Wisconsin governor statement after arrest of Milwaukee judge: a move by Trump to ‘undermine our judiciary’
Wisconsin’s governor Tony Evers released the following statement regarding the arrest of Milwaukee county judge Hannah Dugan:
In this country, people who are suspected of criminal wrongdoing are innocent until their guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt and they are found guilty by a jury of their peers—this is the fundamental demand of justice in America.
Unfortunately, we have seen in recent months the president and the Trump Administration repeatedly use dangerous rhetoric to attack and attempt to undermine our judiciary at every level, including flat-out disobeying the highest court in the land and threatening to impeach and remove judges who do not rule in their favor.
I have deep respect for the rule of law, our nation’s judiciary, the importance of judges making decisions impartially without fear or favor, and the efforts of law enforcement to hold people accountable if they commit a crime. I will continue to put my faith in our justice system as this situation plays out in the court of law.
Key events
Summary
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The FBI arrested Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping a man evade US immigration authorities as they sought to arrest him at her courthouse. In its criminal complaint, the FBI alleges that Dugan escorted Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an undocumented immigrant, and his lawyer out of the courtroom through the jury door on 18 April as a way to help avert his arrest.
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Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, deemed the arrest a move by Trump to “undermine our judiciary”. The FBI director Kash Patel posted about the arrest on X and then quickly deleted it, for reasons that are as yet unknown.
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The Trump administration moved to restore the student visa registrations of potentially thousands of foreign students in the US whose legal status had recently been abruptly terminated. As Politico notes: “[T]he justice department announced the wholesale reversal in federal court after weeks of intense scrutiny by courts and dozens of restraining orders issued by judges who deemed the mass termination of students from a federal database – used by universities and the federal government to track foreign students in the US – as flagrantly illegal.”
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DoJ rescinds policy restricting subpoenaing journalists. In a memo, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi said the policy instated by her predecessor, Merrick Garland, would need to be revoked “in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks.”
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Donald Trump appeared to state that the US position on the future of Crimea was that it would “stay with Russia”, despite the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruling out such a recognition as a red line for his country in any potential peace deal. Trump made the comments in an interview with Time magazine in which he also claimed without evidence that the Chinese president Xi Jinping had called him – prompting another rebuke from the Chinese government that the US and China had not been in talks over trade – and said that he was open to meeting Iran’s supreme leader or president as the two countries began talks on Iran’s nuclear programme.
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In a post on Truth Social, Trump claims that Russia and Ukraine are “very close to a deal” and that most of “the major points are agreed to”.
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The Trump administration is starting to remove exhibits from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and returning those pieces to the original owners. The removal of these artifacts comes after Trump issued an executive order that targeted the Smithsonian for promoting “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives”.
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George Santos, the disgraced former representative, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison, bringing an end to an extraordinary controversy that began with a fraudulent congressional campaign. Santos lied extensively about his life story both before and after entering the US Congress, and was ultimately convicted of defrauding donors. He sobbed in court as he was sentenced in Long Island, New York. Read the story here.
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Joe Kasper, the chief of staff to the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was central to a dramatic power struggle at the Pentagon, unexpectedly left his post. Despite Hegseth’s assurances just days ago that Kasper would merely transition to “a slightly different role” within the department, Kasper confirmed to Politico that he will instead return to government relations and consulting, maintaining only limited Pentagon ties as a special government employee. Read the story here.
Judge calls hearing into two-year-old US citizen being deported
A federal judge has called for a hearing to determine whether a two-year-old US citizen was deported by the Trump administration to Honduras with her mother with “no meaningful process”, Politico is reporting and court documents show.
The baby, identified as VML in court documents, was with her mother and sister when they were detained and queued for deportation during a regular check-in at the New Orleans Ice office on Tuesday.
“The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” the judge wrote. “But the Court doesn’t know that.”
The judge who was looking to speak with the mother to verify this claim, called immigration officials but was notified the family had been released in Honduras. The hearing is set for 16 May “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process”, the judge wrote.
Robert Mackey
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One earlier, the president was asked whether he had any message for the leaders of India and Pakistan, amid heightened tensions between the two countries, following the killing of 25 Indian tourists and one Nepalese national in Kashmir three days ago.
Trump responded by mistakenly claiming that the conflict in Kashmir, which started after the partition of India in 1947, had been going on for centuries. He also misstated the death toll and when the attack took place.
“They’ve had that fight for 1,000 years in Kashmir. Kashmir’s been going on for 1,000 years, probably longer than that,” Trump said. “And, it was a bad one yesterday, that was a bad one, over 30 people.”
Asked in a follow-up question whether he was concerned that there is now increased tension on the border between the two nuclear-armed powers along the line of control, Trump replied: “Well, there have been tensions on that border for 1,500 years. So, you know. The same as it’s been.”
Trump was born in June of 1946, making him just over a year older than the conflict in Kashmir.
When the president travels to the United Kingdom, for a state visit, he will be hosted by King Charles, whose great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was the last British viceroy of India and oversaw the hasty partitioning of the subcontinent, during which more than a million people were killed and many millions more displaced. Both India and Pakistan claimed Kashmir after its status was not settled by the partition plan, and the region was divided between the two during fighting that began in 1947.
Doge orders AmeriCorps to cut nearly $400m in grants
Doge has ordered AmeriCorps to cut nearly $400m in grants, the Washington Post reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The grants would make up about 41% of the 2025 funding for the independent government agency, which assigns thousands of people to do community service across the US.
The order to terminate the grants comes a week after the White House put the majority of the agency’s 650 staff members on paid administrative leave and two weeks after Doge officials visited the agency offices.
Trump dismissed questions about the US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal chats from reporters aboard Air Force One. Reporters asked about new reports that suggest Hegseth had the unclassified commercial messaging service Signal installed on his work computer.
“I don’t view Signal as important,” Trump said. “I think it’s fake news, really. I don’t view it as important.”
The senator Ron Wyden, who had previously co-sponsored a bill that would protect journalists and their sources, said that the Trump administration’s decision to revoke policies that protect journalists from being subpoenaed is “laying the groundwork to lock up reporters who don’t rat out their sources who expose crimes by his administration”.
Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said that every Democrat who didn’t prioritize the bill Wyden co-sponsored – called the Press act – “should be ashamed”.
“Everyone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight,” Stern said in a statement. “Because of them, a president who threatens journalists with prison rape for protecting their sources and says reporting critically on his administration should be illegal can and almost certainly will abuse the legal system to investigate and prosecute his critics and the journalists they talk to.”
Trump claims that Russia and Ukraine are “very close to a deal” and that most of “the major points are agreed to”.
“Stop the bloodshed, NOW,” Trump posted on Truth Social after landing in Rome for Pope Francis’s funeral. “We will be wherever is necessary to help facilitate the END to this cruel and senseless war!”
Trump said that sanctuary cities should be closed down when asked for his reaction to a San Francisco judge blocking the federal government from denying federal funds to sanctuary cities. Trump made these comments to press aboard Air Force One.
“We shouldn’t have sanctuary cities. We’ll see how that turns out,” Trump said. “Sanctuary cities are sanctuary for criminals. We should close them down. If we want a safe country, we have to get rid of sanctuary cities.”
Trump administration begins removing exhibits from Smithsonian
The Trump administration is starting to remove exhibits from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and returning those pieces to the original owners.
The removal of these artifacts comes after Trump issued an executive order that targeted the Smithsonian for promoting “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives”. Among the artifacts being returned are a bible and George W Williams’s History of the Negro Race in America from 1619-1880, one of the first books on racism in the US. The books are being returned to Dr Amos Brown, a civil rights leader and pastor of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, according to emails viewed by Black Press USA, the news site for the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
An inspector general at the treasury department has asked IRS employees to turn over a wide range of documents including any requests for taxpayer data from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, the president, the executive office of the president or the president’s office of management and budget, according to documents obtained by ProPublica.
The investigation comes after several Democrats asked the inspector general to look into whether the Trump administration is violating taxpayer privacy following disclosure of a data-sharing agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS.
“The risks created by these activities cannot be overstated … [IRS] data can be inaccurate because of identity theft, keypunch errors, obsolete address information, and a wide range of other reasons,” the request for investigation reads. “If DHS relies on the same data to deport millions of people without validating its accuracy, it is likely to end up making grave errors that impact American citizens and immigrants with valid legal status.”
DoJ rescinds policy restricting subpoenaing journalists
The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said the Department of Justice will be rescinding a policy instated by her predecessor, Merrick Garland, that limited when the agency could subpoena journalists for records and testimony, according to Axios.
“I have concluded that it is necessary to rescind Merrick Garland’s policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks,” Bondi wrote in a memo obtained by Axios.
Previously, Garland instituted policies that limited government officials’ ability to seize materials and records – like email and phone records – from reporters except in extreme cases. Garland’s policies came after the revelation that the Trump administration, during his first term, had secretly sought and obtained records of at least four reporters including from CNN and the Washington Post.
The Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin said Dugan’s arrest “is a gravely serious and drastic move” that threatens the country’s system of checks and balances:
Make no mistake, we do not have kings in this country and we are a Democracy governed by laws that everyone must abide by. By relentlessly attacking the judicial system, flouting court orders, and arresting a sitting judge, this President is putting those basic Democratic values that Wisconsinites hold dear on the line. While details of this exact case remain minimal, this action fits into the deeply concerning pattern of this President’s lawless behavior and undermining courts and Congress’s checks on his power.
The senator Elizabeth Warren has also weighed in, saying the arrest “rings serious alarm bells”:
“First, Trump ignored the Supreme Court,” Warren posted on BlueSky. “Now, his FBI arrested a judge. This administration is threatening our country’s judicial system.”
The senator Bernie Sanders said Dugan’s arrest has nothing to do with immigration and called on Republicans to stand up to Trump’s “growing authoritarianism”.
“Trump’s latest attack on the judiciary and Judge Dugan is about one thing – unchecked power,” Sanders’ statement read. “He will attack and undermine any institution that stands in his way. Trump continues to demonstrate that he does not believe in the Constitution, the separation of powers, or the rule of law. He simply wants more and more power for himself.”
The Milwaukee city council has called the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan “shocking and upsetting.”
In a statement, the members of the council said Dugan should be “afforded the same respect and due process that she has diligently provided others throughout her career”.
“Perhaps the most chilling part of Judge Dugan’s arrest is the continued aggression by which the current administration in Washington, DC has weaponized federal law enforcement, such as ICE, against immigrant communities,” the statement read. “As local elected officials, we are working daily to support our constituents who grow increasingly concerned and worried with each passing incident.”
