By MICHAEL PHILLIS, Associated Press

A federal judge was wrong to block the Trump administration from freezing billions of dollars and terminating contracts for nonprofits to run a “green bank” aimed at financing climate-friendly projects, a divided appeals court ruled Tuesday.

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The ruling is a win for the Trump administration that had blasted the program as a waste of taxpayer money and tried to claw back funding.

The groups sued the EPA, its administrator Lee Zeldin and Citibank, which held the grant money, saying they had illegally denied the groups access to funds awarded last year. They wanted access to those funds again, saying the freeze had paralyzed their work and jeopardized their basic operations.

Those arguments have no place in federal court, according to the split D.C appeals court panel.

“In sum, district courts have no jurisdiction to hear claims that the federal government terminated a grant agreement arbitrarily or with impunity. Claims of arbitrary grant termination are essentially contractual,” the majority wrote.

Instead, the divided panel said they should go to federal claims court — a loss for Climate United Fund and other nonprofits who wanted the federal court system to ensure it quickly received its funding.

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

By GERALD IMRAY, Associated Press

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Three men deported by the United States to Eswatini in July have been held in a maximum-security prison in the African nation for seven weeks without charge and with no access to legal counsel despite completing criminal sentences in the U.S., their lawyers said Tuesday.

The New York-based Legal Aid Society said it was representing one of the men, Jamaican national Orville Etoria, and that he had been “inexplicably” sent to Eswatini when his home country was willing to accept him back.

Etoria was the first of at least 20 deportees sent by the U.S. to various African nations in the last two months to be identified publicly. The deportations are part of the Trump administration’s largely secretive third-country program to crack down on immigration.

The 62-year-old Etoria was convicted of a serious crime in the U.S. in 1997 and was released from prison on parole in 2021, the Legal Aid Society said in a statement. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a post on X that Etoria had been convicted of murder.

The Legal Aid Society said the U.S. government had falsely claimed that Jamaica refused to accept him back. Homeland Security, when announcing the deportation of a total of five men to Eswatini in mid-July, claimed they were “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”

Homeland Security said at the time the men were dangerous criminals from Jamaica, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen but didn’t identify them by name.

A lawyer representing the two other men, from Laos and Vietnam, said Tuesday his clients also served their criminal sentences in the U.S. and had “been released into the community.”

“Then, without warning and explanation from either the U.S. or Eswatini governments, they were arbitrarily arrested and sent to a country to which they have never ever been,” the lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, said in a statement. He said the U.S. government was “orchestrating secretive third-country transfers with no meaningful legal process, resulting in indefinite detention.”

Homeland security said those two men had been convicted of charges including child rape and second-degree murder.

A third lawyer, Alma David, said she represented two men from Yemen and Cuba who are also held in Eswatini and were denied access to lawyers. She said she had been told by the head of the Eswatini prison that only the U.S. Embassy could grant access to the men.

“Since when does the U.S. Embassy have jurisdiction over Eswatini’s national prisons?” she said in a statement, adding the men weren’t told a reason for their detention, and no lawyer has been permitted to visit them.”

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David said all five were being held in Eswatini’s main maximum-security prison indefinitely at U.S. taxpayers’ expense.

Since July, the Trump administration has expanded its third-country deportation program and sent migrants to at least three African nations: South Sudan, Eswatini and Rwanda, and has a deal in principle with a fourth African country, Uganda.

Though no deportations to Uganda have been announced, the U.S. has said it wants to deport Kilma Abrego Garcia there. His case has been a flashpoint in U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown.

The deportation deals the U.S. has struck have been largely secretive.

Authorities in South Sudan have given little information on where eight men sent there in early July are being held or what their fate might be. They were also described by U.S. authorities as dangerous criminals from South Sudan, Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The five men in Eswatini are being held at the Matsapha Correctional Complex. It’s the same prison where Eswatini, which is ruled by a king as Africa’s last absolute monarchy, has imprisoned pro-democracy campaigners. Authorities said when the five men arrived in Eswatini that they would be held in solitary confinement.

Another seven migrants were deported by the U.S. to Rwanda in mid-August, Rwandan authorities said. They didn’t say where they are being held or give any information on their identities.

The deportations to Rwanda were kept secret at the time and only announced last week.

Editor’s Note: This photo essay is published in partnership with The Texas Tribune.

I walked into an apartment slipping and stumbling on mud so thick I couldn’t see the floor underneath. The table in the dining room was set, decorated with charger plates, flowers, and napkins nicely folded. The mud and debris covered everything. On the wall, I saw a red, white, and blue garland with American flags, a reminder that the day prior had been the Fourth of July. I tried to imagine the life, or lives, that had been lived in this place. A pair of sunglasses, left behind, caught my eye.

I studied water. I studied rivers and tributaries and floodplains and watersheds. Hydrology was a main focus of my research as a student of environmental science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. I even attended a summer program at the National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 2016 that focused on flood mapping and emergency response. But theory is one thing, and seeing 100-year-old cypress trees laying flat on the ground, completely uprooted, is another. 

I accepted the surreality after seeing a kayak stuck 20 feet high up, on a tree branch, among other things that were absurdly out of place. Hills of mud, vegetation, and personal artifacts deposited by the flood had changed the landscape. It all told the story of what had happened that early morning. Everywhere I went along a 30-mile or so stretch of the Guadalupe River, there were excavators and people digging, looking, hopeful to find the missing. The scale of the devastation, the search and recovery efforts, and the grief—all things unfathomable to me, even after I witnessed them.

Community members survey the damage left behind in Kerrville’s Louise Hays Park.

The interior of a beauty salon in Ingram

A woman looks at fallen trees in Kerrville on July 5.

Left: Found photos and patches from the Heart O’ the Hills camp Right: Community members honor victims with a July 11 vigil and memorial.

Grieving at Cross Kingdom Church in Kerrville on July 6

A small American flag on the trunk of a fallen tree in Ingram

The post Where the Water Reached appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By SEUNG MIN KIM and KIM CHANDLER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration will announce on Tuesday that U.S. Space Command will be located in Alabama, reversing a Biden-era decision to keep it at its temporary headquarters in Colorado, according to two people familiar with the announcement.

Trump is expected to speak Tuesday afternoon, and he will give the new location, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to confirm the plans ahead of the official announcement. A Pentagon website set up to livestream the remarks describes the event as a “U.S. Space Command HQ Announcement.”

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“The president will be making an exciting announcement related to the Department of Defense,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Space Command’s functions include conducting operations like enabling satellite-based navigation and troop communication and providing warning of missile launches.

Alabama and Colorado have long battled to claim Space Command because it has significant implications for the local economy. The site also has been a political prize, with elected officials from both Alabama and Colorado asserting their state is the better location.

Huntsville, Alabama, nicknamed Rocket City, has long been home to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command is also located in Huntsville, which drew its nickname because of its role in building the first rockets for the U.S. space program.

The announcement caps a four-year back-and-forth on the location of Space Command.

The Air Force in 2021 identified Army Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville as the preferred location for the new U.S. Space Command. The city was picked after site visits to six states that compared factors such as infrastructure capacity, community support and costs to the Defense Department.

Then-President Joe Biden in 2023 announced Space Command would be permanently located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which had been serving as its temporary headquarters. Biden’s Democratic administration said that keeping the command in Colorado Springs would avoid a disruption in readiness.

A review by the Defense Department inspector general was inconclusive and could not determine why Colorado was chosen over Alabama. Trump, a Republican who enjoys deep support in Alabama, had long been expected to move Space Command back to Alabama.