A federal judge blocked part of an expansive executive order signed last month seeking to overhaul election laws, writing Thursday that President Donald Trump did not have the authority to require documentary proof of citizenship for all voters.

“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states — not the president — with the authority to regulate federal elections,” wrote Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington. She pointed to federal voting legislation being considered in Congress, adding that the president could not “short-circuit Congress’ deliberative process by executive order.”

But the judge did not block another key part of the executive order that sought to force a deadline for mail ballots in federal elections by withholding federal funding from states that failed to comply with the deadline. She found that the Democrats who brought the legal challenge did not have standing to do so. The legal concerns with this provision, Kollar-Kotelly wrote, are being considered in other cases brought by state attorneys general.

In a statement, the Trump administration vowed to continue the legal battle in court.

Judge orders return of El Salvador deportee

A federal judge nominated by President Donald Trump ordered his administration to facilitate the return of a man who was deported to El Salvador last month despite having a pending asylum application.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland ruled Wednesday that the government violated a 2019 settlement agreement when it deported the 20-year-old man, a Venezuelan native identified only as Cristian in court papers.

Gallagher cited another federal judge’s order for the government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland and was accidentally deported to his native El Salvador on March 15, the same day as Cristian.

Gallagher, who was nominated by Trump in 2019, said she recognizes that her ruling in Cristian’s favor “puts this case squarely into the procedural morass that has been playing out very publicly, across many levels of the federal judiciary,” in Abrego Garcia’s case.

Justices asked to OK transgender troop ban

The Trump administration Thursday asked the Supreme Court to let it start enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the military that has been blocked by lower courts.

The administration’s emergency application was the latest in a series of requests asking the justices to pause decisions by trial judges that prevent it from moving forward with the blitz of executive orders President Donald Trump has signed. The Supreme Court has allowed some initiatives to proceed and temporarily blocked others, issuing orders that have for the most part been technical and tentative.

The new case concerns an order issued on the first day of Trump’s second term. It revoked an executive order from President Joe Biden that had let transgender service members serve openly.

A week later, Trump issued a second order saying that expressing what it called a false “gender identity” conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life,” and that requiring others to recognize a “falsehood is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

Judge blocks Trump order on immigration

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the government from enforcing part of one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that directs agencies to withhold funds from cities and counties that don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

In a brief order, the judge, William H. Orrick of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, found himself retreading old ground, intervening to stop a tactic he described as nearly identical to one Trump tried early in his first term.

“Here we are again,” he wrote.

As he did eight years ago, Orrick prohibited the government from “taking any action to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funds” based on the president’s order or a related memo Attorney General Pam Bondi sent Feb. 5 to outline ways agencies could suspend federal payments.

Trump’s directive inspired a legal challenge from 16 city and county governments, including St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Trump orders DOJ to investigate ActBlue

President Donald Trump has ordered the Justice Department to investigate the Democratic Party’s top fundraising platform, the latest example of Trump using the tools of the government to go after his political opponents.

Trump, in an executive order signed Thursday, directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate allegations that Republicans have raised that ActBlue allows illegal campaign donations.

Democrats, who had anticipated they would be targeted, condemned the move Thursday and ActBlue called it an “oppressive use of power” by the White House.

“The Trump Administration’s and GOP’s targeting of ActBlue is part of their brazen attack on democracy in America. Today’s escalation by the White House is blatantly unlawful and needs to be seen for what it is: Donald Trump’s latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition,” ActBlue said in a statement.

ActBlue said it would pursue “all legal avenues to protect and defend itself.”

Trump orders action on ocean floor mining

President Donald Trump has ordered the U.S. government to take a major step toward mining vast tracts of the ocean floor, a move that is opposed by nearly all other nations, which consider international waters off-limits to this kind of industrial activity.

The executive order, signed Thursday, would circumvent a decades-old treaty that every major coastal nation except the United States has ratified. The order “establishes the U.S. as a global leader in seabed mineral exploration and development both within and beyond national jurisdiction,” according to a text released by the White House.

Trump’s order instructs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to expedite permits for companies to mine in international and U.S. territorial waters.

Parts of the ocean floor are blanketed by potato-size nodules containing valuable minerals like nickel, cobalt and manganese that are essential to advanced technologies the United States considers critical to its economic and military security, but whose supply chains are increasingly controlled by China. No commercial-scale seabed mining has ever taken place. The technological hurdles are high, and there have been serious concerns about the environmental consequences.

USDA withdrawing poultry bacteria limits

The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat.

The department on Thursday said it was withdrawing a rule proposed in August after three years of development. Officials with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service cited feedback from more than 7,000 public comments and said they would “evaluate whether it should update” current salmonella regulations.

The rule would have required poultry companies to keep levels of salmonella bacteria under a certain threshold and test for the presence of six strains most associated with illness, including three found in turkey and three in chicken. If the levels exceeded the standard or any of those strains were found, the poultry couldn’t be sold and would be subject to recall, the proposal had said.

DOT says its lawyers failed in N.Y. toll suit

The U.S. Department of Transportation on Thursday said it took the extraordinary step of replacing the federal lawyers defending it in a lawsuit over New York City’s congestion pricing program, after accusing them of undermining the department’s bid to end the toll.

The move came after the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which had been handling the case, said it mistakenly filed in federal court on Wednesday night a confidential memo that questioned the department’s legal strategy and urged a new approach.

In response, however, the department raised the possibility that the disclosure attempted to sabotage its efforts to halt congestion pricing. Transportation officials said they would transfer the case to the civil division of the Justice Department in Washington. The memo has since been removed from the public docket.

In the letter, dated April 11, the three assistant U.S. attorneys on the case warned that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was using shaky rationale to end the tolling plan and was “exceedingly likely” to fail, the lawyers wrote.

EPA to rid experts in children’s health

The Environmental Protection Agency has informed employees who are experts in children’s health that they will be fired or reassigned because their job descriptions include work on environmental justice or diversity, equity and inclusion, an agency spokesperson has confirmed.

The EPA’s 10 regional children’s health coordinators work closely with schools and other institutions to prevent and address environmental hazard exposures among young people. They were among 455 agency workers who were informed this week that their jobs would be either eliminated or that they would be reassigned through a so-called reduction-in-force process.

“This is really an unprecedented attack on the health of our children,” said Jeanne Briskin, a retired EPA employee who worked at the agency for nearly 40 years and led its Office of Children’s Health Protection. She said the children’s health coordinators based in each of the EPA’s 10 regional offices had deep expertise on issues ranging from the way wildfire smoke affects young people to things like lead abatement and pesticide use at schools.

NWS will resume translating forecasts

The National Weather Service will resume translating its products for non-English speakers.

The weather service paused the translations this month because its contract with the provider had lapsed. Experts said the change could put non-English speakers at risk of missing potentially life-saving warnings about extreme weather.

The weather service said Thursday the contract has been reinstated, and the translations will resume by the end of the day Monday.

Lilt, an artificial intelligence company, began providing translations in late 2023. That replaced manual translations that the weather service had said were labor-intensive and not sustainable.

Nearly 68 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home.

— News service reports