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On Wednesday, Judge Dale E. Ho of Federal District Court in Manhattan dismissed federal corruption charges against Eric Adams, ending the first criminal case against a New York City mayor in modern history and underscoring how prosecutorial power is being used to advance President Trump’s agenda. In his ruling, Judge Ho refused to allow the government to keep open the option of reinstating the charges, as the Justice Department had sought, the New York Times reports. Even so, the ruling underscores the remarkable power that Trump’s administration has to terminate cases, regardless of the rationale. The decision abruptly ended the long-running case weeks before it had been set for trial. It was also the culmination of a bitter clash between the prosecutors who indicted Adams and the officials at Trump’s Justice Department who killed the case. The fight, in which Manhattan prosecutors and Justice Department officials accused each other of ethical misconduct, left  Adams deeply damaged as he faces a steep uphill climb for re-election this year.  The Justice Department had moved to dismiss the charges against the mayor after the prosecutors who had brought the indictment refused to do so. One of the department’s highest-ranking officials offered a highly unusual justification, arguing that the case was compromising  Adams’s ability to help enforce the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The judge said that granting the government’s request “would create the unavoidable perception that the mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents.”  Adams was indicted last year on five counts , including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He had pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. The prosecution was pursued aggressively by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan after the indictment was returned in September. But after the change in presidential administrations, the Trump Justice Department reversed course, ordering prosecutors to seek the charges’ dismissal.

The number of stop-and-frisks performed by NYPD officers sharply increased last year, public data analyzed by New York Focus and The City reveals . Officers recorded 25,386 stops in 2024, a 50 percent increase over the previous year and the highest number since 2014. Nearly nine in ten people stopped were Black or Latino. Over 15,600 people were frisked during stops, a 43 percent year-over-year increase. The spike came despite new practices adopted in January 2024 to curb unlawful stops, including trainings, audits and reviews of body-worn camera footage, New York Focus reports . In response to a request for comment, the mayor’s office referred New York Focus and the city to the NYPD’s press office, which did not respond to an inquiry. Stop-and-frisks — otherwise known as Terry stops — refer to the police practice of stopping and patting down the outer clothing of individuals cops suspect to be armed and dangerous. During these stops, police may also search individuals’ belongings. Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYPD officers stopped hundreds of thousands of individuals each year and conducted a record-high 685,724 stops in 2011. Few stops resulted in arrests, and the practice disproportionately targeted Black and Latino individuals. In 2013, a New York federal judge ruled that the practice was ineffectual and, as implemented under Bloomberg, violated the constitutional rights of minorities. By 2021 — Mayor Bill de Blasio’s final year in office — NYPD officers conducted just 8,947 stops. Three years later, that number has nearly tripled under the Adams administration. Since Adams took office in 2022, stop-and-frisk incidents have risen each year and continued to disproportionately target people of color. NYPD officers recorded more than 15,000 stops in both 2022 and 2023. A notorious “anti-crime” plainclothes unit resurrected by Adams may have contributed to those increases. In a report released last month, attorney Mylan Denerstein, the court-appointed federal monitor, found that two specialized nypd units — the Neighborhood Safety Team and the Public Safety Team — were responsible for a majority of unlawful stop-and-frisks in the first half of 2023. A previous version of the Neighborhood Safety Team was disbanded in 2020 after years of controversy surrounding its aggressive tactics . During his mayoral campaign, Adams pledged to bring the unit back amid heightened public concern over shootings. The Bronx has been disproportionately affected by the police tactic, with nearly four in ten stops occurring there last year. The borough is home to only 17 percent of the city’s population, and over 80 percent of Bronx residents are Black or Latino.

A federal judge in California on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily restore legal aid to tens of thousands of migrant children who are in the United States without a parent or guardian, ABC News reports. The Republican administration on March 21 terminated a contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, which provides legal services for unaccompanied migrant children under 18 through a network of legal aid groups that subcontract with the center. Eleven subcontractor groups sued, saying that 26,000 children were at risk of losing their attorneys; Acacia is not a plaintiff. Those groups argued that the government has an obligation under a 2008 anti-trafficking law to provide vulnerable children with legal counsel. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of San Francisco granted a temporary restraining order late Tuesday. She wrote that advocates raised legitimate questions about whether the administration violated the 2008 law, warranting a return to the status quo while the case continues. The order will take effect Wednesday and runs through April 16. “The Court additionally finds that the continued funding of legal representation for unaccompanied children promotes efficiency and fairness within the immigration system,” she wrote. It is the third legal setback in less than a week for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, though all may prove temporary as the lawsuits advance. On Friday, a federal judge in Boston said people with final deportation orders must have a “ meaningful opportunity ” to argue against being sent to a country other than their own. On Monday, another federal judge in San Francisco put on hold plans to end protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, including 350,000 whose legal status was scheduled to expire April 7. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, which created special protections for migrant children who cannot navigate a complex immigration system on their own. Plaintiffs said some of their clients are too young to speak and others are too traumatized and do not know English. The law requires the government to ensure “to the greatest extent practicable” that all children entering the country alone have legal counsel to represent them in proceedings and to “protect them from mistreatment, exploitation, and trafficking.” Defendants, which include the Department of Health and Human Services and its Office of Refugee Resettlement, said that taxpayers have no obligation to pay the cost of direct legal aid to migrant children at a time when the government is trying to save money. They also said district courts have no jurisdiction over a contract termination that would have expired at the end of March. Acacia is under a new contract with the government to provide legal orientations, including “know your rights” clinics.

A plan to build a 3,000-inmate prison in Arkansas hit a roadblock in the state Senate on Tuesday, while the Alabama Legislature gave final approval to ensure funding for another mega-prison. The Republican governors in both states have proposed building new prisons as a partial solution to problems in the state corrections system. The proposals come as Republican governors in several states grapple with how to increase funding for overcrowded facilities, the Associated Press reports. The Arkansas Senate voted 19-10 in favor of a bill that would have given state authority to spend up to $750 million for the prison. The bill needed at least 27 votes to advance to the House. The vote was a setback for the prison that Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and corrections officials have said is needed to ease state prison overcrowding, which has caused a large number of inmates to be housed in county jails. The project has faced a backlash from local leaders who said they were blindsided by the decision last year to purchase 815 acres (330 hectares) for the prison site. Opponents have questioned the viability of the site and how the state will be able to afford the total $825 million estimated cost of the facility. The state has set aside about $405 million for the project, but has not identified the source of the remaining funds. “I cannot imagine letting go of almost a billion dollars without any detail specifics,” said Republican Sen. Bryan King, an outspoken opponent of the measure. It wasn’t clear whether the Senate would take up the proposal again. Sanders’ office vowed to keep pushing. “Governor Sanders and a bipartisan majority of legislators agree: it’s time to fund the Franklin County prison, fund public safety, and fund the future of Arkansas,” Sanders’ spokesperson Sam Dubke said. “The governor will continue to work with the legislature to get this appropriation passed.” The Alabama House of Representatives voted 72-14 for legislation that would give the state the ability to borrow an additional $500 million for prison construction. Republican Rep. Rex Reynolds, the chairman of the House budget-writing committee, said the increased borrowing capacity will ensure the state has enough money to finish a second 4,000-bed prison in addition to one under construction. Reynolds said the state hopes to pay for the prison out of money in state coffers, but that increased borrowing capacity could be tapped if needed.

The FBI is sending extra agents, analysts and other personnel to field offices in 10 states over the next six months to help investigate unsolved violent crimes in Indian Country, marking a continuation of efforts by the federal government to address high rates of violence affecting Native American communities. The U.S. Justice Department announced Tuesday that the temporary duty assignments began immediately and will rotate every 90 days in field offices that include Albuquerque, Phoenix, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Portland, Oregon, and Jackson, Mississippi. The FBI will be working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs Missing and Murdered Unit, tribal authorities and federal prosecutors in each of the states, the Associated Press reports. “Crime rates in American Indian and Alaska Native communities are unacceptably high,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “By surging FBI resources and collaborating closely with U.S. attorneys and tribal law enforcement to prosecute cases, the Department of Justice will help deliver the accountability that these communities deserve.” Work to bring more attention to the crisis has spanned decades. President Donald Trump was the first president to formally recognize the issue when he signed an executive order during his first term establishing a task force to tackle the high rate of killings and disappearances among Native Americans and Alaska Natives. He also signed legislation in 2020 that directed the Justice and Interior departments to consult with tribes while developing national law enforcement guidelines and a separate measure that called for a federal commission to be established to find ways to improve how government responds to Indian Country cases. President Joe Biden issued his own executive order on public safety in 2021, and then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched efforts to implement the Not Invisible Act and the federal commission . Public meetings were held around the country as part of the effort, survivors and family members told heartbreaking stories and recommendations were crafted in 2023. The Justice Department that year also established its Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons outreach program , dispatching more attorneys and coordinators to certain regions to help with unsolved cases. In past years, the FBI’s Operation Not Forgotten had deployed about 50 people for the temporary duty. This year, it’s 60. But without consistent resources and trained detectives investigating the crimes, advocates say many cases go unsolved. They called the FBI’s latest surge an essential investment, saying it should be made permanent.

A judge in Boston is holding a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in contempt after he detained a suspect while the man was on trial. ICE agent Brian Sullivan detained Wilson Martell-Lebron last week as he was leaving court. But a Boston Municipal Court judge issued a ruling Monday against Sullivan, arguing that he had deprived Martell-Lebron of his rights to due process and a fair trial by taking him into custody, the Associated Press reports. “It’s a case of violating a defendant’s right to present at trial and confront witnesses against him,” Judge Mark Summerville said from the bench. “It couldn’t be more serious.” Summerville dismissed the charge against Martell-Lebron of making false statements on his driver’s license application -- namely that he wasn’t Martell-Lebron. After that, Summerville filed the contempt charge against Sullivan, which could lead Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden review the case to determine if any charges should be filed. “It’s reprehensible,” Ryan Sullivan, one of Martell-Lebron’s lawyers said. “Law enforcement agents have a job to see justice is done. Prosecutors have a job to see justice is done. There is no greater injustice in my mind than the government arresting someone, without identifying themselves, and preventing them from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to a jury trial.” The move by ICE is the latest effort to target Boston over its handling of immigration. President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and Republicans in Congress have accused the city of failing to cooperate to get people charged with violent crimes deported. Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat up for reelection this year, said she wants Boston be a welcoming place for immigrants and that city policies limit cooperation with immigration enforcement. Sullivan described a tense scene, in which ICE agents pounced on Martell-Lebron without identifying themselves, put him into a pickup truck and sped away. The trial Thursday had just begun with opening statements and the first witnesses. Sullivan said Martell-Lebron, who is from the Dominican Republic and living with family in Massachusetts, is now at the Plymouth detention facility for allegedly being an undocumented immigrant, he said. “What we were challenging is that they arrested him in the middle of his trial and did not return him,” he said. “If he had been brought to court on Friday morning by ICE, we would not have moved to dismiss. We would not be asking for sanctions. We would have just finished the trial.”

The Trump administration is getting blowback for confirmed and potential errors in its rush to deport hundreds of men to El Salvador last month, NPR reports. On Monday night, immigration officials admitted to deporting a Maryland man to El Salvador due to an "administrative error." Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who lived with his U.S. citizen wife and child, was identified as being on one of the three deportation flights to El Salvador last month that are the subject of several lawsuits. Immigration advocates claim those flown to El Salvador did not receive due process. The administration used the three flights to quickly deport over three hundred men it accused of being members of MS-13, a gang with connections to El Salvador that originated in Los Angeles, and Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. They were later moved to CECOT, a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador. One of them was Abrego Garcia, who his wife identified through photos released by the El Salvadoran government. "The government's filing was pretty shocking because they admitted everything that we alleged," Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, the lawyer representing Abrego Garcia and his family, told NPR. Although Justice Department lawyers acknowledge the mistake in Abrego Garcia's case, they say there is nothing federal officials can do because he is now in custody of another country. And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday doubled down on his deportation, pointing to his links to MS-13 — which Abrego Garcia's lawyers dispute. This latest case adds to the growing judicial scrutiny about the deportations, and has even prompted some consternation from one of Trump's allies. Joe Rogan, the popular host of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast who endorsed Trump last year, this week raised concerns with potential errors in the El Salvador deporations. "It's hard to know what's real and what's not real, but if it is real this is f****** horrible," Rogan said in his latest episode, when discussing the case of Venezuelan makeup artist Andry. Andry's lawyer argues he was a legal asylum seeker who was deported.

The national atmosphere around policing has shifted significantly in the years since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in May of 2020 — including increased public trust in police and political support on both sides of the aisle.  But across the country police departments are still struggling with recruitment efforts, clearance rates, and establishing a sense of public safety for communities, Governing reports .  In 2020, protests against police brutality and racial discrimination sprung up all across the nation and indeed much of the world, and anti-police feeling ran strong in many places. More recently, though, a spike in homicides and other violent crimes during the pandemic put a new focus on public safety. The slogan "defund the police" quickly proved politically toxic, blamed by many Democrats for some of the party’s losses in recent elections. Policies meant to curb the worst excesses of police activity, including bans on chokeholds and restrictions on qualified immunity from civil litigation, now are mostly dead letters.  Within days of Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, the Justice Department ordered a halt to consent decrees and settlement agreements that required changes in policy in departments with patterns of misconduct. In March, President Trump called for the death penalty for anyone who kills a cop. But even if police departments are facing less criticism and enjoying strong political support, that doesn’t mean their challenges are all behind them.  The most glaring problem is staffing. Despite its recruiting efforts, Seattle remains short by about 300 officers. Minneapolis  has a vacancy rate of about 20 percent. Across the country, agencies are about 10 percent short of their budgeted workforce, according to a survey  from the International Association of Chiefs of Police.  “We have gone from a period when there was some talk about defunding the police to where police departments have the money but they cannot hire,” says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit policy group. Agencies are also looking for areas where civilians can take the place of sworn officers, such as monitoring surveillance footage. And while an older generation of cops was trained to assume every call would take them to an active crime scene, younger recruits more often understand that they’ll work as de facto social workers, the go-to responders for people falling through gaps in social safety nets.  A broader trend has been co-responder programs, which involve sending social workers or mental health specialists alongside sworn officers to respond to certain nonviolent incidents. Meanwhile, the percentage of crimes that are solved — the so-called clearance rate — is anemic. More than half of murders and manslaughters were solved  in 2022, but only about a quarter of rapes and robberies get resolved. That’s among crimes that are reported to police, which is less than half of the crimes that are actually committed. And establishing public trust is a long-term process; losing it can happen in a flash. There are still instances where officers turn anodyne encounters into something dangerous — ultimately shooting individuals, for instance, who were initially stopped for a speeding violation. Police fatally shot  a record number of people last year. A group called Mapping Police Violence  found that officers have killed more people each year since 2019. Racial disparities remain stark. The share of Black people confronted or threatened with force actually increased from 2020 to 2022, the period of peak scrutiny following the murder of George Floyd. Although many departments have instituted accountability measures including civilian review boards, what people care about most is police's effectiveness, Moskos says. “Do people feel safe when people leave the house?” he asks. “If they do, then the public in general is willing to cut police a lot of slack — perhaps too much slack in certain cases. But the focus has to be on preventing crime and violence and disorder.”

Kansas is too often relying on law enforcement to make time-critical determinations about the welfare of children with limited information about families and, in some areas of the state, lack of access to alternative services.,  Kansas Child Advocate Kerrie Lonard told the state legislature this week. “Kansas is relying on law enforcement to not only act as public safety officer, but also that of a social worker,” Lonard said. Lonard said questions had been raised in Kansas about the percentage of children being removed from homes by law enforcement, the Kansas Reflector reports . Questions also have been posed about whether child trauma could be reduced if DCF personnel were more readily available to be involved in removal decisions, she said. “Law enforcement does not have in-real-time access to DCF resources or historical information to enable consideration of safely vetted alternative options that would prevent children from being placed into police protective custody,” she said. Ron Paschal, the deputy district attorney in Sedgwick County responsible for the Child In Need of Care division, said the state should be wary of latching onto a set of statistics and deciding too many children were being taken into protective custody by law enforcement agencies. He said a significant portion of children in protective custody were later returned home, but that didn’t mean initial decisions of law enforcement officers were flawed. “We can all agree in a perfect world no child should experience removal from home. We all agree that is a traumatic experience,” Paschal said. “But, I think, if we look at the reality, sadly, many children’s lives and safety are at risk at home.” Former Topeka police chief Ed Klumpp, who lobbies on behalf of three law enforcement associations in Kansas, said the power to place a child in protective custody wasn’t used by officers without exploration of other solutions. “Taking a child into police protective custody can be traumatic not only for the child and family, but also to the officer,” Klumpp said.

Dan Bongino, the F.B.I.’s deputy director, who rose to popularity as a conservative podcaster bashing Democrats and praising President Trump, sought to reassure the bureau’s employees that he would not act as a “partisan political figure.” Addressing the work force on Monday, Bongino said in an email that he would set “aside any personal politics” and rise above partisanship in stepping into the crucial job of overseeing 38,000 employees, the New York Times reports .  “That’s what I did as a special agent with the U.S. Secret Service, where I proudly protected both Democratic and Republican presidents,” he added. “And it’s what I did as an officer with the N.Y.P.D., where I served and protected all the people of New York City equally.” The message was a striking admission for any F.B.I. official — let alone the No. 2 in the organization. It reflected existing skepticism among former and current agents about whether Bongino and Kash Patel, the director, will maintain the bureau’s fierce independence in the face of investigations that could anger the White House. Patel, a former prosecutor for the Justice Department, was also a high-profile surrogate for the Trump campaign. In years past, deputy directors have been veteran agents in the bureau, climbing the ranks until landing on the seventh floor of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington. That period gives agents a chance to learn how to make cases, run major operations and field offices and deal with national security crises. They also fight for agents who face resistance from prosecutors. The selection of Bongino, 50, signaled a major break from tradition at an institution where most agents his age would be retiring.

The Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court defeated a challenger endorsed by President Donald Trump  and billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday, touting her victory as a win against powerful interests and cementing a liberal majority for at least three more years, the Associated Press reports . Susan Crawford , a Dane County judge who led legal fights to protect union power and abortion rights  and to oppose voter ID, stood on stage surrounded by the court’s four current liberal justices and celebrated her win as a victory for democracy while also taking a dig at Musk, the Associated Press reports. “Growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I would be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin,” Crawford said. “And we won.” Musk and groups he backed  had spent more than $21 million in an effort to defeat Crawford. Musk even traveled to Wisconsin two days before the election to personally hand over $1 million checks to two voters. Crawford defeated Republican-backed Brad Schimel in a race  that broke records for spending, was the highest-turnout Wisconsin Supreme Court election ever and became a proxy fight for the nation’s political battles. “Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” Crawford said in her victory speech. “And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price, our courts are not for sale.” The court can decide election-related laws and settle disputes over future election outcomes. “Wisconsin’s a big state politically, and the Supreme Court has a lot to do with elections in Wisconsin,” Trump said Monday. “Winning Wisconsin’s a big deal, so therefore the Supreme Court choice … it’s a big race.” Crawford embraced the backing of Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates, running ads that highlighted Schimel’s opposition to the procedure. She also attacked Schimel for his ties to Musk and Republicans, referring to Musk as “Elon Schimel” during a debate. Schimel’s campaign tried to portray Crawford as weak on crime and puppet of Democrats who, if elected, would push to redraw congressional district boundary lines to hurt Republicans and repeal a GOP-backed state law that took collective bargaining rights away from most public workers. Voters in Eau Claire seemed to respond to both messages. Jim Seeger, a 68-year-old retiree, said he voted for Schimel because he was concerned about redistricting. Jim Hazelton, a 68-year-old disabled veteran, said he had planned to abstain but voted for Crawford after Musk — whom he called a “pushy billionaire” — and Trump got involved. “He’s cutting everything,” Hazelton said of Musk. “People need these things he’s cutting.”