A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order denying U.S. citizenship to the children of parents living in the country illegally, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional” during the first hearing in a multi-state effort challenging the order.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution promises citizenship to those born on U.S. soil, a measure ratified in 1868 to ensure citizenship for former slaves after the Civil War. But in an effort to curb unlawful immigration, Trump issued the executive order just after being sworn in for his second term on Monday.

The order would deny citizenship to those born after Feb. 19 whose parents are in the country illegally. It also forbids U.S. agencies from issuing any document or accepting any state document recognizing citizenship for such children.Trump’s order drew immediate legal challenges across the country, with at least five lawsuits being brought by 22 states and a number of immigrants rights groups. A lawsuit brought by Washington, Arizona, Oregon and Illinois was the first to get a hearing.

“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is,” U.S. District Judge John Coughenour told a Justice Department attorney. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”

Thursday’s decision prevents the Trump administration from taking steps to implement the executive order for 14 days. In the meantime, the parties will submit further arguments about the merits of Trump’s order. Coughenour scheduled a hearing on Feb. 6 to decide whether to block it long term as the case proceeds.

Coughenour, 84, a Ronald Reagan appointee who was nominated to the federal bench in 1981, grilled the DOJ attorney, Brett Shumate, asking whether Shumate personally believed the order was constitutional.

“I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order,” he added.

Shumate assured the judge he did — “absolutely.” He said the arguments the Trump administration is making now have never previously been litigated, and that there was no reason to issue a 14-day temporary restraining order when it would expire before the executive order takes effect.

The Department of Justice later said in a statement that it will “vigorously defend” the president’s executive order, which it said “correctly interprets the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

“We look forward to presenting a full merits argument to the Court and to the American people, who are desperate to see our Nation’s laws enforced,” the department said.

The U.S. is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship — the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” — is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them.

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, in the aftermath of the Civil War, to ensure citizenship for former slaves and free African Americans. It states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump’s order asserts that the children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

Arguing for the states on Thursday, Washington assistant attorney general Lane Polozola called that “absurd,” noting that neither those who have immigrated illegally nor their children are immune from U.S. law.

“Are they not subject to the decisions of the immigration courts?” Polozola asked. “Must they not follow the law while they are here?”

Polozola also said the restraining order was warranted because, among other reasons, the executive order would immediately start requiring the states to spend millions to revamp health care and benefits systems to reconsider an applicant’s citizenship status.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending all U.S. foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they are aligned with his policy goals.

It was not immediately clear how much assistance would initially be affected by the Monday order as funding for many programs has already been appropriated by Congress and is obligated to be spent, if not already spent.

The order, among many Trump signed on his first day back in office, said the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values” and “serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”

Consequently, Trump declared that “no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing last week that “every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions:

“Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” he said.

The order signed by Trump leaves it up to Rubio or his designee to make such determinations, in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget. The State Department and the U.S. Agency for
International Development are the main agencies that oversee foreign assistance.

Trump has long railed against foreign aid despite the fact that such assistance typically amounts to roughly 1% of the federal budget, except under unusual circumstances such as the billions in weaponry provided to Ukraine. Trump has been critical of the amount shipped to Ukraine to help bolster its defenses against Russia’s invasion.

The last official accounting of foreign aid in the Biden administration dates from mid-December and budget year 2023. It shows that $68 billion had been obligated for programs abroad that range from disaster relief to health and pro-democracy initiatives in 204 countries and regions.

Some of the biggest recipients of U.S. assistance, Israel ($3.3 billion per year), Egypt ($1.5 billion per year) and Jordan ($1.7 billion per year) are unlikely to see dramatic reductions, as those amounts are included in long-term packages that date back decades and are in some cases governed by treaty obligations.

Funding for U.N. agencies, including peacekeeping, human rights and refugee agencies, have been traditional targets for Republican administrations to slash or otherwise cut. The first Trump administration moved to reduce foreign aid spending, suspending payments to various UN agencies, including the U.N. Population Fund, and funding to the Palestinian Authority.

One day after Michael Thomas Lewis was charged with felony stalking of Indiana Fever star and WNBA rookie of the year Caitlin Clark, the 55-year-old Texas man shouted “guilty as charged” as soon as he sat down in a courtroom Tuesday.

Lewis is accused of repeated and continued harassment of the 22-year-old Clark beginning on Dec. 16, the Marion County prosecutor’s office wrote in a court filing.

WISH-TV of Indianapolis reported that Lewis behaved “very erratically” in his first court appearance and, at times, appeared to be laughing and joking while noting he had not been taking his medication while jailed or while living out of his car.

Prosecutors said they were seeking a higher than standard bond because Lewis traveled from his home in Texas to Indianapolis “with the intent to be in close proximity to the victim.” Lewis was ordered held on a $50,000 bond, and if the bond is posted, he will be required to wear an ankle monitor and remain in Indiana.

The court also filed a not guilty plea on Lewis’ behalf, and Judge Angela Davis suggested Lewis “remain silent” in jail and only speak with his attorney.

Lewis received a no-contact order and the stay-away order sought by prosecutors that bars him from being within 500 feet of either of the two arenas where the Fever play their home games.

His pretrial hearing will be held remotely on March 31.

In one post on X, Lewis said he had been repeatedly been driving by Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the Indiana Pacers’ home arena where the Fever also play. In another, he said he had “one foot on a banana peel and the other on a stalking charge.” Other messages directed at Clark were sexually explicit.

The social media posts “actually caused Caitlin Clark to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, or threatened” and an implicit or explicit threat also was made “with the intent to place Caitlin Clark in reasonable fear of sexual battery,” prosecutors wrote in the Marion County Superior Court filing.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will take Marco Rubio ’s seat in the U.S. Senate, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday, making Moody only the second woman to represent Florida in the chamber.

Elected as the state’s top law enforcement officer in 2018, Moody campaigned on a pledge to voters that she’d be a prosecutor, not a politician. But along with DeSantis, she boosted her political profile during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling on the federal government to “hold China responsible” for the outbreak.

In elevating her to the post, DeSantis praised Moody as a key player in his political battles, a law and order prosecutor who’s prepared to help President-elect Donald Trump “secure and shut the border,” rein in inflation, and overhaul what he described as a federal bureaucracy “run amok.”

“I’m ready to show up and fight for this nation and fight for President Trump to deliver the America First agenda on Day 1,” Moody said during Thursday’s announcement at a hotel in Orlando.

“The only way to return this country to the people, the people who govern it, is to make sure we have a strong Congress doing its job, passing laws and actually approving the regulations that these unelected bureaucrats are trying to cram down on the American people,” she added.

Before running for statewide office, Moody worked as a federal prosecutor. In 2006, she was elected to the post of circuit judge in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa. A fifth generation native of Plant City, Florida, Moody was once named queen of the city’s famed strawberry festival. She’s a three-time graduate of the University of Florida and she and her husband, a law enforcement officer, have two sons.

As the state’s attorney general, Moody has been instrumental in defending DeSantis’ conservative agenda in court and has joined other Republican-led states in challenging the Biden administration’s policies, suing over changes to immigration enforcement, student loan forgiveness and vaccine mandates for federal contractors.

“I’m happy to say we’ve had an Attorney General that is somebody that has acted time and time again to support the values that we all share,” DeSantis said. “We in Florida established our state as a beachhead of liberty, as the free state of Florida. And she was with us every step of the way.”

Moody isn’t the state’s only AG to use the office as a stepping stone to a national post. Her predecessor, Pam Bondi, is Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department and is testifying Thursday in the Senate.

Moody will be the second woman to represent the state in the Senate, and the first in nearly 40 years; Republican Paula Hawkins served in the chamber from 1981-1987.

With the appointment announced, Moody is poised to take office once the vacancy occurs. Rubio is expected to have broad support from Republicans as well as Democrats, and his confirmation vote could come as soon as Monday evening.

Under Florida law, it was up to the Republican governor to choose Rubio’s replacement after Trump picked the three-term senator to be his next secretary of state. Moody will serve in the Senate until the next general election in 2026, when the seat will be back on the ballot.

A prominent human rights attorney has quietly parted ways with the International Criminal Court to protest what he sees as an unjustified failure of its chief prosecutor to indict members of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ’s government for crimes against humanity, The Associated Press has learned.

The Chilean-born Claudio Grossman, a former law school dean at American University in Washington and past president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, was appointed special adviser to ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan in November 2021. In that unpaid position, he advised Khan on the deteriorating human rights situation in Venezuela.

In a harshly worded email last month to Khan, Grossman said his ethical standards no longer allow him to stand by silently as Maduro’s government continues to commit abuses, expel foreign diplomats and obstruct the work of human rights monitors from the United Nations ? without any action from the ICC.

“I can no longer justify the choice not to take correspondingly serious action against the perpetrators of the grave violations,” Grossman wrote in an email rejecting an offer by Khan’s office in September to renew his contract.

A copy of the email, which has not been made public, was provided to the AP by someone familiar with the ICC investigation into Venezuela. A phone call by Khan asking Grossman to reconsider also failed, according to the person on the condition of anonymity to discuss the politically sensitive investigation.

Following AP’s inquiries with Khan’s office, Grossman’s name was removed from the court’s website listing him as a special adviser.

“The Prosecutor is extremely grateful to Professor Grossman for the expertise and work he has rendered,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement without addressing Grossman’s stated reasons for cutting ties with the court based in The Hague, Netherlands. Grossman declined to comment.

The pressure on Khan to indict Venezuelan officials, including Maduro himself, comes as he battles allegations of misconduct with a female aide and the threat of U.S. sanctions over his decision to seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The Rome Statute that established the court took effect in 2002, with a mandate to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide ? but only when domestic courts fail to initiate their own investigations.

Calls for faster progress in the court’s only ever investigation in Latin America have grown louder as Maduro tightens his grip on power, preparing to be sworn in for a third term Jan. 10 following an election marred by serious allegations of ballot box fraud and a post-election crackdown. More than 2,000 people were arrested and 20 killed following the vote.

The U.S. and even some fellow leftist leaders in Latin America have demanded authorities present voting records, as they have in the past, to refute tally sheets presented by Maduro’s opponents showing their candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, prevailed by a two-to-one margin.

Many in Venezuela’s opposition have complained that the ICC is applying a double standard, moving aggressively to seek the arrest of Netanyahu and Russia’s Vladimir Putin for atrocities in Gaza and Ukraine while showing undue leniency with Venezuelan officials Khan has been investigating for more than three years.

“There is no justification whatsoever for the inaction,” Gonzalez and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado wrote in a recent letter to Grossman and 18 other special advisers to the court appealing for their help.

“What is at stake is the life and well-being of Venezuelans,” they added in the letter, which was also provided to the AP by the person familiar with the ICC investigation. “This unjustifiable delay will cast legitimate doubts about the integrity of a system of accountability that has been an aspiration for the whole world.”

At the request of several Latin American governments, Khan three years ago opened an investigation into Venezuelan security forces’ jailing, torture and killing of anti-government demonstrators. At the same time, he promised technical assistance to give local authorities an opportunity to take action before the ICC, a tribunal of last resort.

In one of the most important cases of the social media age, free speech and national security collide at the Supreme Court on Friday in arguments over the fate of TikTok, a wildly popular digital platform that roughly half the people in the United States use for entertainment and information.

TikTok says it plans to shut down the social media site in the U.S. by Jan. 19 unless the Supreme Court strikes down or otherwise delays the effective date of a law aimed at forcing TikTok’s sale by its Chinese parent company.

Working on a tight deadline, the justices also have before them a plea from President-elect Donald Trump, who has dropped his earlier support for a ban, to give him and his new administration time to reach a “political resolution” and avoid deciding the case. It’s unclear if the court will take the Republican president-elect’s views — a highly unusual attempt to influence a case — into account.

TikTok and China-based ByteDance, as well as content creators and users, argue the law is a dramatic violation of the Constitution’s free speech guarantee.

“Rarely if ever has the court confronted a free-speech case that matters to so many people,” lawyers for the users and content creators wrote. Content creators are anxiously awaiting a decision that could upend their livelihoods and are eyeing other platforms.

The case represents another example of the court being asked to rule about a medium with which the justices have acknowledged they have little familiarity or expertise, though they often weigh in on meaty issues involving restrictions on speech.

The Biden administration, defending the law that President Joe Biden signed in April after it was approved by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress, contends that “no one can seriously dispute that (China’s) control of TikTok through ByteDance represents a grave threat to national security.”

Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok’s U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information.

But the government “concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so,” TikTok told the justices, adding that limits on speech should not be sustained when they stem from fears that are predicated on future risks.

In December, a panel of three appellate judges, two appointed by Republicans and one by a Democrat, unanimously upheld the law and rejected the First Amendment speech claims.

Adding to the tension, the court is hearing arguments just nine days before the law is supposed to take effect and 10 days before a new administration takes office.

In language typically seen in a campaign ad rather than a legal brief, lawyers for Trump have called on the court to temporarily prevent the TikTok ban from going into effect but refrain from a definitive resolution.

“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” D. John Sauer, Trump’s choice to be his administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote in a legal brief filed with the court.

Trump took no position on the underlying merits of the case, Sauer wrote. Trump’s campaign team used TikTok to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, and Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, in December. He has 14.7 million followers on TikTok.

The justices have set aside two hours for arguments, and the session likely will extend well beyond that. Three highly experienced Supreme Court lawyers will be making arguments. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar will present the Biden administration’s defense of the law, while Trump’s solicitor general in his first administration, Noel Francisco, will argue on behalf of TikTok and ByteDance. Stanford Law professor Jeffrey Fisher, representing content creators and users, will be making his 50th high court argument.

If the law takes effect, Trump’s Justice Department will be charged with enforcing it. Lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance have argued that the new administration could seek to mitigate the law’s most severe consequences.

But they also said that a shutdown of just a month would cause TikTok to lose about one-third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.