Self-representation right extends to sentencing requests made before hearing begins

Summary: Supreme Court struck down Trump v. Barbara birthright citizenship policy Justice Samuel Alito dissented against broad citizenship for birth tourists Trump signed executive orders targeting birth tourism and visa restrictions When the U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled in favor of broad citizenship rights for babies born in the United States, one of the most conservative justices complained that the decision was so sweeping it would even cover so-called birth tourists. Women "who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth" would be able to get automatic citizenship for their children, Samuel Alito wrote, dissenting from the 6-3 ruling that invalidated President Donald Trump's first attempt to curtail U.S. birthright citizenship. Undeterred by the court's ruling, Trump tried again on Thursday, signing two executive orders largely aimed at birth tourism. That part of Trump's action, which is certain to face legal challenges, is likely doomed, legal experts said. It targets a category of people that legal experts said the Supreme Court already addressed. "These children are citizens based on their birth on U.S. soil," said University of Virginia law professor Amanda ​Frost, who studies birthright citizenship. "Illegal conduct by their parent can have no bearing on their status." The Republican president has for years threatened to tighten birthright citizenship as part of his restrictive immigration agenda. On the first day of his second term in January 2025, Trump issued a sweeping order that targeted immigrants in the country illegally or even temporarily on a legal basis, including those on work visas or students. The court's June 30 ruling striking it down, in a case called Trump v. Barbara, held that the policy violated language in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment that confers citizenship ​to those born in the United States who are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." To curtail birth tourism, one of Trump's new orders directs federal agencies not to recognize a child's citizenship if either parent is "engaged in fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship." A second executive order seeks to bar visas for foreigners suspected of birth tourism, although it was unclear how it would be enforced. Federal regulation currently bars using temporary visas for the purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a newborn. Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump renewed his criticism of the ruling and said that "people are building businesses around" birth tourism, suggesting that "hundreds of thousands" are wrongly benefiting. Some analyses cite smaller numbers, with Penn State University scholars estimating 5,000 to 10,000 births each year from 2014 to 2024. Besides birth tourism, Trump's new directive also seeks to expand historical exceptions to automatic birthright citizenship, which include children of diplomatic representatives such as ambassadors and hostile foreign troops occupying U.S. territory. The order would widen the categories to include foreign government employees and those deemed foreign terrorists. SCHOLARS DIVIDED Scholars were divided over whether courts might allow some of these expansions. Expanding the category of diplomats is potentially legal, depending on how it is done, said Frost, "though that requires giving those people significant immunity from U.S. law." University of California, Berkeley law professor John Yoo, who worked as a Justice Department official during Republican George W. Bush's ​presidency, said that the order's attempt to define foreign enemy forces on U.S. soil as including terrorist organizations "will eventually pass constitutional muster." Others said certain expansions may stretch too far. "Japanese immigrants to the U.S. were deemed enemy aliens during World War II," said University of Michigan law professor Sam Erman. "Under the administration's rule, their U.S.-born children could have been denied citizenship." The legality of the various provisions could also depend on how agencies implement them. Some of the terms are elastic, such as the definition of an "alien enemy," or the "purpose" of a stay, said Hiroshi Motomura, an immigration law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. This creates "huge zones of discretion that allow officials of the U.S. government to deny visas or admission based on suspicions or a need to vet further," Motomura said. COURT RULING The Supreme Court in June struck down Trump's prior order, even though the administration argued that automatic birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and birth tourism. "Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community," Chief Justice Roberts wrote, adding that the authors ​of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in the land. "We keep that promise today," Roberts wrote. Alito did not mince words in his dissent. "In my judgment, the court has made a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future," he wrote. He faulted the court for ruling that "even a child born to a mother who is here for only a brief time is a citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment." Such a view yields "grotesque results," Alito said. "While foreigners who wish to immigrate lawfully must sometimes wait for many years, a child born here to a birth tourist is automatically a citizen," he said. White House aides defended the orders on Thursday. "There's absolutely nothing in here that runs afoul of any of the Supreme Court's opinions on the subject,” White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf said. Yoo disagreed. "I do not see any exception to birthright, as defined by the court in Barbara, that would include parents who fraudulently violated federal law to give birth to children on American territory," he said. Rachel Rosenbloom, an immigration law professor at Northeastern University, said she would be surprised if the order's new exclusions survived a legal challenge, calling them "clearly unconstitutional." "This order seems like a desperate measure by a president who is having a hard time accepting that he just suffered a significant loss at the Supreme Court," Rosenbloom said. (Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Amy Stevens and Sanjeev Miglani)

Summary: U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis rejects WMATA dismissal Rashawn Williams trapped six days in Glenmont station area of refuge WMATA employees ignored clear signs of distress from Williams A breakdown of basic safety procedures inside a Maryland Metro train station allowed a man with Down syndrome to wander into a dark emergency exit corridor and become trapped there for six days, alone with no food or water, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the man’s family that a judge has ruled can continue toward trial. Rashawn Williams, 33, survived the 2023 ordeal but has grown fearful of the dark, has trouble sleeping, and is prone to unprovoked outbursts, according to the suit against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. The authority’s recent effort to dismiss the suit, arguing among other claims that Williams had become a “trespasser,” was rejected in a 10-page memorandum issued on Aug. 4 by U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis. “A modicum of basic communication with Williams to ensure he left the station safely can hardly be considered ‘burdensome’ to WMATA,” Xinis wrote. Williams, who is described by his family’s attorneys as nonverbal and in need of 24-hour supervision, had made his way alone to the station the night of Oct. 20, 2023, after slipping away from his caregiver hours earlier. At the station, the lawsuit alleges, he walked to a kiosk “where he stood waiting for assistance.” He did not receive any, according to the lawsuit, because the employee there was on a personal call. “WMATA employees ignored Williams’ clear signs of distress,” Xinis wrote. Williams eventually wandered through a door that locked behind him into an “Area of Refuge”, or AOR, which was supposed to be checked daily. By then, police and his family were frantically searching large areas for him. On day 5, according to the lawsuit, Williams’ father, Jimmy Hall, began the painful process of expanding his search to dumpsters and wooded areas. The next day, a police officer searching the Glenmont station for Williams spotted the emergency exit, was led through it by a station manager, and suddenly found Williams. “Evidently, no Metro personnel inspected the AOR on the night Williams became trapped, or for six days thereafter,” the judge wrote, adding the italics for emphasis. “Williams had no light, water, food or toilet facilities. Montgomery County Police Department found Williams severely dehydrated and undernourished, ‘covered’ in his own urine and feces, with bugs nesting in his hair.” A WMATA spokesperson said the authority does not comment on ongoing litigation. “The federal court’s opinion should be a wake-up call to WMATA, which has apparently learned nothing from what happened to Rashawn,” one of the attorneys, Timothy Maloney, told The Washington Post on Aug. 6. “As long as WMATA denies responsibility for disabled patrons like Rashawn, more tragedies are likely in the future.” The lawsuit also names WeAchieve, the nonprofit agency responsible for monitoring Williams, as a defendant. WeAchieve did not file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but in an earlier filing, the agency generally denied allegations of negligence or intentional misconduct and blamed WMATA for any injuries allegedly sustained by Williams, according to court records. Officials at WeAchieve and their outside attorney did not respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, was filed by Williams’s father and stepmother, his legal guardians. Around 2022, Williams’ father said, a fire at the group home led to his son and others to be relocated to suites at a Residence Inn on the eastern edge of Montgomery County. While there on Oct. 20, 2023, at about 6:20 p.m., Williams indicated to his caregiver — who was supervising three other people with disabilities — that he needed to use the bathroom, according to the lawsuit. While the caregiver went to get a key, Williams walked away, rode an elevator to the lobby, passed the front desk, and walked to a bus stop, according to the lawsuit. He boarded a bus. Police were called at 6:41 p.m. Williams’s parents were notified by WeAchieve at 7:39 p.m., the lawsuit states, and they quickly joined the search. At some point that night, Williams got off the bus and rode at least one Metro train for several hours. Shortly after midnight, a train he was on pulled into the Glenmont station to stop its service for the night, according to the lawsuit. A WMATA employee found Williams, who did not understand the train was out of service, and told him to get off but offered no further help, according to the suit. Williams remained on the platform, visibly confused, and later approached the kiosk, according to station video cited by the lawsuit. He then made his way through the emergency exit door and into a second room near a stairway and ladder to the street, according to the suit. It was in that spot where the police officer found him. In her opinion, Xinis cited WMATA directives as described in the suit. “Per WMATA’s written policies, personnel must inspect the AOR daily,” she wrote, “and must not take personal calls at the expense of assisting passengers.” In asking for the complaint to be dismissed, WMATA attorneys argued that at some point at the station, Williams stopped being a Metro user, which affected their duties owed to him. “Plaintiffs further fail to establish that Rashawn Williams was anything other than a trespasser when he reentered the station after service ended, that WMATA assumed an open-ended duty of care through brief employee interactions, or that WMATA denied him access to a public benefit by way of his disability,” they wrote. Xinis did not agree. That Williams, she wrote in her opinion, “found himself in a room that WMATA calls an ‘area of refuge’ further suggests that passengers may very well have occasion to enter the room in an emergency. This is quite likely why Metro personnel are required to inspect the area every day.”

Summary: GAO audit found 108 leases claimed by DOGE were preexisting terminations DOGE claimed termination of 13,476 contracts, nearly 2,000 not ended GAO identified $35 billion in unverified or inaccurate contract savings The U.S. DOGE Service, the cost-cutting group spearheaded by Elon Musk, consistently overstated its savings in online posts, taking credit for lease cancellations initiated before the group existed, according to a report from a government watchdog expected to be released on Aug. 6. DOGE also claimed contracts were terminated that had not been and loaded its database with savings that could not be verified, the report said. In an audit spanning from June 2025 through this month, the Government Accountability Office examined savings claimed by DOGE, the group that swept through federal agencies after President Donald Trump began his second term last year, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and much of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The report, which came after a request by Democratic Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, provides the most comprehensive government assessment of DOGE’s public accounting of its impact, bringing the organization’s figures further into doubt. Though Musk aimed to cut $2 trillion in federal spending, even by DOGE’s own estimates it fell well short. A sporadically updated website tallying its cuts in a “Wall of Receipts” stated that its initiatives had saved $215 billion. The GAO examined $110 billion of this claimed savings that derived from contracts, grants and leases. Among the issues identified by GAO: DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” “includes leases identified for termination before was established,” according to the report. In total, 108 of 264 leases DOGE identified on its website “were already in process for termination” when it came into being, the GAO said. In addition, DOGE claimed to have terminated 13,476 contracts, but the GAO analysis showed nearly 2,000 of these contracts “were not terminated.” Of $61 billion in contracts savings DOGE reported, the GAO said more than half the funds — nearly $35 billion — were either not terminated or unable to be corroborated by the investigators, because DOGE’s data was not specific enough to identify it. Roughly $27.4 billion of the savings DOGE claimed from cancellations were from contracts that were not actually terminated, the GAO said. “In these cases, another action, such as reducing the contract value or deobligating some funds could have occurred,” it said. From the watchdog’s analysis of federal procurement data, “we found that DOGE did not accurately report actions taken on contracts,” the GAO said in the report. Musk and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. “Elon Musk and the Trump administration claimed billions of dollars in savings it could not substantiate, took credit for work already underway, and refused to show its work, all while putting Americans’ sensitive data at risk and hollowing out critical agencies,” Sen. Peters said. The GAO investigation was conducted at the request of Senate Democrats who sought greater accountability of DOGE’s dealings. The findings were shared with administration officials and lawmakers ahead of its Aug. 6 release. Although DOGE promised massive savings, the accounting of its cuts on its website didn’t come close, fact-checkers and media outlets found. Updates to the website slowed to a trickle after Musk left and some of the “savings” were later removed. Federal workers told The Washington Post that DOGE added red tape and extra hurdles even as it touted regulation cuts on its website. The GAO said it sought to speak with DOGE officials and submitted written questions to the group. However, it said, “the U.S. DOGE Service did not respond to our inquiries.”