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Contempt threat, species endangerment and alien hints

 
Today's LEGAL story

Judge threatens Trump team with criminal contempt

What happened
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled yesterday that "probable cause exists" to charge Trump administration officials with criminal contempt for their "willful disregard" of his March 15 order to halt the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador's infamous CECOT prison without due process, under claimed wartime powers.

Who said what
“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders," especially by officials "who have sworn an oath to uphold it," Boasberg, the chief judge of the District of Columbia circuit, wrote in his 46-page ruling. Allowing such defiance would make a "solemn mockery" of "the Constitution itself." 

The Trump administration is also "locked in a separate high-stakes confrontation" with U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis over its refusal to "facilitate" the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, a man "illegally deported" on the same flights Boasberg ordered turned around, Politico said. The two cases represent a "remarkable attempt" by federal courts to "hold the White House accountable for its apparent willingness to flout court orders," The New York Times said. Boasberg's "detailed blueprint" for how he will hold the administration's "feet to the fire" if it doesn't rectify the situation suggested his "anger" had been "building for weeks." 

An "order of criminal contempt is a crime and can carry a fine or prison sentence" of up to six months, NPR said. In rare cases, "judges have been willing to hold officials" in contempt for "failing to abide by rulings," The Associated Press said, "but higher courts have almost always overturned them."

What next?
Boasberg gave the Trump administration until next Wednesday to decide if it will "purge" the contempt by "asserting custody" over the Venezuelans so they can challenge their detention, potentially from inside the Salvadoran prison, or identifying the individuals responsible for defying his judicial order. If it declines either path, he wrote, he would begin the "next steps" to identify those officials and refer them for prosecution — appointing an outside prosecutor if the Trump Justice Department declined to act.

 
 
Today's ENVIRONMENT story

US proposes eroding species protections

What happened
The Trump administration yesterday proposed changing the definition of "harm" in the 1973 Environmental Protection Act to exclude damaging the habitats where endangered species live, siding with businesses who view the current longstanding definition as a burdensome regulation that limits logging, oil drilling, mining and housing development. Under the proposed new definition, harm would refer only to activities that deliberately kill or injure an endangered animal, like hunting or trapping.

Who said what
Narrowing the definition of "harm" to exclude habitat degradation "makes sense in light of the well-established, centuries-old understanding" of the word, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service said in their proposed rule.

"Habitat loss is the single biggest reason that many species face extinction," The New York Times said. The proposed change "cuts the heart out of the Endangered Species Act," said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity. Kristen Boyles, a lawyer at Earthjustice, called the new definition "nonsensical both legally and biologically," allowing "a developer to drain a pond where an endangered species of turtle or fish lived, and that wouldn't be harm."

What next?
The public has 30 days to submit comments on the rule before it is finalized. Oil industry advocates applauded the proposal. Environmental groups vowed to challenge it in court, pointing out that the Supreme Court upheld the more expansive definition of "harm" in 1995. 

 
 
Today's SPACE Story

Scientists find hint of alien life on distant world

What happened
Astrophysicists reported yesterday they had found significant evidence that life may exist on a planet called K2-18b, some 124 light years away. The report, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, said NASA's James Webb Space Telescope had detected large amounts of dimethyl sulfide and/or dimethyl disulfide — gasses that on Earth are only created by living organisms — in the exoplanet's atmosphere.

Who said what
Study leader Nikku Madhusudhan, from Cambridge University's Institute of Astronomy, said the new findings point to K2-18b, discovered in 2015, being a "hycean world" covered by a deep ocean "teeming with life." The team didn't prove the existence of alien life, but "this is a revolutionary moment," he said at a news conference. "It's the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet."

Other scientists urged caution. A "molecule glimpsed in the air of a planet 729 trillion miles away is a thin reed upon which to rest what would be the historic discovery of alien life," The Washington Post said.

What next?
The "rich data from K2-18b make it a tantalizing world," and "I look forward to seeing additional, independent work on the data analysis starting as soon as next week," said planetary scientist Christopher Glein of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas. But "unless we see E.T. waving at us, it's not going to be a smoking gun."

 
 

It's not all bad

When a magnitude 5.2 earthquake hit Southern California on Tuesday, three adult African elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park were filmed immediately rushing to protect the younger elephants. Khosi, Ndlula and Umngani were engaged in an "alert circle," a "defensive behavior" used in the wild to shield the youngest members of the herd, the Los Angeles Times said. This "moving display" of connectedness lasted about four minutes, until the elephants determined they were no longer in danger.

 
 
Under the radar

The Israeli army is running tours for civilians in territory it recently seized from Syria. Tickets for hikes in the Golan Heights — scheduled twice a day throughout the week of the Jewish Passover festival — sold out almost immediately. The widely criticized venture marks a "provocative intersection of militarized control, tourism expansion and territorial assertion" in one of the "most politically sensitive" regions of the world, said Travel and Tour World.  

The hiking route ventures into a buffer zone that was previously off-limits to both Syria and Israel under a 1974 ceasefire agreement. The Israeli army took advantage of the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad last December to seize the territory.  

Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, although the United Nations has refused to accept the move as legitimate. In 2019, however, President Donald Trump recognized Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights — a decision that was met with shock and fury, particularly in the Arab world.  

The subsequent buffer-zone land grab in December is "seen as a component of the so-called 'Greater Israel' project," said Iranian state broadcaster Press TV. "Greater Israel" typically refers to the "notion of expanding Israel's territory and sovereignty" to what its proponents see as its "historic biblical land," said Middle East Monitor.  

The term has "come to mean very different things to different groups," said The Times of Israel. "In Israel and the diaspora today," Greater Israel is generally understood to mean "extending Israel's sovereignty to the West Bank." But in more extreme interpretations, it also encompasses Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.

 
 
On this day

April 17, 2011

The television series "Game of Thrones" premiered on HBO. The show, based on the "Song of Ice and Fire" novels by George R.R. Martin, became a cultural phenomenon and one of the most successful shows in TV history. A spinoff, "House of the Dragon," premiered in 2022, and other related series are in the works.

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

"Stocks slump as Fed chair warns of inflationary risks" from President Donald Trump's tariffs, The Washington Post says on Thursday's front page. The tariffs also caused the U.S. currency to "slide," and the "weak dollar poses global risk," The Wall Street Journal says. "Will trade war upend global order — and boost China?" the Los Angeles Times says. California says it "will defeat Trump tariffs" in court, The Sacramento Bee says. "Harvard tax status under attack" from Trump, The Boston Globe says. "Judge warns White House on contempt," The New York Times says.

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Departin' from Parton?

An online petition to rename Nashville International Airport to Dolly Parton International Airport has received more than 51,000 signatures. "Dolly's a great Tennessean and great unifier who adds legitimacy to the South," petition co-author Lydia Popovich told The Tennessean. Fewer than 5% of airports worldwide are named in honor of women, and Parton is "deserving of reverence," Popovich said. A Republican state lawmaker recently tried and failed to rename the airport after President Donald Trump.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Chas Newkey-Burden, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Valerie Plesch / Bloomberg via Getty Images; Joe Raedle / Getty Images; NASA / CSA / ESA / J. Olmsted (STScI); Jalaa Marey / AFP / Getty Images