Temporary Protected Status for the two countries was set to expire on Monday. The Trump administration said an announcement would be made “at the appropriate time.”
The decision to hold off on an announcement about Ukrainian and Sudanese migrants mirrored a similar move by the Trump administration last month to allow people from El Salvador to keep their deportation protections for now.
As Trump held rallies around the nation, his White House was consumed by dramas that reinforce how his presidency has become a drag on his party’s prospects in the midterms.
The plan to begin work transforming the course in four weeks injected fresh urgency into a federal lawsuit opposing changes to East Potomac Golf Links.
Immigration agents descended upon Oscar Belgal, a Dominican immigrant, along a strip of small stores in New York as people made their way home from work or accompanied their children after school.
Female colleague says she was forced out shortly after incident with Luke Campbell, Hull and East Yorkshire mayor
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Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxing champion and the mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, is understood to have been questioned under caution by Humberside police earlier this month.
Scrutiny committee looks into financing of Manchester Life project as PM promises ‘full transparency’
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Cabinet ministers are turning on Ed Miliband, accusing him of blocking AI investment to protect Net Zero – while families pay the price in lost jobs and holidays.
Walking through East Cleveland, Ohio, feels a touch like you've wandered onto the set of a postapocalyptic film noir. Grand, gilded homes announce themselves on neighborhood streets, some crowned with turrets, many with windows punched out like missing teeth. Often, no one is home, because no one lives there. It is safer than 1 percent of U.S. cities.
That question is not really a legal one, at least not in the most technical sense. But it is the driving force behind a thorny case a federal court recently resuscitated: Fambrough v. City of East Cleveland, a saga concerning a man whose vehicle became an obsessive target of the East Cleveland Police Department (ECPD) after he used it to campaign for a mayoral challenger.
Some of the facts are in dispute. But the basic gist is as follows: William Fambrough, long a politically engaged East Clevelander, campaigned for Juanita Gowdy—a challenger to then-Mayor Brandon King—by broadcasting messages around the city with his sound truck. That ultimately came to an end after law enforcement impounded the car, cited him for parking and noise violations, and prosecuted him for the latter.
Fambrough sued, alleging the complex legal odyssey set into motion over his step van amounted to First Amendment retaliation, an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and a violation of the 14th Amendment's proscription against selective enforcement. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rejected some of those claims. But it resurrected claims against King and his chief of staff, Michael Smedley—depriving them of qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that inoculates state and local government officials from facing lawsuits if their alleged misconduct was not "clearly established" as illegal in prior case law. It also revived Fambrough's retaliation claim against the city.
As the 6th Circuit summarizes: King "says he received a phone call from a resident who complained about Fambrough's sound truck and someone else's box truck being parked in a residential area," so he told someone to take care of it. Scott Gardner, then the city's chief of police, "was concerned about selectively enforcing" the parking ordinance—which prohibits parking a truck in front of residential property, except for loading or unloading—because it is indeed almost never enforced. This was the beginning of a long pursuit, which ultimately saw a swarm of officers dispatched to Fambrough's house in August 2021 to confiscate the vehicle, allegedly resulting in $6,000 in damage. Fambrough also had to pay $528 in fees to get the damaged truck back.
"All the attention City officials gave Fambrough struck Gardner as unusual," the 6th Circuit notes. "The mayor's office wasn't this attentive even in homicide cases. And considering that the City had around only 50 police officers at the time and had 'serious crime problems,' Gardner thought it was odd to devote this much attention to permitting and parking issues." Based on available data, East Cleveland's violent crime rate is 1,409 per 100,000 residents, about four times higher than the national average.
Yet Gardner ultimately got on board. Smedley phoned him on August 9 "extremely upset," according to Gardner, and told the police chief he was "incompetent" for failing to "take care of" Fambrough's sound truck. Smedley wanted the "utmost enforcement as possible." So Gardner sent an email. "Please, find this vehicle and tow it," he wrote to all of ECPD. "Cite the operator with disturbing the peace and loud music. Please contact me as soon as this is complete to claim a surprise." A surprise!
Police succeeded. "On its face, the email told officers to tow Fambrough's truck regardless of whether it was parked illegally," writes the 6th Circuit. "And the Noise Ordinance authorizes seizure only of 'the sound device used,' and only upon conviction. So Gardner's instruction to tow the truck wasn't authorized by municipal law." The court still held that the seizure did not violate the Fourth Amendment. It also gave Gardner qualified immunity, ruling it is not clearly established that someone who acts as a conduit for someone else's alleged retaliation—which here came from the mayor's office—is a "responsible party."
Heather McCollough, the city's assistant law director, subsequently prosecuted Fambrough for allegedly violating the noise ordinance. According to a sworn declaration from Fambrough's attorney, McCollough outlined some of Fambrough's offenses on a call: that he "made complaints about the police department" and filed "public records requests," among other issues. Notably, it is legal to do those things. McCollough was typically willing to resolve minor noise complaints, she added, but not so much in this case, because Fambrough needed to "stand down." (He ultimately pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct, a reduced charge.)
Institute for Justice
"Only after [Fambrough] began supporting Gowdy's election was the weight of the law thrown against him," the 6th Circuit writes in its analysis of potential municipal wrongdoing. "And the City's police officers didn't uncover Fambrough's violations of their own accord. Instead, City decisionmakers sent them to Fambrough's home each time to enforce the Parking Ordinance. So the timing of the parking-related enforcement actions supports an inference that Fambrough's political speech was the motivating factor—as does the fact that the City rarely enforced the Parking Ordinance against anyone else despite having plenty of opportunities to do so." Incredibly, a photo of another truck can be seen down the street on the same day law enforcement came to fetch Fambrough's vehicle. (The law also includes pickup trucks, so the city arguably has a lot of enforcement to do if it sincerely believes this law matters.)
King allegedly set the chain of events into motion while Smedley took the driver's seat. "Smedley's pattern of incessantly calling and berating Gardner," the 6th Circuit adds, "clashes with the idea that Smedley was chiefly concerned with minor permitting, noise, or parking issues." After all, if that were true, why would the problem appear to begin and end with one person?
Over five years have passed since the ordeal. Although Fambrough is now potentially closer to getting in front of a jury, he has yet to actually state his case, still burdened by the onerous process government actors invoke to kill such suits before the community can assess the merits. King, meanwhile, won that election. He left office in May 2025, however, after he was found guilty of one count of theft in office, four counts of having an unlawful interest in a public contract, three counts of representation by public official or employee, one count of filing a false disclosure statement, and one count of soliciting improper compensation.
From a press release last month, just posted on Westlaw:
N.C. Detective Agency, a Durham-based security company, will pay $65,231 in compensatory damages and back pay, and take other corrective actions to voluntarily resolve a religious discrimination investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.
The EEOC's investigation found reasonable cause to believe that an employee requested to be excused from work due to a Muslim religious holiday, but the request was denied. The company was aware of the employee's need for a religious accommodation but did not engage in the legally required interactive process, and instead terminated her in June 2025 when she did not report for duty.
And from another press release two weeks later, also just posted on Westlaw:
Reynolds IGA Foodliner, Inc., owner and operator of a chain of grocery stores, will pay $65,000 and provide other equitable relief to settle a religious discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.
According to the suit, shortly after she was hired as a deli clerk at the Piggly Wiggly store in Hazlehurst, Georgia, the employee requested Sundays off to observe her Sabbath. The employee's supervisor denied the request, claiming that, if the store gave the employee Sundays off, it would have to do the same for all other employees. The employee continued to request the accommodation, and the company fired her in January 2025.
More from the second press release:
"Employers cannot deny religious accommodation requests simply for fear of upsetting other employees," said Marcus G. Keegan, regional attorney for the EEOC's Atlanta District. "The EEOC remains committed to enforcing federal anti-discrimination law and protecting employees' rights to religious freedom."
Darrell E. Graham, director of the EEOC's Atlanta District, said, "Employers must thoughtfully consider each request for religious accommodation on an individual, case-by-case basis and otherwise make good-faith efforts to accommodate their employees' religious beliefs. Employers must be aware of their obligations under federal law to provide reasonable religious accommodations absent undue hardship."
Finally, from a third press release from last month (it was published in between the first two, but was again just posted on Westlaw); this one involves a lawsuit and not a settlement:
Blue Bell Creameries, Inc., a Brenham, Texas-based frozen snack manufacturer and distributor with a production facility in Sylacauga, Alabama, unlawfully terminated a Jewish body shop technician soon after he requested a beard‑related religious accommodation, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit announced today.
Even supporters of bans on religious discrimination by private employers might debate whether employers should be required to give religious exemptions from generally applicable rules (exemptions that could themselves be seen as discrimination in favor of religious observers). But Congress has indeed mandated such exemptions: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended in 1972, generally requires employers to accommodate religious objectors' requests for exemptions from generally applicable work rules, unless doing so would pose an "undue hardship" for the employer.
That extends to time off for religious holidays: Indeed, the leading recent case on the subject, Groff v. DeJoy, involved a Christian employee's request for an exemption from having to work Sundays. And of course it extends, as it must, to all religions.
Senator Darline Graham, appointed to fill the Senate seat of her late brother, Lindsey, gently disagreed with the president’s decision to exempt Russia from the sanctions legislation.
The Trump administration is ignoring the will of Congress and waiving new Russia sanctions amid fears that high energy prices will cost Republicans in next month’s elections.
Ken Paxton’s bus tour of Texas comes as polls have shown the race for Senate is increasingly close. His rival, James Talarico, is scheduled to kick off a similar tour on Sunday.
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