A U.S. appeals court has blocked President Donald Trump's executive order suspending asylum access at the southern border. The court ruled Friday that immigration laws allow people to apply for asylum at the border, and the president cannot bypass this. The decision stems from Trump's action on Inauguration Day 2025, declaring the border situation an invasion and suspending asylum. The court found that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn't give the president authority to override asylum procedures. The White House says the asylum ban was within Trump's powers, but the Department of Justice plans to seek further review.

A U.S. soldier involved with the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been granted bond, a day after being charged with using classified information about the operation to win more than $400,000 in an online prediction market. Federal prosecutors say Gannon Ken Van Dyke used his access to classified information about the January raid to win money on Polymarket. Van Dyke is a special operations soldier who is stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. He's now facing several federal charges and the possibility of years in prison. He said little during Friday's hearing and was assigned a federal public defender, who declined to comment.

President Donald Trump's nominee to chair the Federal Reserve says that he never promised the White House he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls for the central bank to do so. The comments underscore the challenge faced by Kevin Warsh, 56, a former top Fed official whom Trump named in January to replace the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell. Democrats on the committee accused Warsh on Tuesday of flip-flopping on interest rates over the years, supporting higher interest rates under Democratic presidents and advocating rate cuts during Trump's time in office.

Some new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers started working before passing background checks and had problems in their past. ICE announced in January that it completed an unprecedented hiring spree, adding 12,000 officers and agents to double its force. Their mission is to help carry out President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign. But the speed with which they were brought on to the payroll, to jobs considered important for national security, has raised alarm. The Associated Press found one new ICE hire had filed for bankruptcy twice and worked for six law enforcement agencies in three years. Another was accused of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman. A third quit his only prior policing job after three weeks.

Congress has approved a short-term renewal of a controversial surveillance program used by U.S. spy agencies just days before it was set to expire. A bill extending the program until April 30 cleared the Senate by voice vote Friday as Congress raced to send it to President Donald Trump for his signature. Lawmakers turned to a short-term extension of the program after an attempt to pass a five-year renewal failed in a late-night House vote. The short-term fix sets the stage for another showdown in a matter of weeks. The program permits key national security agencies to collect and analyze vast amounts of overseas communications without a warrant.

A federal commission has approved the design concept for the Triumphal Arch that President Donald Trump wants to build at an entrance to the nation's capital. The 250-foot-tall arch would rise on federal land on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, at the end of Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts will review an updated design at a later date before a final vote. The arch is one of several projects, including a new White House ballroom, that the Republican president is pursuing to leave a lasting imprint on the city.

The House has rejected a resolution requiring President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from the war with Iran unless Congress authorizes military action. The vote Thursday was the latest such attempt that fell short of passage as Republicans largely continue to support Trump's operation. Democrats are concerned about the United States getting further entrenched in another lengthy Middle East conflict and are promising to keep raising the issue through more votes in the coming weeks. Republicans counter by noting that Congress never voted on a war powers resolution when the Biden administration attacked Iranian-backed Houthis.

President Donald Trump has railed against a federal judge's decision that continues to block above-ground construction of a $400 million White House ballroom. The decision on Thursday allows only below-ground work on a bunker and other "national security facilities" at the site. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington issued his latest ruling Thursday in a lawsuit over the ballroom project several days after an appeals court instructed him to reconsider the possible national security implications of stopping construction. Leon said he is ordering a stop only to the above-ground construction of the planned ballroom, apart from any work needed to cover or secure that part of the project.