A Yemeni asylum seeker living in the Netherlands cannot rely on family reunification rules to bring over children from two additional marriages that Dutch law does not recognize, ruled the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The ECHR dismissed the migrant’s complaint on Tuesday, holding that Council of Europe states are not required to treat polygamous family arrangements as they would a monogamous household.
The man, 56, has three wives and 13 children from those unions. After arriving in the Netherlands in 2018 and receiving asylum, he was allowed to bring one wife and their eight children.
Dutch authorities refused entry to the five children born of his other two marriages, citing that “polygamy is prohibited in the Netherlands.”
He lost his challenges in the Dutch courts and then turned to Strasbourg, according to French newspaper Le Figaro. He argued the case was not about importing polygamy, because he was not seeking to bring the other two wives, only the remaining children. The court rejected the argument that the refusal violated his right to respect for family life.
If a European state “establishes an immigration policy that takes family ties into account,” it “cannot be obliged to recognize polygamous marriages that conflict with its own legal system,” the judges in Strasbourg ruled.
🇩🇪A tale of two Germanys🇩🇪
🔴The first Germany represents illiterate Syrian migrant Ahmad A. and his 2 wives and 6 children. The entire family received free housing and welfare thanks to German taxpayers.
The court also noted that he could have divorced the two other wives, as Dutch authorities had proposed, but declined to do so.
Notably, the second wife is already in the Netherlands with her children after she received asylum in June 2025. However, the fact that she entered the Netherlands did not change the ruling, the ECHR stated.
“The fact that polygamy is prohibited in all member states of the Council of Europe shows that there is a strong European consensus on this issue,” the judges noted. Under those circumstances, “Member States have considerable discretion as to whether or not to grant fathers and children born of polygamy the right to family reunification.”
🇫🇷🚨In France, an Ivorian polygamist has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for torture, rape, and for imposing a hard-line Islamic regime on his 4 wives and 29 children.
The 45-year-old Ivorian migrant, held in pretrial detention since 2022, was said to have stripped the home… pic.twitter.com/1NVsbWmJcl
In 1990, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) provided “full funding” for one Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki for studies in civil engineering at Colorado State University.
There was only one problem: the USAID document listed his birthplace as Sana’a, Yemen. Awlaki was actually born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, an inaccuracy which federal security agent Ray Fournier and The New York Times describe as being done in an attempt to qualify for scholarship money.
Awlaki returned to the United States on October 23, 2000, just two weeks after the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. This sequencing is worth mentioning, but at this time the FBI did not establish any connection between Awlaki and the attack.
Just months before September 11, Awlaki moved to Virginia and became an imam at the Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church. After the events of 9/11, on September 15, he was questioned by authorities and claimed he flew into Washington DC’s National Airport at 9 AM – less than an hour before the Pentagon was hit.
Significantly during interrogations, Awlaki would not show his passport and left the interview at one point to take an “urgent” phone call. When asked about his feelings about jihad, he would go on to state “I would like not to comment on that.”
Years later, in 2003, Awlaki himself would initiate a conversation with the FBI, stating he was “astonished by some of the talk circulating in the media.” This included allegations of him serving as a “spiritual advisor” to the hijackers, to which Awlaki stated he would like to “clarify any misunderstandings.”
As one FBI agent asked upon receiving correspondence from Awlaki, “Holy crap – isn’t this your guy?”
While they discussed a potential meeting in London, the meet up never happened as Awlaki stopped replying. Still, the story didn’t end there.
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission Report was released in which Awlaki’s relationship with the hijackers was detailed. In the report, it discusses hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar who were reported to have “developed a close relationship” with Awlaki.
Years later, on July 16, 2010, Awlaki was revealed by the U.S. Treasury as a key leader for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and described as being increasingly dangerous with an “operational role” in the group.
This included assistance to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, known by some as the “underpants bomber,” who attempted to detonate a device in mid-air during a flight on Christmas 2009. Awlaki also exchanged messages with Nidal Hasan before he killed thirteen people at Fort Hood in 2009. In 2010, Faisal Shahzad – who attempted to use a car bomb in Times Square – stated he was a “fan and follower” of Awlaki.
Awlaki was killed a year later in Yemen by a drone strike. Weeks later, his 16-year old son was also killed by a drone strike which raised multiple legal and ethical questions, as he was a U.S. citizen and killed in a country the United States was not formally at war with. His daughter was also killed in a raid over five years later.
As families of 9/11 victims sued the Saudi Arabian government, more potential reveals were provided in 2015. This included a witness during a civil lawsuit who stated they saw Hazmi and Mihdhar at a second-floor guest room at Awlaki’s San Diego mosque and also that he had “closed-door meetings in San Diego with al-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi, and another individual, whom al-Bayoumi had asked to help the hijackers.”
An April 4, 2016, FBI “Encore” Investigation Update, Review and Analysis discussed how Awlaki had phone contact with Ziyad Khaleel – an alleged equipment procurer for Osama Bin-Laden. It was this connection that led the FBI to open an investigation into Awlaki in the first place in 1999.
A part of Operation Encore released in 2021, the Joe Biden administration revealed that Saudi diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy had directed an associate to look after “two very significant people,” who were later identified as Hazmi and Mihdhar.
Later reveals also show Omar al-Bayoumi – who supported both Hazmi and Mihdhar – worked as an agent of Saudi intelligence. Awlaki was later revealed to have phone calls with Bayoumi just days after Bayoumi was setting up bank accounts for the hijackers in San Diego. Videos released in 2022 show Awlaki warmly greeting Bayoumi before the events of September 11.
With the U.S. government having years of warnings, connections, and unanswered questions, Awlaki’s story has continued to raise questions about intelligence failures, foreign alliances, and the consequences of intervention. As we approach the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the question Awlaki leaves behind is why so many warning signs were missed, and why some answers remain hidden.
Lefty Seattle-Area Corporate Giants Begin Revolt Against Progressive City Hall
Seattle-area corporate giants, including Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco, and Alaska Airlines, are pressuring City Hall for a new public safety plan amid concerns about violent crime and ongoing disorder after years of failed progressive experiments have transformed parts of the metro area into a hellhole.
🚨THIS IS INSANE!!!!
A community is now BEGGING for help after a tiny homeless encampment in Seattle EXPLODED into a SEVERAL ACRE camp.
In just over a year, a small cluster of tents became a GIGANTIC tent city.
The coalition includes Microsoft President Brad Smith, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, Costco CEO Ron Vachris and executives from Nordstrom, Alaska Air Group and other major employers, according to local outlet Komo News. Their letter, sent to City Hall on Thursday, brings coordinated pressure from the business community to change how City Hall governs.
2024 donations (employees + PACS):
Starbucks: 92% went to Democrats
Microsoft: 84% went to Democrats
Costco: 80% went to Democrats
“The clearest message” from an August poll of Seattle voters, the coalition wrote, is that residents expect the city “to act with urgency, fund the actions needed to improve public safety, and provide a clear plan for measuring progress.”
DO YOU TIME TRAVEL? Literal madness on the streets of Seattle Monday afternoon. A woman was totally naked on the sidewalk across the street from Seattle City Hall. This is the best I could do with the blurs. 🙃
I asked if she needed help. Instead, she wanted my muffins. Then she… pic.twitter.com/EhfsepupF9
The coalition wants cameras in Pioneer Square, the Stadium District and other areas hosting large events. It also seeks more foot and bicycle patrols, adherence to a seven-minute response standard for priority 911 calls, and an end to open-air drug markets.
“We need action,” former Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, now the CEO of Challenge Seattle, said. “We’ve got a crisis on our hands right now, and we need action on public safety.”
Breaking — Following the inauguration of Seattle’s newly-elected Social Mayor Katie Wilson, Seattle police has been ordered to stop making arrests for open-air drug use.
This is the current scene in Seattle, close to Lumen Field, where the World Cup is set to take place.… pic.twitter.com/s5FwdDpzXD
Perhaps the progressive experiment of defunding police and open-air drug markets has run its course, and shame on the corporations that fueled this era of left-wing stupidity.
China’s purge of senior military leaders may be pushing Beijing to rely more heavily on military intimidation and gray-zone operations against Taiwan, even as the upheaval leaves the Chinese military with a weakened command structure, according to two Chinese academics and an insider familiar with the Chinese military.
The insider and academics spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
The developments are raising concerns that Beijing’s increasingly aggressive operations around Taiwan could become more difficult to control as analysts say political loyalty takes precedence over military expertise within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry has reported near-daily Chinese military activity around the island, describing the operations as increasingly aggressive and unpredictable, according to Taiwan’s national news agency CNA. Chinese military planners are studying drone swarms, long-range strikes, ammunition consumption, maritime blockades and coordination with other countries, while exploring methods that could potentially isolate Taiwan, cut off outside supplies, and weaken its defenses during the early stages of a conflict.
At the same time, the PLA is undergoing an unusually extensive leadership purge. The seven-member Central Military Commission (CMC), which formally oversees China’s armed forces, is down to just two members.
A Chinese military academic told The Epoch Times that the continuing purge suggests Xi remains deeply concerned about the loyalty of senior military commanders.
“The CMC has had so many people fall. There are already very few military members of the Central Committee,” he said. “The possibility of war is not very high, but the harassment [against Taiwan] will not stop.”
Military Pressure Continues
The academic said the purge has created serious gaps in the military command structure at a time when Beijing continues to use military pressure against Taiwan.
He said former CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia had been authorized to oversee simulated training for operations against Taiwan and that it would be difficult to find a replacement with comparable experience.
“At present, the pressure on Taiwan is concentrated on military intimidation,” the academic said. “If they give up intimidation, they simply cannot come up with a better method.”
The leadership turmoil has unfolded alongside a series of high-level purges. In October last year, nine senior military officers, including CMC Vice Chairman He Weidong, were expelled from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the military.
In January, the Chinese regime announced investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, chief of the CMC’s Joint Staff Department.
The academic said the military could be experiencing an unusually broad leadership vacuum ahead of the CCP’s 21st National Congress next year.
The leadership upheaval does not necessarily mean that Beijing is preparing to launch an invasion of Taiwan. Instead, military pressure could continue precisely because it is one of the few tools available to a command structure weakened by political purges, according to the academic.
Chinese military activity around Taiwan has increasingly extended beyond conventional military exercises. Beijing has also been combining military drills, combat-readiness patrols and China Coast Guard operations, creating pressure that remains between ordinary peacetime activity and open warfare.
Taiwan’s National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen told reporters in July that the months of July through September are typically a period of heightened Chinese military exercises. Taiwan had detected increased activity by the Chinese navy and other maritime forces, including four Chinese naval formations operating in the western Pacific at the time.
A Chinese military academic and researcher told The Epoch Times that Beijing was increasingly integrating military exercises with combat-readiness patrols and coast guard enforcement.
The approach allows China to maintain sustained pressure on Taiwan without crossing the threshold into open conflict, the researcher said.
He cautioned, however, that the pattern should not necessarily be interpreted as preparation for an imminent attack.
“If [the CCP] wants to launch military action against Taiwan, [it] needs to first carry out war mobilization, deploy logistical support, and even more importantly, have powerful offensive weapons and a strong and effective command system,” he said.
Potential Blockade
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry has assessed that China does not yet possess all the capabilities required for a full-scale amphibious invasion of Taiwan. But Beijing has other options, including maritime isolation, a joint blockade, missile strikes, cyberattacks, and information warfare.
A blockade or maritime isolation campaign could require fewer forces than a full-scale invasion and could be conducted under the cover of military exercises or law-enforcement operations, according to researchers who spoke to The Epoch Times.
That creates a dilemma for Taiwan. If Taipei does not respond, Beijing could gradually expand its control over surrounding waters. If Taiwan responds militarily, Beijing could portray Taipei as the party responsible for escalating tensions.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said on Sept. 2 that Taiwan’s defense budget for next year would exceed NT$1 trillion ($32 billion) for the first time, according to CNA. The government plans to invest in unmanned systems, AI, and Taiwan’s domestic defense industry.
The Chinese military researcher said the continued expansion of Chinese military and maritime operations around Taiwan is reducing the island’s warning time.
The greater concern, he said, is not a deliberate decision by Beijing to start a war, but the possibility that an incident could escalate when military judgment is compromised by political considerations.
For Taiwan, he said, that makes continued vigilance essential.
Appeals Court Won’t Allow Trump Admin To Implement New Rules For Mail-In Voting
A federal appeals court on Sept. 10 declined to permit the Trump administration to enforce a new U.S. Postal Service (USPS) rule that changes mail-in voting requirements before the midterm congressional elections on Nov. 3.
The Supreme Court is currently considering a similar request.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit declined to pause an injunction issued on Sept. 4 by Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, which extended a temporary restraining order that she granted on Aug. 27. The injunction halted key parts of the Postal Service’s final rule.
The injunction applies to the Nov. 3 elections and any federal elections that take place before then.
The injunction blocks the mandatory parts of the Postal Service’s final rule published on Aug. 26 that implements Section 3 of President Donald Trump’s executive order 14399. That provision would assign federal agencies a larger role in who receives a mailed ballot and how those ballots are processed by the USPS.
As Matthew Vadum reporets for The Epoch Times, the Trump administration previously said the executive order would help to keep federal elections honest. The Department of Justice argued that the USPS is imposing mailpiece design and data standards under its general authority to regulate the mail, not deciding who is eligible to vote; states are still free to set voter lists and count ballots.
Talwani had said the postal rule could disenfranchise voters, was probably unlawful, and likely violated the U.S. Constitution, which gives states authority to run federal elections taking place within their borders. The judge previously said the postal agency presented no evidence of fraudulent mail-in voting that would justify the new Postal Service rule.
Talwani held that the USPS lacked authority to enforce the rule, and that, as election officials have said, given existing time constraints, complying with the rule for the midterms was “likely impossible.”
Talwani said Congress never agreed to delegate its powers under the Constitution’s elections clause to the USPS, so the rule “clashes with Congress’s statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on … [those] powers but also that power left to the States.”
The judge added that even a small glitch in the new system would be problematic and could mean that ballots never go out, that eligible voters would almost certainly lose the chance to vote by mail, and that the disenfranchisement of plaintiff groups such as the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts was “practically inevitable.”
Advocacy groups and a coalition of Democrat-led states had sued to block parts of the rule, arguing that implementation would lead to voter disenfranchisement. Republican states intervened in support of the federal government, arguing that the rule would promote election integrity.
In its new ruling, the First Circuit said the federal government failed to show that the Postal Service rule was likely lawful or that the district court’s ruling was in error.
The appeals court panel said it agreed with the district court that the rule likely regulated the manner of holding elections for members of Congress, which the Constitution assigns to the states and Congress, not to an executive agency such as the USPS acting without congressional authorization.
The federal government is trying “to avoid the constitutional problem by denying that the Final Rule regulates the manner of holding elections,” but “this denial rings hollow,” the panel said, quoting the district court.
“The title of the Final Rule is ‘Ballot Mail for Federal Elections,’ and the Final Rule explicitly and exclusively regulates election mail,” the panel said.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Sept. 3 to allow the government to begin implementing a regulation that tightens rules around mail-in voting. After Talwani dissolved the temporary restraining order, the federal government withdrew its application and filed a new one targeting the Sept. 4 injunction.
That application is still pending before the Supreme Court.
From the start, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has been a story of unintended consequences. Contrary to President Donald Trump’s hopes for a quick victory, the conflict has morphed into a sustained crisis, one that has driven up oil prices, driven down tourism in the Middle East, and reshaped the region’s geopolitical map.
Now, a new unintended consequence has emerged: the return of piracy to Somalia’s coasts. This shift, which comes after a decade of quiet, threatens some of the world’s most important shipping lanes and the interests of the United States and its allies.
Pirates have attacked at least 15 vessels in the region this year, a sharp uptick from the five attacks that occurred last year, according to data from the International Maritime Organization. The renewed criminal activity has led to extended hostage situations, including one ongoing seizure of an oil tanker and its crew.
A controversial operation to free the MV LATUF, carried out by Somali forces and the Turkish navy late last month, raised questions about whether a ransom was paid. The government of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia, says it has evidence of phone contacts between Somali government officials and the pirates, which undermines the official story from both Ankara and Mogadishu. The vessel was carrying Turkish weapons and satellite and communication equipment bound for a Turkish training facility in Mogadishu.
Global piracy dropped in the first half of 2026 to its lowest level since 1992 – only 38 incidents, compared to 90 in the same period of 2025 and 60 in 2024. But data from the International Chamber of Commerce shows that, by the end of last month, six commercial ships were still being held, with more than 90 seafarers on board.
When ransom money funds the pirates
The pirates recently received a new ransom estimated at around $1.7 million for the release of the hijacked ship MV Sward off the coast of Puntland, along with its crew of Syrian and Indian sailors, after a crisis that lasted more than four months.
On 26 April, about ten armed Somali men in three speedboats intercepted the ship near the town of Garaad. The vessel flies the flag of St. Kitts and Nevis and is managed by Turkey-linked companies. It was only six nautical miles from the coast. The ship had left the Egyptian port of Adabiya/Suez heading to Mombasa in Kenya with a cargo of cement or fertilizer.
According to a well-informed maritime source in Puntland, this incident shows the pirates going back to their classic method: using the hijacked ship as a mother vessel to carry out more attacks, including the hijacking of Iranian fishing boats.
Before the war on Iran, the threat from piracy to international shipping had dropped significantly. Now that the pirates are active again, the international community needs to rethink how military forces are deployed in the Middle East and the Red Sea to close the security gap the pirates are exploiting – a gap that stretches from Somalia’s eastern coast through the Gulf of Aden to the route linking the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
Dr. Ian Ralby, a maritime security expert at Auxilium Worldwide, says the Houthis are playing a key role in the return of piracy. He points to the transfer of know-how and technology from them to Somali pirates, which could increase their ability to disrupt shipping.
Ralby says the main beneficiaries are the pirates themselves. But he does not rule out that other groups, including the Houthis and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, may find an indirect interest in the ongoing chaos. He also notes that the attacks have reached the waters off Yemen, widening the threat and increasing pressure on naval forces and coast guards.
The gaps behind the return of piracy
Somali State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ali Omar admits that the return of piracy shows there are still gaps in maritime security. The long Somali coastline makes monitoring difficult, and the country’s naval capabilities are still being developed, he told RS.
But Omar stresses that today’s Somalia is not the same country that faced the global piracy crisis more than a decade ago. It now has federal institutions, security forces and maritime authorities, along with wider international cooperation, especially with Turkey, to strengthen its naval capacity.
But the problem is not limited to poor policing, Omar said. It is linked to illegal fishing, organized crime, poverty in coastal communities, weak maritime surveillance and the wider security situation in the Gulf of Aden.
This view matches what Ralby says: the return of piracy is no longer a purely Somali issue. Attacks have moved further into the Gulf of Aden, and there are signs of technology and expertise being passed from the Houthis to the pirates. The challenge for Somalia is not only to regain control of its coastline, but also to stop piracy from becoming part of a wider effort to disrupt shipping.
Egyptian national security expert Mohamed Abdel Wahid, who focuses on Somalia, believes the international focus on securing navigation through Bab el-Mandeb (at the mouth of the Red Sea) and the Strait of Hormuzhas helped create a security vacuum.
Who benefits from the return of piracy?
Colonel Mohamed Jama, a maritime security expert in Puntland, says the pirates’ return has become a cross-border regional threat that exploits a gap in maritime coverage, partly because Puntland forces are busy fighting ISIS.
According to Jama, the pirates successfully hijacked six commercial ships between April and August. Their operations have extended into Yemeni waters and deep into the Indian Ocean, putting vital shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea at greater risk.
Jama says the beneficiaries of the return of piracy to the region include financiers and investors; arms and ammunition suppliers; fuel and logistics providers; suppliers of khat and drugs; and maritime smuggling networks. Somali and Yemeni networks are also moving resources, people and information across maritime borders.
Jama stresses that the focus should not only be on those who board the ships, but on those who finance the operations, supply the weapons and control the money.
Omar, the Somali minister, has warned about what he calls fragmented security arrangements as an additional reason for the return of piracy off the north-eastern coast. For years, Somalia has cautioned against outside actors training, funding and equipping security or maritime forces without the knowledge, coordination or supervision of the federal government. Such arrangements, he says, create parallel security structures, intelligence gaps and make accountability almost impossible.
The Somali solution
Warships alone will not defeat piracy, the Somali minister says. The whole issue requires unified national institutions and a responsible, coordinated international partnership.
As a journalist who has followed the pirates’ activity for nearly 18 years, both at its peak and in its quiet periods, I can say that those I once described as the jinn of the sea and a headache for the world and international shipping are the result of mistakes both inside and outside the country. Not least among them is the conflict of authority between the federal government in Somalia and the Puntland administration.
But the most dangerous trend now is the security vacuum in the Red Sea created by the war on Iran, which has allowed the pirates to return in force. As long as the war continues, there is little hope of stopping this burgeoning banditry on the high seas.
NEW YORK CITY – Prosecutors in the criminal trial against Chinese telecoms firm Huawei alleged that the company used lies, theft, cover-up, and a criminal conspiracy in its efforts to dominate the global telecommunications market.
In opening remarks at a federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Sept. 9, Assistant U.S. Attorney Taylor Stout said that Huawei “engaged in a pattern of criminal activity to expand its business empire.” He alleged that its two subsidiaries in the United States, Huawei Device USA and Futurewei Technologies, served as outposts to steal technology.
The trial covers 20 years of Huawei business activity in the United States and around the globe.
The prosecution said it will present evidence against Huawei in three categories: alleged theft of trade secrets from competitors, alleged bank and wire fraud in relation to efforts to skirt sanctions against Iran, and Huawei’s alleged cover-up and efforts to block law enforcement from investigating its business activities.
A subsidiary of Huawei, Skycom, provided Iran’s government with tools to spy on its own citizens, specifically during 2009 protests in Tehran, according to the U.S. government. Huawei employees falsely claimed that Skycom was not owned by Huawei.
Prosecutors allege that Huawei used confidentiality agreements, competitors’ employees, and third parties to acquire trade secrets on technology for routers, storage, and wireless technology.
Huawei “cultivated a culture of crime and corruption,” said Stout, such that employees who stole from competitors were just “following company practice.” Stout alleged that an engineer who stole from New York state-based Quintel, which develops cellular antennae technology, received a bonus for the information obtained.
Huawei defense attorney Brian Heberlig portrayed Huawei as a global player serving underserved and remote communities. He said the government is relying on five incidents that happened over the course of 20 years.
Heberlig argued that the prosecution’s witnesses are unreliable, as many were involved in civil litigation over commercial disputes with Huawei, including Cisco, T-Mobile, and Quintel. He also claimed that the government cherry-picked incidents to support racketeering charges but won’t be able to prove a broad overarching conspiracy.
He challenged the government narrative that Huawei fostered a culture of stealing trade secrets, saying that when such activity was discovered, “Huawei acted appropriately in all three incidents,” including by firing the employee caught taking pictures of a Fujitsu device at a conference.
Heberlig said that to prove a racketeering conspiracy, the government must prove that the “same people agreed to carry out the same criminal plan.” He said the incidents cited by the government are isolated and insufficient to prove that there was some “blueprint for a criminal conspiracy.”
The government also alleges that Huawei violated U.S. sanctions by involving the U.S. financial system in its business dealings with Iran and North Korea.
Heberlig contested prosecutors’ narrative that Huawei knowingly violated U.S. sanctions, arguing that Huawei had no intention to violate U.S. laws but that the banks it was using in its business with Iran caused the funds to route through the U.S. financial system.
Prosecutors allege that Huawei misrepresented to banks its connection with Skycom, a subsidiary that was doing business with Iran, which prosecutors say received instructions to remove all Huawei logos from hardware sold to Iran.
ICE Hits Legal Wall On Two Fronts As Denver Targets Polling-Place Enforcement And Appeals Court Curbs Detention Power
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown ran into two separate legal challenges Thursday, as Denver sued to keep armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away from polling places while a federal appeals court rejected the government’s attempt to subject millions of illegal immigrants already living inside the United States to mandatory detention without bond hearings.
The disputes involve different statutes and different courts, but the underlying fight is increasingly the same: how far can the executive branch push immigration enforcement under existing federal law before judges conclude that Congress never gave it the authority being claimed?
On one front, Denver and several national advocacy groups filed suit in federal court in Washington seeking to stop ICE officers from carrying out immigration enforcement at voting locations ahead of November’s midterm elections.
On the other, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that immigrants who have been living inside the United States for years – even if they originally entered illegally – cannot automatically be placed into mandatory detention under the provision the administration has been invoking.
Together, the cases put fresh judicial pressure on one of the administration’s signature second-term policies.
Denver Takes ICE To Court Over The Polls
The City and County of Denver joined the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause and UnidosUS in challenging what the plaintiffs characterize as a federal policy permitting armed ICE officers to conduct enforcement operations at polling locations.
The lawsuit, filed Sept. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, invokes a rarely litigated Civil War-era federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 592, that generally prohibits federal officials from bringing “troops or armed men” to places where elections are being conducted, except when needed to repel armed enemies of the United States.
The plaintiffs argue that even the prospect of armed immigration officers appearing at voting sites could deter voters, disrupt election workers and force municipalities to divert resources toward preparing for confrontations with federal agents. Denver officials are already training election personnel on how to identify federal agents, document encounters and de-escalate potential conflicts, according to the complaint.
The complaint also alleges that armed agents have already appeared at polling locations in San Antonio, Ventura County, California, and Syracuse, New York.
The lawsuit follows comments by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who said ICE would not patrol polling places but would not exclude them from normal enforcement activity.
Mullin said agents could enter a voting location if there were a security threat or if officers were serving a warrant on a person they had been tracking, while the administration’s position is not that polling places are enforcement targets. It is that they are not automatically enforcement-free zones either.
DHS has similarly said ICE is not planning operations targeting polling sites, while maintaining that officers could make an arrest there if an active public-safety threat or targeted enforcement action required it.
That distinction is now headed for federal court – where the plaintiffs want a judge to declare the policy unlawful and prevent armed federal immigration officers from carrying out enforcement at polling locations and other places where votes are collected. The case arrives as election officials around the country prepare for a midterm season already saturated with litigation over voting rules, federal-state authority and election administration.
Fourth Circuit Rejects ICE Detention Theory
Hours away from the political fight over polling sites, the Fourth Circuit delivered a more immediate legal setback for the administration’s detention policy.
In Lopez Garcia v. Guadian, a divided three-judge panel held that two immigrants who had lived in the United States for years could not be mandatorily detained without an opportunity to seek release on bond.
The dispute centers on two sections of federal immigration law.
The administration contends that immigrants who entered the country without being legally admitted remain “applicants for admission” under Section 1225 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and therefore can be detained without bond while removal proceedings play out. The detainees argued – and the Fourth Circuit majority agreed – that immigrants already established inside the United States instead fall under Section 1226, which generally allows for bond consideration.
Judge Nicole Berner, joined by Senior Judge Barbara Keenan, said the latter interpretation better fits the text, structure and historical application of the statute. The court noted that Section 1226 had for decades generally governed detention of noncitizens already inside the country, while Section 1225 had traditionally been associated with people seeking admission at the border.
Berner warned that accepting the government’s interpretation could expose millions of people to mandatory detention without bond and said such a reading would imply Congress quietly authorized an unprecedented expansion of immigration detention when it rewrote immigration law in 1996.
The majority eventually compared the implications to some of the darkest chapters of American detention policy, including the confinement of Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century and the internment of roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
The court ultimately affirmed habeas relief for Oscar Enrique Lopez Garcia and Juan Jose Rivera, ruling that both had to be given an opportunity to argue for release at a bond hearing.
The Dissent: Congress Meant What It Wrote
Judge Allison Jones Rushing rejected the majority’s reasoning – with her dissent focusing heavily on the wording Congress adopted in its sweeping 1996 immigration overhaul. Earlier immigration laws explicitly referred to “arriving” immigrants, ports of arrival and people attempting to enter the country. Congress removed much of that language in 1996 and instead defined a broader category of “applicants for admission.”
If Congress intended mandatory detention to remain limited to people physically arriving at the border, she argued, lawmakers could simply have retained the older language. Instead, Congress deliberately adopted terminology broad enough to include people physically present in the United States who had never been lawfully admitted. The statute treats anyone present without admission as an applicant for admission, and an applicant is by definition seeking admission, she wrote. “It’s that simple.”
The majority, she added, “clearly has strong views about what it considers the ‘moral implications'” of denying bond, but those views do not rewrite the text.
That statutory disagreement is no longer confined to one court – meanwhile, the Fourth Circuit has now joined the First, Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits on the side of bond eligibility for immigrants already living inside the country.
The Fifth and Eighth Circuits have taken the opposite view, concluding that the government’s mandatory-detention interpretation is consistent with the statute.
That 9-2 split puts the issue squarely in territory the Supreme Court often steps in to resolve.
ICE’s Next Battle May Be At The Supreme Court
The two developments illustrate the rapidly expanding legal front surrounding the administration’s immigration agenda. Denver’s lawsuit asks whether federal immigration officers can carry their normal enforcement authority into one of the most legally protected environments in American civic life: the polling place.
The Fourth Circuit case asks a different but potentially far larger question – whether the government can automatically detain broad categories of immigrants already living in the country without first giving them access to a bond hearing.
DHS maintains that the administration is enforcing immigration law as Congress wrote it. The Fourth Circuit majority says the government is attempting to extract sweeping detention powers from statutory language that does not clearly provide them.
And Denver is effectively making the same structural argument from another direction: whatever authority ICE may have to execute immigration law, Congress imposed special limits around elections. So while the administration continues expanding immigration enforcement on the ground, the courts are increasingly being asked to define the perimeter.
For ICE, that means the next phase of the immigration fight may be determined less by how many agents Washington deploys – and more by how the Supreme Court ultimately reads statutes Congress wrote decades ago.
Some of us have been closely following challenges to A1765, New Jersey’s gun industry liability law. In my view, the law is facially invalid and preempted under federal law, and we may now find out after the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit greenlit a challenge from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) yesterday. The court found that the NSSF has standing to bring the lawsuit, which could reach the United States Supreme Court.
In 2022, New Jersey enacted A1765 to expose “gun industry members” – gun sellers, manufacturers, distributors, importers, and marketers – to lawsuits as a “public nuisance.” This is a common effort among blue states to circumvent Second Amendment cases that reinforce the right to bear arms.
These laws are designed to achieve indirectly what the Court denied directly to the states: to effectively suppress the availability of guns. Indeed, the law effectively requires manufacturers to self-regulate after the state was prevented from direct regulations, mandating that these companies “shall establish, implement, and enforce reasonable controls regarding its manufacture, sale, distribution, importing, and marketing of gun-related products.” Id. § 2C:58-35(a)(2).
The problem is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (“PLCAA”) which was passed to “prohibit causes of action against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers of firearms or ammunition products, and their trade associations, for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.” 15 U.S.C. § 7901(b)(1).
PLCAA does have exceptions, including negligence per se. Id. § 7903(5)(A)(ii). The predicate exception requires proof that the manufacturer or seller “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product,” and that “the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.” Id. § 7903(5)(A)(iii).
However, in Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 605 U.S. 280, 299 (2025), the Supreme Court stressed that this exception applies only to those cases where the “plaintiff makes a plausible allegation that a gun manufacturer participated in a firearms violation as in something that it wished to bring about and sought to make succeed.” Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 605 U.S. 280, 299 (2025) (citation modified).
In the case, the Government of Mexico sued seven American gun manufacturers, alleging that the companies aided and abetted unlawful gun sales that routed firearms to Mexican drug cartels under the predicate exception. It argued that the companies failed to exercise “reasonable care” to prevent trafficking of their guns into Mexico, and so are responsible for the harms arising there from the weapons’ misuse as “willful accessories.” As some of us predicted, it failed spectacularly in a unanimous decision.
Nuisance is not negligence per se, and gun control advocates have tried to use product liability and nuisance laws to curtail gun sales for years as an alternative to legislative gun bans, which would be struck down. (There are a couple of gun ban cases going before the Court this term).
As previously discussed, public nuisance was originally addressed in England by criminal laws against such offenses as obstructing “the King’s highways.” It evolved into a common-law tort to address a broader range of “interests of the community at large – interests that were recognized as rights of the general public entitled to protection,” in the words of the American Law Institute’s Second Restatement of Torts (1965-79).
Those cases collapsed, and rightly so. In Chicago v. Beretta U.S.A. (2004), the Illinois Supreme Court rejected the claim while acknowledging that “the tragic personal consequences of gun violence are inestimable.” The court found no interference with a legal public right. It held that such theories “would permit nuisance liability to be imposed on an endless list of manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of manufactured products.” The opioid claims are similar. Neither product was defective; both worked – all too well in some cases. The claims were based on third parties’ illegal or harmful use.
The same result appeared in nuisance claims involving lead paint. In State v. Lead Industries Association (2008), the Rhode Island Supreme Court rejected an effort to use nuisance as a substitute for product liability. The court recognized the huge toll from the product while insisting that if it is defective, that should be addressed by product liability: “Our hearts go out to those children whose lives forever have been changed by the poisonous presence of lead. But, however grave the problem of lead poisoning is in Rhode Island, public nuisance law simply does not provide a remedy for this harm.”
Consideration of the merits of the challenge in this case, however, was stymied by that state challenging standing. First filed in February 2025, the lawsuit was dismissed because it was filed before the law was enforced against any industry member companies. The state, under New Jersey’s then-AG Matthew Platkin, sued several industry members, including GLOCK, Inc. NSSF promptly moved to reopen its lawsuit against New Jersey’s gun control law.
The Third Circuit held, “NSSF’s members’ intended actions are arguably precluded by A1765 and affected with constitutional interests. NSSF argues A1765 enforcement actions against its members for otherwise lawful commerce would be an attempt to ‘hold [its members] liable for the acts of third parties who use their legal products to commit heinous crimes.'”
Unless the standing decision is reversed, New Jersey will now face review (and a possible reckoning) over its latest effort to use civil liability as an alternative avenue for gun control.
Trump even commented to Ingraham that he would make the same decisions all over again if he had a chance.
The Fox show host had posed to the president, “If we hadn’t done Iran, you would be cruising to midterms victory right now” – and made reference to high gas prices.
Trump replied: “supposing we were cruising, and all of a sudden Iran has a nuclear weapon. They would use it.”
Explaining that he doesn’t believe in “regrets” and that he has none especially about launching the Iran war, Trump asserted: “If I had it to do again, I would do exactly what I did.“
He further argued that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, its leaders wouldn’t hesitate to “wipe out” Israel and the Middle East, and could go so far as to hit American cities.
In a separate brief interview with the press this week, President Trump was asked about reports that Vice President Vance and Secretary State Marco Rubio warned him of the possibility that the Iran conflict could persist for the remainder of his term…
Reporter: Is it possible that the Iran war will last the rest of your term?
Trump vehemently denied that there’s so much as a chance of this, but didn’t actually explain how he intends to wind down the war in a way favorable to the US and White House policy. Or in other words, the American public still awaits words on a realistic exit strategy.
On going into Iran “full” – Trump did underscore that the midterm elections makes this a bad idea. His administration has also repeatedly said there won’t be boots on the ground in Iran.
Was this a quiet part out loud moment?
Ingraham: “Even the neoconservatives are saying, ‘If you’ge going to go in [to Iran] just go in full.'”
Among the most interesting parts of the interview came when he was asked about the young men in MAGA who are angry over the Iran war:
Q: What do you say to all the young men who supported you in 2024?
Trump: They still do.
Q: Some of them are demoralized.
Trump: I don’t think they’re demoralized. I think they’re very proud of the fact I’m not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.
President Trump, when asked about the millions of demoralized young men who voted for him in 2024: “I don’t think they’re demoralized. I think they’re very proud of the fact I’m not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump earlier this week insisted of Iran’s position in the conflict, “I don’t know that they’re gonna be able to hold out,” Trump said. “But it’ll get settled after the elections. Or maybe sooner. But it’ll get settled right after the election.”
The reference to it’ll “get settled” could have ominous meaning. It suggests Trump could ether escalate against Tehran dramatically, or else there could be the opposite: de-escalation. The world will find out within a couple months.
