A federal appeals court agreed on Tuesday to allow President Donald Trump to maintain many of his tariffs on China and other U.S. trading partners, extending a pause granted shortly after another panel of judges ruled in late May that the import taxes were illegal.

The decision, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, delivered an important but interim victory for the Trump administration, which had warned that any interruption to its steep duties could undercut the president in talks around the world.

But the government still must convince the judges that the president appropriately used a set of emergency powers when he implemented the centerpiece of his economic agenda this year. The Trump administration has already signaled it is willing to fight that battle as far as the Supreme Court.

The ruling came shortly after negotiators from the United States and China agreed to a framework intended to extend a trade truce between the two superpowers. The Trump administration had warned that those talks and others would have been jeopardized if the appeals court had not granted a fuller stay while arguments proceeded.

At the heart of the legal wrangling is Trump’s novel interpretation of a 1970s law that he used to wage a global trade war on an expansive scale. No president before him had ever used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to impose tariffs, and the word itself is not even mentioned in the statute.

Trump seeks to abolish national monuments

Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s administration say he has the authority to abolish national monuments meant to protect historical and archaeological sites across broad landscapes, including two in California created by his predecessor at the request of Native American tribes.

A Justice Department legal opinion released Tuesday disavowed a 1938 determination that monuments created by previous presidents under the Antiquities Act can’t be revoked. The department said presidents can cancel monument designations if protections aren’t warranted.

The finding comes as the Interior Department under Trump weighs changes to monuments across the nation as part of the administration’s push to expand U.S. energy production.

Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said that at Trump’s order, “his Justice Department is attempting to clear a path to erase national monuments.”

Trump in his first term reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in Utah, calling them a “massive land grab.” He also lifted fishing restrictions within a sprawling marine monument off the New England Coast.

Former President Joe Biden reversed the moves.

Trump: FEMA will end after hurricane season

President Donald Trump said his team will move forward with winding down much of the Federal Emergency Management Agency — but not until after a hurricane season that some projections show could be particularly deadly.

“We’re going to do it much differently,” Trump said Tuesday at the White House, adding that he would like to see FEMA largely eliminated “after the hurricane season.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration would create a council “over the next couple of months” to envision the future of the agency under her department.

“It will empower governors to go out and respond to emergency situations,” Noem said, standing beside Trump.

The move would “make sure that the taxpayers are only fulfilling the need to which is appropriate, and that people are responsible to respond to their own people closest to home,” Noem added.

Any such change would represent a dramatic overhaul to federal disaster assistance, which currently includes both grants to state governments and direct payments to disaster survivors.

N.J. congresswoman handed indictment

Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver was indicted Tuesday on federal charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center while Newark’s mayor was being arrested after he tried to join a congressional oversight visit at the facility.

Acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced the grand jury indictment in a post on X.

“While people are free to express their views for or against particular policies, they must not do so in a manner that endangers law enforcement and the communities those officers serve,” Habba said.

In a statement, McIver said the charges amounted to the Trump administration trying to scare her.

“The facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation,” she said.

Smithsonian rejects personnel changes

In a challenge to President Donald Trump, the Smithsonian said Monday that it retained the power over personnel decisions, a statement that came in the wake of the president’s announcement that he was firing Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery.

“All personnel decisions are made by and subject to the direction of the secretary, with oversight by the board,” said a statement from the Smithsonian, which oversees that museum and 20 others, as well as libraries, research centers and the National Zoo. “Lonnie G. Bunch, the secretary, has the support of the Board of Regents in his authority and management of the Smithsonian.”

The statement came hours after the Board of Regents, including Vice President JD Vance, discussed the president’s announcement at a quarterly meeting. When Trump said 10 days ago that he had fired Sajet, he called her “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position.”

Block on Venezuelan court order sought

The Trump administration on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to block a lower court’s order directing the Trump administration to provide due process to scores of Venezuelan immigrants who were deported without hearings to El Salvador in March under a wartime law.

The emergency request by the Justice Department, filed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, came one day before the administration was supposed to send the lower court judge its proposal for how to allow nearly 140 of the deported Venezuelans to challenge their expulsion. The men, accused of being members of a violent street gang called Tren de Aragua, are being held in a maximum-security Salvadoran prison.

The White House deported the men on March 15 on a series of flights, using a powerful 18th-century statute known as the Alien Enemies Act. That law, which has been used on only three occasions in U.S. history, is meant to be used in times of declared war or during an invasion by a foreign nation.

AP seeks full hearing on White House blockade

The Associated Press on Tuesday asked for a hearing before the full U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, seeking to overturn a three-judge panel’s ruling that allowed the Trump administration to continue blocking AP access to some presidential events — a four-month case that has raised questions about what level of journalistic access to the presidency the First Amendment permits.

Three judges of that court on Friday, in a 2-1 decision, said it was OK for President Donald Trump to continue keeping AP journalists out of the Oval Office or other small events in retaliation for the news outlet’s decision not to follow his lead in changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name.

He had sought a pause of a lower court’s ruling in AP’s favor in April that the administration was improperly punishing the news organization for the content of its speech.

ABC says Moran won’t return to network

Correspondent Terry Moran is out at ABC News, two days after the organization suspended its correspondent for a social media post that called Trump administration deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller a “world class hater.”

The network said Tuesday that it was at the end of its contract with Moran “and based on his recent post — which was a clear violation of ABC News policies — we have made the decision not to renew.”

The Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, quickly condemned Moran for his late-night X post criticizing Miller, which was swiftly deleted.

Moran had interviewed President Donald Trump only a few weeks ago. He said in his X post that the president was also a hater, but that his hatred was in service of his own glorification.

But for Miller, Moran said, “his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.”

Moran, 65, had worked at ABC News since 1997.

— News service reports