House votes to curb presidential power limiting entry into US
WASHINGTON — The Democratic-led House passed legislation Wednesday designed to constrain a president’s power to limit entry to the U.S., a response to former President Donald Trump’s travel ban covering five Muslim-majority countries.
President Joe Biden reversed the travel restrictions from the Trump administration in one of his first moves in office, easing limits on Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, as well as North Korea and some government officials from Venezuela. But Democrats say Congress has a responsibility to prevent future administrations from enacting similarly broad restrictions.
The bill passed the House by a vote of 218-208. It is unlikely to advance in the evenly split Senate, with Republicans broadly opposed.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said presidents from both parties have used their authority to exclude narrow groups of people from entering the U.S., such as certain North Korean officials.
“But former President Trump abused this authority, twisting it in ways that were never intended,” Nadler said.
The White House announced its support for the measure this week. “The prior Administration’s haphazard misuse of this authority highlightstheneedforreasonable constraints,” it said.
Trump had proposed a broad, all-encompassing Muslim ban during the presidential campaign. Within a week of him taking office, the first travel ban was announced with little notice, causing chaos at airports and sparking protests across the nation.
The Trump administration was forced to revise its original order twice to resolve legal problems concerning due process, implementation and exclusive targeting of Muslim nations.
In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the ban in a 5-4 decision. It determined that the ban was within a U.S. president’s considerable authority over immigration and responsibility for keeping the nation safe.
Republicans said Trump’s actions were not a Muslim ban. Rather, he was seeking to secure the United States from terrorists. They said the ban was limited to countries that were previously designated by Congress or prior administrations as posing national security risks.
Indonesia’s navy is searching for a submarine that went missing north of the resort island of Bali with 53 people on board, the military said Wednesday.
Military chief Hadi Tjahjanto said the submarine was participating in a training exercise when it missed a scheduled reporting call.
The submarine is believed to have disappeared in waters about 60 miles from Bali, he said.
Tjahjanto said the navy has deployed scores of ships to search the area, including a hydrographic survey ship, and has asked for help from Singapore and Australia, which have submarine rescue vessels.
The Defense Ministry said the submarine lost contact after being granted clearance to dive. It said a helicopter later spotted an oil slick near the dive’s starting position.
The submarine was carrying 49 crew members, its commander and three gunners, it said.
The navy said an electrical failure may have occurred during the dive, causing the submarine to lose control and become unable to undertake emergency procedures that would have allowed it to resurface. It said it believes
MANJUNATH KIRAN/GETTY-AFP the submarine sank to a depth of 2,000-2,300 feet.
A man who killed a manager and wounded two workers at a Long Island grocery store was a “troubled employee” who had been reprimanded in recent months for threatening and sexually harassing colleagues, police said Wednesday.
Gabriel DeWitt Wilson, a shopping cart collector at Stop & Shop in West Hempstead, New York, opened fire Tuesday in an office area above the retail floor about 40 minutes after talking to a manager about transferring to another store, Nassau County police Detective Sgt. Stephen Fitzpatrick said.
Tips from the public led police to an apartment building about 2 miles away, where officers in tactical gear blocked off doors and cornered Wilson, arresting him about four hours after the shooting, Fitzpatrick said.
Wilson, 31, was arraigned Wednesday on homicide and attempted murder charges and ordered jailed without bail.
Police arrested nearly 1,500 people Wednesday during a day of demonstrations throughout Russia calling for freedom for imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, whose health reportedly is in severe decline after three weeks of hunger striking, according to a group that monitors political detentions.
The largest of the protests took place in Moscow, where thousands marched through the center city. Some of the people arrested were seized before the protests even
A New York judge agreed Wednesday to dismiss thousands of prostitution-related offenses dating to the 1970s at the request of the Manhattan district attorney, who also said he would no longer prosecute many offenses related to sex work.
The mass dismissal of charges is the latest big step in a movement to decriminalize sex work, or at least aim prosecutions at human trafficking or exploitation, rather than at mostly poor women who have historically made up the bulk of people arrested.
The cases also include charges related to loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution. Earlier this year, the state Legislature repealed a 1970s anti-loitering law that opponents decried as a “walking while trans” ban.
Rebels in Chad threatened to depose the son of the country’s slain president after he was named interim leader of the African nation, raising the specter Wednesday of a violent power struggle.
It was not certain how close the rebel column was to N’Djamena, the capital city of 1 million people, or whether the military would remain loyal to Mahamat Idriss Deby following his father’s sudden death after three decades in power.
The rebel group that the military blamed for President Idriss Deby Itno’s killing said Wednesday in a statement that they were giving his family until midnight to bury him.
The fighters gave no indication of their positions after saying the day before that they were “heading toward N’Djamena at this very moment.”