seen an email sent earlier today to all the states from defendthespend@hhs.gov – which we’re assuming is the work of Trump’s billionaire mega-donor Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge. It reads:

“We are requesting additional clarification regarding this payment. An ideal payment justification includes a description of the award and what you plan to do with the funds.”

The email then includes a link to an online form before continuing:

“If you have any inquiries, you can reply to this email directly. God Bless America.”

It’s unclear what additional information HHS – or Doge – needs.

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program( Liheap) has helped families with the rising cost of home energy bills for more than four decades, and enjoys widespread bipartisan support. Congress appropriated $4.1bn for 2024/25 fiscal year, of which 90% has already been distributed. But the remaining 10% has been in limbo since the Trump Administration eliminated the Division of Energy Assistance (DEA) – the office overseeing Liheap.

An estimated one in six households are behind on their energy bills, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada), which means millions of families are at risk of utilities cutting the power cut off in what’s expected to be another record-breaking hot summer.

Read more here:

The White House is holding a press briefing at 4.30pm ET with press secretary Karoline Leavitt and a surprise “special guest”. I’ll bring you any key lines from that here.

My colleague Léonie Chao-Fong has written this very helpful explainer on Kilmar Ábrego García, a man wrongly deported by the Trump administration to a notorious prison in El Salvador. His case has become a flashpoint as Donald Trump tests the limits of his executive power and continues with his plans for mass deportations.

Senator Chris Van Hollen says El Salvador denied request to meet Kilmar Ábrego García

Chris Stein

Maryland’s Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen says the government of El Salvador has denied his request to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, his constituent who was wrongly deported to the Central American country last month.

Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday with the intention of meeting Ábrego García at the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), where US authorities have said that the Maryland resident is being held along with others deported at Donald Trump’s orders.

The senator’s visit came days after Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele refused to take steps to return Ábrego García to the United States, even though the US supreme court last week said the administration must “facilitate” his return.

At a press conference in El Salvador, Van Hollen said that he had met with the country’s vice-president Félix Ulloa, who told him it would not be possible for him to speak with Ábrego García in person or on the phone. Van Hollen said:

I asked the vice-president if I could meet with Mr Ábrego García. And he said, well, you need to make earlier provisions to go visit Cecot. I said, I’m not interested at this moment in taking a tour of Cecot, I just want to meet with Mr Abrego Garcia. He said he was not able to make that happen.

Van Hollen said he offered to come back next week to meet with Ábrego García, but Ulloa “said he couldn’t promise that either”. The vice-president also said he could not arrange for Ábrego García’s family to speak to him by phone. When the senator asked if he could do so, Ulloa told him that the US embassy must make that request, Van Hollen said.

“We have an unjust situation here. The Trump administration is lying about Ábrego García,” said Van Hollen, who said his constituent had been wrongly named as a member of the MS-13 criminal gang. The Trump administration has admitted that an “administrative error” led to the deportation of Ábrego García to his home country, despite an immigration judge granting him protected status in 2019.

Van Hollen said that he had asked Ulloa if he would consider releasing Ábrego García, to which the vice-president replied by reiterating Bukele’s comments from earlier this week that he would not “smuggle” the deportee back into the United States.

In a major escalation in the showdown over Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without normal due process, federal judge James Boasberg ruled there was probable cause to find Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for violating his order to halt sending deportees to El Salvador under the wartime law. In a scathing 46-page opinion, Boasberg said the government had shown “willful disregard” for the court, and that senior Trump officials could either return the people who were supposed to have been protected by his injunction, or face contempt proceedings. The judge also warned that if the administration tried to stonewall his contempt proceedings or instructed the justice department to decline to file contempt charges against the most responsible officials, he would appoint an independent prosecutor himself. Boasberg said the administration’s “willful disobedience of judicial orders” without consequences would make “a solemn mockery” of “the constitution itself”.

My colleague Hugo Lowell has the story:

Meanwhile, Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland traveled to El Salvador in an effort to get answers about the Trump administration’s illegal deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García. He said he hoped to meet Ábrego García in person and see his condition. He previously told the Guardian the case had tipped the US into a constitutional crisis. Earlier today, US attorney general Pam Bondi insisted the 29-year-old is “not coming back to our country”. Bondi repeated the government line that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 gang member, an allegation the Trump administration has not made in court documents.

Elsewhere:

• The Associated Press accused aides to Donald Trump of defying a court order restoring its access to press events in the White House after a judge found the news agency had faced unlawful retaliation. In a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for the AP accused the White House of continuing to exclude its journalists from the small pool of reporters that travels with the president and attends events in the Oval Office in violation of US district judge Trevor McFadden’s order lifting those restrictions while a lawsuit moves forward.

• Republican representative Elise Stefanik is considering a run for New York governor. NBC News reports that Stefanik is seriously considering a run after receiving encouragement from Republicans in New York, members of the Trump world and GOP donors.

• A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out steep cuts to federal research funding provided to universities by the US Department of Energy. US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued a temporary restraining order blocking the department from implementing the new policy at the behest of a group of universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and California Institute of Technology.

• US attorney general Pam Bondi on Wednesday unveiled legal action against Maine, in an escalation of Trump’s conflict with the state for refusing to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. The lawsuit comes five days after the administration tried to cut off all of Maine’s federal funding for public schools and its school lunch program over the issue, following a 21 February meeting of Trump and a group of US governors where he clashed with Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills.

• As Trump attacked Harvard again, other universities rallied behind its stand against the administration. Stanford put out a statement in support of Harvard, saying the strength of American universities is “built on government investment but not government control”. Columbia, which caved to demands by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in grants, vowed to reject any deal that erodes its independence. Yesterday, Barack Obama and Yale threw their support behind Harvard’s rejection of an attempt at “government regulation”.

Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr says US autism cases are climbing at an ‘alarming rate’

Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr warned that children in the US are being diagnosed with autism at an “alarming rate,” promising on Wednesday to conduct exhaustive studies to identify any environmental factors that may cause the developmental disorder.

The Associated Press reports that his call comes the day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report that found an estimated 1 in 31 children in the US is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder by their 8th birthday, a marked increase from 1 in 36 in 2020.

“Autism destroys families,” Kennedy said. “More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this.”

Kennedy described autism as a “preventable disease”, although researchers and scientists have identified genetic factors that are associated with it. Autism is not considered a disease, but a complex disorder that affects the brain. Cases range widely in severity, with symptoms that can include delays in language, learning, and social or emotional skills. Some autistic traits can go unnoticed well into adulthood.

Those who have spent decades researching autism have found no single cause. Besides genetics, scientists have identified various possible factors, including the age of a child’s father, the mother’s weight, and whether she had diabetes or was exposed to certain chemicals.

Kennedy said his wide-ranging plan to determine the cause of autism will look at all of those environmental factors, and others. He had previously set a September deadline for determining what causes autism, but said on Wednesday that by then, his department will determine at least “some” of the answers.

Related: RFK Jr giving families ‘false hope’ on autism, says outgoing US vaccine official

The effort will involve issuing grants to universities and researchers, Kennedy said. He said the researchers will be encouraged to “follow the science, no matter what it says”.

The Trump administration has recently canceled billions of dollars in grants for health and science research sent to universities.

On Wednesday, Kennedy criticized theories that the rise in autism cases can be attributed to more awareness about the disorder. Autism researchers have cited heightened awareness, as well as medical advancements and increased diagnoses of mild cases.

“The reasons for increases in autism diagnosis come down to scientific and health care progress,” said Annette Estes, director of the autism center at the University of Washington. “It’s hard for many people to understand this because the causes of autism are complex.”

Republican representative Elise Stefanik is considering a run for New York governor, two sources familiar with the matter have told NBC News.

NBC reports that the sources said Stefanik was seriously considering a run after receiving encouragement from Republicans in New York, members of the Trump world and GOP donors.

The potential move comes after Donald Trump abruptly withdrew Stefanik’s nomination to be US ambassador to the UN and asked her to stay in Congress instead, where she has been given a new leadership arrangement.

Politico reports the sources believe she is formidable enough to stand a chance in the traditionally blue state. She has enjoyed longtime support from Trump, who this morning posted about her on Truth Social: “Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is GREAT!!!”

Ukraine and the United States have made “substantial progress” in their talks on a minerals deal and will sign a memorandum in the near future, first vice-prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Wednesday.

“Our technical teams have worked very thoroughly together on the agreement, and there is significant progress. Our legal staff has adjusted several items within the draft agreement,” Svyrydenko said in a social media post on X.

She said the work on the deal would continue and that both sides agreed to sign a memorandum in the near term as the first stage to record the progress.

Deputy Ukrainian economy minister Taras Kachka told national television that talks were advancing and that it was likely a provisional document, or memorandum, could be signed very soon.

A final document won’t be signed this week. There is a lot of work to be done because the ideas included in the agreement by the US side need to be developed further.

The US has reduced its cost estimate for the assistance provided to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022 to about $100bn from $300bn, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Last month, the Trump administration proposed a new, more expansive minerals deal, which gives Ukraine no future security guarantees but requires it to place in a joint investment fund all income from the exploitation of natural resources by state and private enterprises across Ukrainian territory.

The future agreement would require ratification in Ukraine’s parliament and was expected to help economic growth in both countries, Svyrydenko said, but provided no more details.

“It will create opportunities for investment and development in Ukraine and establish conditions for tangible economic growth for both Ukraine and the United States,” she said.

As NPR notes, the supreme court weighed in on the case last week, saying the ACLU and Democracy Forward should have brought their suits in a different court, and under a different statute. But it didn’t rule on the underlying constitutionality of Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and also said any alleged gang members deported under the act need to be given notice of deportation and the opportunity to contest it.

“That Court’s later determination that the TRO suffered from a legal defect, however, does not excuse the Government’s violation,” Boasberg said about the supreme court’s order. “If a party chooses to disobey the order – rather than wait for it to be reversed through the judicial process – such disobedience is punishable as contempt, notwithstanding any later-revealed deficiencies in the order.”

ABC News has more extracts from Judge James Boasberg’s ruling, including that the administration’s “willful disobedience of judicial orders” without consequences would make “a solemn mockery” of “the Constitution itself”.

Boasberg has given the federal government until 23 April to respond to try to “purge their contempt” and prove they did not violate his temporary restraining order. Should they fail to answer his questions by then, he said, he will refer the matter for potential prosecution.

He said the “most obvious” way for the administration to avoid contempt would be to allow migrants deported under the law in violation of his order to challenge their removal in court. The judge said that would not require bringing the migrants back to the United States, adding that the administration could “propose other methods of coming into compliance”. He wrote:

The most obvious way for Defendants to do so here is by asserting custody of the individuals who were removed in violation of the Court’s classwide TRO so that they might avail themselves of their right to challenge their removability through a habeas proceeding.

Per the terms of the TRO, the Government would not need to release any of those individuals, nor would it need to transport them back to the homeland. The Court will also give Defendants an opportunity to propose other methods of coming into compliance, which the Court will evaluate.

Alternatively, if the Trump administration does not wish to purge Boasberg’s contempt finding, the government must provide the name of the person or people who chose not to stop the deportations out of the US despite his order – and Boasberg said he would refer them for prosecution. The judge said he will “proceed to identify the individual(s) responsible for the contumacious conduct by determining whose ‘specific act or omission’ caused the noncompliance”.

The judge said he will begin by requiring declarations from the government, and if those prove to be unsatisfactory, he will “proceed either to hearings with live witness testimony under oath or to depositions conducted by Plaintiffs”.

As a final potential step, Boasberg raised the prospect that he could appoint an independent attorney to prosecute the government for its contempt.

The next step would be for the Court, pursuant to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, to request that the contempt be prosecuted by an attorney for the government.

If the government “declines” or “the interest of justice requires”, the court will “appoint another attorney to prosecute the contempt”, he wrote.

US federal judge James Boasberg on Wednesday found “probable cause” to hold Donald Trump’s administration in contempt of court for violating his order last month halting deportations of Venezuelan migrants under the wartime Alien Enemies Act.

Boasberg gave the Department of Justice a one-week deadline to file “a declaration explaining the steps they have taken and will take to do so”.

Last month he instructed the Trump administration to explain why its failure to turn around flights carrying more than 200 deportees to El Salvador did not violate his court order.

Boasberg wrote in his ruling on Wednesday:

As this Opinion will detail, the Court ultimately determines that the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.

The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory.

I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.