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Trump plans 100% tariff on computer chips, unless companies build in US
Legal PR |
2025/08/07 13:28
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President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will impose a 100% tariff on computer chips, raising the specter of higher prices for electronics, autos, household appliances and other essential products dependent on the processors powering the digital age.
“We’ll be putting a tariff of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors,” Trump said in the Oval Office while meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook. “But if you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge.”
The announcement came more than three months after Trump temporarily exempted most electronics from his administration’s most onerous tariffs.
The Republican president said companies that make computer chips in the U.S. would be spared the import tax. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of computer chips increased the price of autos and contributed to higher inflation.
Investors seemed to interpret the potential tariff exemptions as a positive for Apple and other major tech companies that have been making huge financial commitments to manufacture more chips and other components in the U.S..
Big Tech already has made collective commitments to invest about $1.5 trillion in the U.S. since Trump moved back into the White House in January. That figure includes a $600 billion promise from Apple after the iPhone maker boosted its commitment by tacking another $100 billion on to a previous commitment made in February.
Now the question is whether the deal brokered between Cook and Trump will be enough to insulate the millions of iPhones made in China and India from the tariffs that the administration has already imposed and reduce the pressure on the company to raise prices on the new models expected to be unveiled next month.
Wall Street certainly seems to think so. After Apple’s stock price gained 5% in Wednesday regular trading sessions, the shares rose by another 3% in extended trading after Trump announced some tech companies won’t be hit with the latest tariffs while Cook stood alongside him.
The shares of AI chipmaker Nvidia, which also has recently made big commitments to the U.S., rose slightly in extended trading to add to the $1 trillion gain in market value the Silicon Valley company has made since the start of Trump’s second administration.
The stock price of computer chip pioneer Intel, which has fallen on hard times, also climbed in extended trading.
Inquiries sent to chip makers Nvidia and Intel were not immediately answered. The chip industry’s main trade group, the Semiconductor Industry Association, declined to comment on Trump’s latest tariffs.
Demand for computer chips has been climbing worldwide, with sales increasing 19.6% in the year-ended in June, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization.
Trump’s tariff threats mark a significant break from existing plans to revive computer chip production in the U.S. that were drawn up during the administration of President Joe Biden.
Since taking over from Biden, Trump has been deploying tariffs to incentivize more domestic production. Essentially, the president is betting that the threat of dramatically higher chip costs would force most companies to open factories domestically, despite the risk that tariffs could squeeze corporate profits and push up prices for mobile phones, TVs and refrigerators.
By contrast, the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act that Biden signed into law in 2022 provided more than $50 billion to support new computer chip plants, fund research and train workers for the industry. The mix of funding support, tax credits and other financial incentives were meant to draw in private investment, a strategy that Trump has vocally opposed.
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Victims feeling exhausted and anxious about wrangling over Epstein files
Legal PR |
2025/08/04 20:28
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Women who say they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein are feeling skeptical and anxious about the Justice Department’s handling of records related to the convicted sex offender, with some backing more public disclosures as an overdue measure of transparency, and others expressing concerns about their privacy and the Trump administration’s motivations.
In letters addressed to federal judges in New York this week, several victims or their attorneys said they would support the public release of grand jury testimony that led to criminal indictments against Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell — if the government agreed to allow them to review the material and redact sensitive information.
The Justice Department has asked the court to take the rare step of unsealing transcripts of that secret testimony, in part to placate people who believe that the government has hidden some things it knows about Epstein’s wrongdoing.
Other victims, meanwhile, accused President Donald Trump of sidelining victims as he seeks to shift the focus from Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he habitually sexually abused underage girls. Some expressed concern that the administration — in its eagerness to make the scandal go away — might give Maxwell clemency, immunity from future prosecution or better living conditions in prison as part of a deal to get her to testify before Congress.
“I am not some pawn in your political warfare,” one alleged victim wrote in a letter submitted to the court by her lawyer this week. “What you have done and continue to do is eating at me day after day as you help to perpetuate this story indefinitely.”
Added another victim, in a letter submitted anonymously on Wednesday: “This is all very exhausting.”
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. A top Justice Department official, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, interviewed Maxwell for nine hours late last month, saying he wanted to hear anything she had to say about misdeeds committed by Epstein or others. After that interview, Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison camp in Texas.
Alicia Arden, who said Epstein sexually assaulted her in the late 1990s, held a news conference on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She said she would support the release of additional material related to the case, including a transcript of Maxwell’s interview with Blanche.
But she also expressed outrage at the possibility that Maxwell could receive clemency or other special treatment through the process, adding that the Justice Department’s approach had been “very upsetting” so far.
The Trump administration has faced weeks of furor from some segments of the president’s political base, which have demanded public disclosure of files related to Epstein. Epstein has long been the subject of conspiracy theories because of his friendships with the rich and powerful, including Trump himself, Britain’s Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton.
Last month, the Justice Department announced it would not release additional files related to the Epstein sex trafficking investigation.
Prosecutors later asked to unseal the grand jury transcripts, though they’ve told the court they contain little information that hasn’t already been made public. Two judges who will decide whether to release the transcripts then asked victims to share their views on the matter.
In a letter submitted to the court Tuesday, attorneys Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, who represent numerous Epstein victims, wrote: “For survivors who bravely testified, the perception that Ms. Maxwell is being legitimized in public discourse has already resulted in re-traumatization.”
An attorney for Maxwell, David Oscar Markus, said this week that she opposed the release of the grand jury transcripts.
“Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not,” he wrote. “Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable, and her due process rights remain.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the victims’ statements.
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Colorado deputies disciplined for helping federal immigration agents
Legal PR |
2025/08/01 20:22
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Two Colorado deputies have been disciplined for violating state law by helping federal agents make immigration arrests, and their sheriff says officers from other agencies have done the same.
One of the deputies, Alexander Zwinck, was sued by Colorado’s attorney general last week, after his cooperation with federal immigration agents on a drug task force was revealed following the June arrest of a college student from Brazil with an expired visa.
Following an internal investigation, a second Mesa County Sheriff’s Office deputy and task force member, Erik Olson, was also found to have shared information. The two deputies used a Signal chat to relay information to federal agents, according to documents released Wednesday by the sheriff’s office.
Zwinck was placed on three weeks of unpaid leave, and Olson was given two weeks of unpaid leave, Mesa County Sheriff Todd Rowell said in a statement. Both were removed from the task force.
Two supervisors also were disciplined. One was suspended without pay for two days, and another received a letter of reprimand. A third supervisor received counseling.
State laws push back against Trump crackdown
The lawsuit and disciplinary actions come as lawmakers in Colorado and other Democratic-led states have crafted legislation intended to push back against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Since Trump took office, pro-immigrant bills have advanced through legislatures in Illinois, Vermont, California, Connecticut and other states. The measures include stronger protections for immigrants in housing, employment and police encounters.
Trump has enlisted hundreds of state and local law enforcement agencies to help identify immigrants in the U.S. illegally and detain them for potential deportation. The Republican also relaxed longtime rules restricting immigration enforcement near schools, churches and hospitals.
Zwinck was sued under a new state law signed by Gov. Jared Polis about two weeks before the arrest of the student from Brazil. It bars local government employees including law enforcement from sharing identifying information about people with federal immigration officials. Previously, only state agencies were barred from doing that. It’s one of a series of laws limiting the state’s involvement in immigration enforcement passed over the years that has drawn criticism and a lawsuit from the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Justice has also sued Illinois and New York, as well as several cities in those states and New Jersey, alleging their policies violate the U.S. Constitution or federal immigration laws.
Officers say they were following established procedures
Zwinck and Olson told officials they thought they were operating according to long-standing procedures.
However, the internal investigation found they had both received and read two emails prior to the passage of the new law about previous limits on cooperation with immigration officials. The most recent was sent on Jan. 30, 2025, after an official for Homeland Security Investigations, part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had asked state and local law enforcement officers at a law enforcement meeting to contact HSI or ICE if they arrested a person for a violent crime who was believed not to be a citizen, the investigation documents said. The email said not to contact HSI or ICE.
Zwinck said he didn’t know about the new law and was not interested in immigration enforcement.
“When I was out there, I wanted to find drugs, guns and bad guys,” Zwinck said at a July 23 disciplinary hearing. “And sending that information to HSI they provided the ability to give me real time background information on the person I was in contact with,” he said.
Olson, who said he had been with the sheriff’s office 18 years, testified at his disciplinary hearing that it was “standard practice” to send information up to federal agents during traffic stops.
“It was routine for ICE to show up on the back end of a traffic stop to do their thing,” Olson said. “I truly thought what we were doing was condoned by our supervision and lawful.”
A lawyer at a law firm listed as representing both deputies, Michael Lowe, did not immediately return a telephone call or email seeking comment.
Rowell said drug task force members from other law enforcement agencies, including the Colorado State Patrol, also shared information with immigration agents on the Signal chat. The state patrol denied the claim.
The sheriff faulted Attorney General Phil Weiser for filing the lawsuit against Zwinck before a local internal investigation was complete. He called on the Democrat, who is running for governor, to drop it.
“As it stands, the lawsuit filed by the Attorney General’s Office sends a demoralizing message to law enforcement officers across Colorado — that the law may be wielded selectively and publicly for maximum political effect rather than applied fairly and consistently,” he said.
Weiser said last week that he was investigating whether other officers in the chat violated the law.
Spokesperson Lawrence Pacheco said Weiser was presented with evidence of a “blatant violation of state law” and had to act.
“The attorney general has a duty to enforce state laws and protect Coloradans and he’ll continue to do so,” Pacheco said.
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Nursing homes struggle with Trump’s immigration crackdown
Legal PR |
2025/07/13 15:40
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Nursing homes already struggling to recruit staff are now grappling with President Donald Trump’s attack on one of their few reliable sources of workers: immigration.
Facilities for older adults and disabled people are reporting the sporadic loss of employees who have had their legal status revoked by Trump. But they fear even more dramatic impacts are ahead as pipelines of potential workers slow to a trickle with an overall downturn in legal immigration.
“We feel completely beat up right now,” says Deke Cateau, CEO of A.G. Rhodes, which operates three nursing homes in the Atlanta area, with one-third of the staff made up of foreign-born people from about three dozen countries. “The pipeline is getting smaller and smaller.”
Eight of Cateau’s workers are expected to be forced to leave after having their Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, revoked. TPS allows people already living in the U.S. to stay and work legally if their home countries are unsafe due to civil unrest or natural disasters and during the Biden administration, the designation was expanded to cover people from a dozen countries, including large numbers from Venezuela and Haiti.
While those with TPS represent a tiny minority of A.G. Rhodes’ 500 staffers, Cateau says they will be “very difficult, if not impossible, to replace” and he worries what comes next.
“It may be eight today, but who knows what it’s going to be down the road,” says Cateau, an immigrant himself, who arrived from Trinidad and Tobago 25 years ago.
Nearly one in five civilian workers in the U.S. is foreign born, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but as in construction, agriculture and manufacturing, immigrants are overrepresented in caregiving roles. More than a quarter of an estimated 4 million nursing assistants, home health aides, personal care aides and other so-called direct care workers are foreign born, according to PHI, a nonprofit focused on the caregiving workforce.
The aging of the massive Baby Boom generation is poised to fuel even more demand for caregivers, both in institutional settings and in individuals’ homes. BLS projects more growth among home health and personal care aides than any other job, with some 820,000 new positions added by 2032.
Nursing homes, assisted living facilities, home health agencies and other such businesses were counting on immigrants to fill many of those roles, so Trump’s return to the White House and his administration’s attack on nearly all forms of immigration has sent a chill throughout the industry.
Katie Smith Sloan, CEO of LeadingAge, which represents nonprofit care facilities, says homes around the country have been affected by the immigration tumult. Some have reported employees who have stopped coming to work, fearful of a raid, even though they are legally in the country. Others have workers who are staying home with children they have kept out of school because they worry about roundups. Many others see a slowdown of job applicants.
Rachel Blumberg, CEO of the Toby and Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, has already lost 10 workers whose permission to stay in the U.S. came under a program known as humanitarian parole, which had been granted to people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. She is slated to lose 30 more in the coming weeks with the end of TPS for Haitians.
“I think it’s the tip of the iceberg,” says Blumberg, forecasting further departures of employees who may not themselves be deported, but whose spouse or parent is.
Blumberg got less than 24 hours’ notice when her employees lost their work authorization, setting off a scramble to fill shifts. She has already boosted salaries and referral bonuses but says it will be difficult to replace not just aides, but maintenance workers, dishwashers and servers.
“Unfortunately, Americans are not drawn to applying and working in the positions that we have available,” she says.
Front-line caregivers are overwhelmingly female and a majority are members of minority groups, according to PHI, earning an average of just $16.72 hourly in 2023.
Long-term care homes saw an exodus of workers as COVID made an already-challenging workplace even more so. Some facilities were beginning to see employment normalize to pre-pandemic levels just as the immigration crackdown hit, though industry-wide, there is still a massive shortage of workers.
Some in the industry have watched in frustration as Trump lamented how businesses including farming and hospitality could be hurt by his policies, wondering why those who clean hotel rooms or pick tomatoes deserve more attention than those who care for elders. Beyond rescinded work authorizations for people living in the U.S., care homes are having difficulty getting visas approved for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses they recruit abroad.
What used to be a simple process now stretches so long that candidates reconsider the U.S. altogether, says Mark Sanchez, chief operating officer of United Hebrew, a nursing home in New Rochelle, New York.
“There are lines upon lines upon lines,” says Sanchez, “and now they’re saying, ‘I’m going to go to Canada’ and ‘I’m going to go to Germany and they’re welcoming me with open arms.’”
Looking around a facility with a majority-immigrant staff, the son of Filipino immigrants wonders where his future recruits will come from.
“I don’t have ICE coming in my door and taking my people,” Sanchez says, “but the pipeline that was flowing before is now coming in dribs and drabs.”
Long-term care workers are routinely lured away not just by hospitals and doctors’ offices, but restaurants, stores and factories. Half of the average nursing home’s staff turns over each year, according to federal data, making the attraction and retention of every employee vital to their operation.
Robin Wolzenburg of LeadingAge in Wisconsin began working to place an influx of people from Afghanistan after the U.S. pulled out its final troops four years ago and thousands of refugees arrived in her state. Care homes began hiring the refugees and were so delighted with them, some facilities began hiring refugees who arrived from Ukraine, Somalia and Congo. Though many homes had employee retention rates around 30%, Wolzenburg said the figure was above 90% with refugees.
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What’s next for birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court’s ruling
Legal PR |
2025/06/28 15:20
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The legal battle over President Donald Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship is far from over despite the Republican administration’s major victory Friday limiting nationwide injunctions.
Immigrant advocates are vowing to fight to ensure birthright citizenship remains the law as the Republican president tries to do away with more than a century of precedent.
The high court’s ruling sends cases challenging the president’s birthright citizenship executive order back to the lower courts. But the ultimate fate of the president’s policy remains uncertain.
Here’s what to know about birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court’s ruling and what happens next.
What does birthright citizenship mean?
Birthright citizenship makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally.
The practice goes back to soon after the Civil War, when Congress ratified the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, in part to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,” the amendment states.
Thirty years later, Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the U.S. to Chinese parents, was refused re-entry into the U.S. after traveling overseas. His suit led to the Supreme Court explicitly ruling that the amendment gives citizenship to anyone born in the U.S., no matter their parents’ legal status.
It has been seen since then as an intrinsic part of U.S. law, with only a handful of exceptions, such as for children born in the U.S. to foreign diplomats.
Trump has long said he wants to do away with birthright citizenship
Trump’s executive order, signed in January, seeks to deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are living in the U.S. illegally or temporarily. It’s part of the hardline immigration agenda of the president, who has called birthright citizenship a “magnet for illegal immigration.”
Trump and his supporters focus on one phrase in the amendment — “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” – saying it means the U.S. can deny citizenship to babies born to women in the country illegally.
A series of federal judges have said that’s not true, and issued nationwide injunctions stopping his order from taking effect.
“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. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said at a hearing earlier this year in his Seattle courtroom.
In Greenbelt, Maryland, a Washington suburb, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote that “the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected and no court in the country has ever endorsed” Trump’s interpretation of birthright citizenship.
Is Trump’s order constitutional? The justices didn’t say
The high court’s ruling was a major victory for the Trump administration in that it limited an individual judge’s authority in granting nationwide injunctions. The administration hailed the ruling as a monumental check on the powers of individual district court judges, whom Trump supporters have argued want to usurp the president’s authority with rulings blocking his priorities around immigration and other matters.
But the Supreme Court did not address the merits of Trump’s bid to enforce his birthright citizenship executive order.
“The Trump administration made a strategic decision, which I think quite clearly paid off, that they were going to challenge not the judges’ decisions on the merits, but on the scope of relief,” said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at the White House that the administration is “very confident” that the high court will ultimately side with the administration on the merits of the case.
Questions and uncertainty swirl around next steps
The justices kicked the cases challenging the birthright citizenship policy back down to the lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the new ruling. The executive order remains blocked for at least 30 days, giving lower courts and the parties time to sort out the next steps.
The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves open the possibility that groups challenging the policy could still get nationwide relief through class-action lawsuits and seek certification as a nationwide class. Within hours after the ruling, two class-action suits had been filed in Maryland and New Hampshire seeking to block Trump’s order.
But obtaining nationwide relief through a class action is difficult as courts have put up hurdles to doing so over the years, said Suzette Malveaux, a Washington and Lee University law school professor.
“It’s not the case that a class action is a sort of easy, breezy way of getting around this problem of not having nationwide relief,” said Malveaux, who had urged the high court not to eliminate the nationwide injunctions.
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