A judge blocked New York City’s mayor from letting federal immigration authorities reopen an office at the city’s main jail, in part because of concerns the mayor invited them back in as part of a deal with the Trump administration to end his corruption case.

New York Judge Mary Rosado’s decision Friday is a setback for Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who issued an executive order permitting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to maintain office space at the Rikers Island jail complex. City lawmakers filed a lawsuit in April accusing Adams of entering into a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain” with the Trump administration in exchange for the U.S. Justice Department dropping criminal charges against him.

Rosado temporarily blocked the executive order in April. In granting a preliminary injunction, she said city council members have “shown a likelihood of success in demonstrating, at minimum, the appearance of a quid pro quo whereby Mayor Adams publicly agreed to bring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (”ICE”) back to Rikers Island in exchange for dismissal of his criminal charges.”

Rosado cited a number of factors, including U.S. border czar Tom Homan’s televised comments in February that if Adams did not come through, “I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’ ”

Adams has repeatedly denied making a deal with the administration over the criminal case. He has said he deputized his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to handle decision-making on the return of ICE to Rikers Island to make sure there was no appearance of any conflict of interest.

Rosado said that Mastro reports to Adams and “cannot be considered impartial and free from Mayor Adams’ conflicts.”

Mastro said in a prepared statement Friday the administration was confident they will prevail in the case. “Let’s be crystal clear: This executive order is about the criminal prosecution of violent transnational gangs committing crimes in our city. Our administration has never, and will never, do anything to jeopardize the safety of law-abiding immigrants, and this executive order ensures their safety as well,” Mastro said.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is running in the Democratic primary for mayor, called the decision a victory for public safety.

“New Yorkers are counting on our city to protect their civil rights, and yet, Mayor Adams has attempted to betray this obligation by handing power over our city to Trump’s ICE because he is compromised,” she said in a prepared statement.

President Donald Trump said Thursday he is in “no rush” to reach any trade deals because he views tariffs as making the United States wealthy. But he suggested while meeting with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni that it would be easy to find an agreement with the European Union and others.

Trump played down the likelihood of an accelerated timeline to wrap up deals, saying other countries “want to make deals more than I do.”

“We’re in no rush,” said Trump, hinting he has leverage because other countries want access to U.S. consumers.

Even though Trump has a warm relationship with Meloni, she was unable in their meeting to change his mind on tariffs.

“No, tariffs are making us rich. We were losing a lot of money under Biden,” Trump said of his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden. “And now that whole tide is turned.”

Trump is convinced that his devotion to tariffs will yield unprecedented wealth for his country even as the stock market has dropped, interest on U.S. debt has risen and CEOs are warning of price increases and job losses in what increasingly looks like a threat to the existing structure of the world economy.

A bond market panic was enough for Trump to partially pull back on his tariffs, causing him to pause his 20% import taxes on the EU for 90 days and charge a baseline 10% instead. Meloni’s visit showed the challenge faced even by leaders who enjoy a rapport with Trump.

After they met, Trump told reporters that trade talks were easier than other business negotiations such as mergers. He said he had spoken with Chinese officials about tariffs “a lot” and the amount of his import taxes could be influenced by China approving a sale of the social media site TikTok. He also seemed to contradict his previous statement Thursday morning about being in no rush to make trade deals “over the next three or four weeks.”

Even then, Trump showed no interest in fully severing his tariffs. “Tariff negotiations are actually simpler than everyone has said,” Trump said. “A number of people are going to pay that number or they’re going to decide to go elsewhere if there is such a place. There really is no elsewhere.”

Meloni had, in a sense, been “knighted” to represent the EU at a critical juncture in the fast-evolving trade war that has stoked recession fears. The U.S. administration has belittled its European counterparts for not doing enough on national security while threatening their economies with tariffs, sparking deep uncertainty about the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

She sought to portray the U.S. and Europe as natural allies in Western civilization and said it was important to “try to sit down and find solution” to tensions over trade and national security.

The EU is defending what it calls “the most important commercial relationship in the world,’’ with annual trade with the U.S. totaling 1.6 trillion euros ($1.8 trillion). It was unclear, based on Meloni’s public interactions with Trump, whether the premier has a clear understanding of what Trump wants as part of an agreement.

His administration has said its tariffs would enable trade negotiations that would box out China, the world’s dominant manufacturer. But Trump maintains that rivals and allies alike have taken advantage of the U.S. on trade, a position that has frustrated long-standing partners and raised concerns about whether Trump is a trustworthy dealmaker.

Trump tried to push back against claims that his tariffs are harming the economy, saying that gasoline and egg prices are already dropping. The president blamed the Federal Reserve for interest rates rising on U.S. debt. Rates largely increased because investors were worried about Trump’s tariff plans and they became less willing to buy Treasury notes, while the central bank has held steady on its own benchmark rates because of economic uncertainty.

Hong Kong’s government on Monday defended its immigration procedures after a British member of parliament was denied entry to the Chinese city last week, an incident that has prompted concerns among U.K. officials.

Wera Hobhouse, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party representing Bath, on Sunday wrote on the social media platform Bluesky that authorities gave her no explanation for what she described as a “cruel and upsetting blow.” She noted that she was the first British MP to face such a situation upon arrival in the former British colony since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Hobhouse had told British media that she flew to Hong Kong to visit her newborn grandchild. She is also a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China that has scrutinized Beijing’s human rights record.

The Hong Kong government, in a statement released late Monday, maintained that its immigration officers are duty-bound to question individuals to ascertain the purpose of any visit.

“The person concerned knows best what he or she has done. It will be unhelpful to the person’s case if the person refuses to answer questions put to him or her for that purpose,” the statement read. The government added that it would not comment on individual cases.

The statement also said that Chief Secretary Eric Chan discussed the matter with the U.K. Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security Douglas Alexander earlier on Monday during the British official’s visit to Hong Kong.

In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian emphasized that immigration affairs fall within the scope of national sovereignty and the city’s government has the right to handle individual immigration cases according to the law.

The British government also issued a statement on Monday about Hobhouse’s entry denial last Thursday. It stated that Alexander had raised its concerns with senior Chinese and Hong Kong counterparts and demanded an explanation during his visit to the city and mainland China.

“Unjustified restrictions on the freedom of movement for U.K. citizens into Hong Kong only serves to further undermine Hong Kong’s international reputation and the important people-to-people connections between the U.K. and Hong Kong,” it said.

It added that the U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy made clear that it would be unacceptable for any member of parliament to be denied entry for simply expressing their views.

A former Conservative lawmaker and 14 others have been charged with cheating when placing bets on the timing of Britain’s general election last year, the Gambling Commission said Monday.

Craig Williams was one of several people who had been investigated for cashing in on insider knowledge on the date then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would call the election. Other members of the Conservative Party that controlled government at the time and a police officer were among those facing charges that carry a potential two-year prison term, if convicted.

It’s legal for politicians to wager on elections, but the investigation was about whether they used inside information to gain an unfair advantage. One of the popular bets at the time was to wager on the date the prime minister would call an election.

At the time, the conventional wisdom was that Sunak would call an election in the fall, but he surprised people in May when he set the election date for July 4th. The announcement was a disaster as Sunak was drenched in pouring rain outside his residence and word quickly spread that a handful of people with connections to the party had placed suspiciously timed bets.

The vote six weeks later ended up being a bloodbath for Conservatives, as the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, swept them out of office for the first time in 14 years.

Williams, who was Sunak’s parliamentary private secretary and running for reelection, had disclosed he placed a 100-pound ($131) bet on a July election days before the date had been announced.

“I committed an error of judgment, not an offense, and I want to reiterate my apology directly to you,” he said in a video posted on social media in June.

In the election, Williams lost his seat representing an area of Wales, finishing third.

Others facing charges included Russell George, a Conservative in the Welsh parliament, Nick Mason, a former chief data officer for the Tories and Thomas James, the director of the Welsh Conservatives.

Anthony Lee, a former Conservative campaign director, was also charged alongside his wife, Laura Saunders, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat in Parliament representing an area of southwest England.

George was suspended by the Conservative Party after news of the criminal case.

U.S. immigration officials are asking the public and federal agencies to comment on a proposal to collect social media handles from people applying for benefits such as green cards or citizenship, to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump.

The March 5 notice raised alarms from immigration and free speech advocates because it appears to expand the government’s reach in social media surveillance to people already vetted and in the U.S. legally, such as asylum seekers, green card and citizenship applicants -- and not just those applying to enter the country. That said, social media monitoring by immigration officials has been a practice for over a decade, since at least the second Obama administration and ramping up under Trump’s first term.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a 60-day notice asking for public commentary on its plan to comply with Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” The plan calls for “uniform vetting standards” and screening people for grounds of inadmissibility to the U.S., as well as identify verification and “national security screening.” It seeks to collect social media handles and the names of platforms, although not passwords.

The policy seeks to require people to share their social media handles when applying for U.S. citizenship, green card, asylum and other immigration benefits. The proposal is open to feedback from the public until May 5.

“The basic requirements that are in place right now is that people who are applying for immigrant and non-immigrant visas have to provide their social media handles,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, managing director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program at New York University. “Where I could see this impacting is someone who came into the country before visa-related social media handle collection started, so they wouldn’t have provided it before and now they’re being required to. Or maybe they did before, but their social media use has changed.”

“This fairly widely expanded policy to collect them for everyone applying for any kind of immigration benefit, including people who have already been vetted quite extensively,” she added.

What this points to — along with other signals the administration is sending such as detaining people and revoking student visas for participating in campus protests that the government deems antisemitic and sympathetic to the militant Palestinian group Hamas — Levinson-Waldman added, is the increased use of social media to “make these very high-stakes determinations about people.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service said the agency seeks to “strengthen fraud detection, prevent identity theft, and support the enforcement of rigorous screening and vetting measures to the fullest extent possible.”

“These efforts ensure that those seeking immigration benefits to live and work in the United States do not threaten public safety, undermine national security, or promote harmful anti-American ideologies,” the statement continued. USCIS estimates that the proposed policy change will affect about 3.6 million people.
How are social media accounts used now?

The U.S. government began ramping up the use of social media for immigration vetting in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In late 2015, the Department of Homeland Security began both “manual and automatic screening of the social media accounts of a limited number of individuals applying to travel to the United States, through various non-public pilot programs,” the nonpartisan law and policy institute explains on its website.

In May 2017, the U.S. Department of State issued an emergency notice to increase the screening of visa applicants. Brennan, along with other civil and human rights groups, opposed the move, arguing that it is “excessively burdensome and vague, is apt to chill speech, is discriminatory against Muslims, and has no security benefit.”

Two years later, the State Department began collecting social media handles from “nearly all foreigners” applying for visas to travel to the U.S. — about 15 million people a year.

Under threat from the Trump administration, Columbia University agreed to implement a host of policy changes Friday, including overhauling its rules for protests and conducting an immediate review of its Middle Eastern studies department.

The changes, detailed in a letter sent by the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, came one week after the Trump administration ordered the Ivy League school to enact those and other reforms or lose all federal funding, an ultimatum widely criticized in academia as an attack on academic freedom.

In her letter, Armstrong said the university would immediately appoint a senior vice provost to conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of its regional studies programs, “starting immediately with the Middle East.”

Columbia will also revamp its long-standing disciplinary process and bar protests inside academic buildings. Students will not be permitted to wear face masks on campus “for the purposes of concealing one’s identity.” An exception would be made for people wearing them for health reasons.

In an effort to expand “intellectual diversity” within the university, Columbia will also appoint new faculty members to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies department. It will also adopt a new definition of antisemitism and expand programming in its Tel Aviv Center, a research hub based in Israel.

The policy changes were largely in line with demands made on the university by the Trump administration, which pulled $400 million in research grants and other federal funding, and had threatened to cut more, over the university’s handling of protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

The White House has labeled the protests antisemitic, a label rejected by those who participated in the student-led demonstrations.

A message seeking comment was left with a spokesperson for the Education Department. As a “precondition” for restoring funding, federal officials demanded that the university to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.”

They also told the university to ban masks on campus, adopt a new definition of antisemitism, abolish its current process for disciplining students and deliver a plan to ”reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices.”

Historians had described the order as an unprecedented intrusion on university rights long treated by the Supreme Court as an extension of the First Amendment.

On Friday, freedom of speech advocates immediately decried Columbia’s decision to acquiesce.