High court to hear White House appeal
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a Trump administration appeal that could bolster the government’s ability to deport undocumented immigrants quickly after their asylum bids are rejected.
Taking up a politically charged issue, the justices said they’ll review a lower court’s conclusion that people who enter the country illegally have a broad right under the Constitution to make their case to a federal judge before being deported.
The case centers on “expedited removal,” a streamlined deportation process set up by Congress in 1996. Right now, those eligible include thousands of people who every year are arrested within 100 miles of the border less than two weeks after crossing and then are deemed by officials not to have a credible fear of being persecuted if they are deported.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Constitution guarantees a Sri Lankan man arrested near the Mexican border a “meaningful opportunity” to show he met the criteria for asylum.
In its appeal, the Trump administration said the 9th Circuit ruling would “impose a severe burden” on the U.S. immigration system.
The appeal doesn’t directly concern the Trump administration’s effort to expand the expedited removal program to cover people who’ve been in the U.S. as long as two years and are no longer near the border. A federal judge in Washington temporarily blocked that expansion in September.
Opioid efforts hit snag
CLEVELAND — A dramatic 11th-hour effort to settle landmark opioid litigation stalled Friday afternoon with the sides far apart on several key issues.
Summoned to court by U.S. District Court Judge Dan Aaron Polster, four state attorneys general and corporate executives faced strong opposition from other officials over a proposed $50 billion bid to settle hundreds of lawsuits in the first federal trial of the opioid epidemic.
“As of right now, 4:10 p.m., there is no settlement,” said Paul Hanly Jr., an attorney for 2,400 cities and counties that sued the drug industry.
Mr. Hanly said there had been no progress in persuading three major drug distributors — McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen — to increase their settlement offer from $18 billion over 18 years in a deal that would release them not only from the first trial, brought by two Ohio counties, but from the hundreds of others brought by other local and state governments.
J&J recalls baby powder
Johnson & Johnson recalled a shipment of baby powder Friday, after the Food and Drug Administration discovered evidence of asbestos in one of the bottles. The move could seriously undercut the company’s defense against a swarm of claims that its talc-based products caused cancer.
The recall of 33,000 bottles, sourced from China and distributed last year, is the first time the company has taken action to shield baby powder customers from potential exposure to asbestos, after it spent years denying that the bathroom staple has ever been contaminated with the carcinogen.
It comes as Johnson & Johnson is entangled in numerous lawsuits and policy battles over accusations of harm caused by its products.
New DOE head tapped
President Donald Trump said Friday he would nominate Dan Brouillette, the deputy secretary of energy, to succeed Rick Perry as energy secretary after the former Texas governor said he would resign amid scrutiny over his role in the Ukraine scandal.
As Mr. Perry’s deputy, Mr. Brouillette has been in charge of leading day-to-day operations at the Department of Energy.
When he joined the Trump administration in 2017, it was Mr. Brouillette’s second stint at the agency: He served as an assistant secretary of congressional affairs in the George W. Bush administration.