James' World 2

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Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Neil M. Gorsuch — noted their objections in lengthy dissents, with Justice Alito writing that “the protection of federal officers from potentially lethal attacks should not be thwarted.”

In response to the ruling, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the president had promised to “work tirelessly to enforce our immigration laws and protect federal personnel from violent rioters.”

She added: “He activated the National Guard to protect federal law enforcement officers, and to ensure rioters did not destroy federal buildings and property. Nothing in today’s ruling detracts from that core agenda.”

Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois called the ruling a victory for democracy.

“This is an important step in curbing the Trump administration’s consistent abuse of power and slowing Trump’s march toward authoritarianism,” Mr. Pritzker, a Democrat, said in a statement. “The brave men and women of our National Guard should never be used for political theater and deserve to be with their families and communities, especially during the holidays.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago said he hoped the Supreme Court’s ruling would shield other cities from unwanted National Guard deployments.

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The president’s efforts to use troops for domestic policing have prompted legal challenges accusing the Trump administration of exceeding its authority. Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

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“The law Congress passed is crystal clear: release the Epstein files in full so Americans can see the truth. Instead, the Trump Department of Justice dumped redactions and withheld the evidence—that breaks the law,” Schumer said in a press release. He called the move a “blatant cover-up,” accusing Justice Department officials of “shielding [President] Donald Trump from accountability.” 

Schumer’s announcement comes after two other lawmakers—Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky—said over the weekend that they were discussing pursuing contempt findings against Attorney General Pam Bondi for the incomplete release. Khanna and Massie co-authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last month that gave the Justice Department 30 days to make public a wide collection of unclassified documents related to Epstein, his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and other people connected to their cases. The law allows the department to redact some information in certain situations, such as to protect victims’ identities and to adhere to the rules of grand jury secrecy.

“The quickest way, and I think most expeditious way, to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi,” Massie said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” which aired on Sunday. “Ro Khanna and I are talking about and drafting that right now.”

The resolution, Khanna told The Washington Post, would also include a provision that would permit a congressional committee to evaluate any redactions to the files to ensure that there is a valid reason for the redaction.

The Justice Department began releasing the files in the Epstein case on Friday, the deadline imposed by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Before the release, the Trump Administration warned earlier that day that it wouldn’t be releasing all the files—which is required by the law—because of the large scale of the redactions it said were needed to protect victims’ identities.

“What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim, their name, their identity, their story to the extent it needs to be protected is completely protected,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News on Friday. He added that more documents are expected to be made public over the coming weeks.

Victims of Epstein and lawmakers quickly criticized the department for releasing incomplete and heavily redacted documents that included no significant new details about Epstein’s crimes or the attempts to investigate him.

“For survivors, this deadline was not symbolic for us but was a real opportunity to see whether transparency would finally outweigh the protection of powerful interests, after decades of reporting this abuse,” Liz Stein, an Epstein survivor and anti-trafficking advocate, said in a statement. “The DOJ’s partial, staggered release—largely repeating already public information, lacking context, and extending beyond the statutory deadline—violates federal law and risks shielding the individuals and institutions who perpetrated and enabled this abuse, falling far short of the transparency intended by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks at a press conference with other Senate Democrats on the upcoming deadline for the release of the Epstein files, in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 16, 2025.Nathan Posner—Anadolu/Getty Images

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Hmmmm … Is War part of the current administration’s plan?

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The Trump administration has said it would prioritize deporting the “worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”

Historically, ICE detained immigrants who had committed crimes through “custodial” arrests — picking up people who had already been arrested by other law enforcement agencies from jails and prisons.

While custodial arrests still make up half of all immigration arrests, ICE has increasingly gone after anyone who may be in the country illegally, whether they have a criminal record or not.

Most ICE arrests at jails and prisons take place in Republican-led states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas.

The rest are “at-large” arrests in the community, which are more common in states led by Democrats, like California and New York, where many local agencies do not cooperate with ICE.

More people who have been in the country for years or decades are being swept up and removed. More than 3,000 adults who entered before the age of 16 — potential “Dreamers” — have been deported, as have more than 4,000 children.

Where they are held

In the past, most people who were arrested were released to await their day in immigration court. Illegal immigration is a civil — not a criminal — offense, and detention was designed to hold only those deemed a flight risk.

But the Trump administration told ICE to hold people indefinitely and told immigration judges that most people are no longer eligible for bail. The Laken Riley Act, passed in January, further narrowed who can be released.

Immigrant detention centers are filling up, even as the Trump administration has opened dozens of new facilities to expand the capacity and reach of this network

The detained population has nearly doubled, to more than 68,000 people in December, an all-time high.

People detained by ICE have described unsanitary and unsafe conditions in some detention centers — including rotten food, a lack of access to showers and toilets, and the use of solitary confinement. At least 32 people have died in ICE custody since Mr. Trump took office, more than the number in Mr. Biden’s entire four years in office.

Officials have denied claims of poor conditions and mistreatment of detainees.

Because detention facilities are concentrated in the South, people arrested elsewhere are often quickly transferred long distances to places where there is space, often in Texas and Louisiana, far from family and lawyers.

Each line here represents the average monthly volume of transfers of immigrant detainees between detention facilities. Darker lines reflect higher numbers of detainee transfers.

People are moving around the system more than last year — passing through an average of three different facilities over seven weeks before they are deported. Immigration lawyers say the process has caused some people to give up their asylum cases and to agree to be deported.

Where deported people go

The Trump administration has deported people to almost every country in the world, including those that had resisted taking back their citizens. It has sent people to repressive regimes, including Afghanistan, Iran, and Russia, and it has pressed countries like South Sudan and Uganda to accept deportees from far-away places who have no ties to those countries.

Detailed data on ICE removals was available only through the end of July, but it showed that the monthly pace of deportations had more than doubled compared with last year for people from more than 100 places.

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How ICE has moved thousands of people through detention and out of the country.

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Ancient Romans in Britain were riddled with intestinal parasites that spread through human feces.

A new analysis of the sewer system at Vindolanda, a Roman fort near Hadrian’s Wall, found that residents in ancient times were infected with at least three gut parasites—roundworm, whipworm, and Giardia duodenalis.

Roundworms and whipworms both live in the intestine and cause various ailments, including abdominal pain, nausea, fever, and diarrhea. Roundworms can grow as long as 30 centimeters, while whipworms tend to be smaller. People can get infected by ingesting food or drink contaminated with human feces holding the eggs of these worms. Giardia duodenalis, meanwhile, is not a worm but a tiny organism that lives primarily inside the small intestine. It exists in two forms—cysts and trophozoites—and causes giardiasis, an illness that causes severe diarrhea and makes it harder for the body to absorb vital nutrients. It is also spread through human waste.

For the analysis, published in the journal Parasitology, researchers looked at 50 sediment samples taken from the drain of a third-century latrine at the fort. About 28 percent of the samples contained whipworm or roundworm eggs, whereas others had traces of Giardia duodenalis. A sample from an older structure dating to the first century also contained the worms.

What all this suggests is that ancient Romans were probably not as fastidious about washing their hands or their food as we are today. Fecal matter may also have contaminated the drinking water supply at Vindolanda fort, sickening the residents. And once the Romans were infected, there was little that could be done, said study co-author Marissa Ledger, a medical microbiology resident at McMaster University in Ontario, in a statement.

“While the Romans were aware of intestinal worms, there was little their doctors could do to clear infection by these parasites or help those experiencing diarrhoea, meaning symptoms could persist and worsen,” Ledger said.

The conditions almost certainly affected the Romans’ ability to protect Hadrian’s Wall, a vital defense structure built by the Romans in C.E. 122 to keep out the Picts and other tribes who lived to the north. Disease outbreaks would have been common, with dozens sickened at a time.

Ultimately, the findings suggest life for a Roman soldier at Hadrian’s Wall was pretty miserable, the researchers said. “Excavations at Vindolanda continue to find new evidence that helps us to understand the incredible hardships faced by those posted to this northwestern frontier of the Roman Empire nearly 2,000 years ago,” said Andrew Birley, a co-author of the study and CEO of the Vindolanda Charitable Trust.

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