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By Sarah Naffa
April 01, 2025
By Sarah Naffa
April 01, 2025
In the news today: President Donald Trump signs a sweeping executive action to overhaul elections; Trump officials who shrug off the Signal leak once decried Hillary Clinton’s use of a home server as secretary of state; and an appeals court rules that the Trump administration can stop approving new refugees for entry into the United States. Also, a pilot and two children survive on the wing of a plane for about 12 hours after it crashed into an icy Alaska lake.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks, as Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, right, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., stand beside him at the White House in Washington, Monday. (Pool via AP)
POLITICS
Trump signs order seeking to overhaul US elections
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive action to overhaul elections in the United States, including requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and demanding that all ballots be received by Election Day. Read more.
Why this matters:
The order says the U.S. has failed “to enforce basic and necessary election protections” and calls on states to work with federal agencies to share voter lists and prosecute election crimes. It threatens to pull federal funding from states where election officials don’t comply.
The move, which is likely to face challenges because states have broad authority to set their own election rules, is consistent with Trump’s history of criticizing election processes.
Voting rights groups have expressed concerns that the requirement could disenfranchise people. An estimated 9% of U.S. citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, do not have proof of citizenship readily available, according to a 2023 report by the Brennan Center for Justice and other groups.
In their own words: Trump officials shrugging off Signal leak once decried Clinton’s server
The attempts by President Donald Trump and top leaders of his administration to downplay a security breach that revealed military strike plans in a Signal group chat including a journalist stand in stark contrast to their reaction to Hillary Clinton’s use of a home server as secretary of state. Read more.
Why this matters:
This time, they’ve largely focused their ire not on sweeping potential security lapses but on the journalist who was mistakenly addedto the group text and reported on it: the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. Some of the chat’s participants who spoke out against Clinton haven’t commented publicly about the Signal leak.
Appeals court allows Trump administration to suspend approval of new refugees amid lawsuit
The Trump administration can stop approving new refugees for entry into the U.S. but has to allow in people who were conditionally accepted before the president suspended the nation’s refugee admissions system, an appeals court ruled Tuesday. The order narrowed a ruling from a federal judge in Seattle who found the program should be restarted. Read more.
Why this matters:
The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the president has the power to restrict people from entering the country, pointing to a 2018 Supreme Court ruling upholding President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries during his first term.
The panel ruled on an emergency appeal of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, who found that the president’s authority to suspend refugee admissions is not limitless and that Trump cannot nullify the law passed by Congress establishing the program.
Refugees who were conditionally approved by the government before Trump’s order halting the refugee program should still be allowed to resettle, the judges found. There are 600,000 people being processed to come to the U.S. as refugees around the world, according to the administration.
Houseplants vacationing outdoors over the summer. (Jessica Damiano via AP)
After a long winter, send your houseplants on a summer vacation Many houseplants are tropical plants that require the warm, somewhat humid conditions of their natural habitat. In the home, many can become tired-looking, especially over winter. So why not send your houseplants on a vacation so they’ll return re-energized and invigorated.
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Please let us know what you think of this newsletter. You can sign up for more and invite a friend here. For news in real time visit APNews.com. - Sarah
