Category: Top Stories

A New York county clerk declined to enforce Texas’ civil judgment against a doctor who prescribed abortion pills to a patient via telehealth, escalating an interstate legal battle that is expected to end up before the Supreme Court.

Citing New York’s shield laws, acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck informed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday that he will not file a more than $100,000 judgment against Dr. Margaret Daly Carpenter, a physician who practices in upstate New York. Any similar filings that come his way will also be rejected, Bruck added.

“Since this decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation,” Bruck said in a statement.

Carpenter was sued by Paxton’s office in December for prescribing abortion pills via telemedicine to a patient who lives near Dallas. Paxton accused Carpenter of violating Texas law by practicing medicine in the state without a local license. Last month, a Texas judge ordered Carpenter to stop prescribing abortion pills to patients in the state and issued her a more than $100,000 fine.

Paxton, in a statement on X, said that he was “outraged” over the county clerk’s refusal to allow his state to enforce the judgment against Carpenter, whom he called “a radical abortionist illegally peddling dangerous drugs across state lines.” (Ample research has shown that mifepristone and misoprostol, the two pills that induce an abortion, are safe and effective.)

Carpenter is also facing criminal charges in Louisiana for allegedly prescribing abortion pills to a patient in the state. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last month rejected Louisiana’s request to extradite Carpenter, setting up another potential showdown over New York’s shield laws.

New York is one of more than a dozen states with legislation to protect patients, health care providers or others who help people access reproductive care in states where it is outlawed. Texas’ case against Carpenter — as well as Louisiana’s — are likely to be scrutinized by federal courts and eventually reach the Supreme Court.

Carpenter has not made any public statements about either case. The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, a group co-founded by Carpenter that supports telehealth abortion providers across the country, commended Bruck’s actions in a statement to MSNBC:

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill Thursday banning fluoride in public water systems, making his state the first in the nation to do so. The legislation appears to be the product of health misinformation and a decline in trust in scientists since the Covid pandemic, fueled in part by conspiracy theorists like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Utah’s law goes into effect May 7.

Kennedy has linked fluoride to various health maladies, despite U.S. scientists and public health groups supporting the mineral’s use, and has said the Trump administration would advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.

During his confirmation hearing in January, Kennedy bemoaned that he’s been labeled a conspiracy theorist for linking fluoride to low IQ levels, but the data he references has been criticized by experts. As NBC News reported:

Scientists and major medical associations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have touted the benefits of fluoride in water for decades, particularly for children, to help prevent tooth decay and reducing cavities.

Utah’s anti-fluoridation law is what happens when the MAGA movement’s anti-science efforts spur official policy.

Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin has been having a rough go at things since President Donald Trump picked the former lawyer for Jan. 6 defendants — who on the day of the attack tweeted that he was at the Capitol and relayed the “love, faith and joy” at the scene — to serve as the top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.

I wrote last month about Martin’s rage over media leaks apparently coming from staffers in his office. And this week, he received fierce backlash during an appearance in one of the Blackest communities in D.C.

The Washingtonian magazine published a dispatch from Martin’s trip to Anacostia, a neighborhood that is nearly 90% Black, for a discussion with local leaders about crime. On its face, this appearance seemed ripe for controversy, given that Martin is a staunch supporter of the insurrectionists who waged a Ku Klux Klan-style attack on the Capitol, with gallows and all.

And apparently, Martin’s disconnect from attendees was glaringly obvious. According to the Washingtonian, he made an attempt to drive a wedge between Anacostia residents and Africans who have benefited from foreign aid. And it didn’t go over well.

Per the Washingtonian:

This was a pretty disgusting attempt by Martin to sow division by invoking U.S. Agency for International Development cuts, which are inhibiting everything from HIV treatment to maternal health care in Africa.

Martin appeared to be taking tips from his boss here: President Donald Trump peddled this same kind of “foreigners are taking your money” schlock, particularly to Black audiences, during last year’s campaign. And the Washingtonian noted that Martin was called out on this by Cora Masters Barry, the widow of former Washington Mayor Marion Barry:

Ouch. She basically called Martin an ignoramus to his face. And Barry didn’t stop there:

She reportedly received applause when she advised Martin to “be careful how you talk to us.”

This seems to have been a pretty disastrous showing by Martin, whose MAGA messaging clearly goes over well with hardcore Trump supporters — and far less so with residents of Anacostia. At least those residents appear to see him more as an occupying force in D.C., which Trump has said he wants to “take over,” than a helpful partner to its communities.

As Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem toured a notorious megaprison in El Salvador on Wednesday, she took the opportunity to use the men incarcerated there as a backdrop for her latest video to warn migrants not to enter the United States illegally.

“I also want everybody to know, if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem says in the video, standing in front of a cell housing dozens of shirtless, tattooed men. “First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted.”

The facility, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, is a maximum-security prison built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele that can hold up to 40,000 people. Those incarcerated at CECOT do not have visitation rights, and they are not afforded outdoor recreation time or given access to educational programs. Salvadoran officials have said those serving time in CECOT will never leave the facility.

With virtually no due process, the Trump administration has deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants it claims are part of the Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador, where they are incarcerated at CECOT.

In the video, Noem warned that the administration would continue to send migrants to CECOT, calling the facility “one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”

Multiple families have said their Venezuelan relatives deported to El Salvador have no criminal records or gang affiliations, and that the administration has not provided evidence of their alleged gang membership.

Noem’s video, which has been widely criticized, follows a pattern of her using immigration enforcement activities as photo ops, often with a full face of makeup and her hair blown out. True to form, in a subsequent post on X Thursday morning, Noem shared a series of glossy photos of herself touring the Salvadoran prison.

This is an adapted excerpt from the March 26 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”

While there is a lot of focus on the major scandals involving Donald Trump’s administration, it’s important we don’t lose sight of what’s happening inside this country, where we are witnessing the federal government snatch people right off the streets for their political speech. The latest, most chilling example of that happened Tuesday outside of Boston, when Rumeysa Ozturk, a Ph.D. student and Fulbright scholar at Tufts University, was taken off a residential street in Somerville, Massachusetts.

At 5:15 p.m., Ozturk, who came to the United States from Turkey on a student visa, had just left her apartment when, as video obtained by NBC News shows, she was approached by a man in a dark hoodie and hat who grabbed her hands. In that video, you can see and hear how upset and scared she is. Eventually, an ICE agent finally pulls out a badge and appears to identify himself as law enforcement.

Ozturk is quickly surrounded by half a dozen cops, all in street clothes with their faces covered by masks. They take her cellphone and physically remove her backpack. She is then handcuffed as a bystander films and asks how anyone is supposed to know these people are law enforcement officials. The ICE agents then lead the terrified woman to their unmarked vehicles and drive off.

Now, if all that were not chilling enough, an attorney for Ozturk released a statement earlier Wednesday saying in part: “We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her. … No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of.”

Tuesday night, a district court judge ordered Ozturk not be moved out of Massachusetts “without first providing advance notice.” But late the next afternoon, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee locator, Ozturk is currently being held in a south Louisiana ICE processing center, nearly 2,000 miles from where she was snatched off the street.

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that “investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” But she is still not charged with any crime. The “activities” she is accused of appear to be that she co-wrote an editorial in the Tufts University newspaper that was published a year ago.

The piece reads, in part, “We … affirm the equal dignity and humanity of all people,” specifically referencing Palestinians. It then goes on to quote the author James Baldwin and challenges the university’s president to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “embrace efforts by students to evaluate ‘diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions.’”

In response to Ozturk’s detention, more than 1,000 people showed up in Somerville on Wednesday night to protest and call for her return.

Ozturk is not charged with a crime because, as far as we know, she did not commit one. She is here legally on a visa. And while the government does have the discretion to terminate a visa, is this how America does that now — by snatching terrified students off the street and taking them thousands of miles across the country without anyone knowing?

That is as flatly authoritarian as anything we have ever seen in the United States.

President Donald Trump coined a bizarre new nickname for himself during a speech at a White House event on Wednesday to commemorate Women’s History Month: “the fertilization president.”

While touting efforts to expand in vitro fertilization, Trump said there will be “tremendous goodies in the bag for women” including what he called “the fertilization and all the other things we’re talking about.”

“Fertilization,” he said as the crowd laughed, “I’m still very proud of it, I don’t care. I’ll be known as the fertilization president and that’s OK.”

“That’s not bad,” Trump went on, adding that he had been called “much worse” than the nickname he seemed to have just made up on the spot. “Actually, I like it, right?”

Trump otherwise hit familiar notes in his speech at the event. He bragged about women’s support for him in the 2024 election, attacked transgender people and hailed his executive order to abolish the Education Department.

But his remarks about “fertilization” follow a record of awkward and patronizing remarks he has made while trying to make a case for himself to women. During the 2024 campaign, Trump dubbed himself the “father of IVF” as he tried to win over female voters by promising to have the government pay for fertility treatments — even as he admitted that he’d never heard of the procedure prior to a controversial Alabama Supreme Court decision to recognize frozen embryos as legal persons. Trump also vowed to be a “protector” of women — whom he said were abandoned, scared and in danger — “whether the women like it or not,” echoing the disturbing rhetoric of pickup artists, as my colleague Ja’han Jones pointed out at the time.

As Florida officials enable Trump’s mass deportation policies, lawmakers in the state are looking to children to take on some of the jobs that have typically been done by immigrants.

Making its way through the state Senate is a new law, Senate Bill 918, that aims to loosen child labor laws and allow teenagers to work overnight shifts. 

As CNN reported:

S.B. 918 also “includes a number of changes including eliminating working time restrictions on teenagers aged 14 and 15 if they are home-schooled and ending guaranteed meal breaks for 16 and 17 year olds,” CNN reported.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis backs the law and has defended the idea of teenagers and college students working these jobs. DeSantis also explicitly linked the effort to the loss of immigrant labor. Speaking about the consequences of state verification laws at an event with border czar Tom Homan, the governor said, “Yes, we had people that left because of those rules, but you’ve also been able to hire other people. And what’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now?”

In recent years, several states — many of them led by Republican governors — have rolled back child labor laws. This map from the Economic Policy Institute illustrates the spike in states rolling back these laws from 2021 to 2024. Back in 2023, for example, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill that made it easier for companies to hire children without getting consent from their parents. One month earlier, The New York Times published a bombshell report about the exploitation of immigrant children in factories operated by some of the most well-known companies in the U.S. 

That story should have spurred a nationwide push to strengthen child labor laws. Instead, states like Florida are going in the opposite direction, weakening such laws in part to deal with the fallout from the conservative movement’s demonization of immigrants. They’re essentially using child labor to paper over the gaps left by their draconian immigration policies.

Project 2025, the far-right playbook for Trump’s second term, specifically calls for rolling back “hazard” regulations around child labor. The text claims, “Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs” and argues that “with parental consent and proper training, certain young adults should be allowed to learn and work in more dangerous occupations.”

Even as child labor laws are being rolled back, the Trump administration is working to gut social services, including funds that help provide school lunches to children and programs, like the supplemental nutrition assistance program, that help feed poor families. And if those cuts stay in place, they may leave American families with few alternatives to sending their children to work to keep food on the table.

When white nationalist Nick Fuentes recently praised ESPN host Stephen A. Smith, it was just the latest in a series of data points showing how the loudest voice in sports entertainment has become a boon to MAGA world.

Fuentes praised Smith, arguably ESPN’s most cherished employee, for being “clearly” red-pilled (a term for those who have embraced right-wing ideology) since he hosted far-right influencer Candace Owens on his show.

Smith’s far-right sympathies have seemed clear to me for years. I still remember, as a high schooler, witnessing his weak defense — interestingly enough, on MSNBC — of right-wingers who formed the anti-Obama tea party back in 2009. And a report I covered last year, highlighting various platforms that disseminate right-wing propaganda and misinformation among Black audiences, listed Smith’s show as one of the top culprits.

Last year, for example, Smith told his friend Sean Hannity, whose Fox News show he has appeared on numerous times, that liberals were weaponizing the legal system to stop Donald Trump’s momentum ahead of the 2024 election.

“Primarily, I have voted Democrat throughout my life, but I’m utterly disgusted with what I’m seeing,” he said.

Smith’s embrace of the MAGA movement and its influencers has only continued since then. In recent days, for example, he has spoken with right-wing commentators Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly. You might be thinking that these were adversarial chats between a left-leaning “centrist” and a conservative — but to adroit listeners, they can come across more as conservatives in friendly discussion than anything else.

In his conversation with Shapiro, in which the two disagreed over whether Trump should pardon Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd, Smith called Shapiro “a pretty brilliant dude.” Smith also praised the job Shapiro has done at The Daily Wire, the platform he launched that has become a cesspool of right-wing propaganda.

Appearing on Kelly’s show, Smith said “it’s just so bad on the left right now,” called himself a centrist — and said it would be a “cakewalk” for him to win the Democratic primaries for president in 2028.

And while hosting O’Reilly, Smith accused Democrats of “hypocrisy” because Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., used words like “waste” and “abuse” years ago while discussing Medicare. This seemed like odd bothsidesism that lacked context and gave Smith an opportunity to do what he’s been known to do lately: target liberals and provide the Trump administration some cover.

Smith’s overt politicism seems to fly in the face of ESPN’s apparent effort, in recent years, to deter some of its talent from speaking on controversial political matters. Either way, the network’s most recognizable host is now regularly platforming MAGA propaganda at will.

Thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers could find themselves in limbo as the Department of Homeland Security confirmed it has suspended processing some applications for green cards to comply with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.

The order, issued by Trump in January, called for federal agencies to “vet and screen to the maximum degree possible all aliens who intend to be admitted, enter, or are already inside the United States, particularly those aliens coming from regions or nations with identified security risks.”

The pause on green card applications for refugee and asylum seekers already in the country, first reported by CBS News, is being carried out by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

A DHS spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that the agency is “placing a temporary pause on finalizing certain adjustment of status applications pending the completion of additional screening and vetting.” However, the spokesperson did not address which applications were affected, whether the pause would affect spending at the agency, how long it would last or other questions from NBC News.

Both refugees and asylum seekers already face a rigorous vetting process. Refugees aren’t even allowed into the U.S. until they have completed a series of interviews, security screenings and medical exams — a process that often takes years to complete.

Those seeking asylum must be physically present in the U.S. and prove they have suffered persecution, or fear that they will, for reasons related to their race, religion, nationality or political opinions. These individuals undergo extensive background and security checks and must sit down with officials for an interview.

After an individual is granted asylum or admitted as a refugee, they must wait one year before applying for a green card. The average wait time for those applications is typically 8 months for a refugee and almost 10 months for an asylum-seeker.

Tuesday’s announcement follows another notice this month from Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that it wants to collect data from social media profiles of individuals applying for citizenship. While those applying for visas already have to share their social media handles with the government, the new proposal would force those applying for asylum, permanent residency or naturalization — people who are already legally in the country — to identify their accounts to USCIS. The agency said that vetting of social media accounts is necessary for “the enhanced identity verification, vetting and national security screening.” Critics are calling the proposal a violation of freedom of speech.

As USCIS cracks down on some green card applications, the Trump administration is still preparing to launch its so-called gold card program, which would offer citizenship to wealthy individuals in exchange for a direct $5 million payment to the U.S. government. Last week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick bragged that the administration had already raked in $5 billion from the program, despite the fact it hasn’t even officially launched yet. “Yesterday, I sold a thousand,” Lutnick said on the tech podcast “All-In.”

According to Lutnick, Elon Musk is currently building the software for an app to handle “gold card” applications, which he expects to launch in two weeks.