By TAMMY WEBBER

The Trump administration plans to eliminate habitat protections for endangered and threatened species in a move environmentalists say would lead to the extinction of critically endangered species due to logging, mining, development and other activities.

At issue is a longstanding definition of “harm” in the Endangered Species Act, which has included altering or destroying the places those species live. Habitat destruction is the biggest cause of extinction, said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service said in a proposed rule issued Wednesday that habitat modification should not be considered harm because it’s not the same as intentionally targeting a species, called “take.” Environmentalists argue that the definition of “take,” though, has always included actions that harm species, and the definition of “harm” has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

The proposed rule “cuts the heart out of the Endangered Species Act,” said Greenwald. “If (you) say harm doesn’t mean significant habitat degradation or modification, then it really leaves endangered species out in the cold.”

For example, he said spotted owls and Florida panthers both are protected because the current rule forbids habitat destruction. But if the new rule is adopted, someone who logs in a forest or builds a development would be unimpeded as long as they could say they didn’t intend to harm an endangered species, he said.

The proposed rule was expected to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday, kicking off a 30-day public comment period.

A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman referred The Associated Press to the Department of Interior, which declined to comment.

Environmental groups will challenge the rule in court if it is adopted, said Drew Caputo, an attorney at Earthjustice.

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He said the proposal “threatens a half-century of progress in protecting and restoring endangered species,” including bald eagles, gray wolves, Florida manatees and humpback whales. He said that’s because the current rule “recognizes the common-sense concept that destroying a forest, beach, river, or wetland that a species relies on for survival constitutes harm to that species.”

The question is whether the Trump administration is entitled to repeal a rule that was upheld specifically by the Supreme Court and therefore subject to precedent, said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School who has handled endangered species cases.

Because of the current definition of harm, “many, many millions of acres of land has been conserved” to help keep species alive, he said.

The issue is of particular concern in Hawaii, which has more endangered species than any other state — 40% of the nation’s federally listed threatened and endangered species — even though it has less than 1% of the land area, according to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Birds are among the most vulnerable. Since humans arrived, 71 birds have gone extinct, according to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. Thirty-one of the 42 remaining endemic birds are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the department said and ten of these haven’t been seen in decades.

Associated Press reporter Audrey McAvoy in Hawaii contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By SAM MEDNICK

BINYAMINA, Israel (AP) — Rachel Dancyg never thought she would see her dog again after it disappeared in the Hamas attack that sparked the ongoing war with Israel.

Her ex-husband and brother were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel and killed. She thought her beloved pet had suffered the same fate. So when a soldier called the family on Tuesday night, telling them that Billie had been found alive in Gaza, it was hard to believe.

“It’s a miracle,” Dancyg told The Associated Press on Wednesday, hours after being reunited with her now 3 1/2-year old Cavalier King Charles spaniel. “It doesn’t make sense … People didn’t survive. How did she?”

The reunion brought a rare touch of joy in Israel after 18 months of devastating war.

The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack killed some 1,200 people and resulted in more than 250 others being kidnapped. Nearly 60 hostages remain in Gaza, more than half of whom are believed to be dead. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

An Israeli offensive launched after the attack has killed more than 51,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health authorities, and reduced large parts of Gaza to rubble. U.S.-led efforts to broker a ceasefire and bring home remaining hostages appear to be at a standstill.

Nir Oz was one of the hardest hit communities, with nearly a quarter of the approximately 400 residents killed or captured in the 2023 attack. For Israelis, it stands out as the embodiment of their country’s vulnerability that day. Soldiers took hours to respond. Some families have said they saw Hamas fighters killing or kidnapping animals.

It’s unclear how Billie ended up in Gaza. When Hamas entered Dancyg’s home, she hid in the safe room with her family for eight hours, holding the door shut. But she fled so quickly there was no time to find the dog. For months, the community looked everywhere for Billie, but there was no trace of her.

The family later moved to northern Israel.

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Then, on Tuesday night, Dancyg’s daughter received a phone call from a soldier who had just returned from Gaza. He said he had their dog.

“I couldn’t believe it. I asked for a photo. I was really confused,” said her daughter, Lee Maor.

The soldier said he found Billie in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah — about 9 miles (15 kilometers) from the Kibbutz — days earlier, and she immediately gravitated toward his troops, not leaving their side. It might have been because Billie heard them speaking Hebrew, he told them.

Speaking to Israeli television, reserve soldier Aviad Shapira said he found Billie among the rubble and called out to her. “I said ‘shalom’ and she jumped on me,” he said.

He had a feeling that she didn’t belong in Gaza and that there was a story behind her, Shapira said. He brought the dog to a veterinarian and found the family’s contact information on a chip inside the animal.

Stroking Billie on her lap, Dancyg says it will take time to see how the odyssey has affected her. Billie appears happy to be home, but she seems disoriented and has lost weight, Dancyg said.

While Israeli media happily reported Billie’s return, the Nir Oz community reminded people not to forget what the family went through. In a Facebook post, the kibbutz called the reunion a “little light in a lot of sorrow.”

The body of Dancyg’s ex-husband, Alex, 76, was recovered by the army and returned in August. The body of her brother Itzhak Elgarat, 68, was returned earlier this year as part of a ceasefire.

For Dancyg, Billie’s return gives her some sense of closure. Yet she said it is bittersweet knowing there are hostages still in Gaza.

“I can’t get out of this trauma as long as they are there,” she said.

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, MARK SHERMAN and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration appears to have willfully violated his order to turn around planes of migrants headed for El Salvador increases the prospect of officials being held in criminal contempt of court and potentially facing possible prosecution.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said in his ruling on Wednesday that probable cause exists to hold the administration in contempt over its defiance of his order in the case involving migrants sent to a notorious El Salvador prison. The judge is giving the administration a chance to remedy the violation first before moving forward with such an action.

The White House says it’s planning to appeal.

It’s the latest standoff between the administration and the judiciary, which has blocked a slew of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive actions around immigration and other matters.

Here’s what to know about the judge’s ruling, contempt of court and what happens next:

The judge’s order and the administration’s violation

The case stems from Trump’s invocation of a 1798 wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport Venezuelan migrants it accuses of being gang members. During an emergency hearing last month after several migrants sued, Boasberg had ordered the administration not to deport anyone in its custody under the act.

When told there were already planes in the air headed to El Salvador, which has agreed to house deported migrants in a notorious prison, the judge said the aircraft needed to be returned to the United States. That didn’t happen.

Hours later, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, announced that the deportees had arrived in his country. In a social media post, he said, “Oopsie…too late” above an article referencing Boasberg’s order.

The Justice Department has argued the judge’s order didn’t apply to planes that had already left U.S. airspace by the time his command came down.

Boasberg said the government’s “actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order.” Even though the Supreme Court earlier this month vacated Boasberg’s ruling that blocked the deportations, the judge said that does not “excuse the government’s violation.”

Judge warns of possible contempt of court prosecution

Boasberg said the administration can avoid contempt proceedings if it attempts to remedy the violation by retaking custody of the deportees, who were sent to the El Salvador prison in violation of his order, so they have a chance to challenge their removal. The judge wrote that the government “would not need to release any of those individuals, nor would it need to transport them back to the homeland,” but it’s unclear how that would work.

Boasberg said if the administration chooses not to remedy the violation, he will move forward with trying to identify the official or officials who made the decision not to turn the planes around. The judge said he would start by asking the government to submit written declarations in court, but he could turn to hearings with live witnesses under oath or depositions.

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Then, he could refer the matter for prosecution. Since Trump’s Justice Department leadership would almost certainly opt not to bring a case, the judge said he would appoint another attorney to prosecute the contempt case should the government decline to do so.

Rory Little, a law professor of constitutional law at UC Law San Francisco, believes the government could easily avoid a contempt finding.

“Boasberg doesn’t suggest it, but if they put those 200 people back on a plane and brought them back, that would purge the contempt for sure. It’s just that we don’t think Trump’s going to do that,” Little said.

Little said Boasberg suggested a “much less intrusive method” for the administration to comply with his order.

“He is being as careful as he can be to avoid the face-to-face, ugly confrontation that we all think must be coming sooner or later,” he said.

The administration could also be facing possible contempt of court in another case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man whom the administration has acknowledged was mistakenly sent to the El Salvador prison. The judge in that case has said she is determining whether to undertake contempt proceedings, saying officials “appear to have done nothing to aid in Abrego Garcia’s release from custody and return to the United States” despite a Supreme Court ruling that the administration must “facilitate” his release.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, right, stands with supporters during a news conference at CASA’s Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Criminal contempt cases are rare

Judges have been willing to hold officials and agencies in contempt for failing to abide by rulings, even occasionally seeking to impose fines and imprisonment. But higher courts have almost always overturned them, Yale law professor Nicholas Parrillo wrote in a 2018 Harvard Law Review article that surveyed thousands of cases and turned up 82 contempt findings by federal judges since the end of World War II.

In a long-running dispute over money, the federal government holds in trust for Native American tribes, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth held interior secretaries Gale Norton, a Republican, in 2002, and Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat, in 1999, in contempt and twice ordered the Interior Department to disconnect its computers.

The federal appeals court in Washington overturned the contempt charge against Norton and finally removed Lamberth from the case in 2006.

Even without sanctions, though, contempt findings “have a shaming effect that gives them substantial if imperfect deterrent power,” Parrillo wrote. But he acknowledged that the potency of contempt rests on the widely shared view that officials comply with court orders.

In 1987, a divided Supreme Court ruled that district court judges have the authority to appoint private attorneys to prosecute criminal contempt actions. Justice Antonin Scalia, who disagreed with the majority decision, concluded that the courts don’t have the power to appoint attorneys to conduct contempt prosecutions.

Stanford Law School professor Robert Weisberg, who teaches criminal procedure, said Boasberg’s claim that the government flagrantly violated his order is “very convincing.”

“This looks so sound to me that I think it will be difficult to win a reversal, which means we may have a standoff,” he said.

Weisberg said he is concerned that the showdown between the judge and administration could move the government even closer to a constitutional crisis.

“I’m supposed to say, because everybody else does, that we have to be careful about using the term ‘constitutional crisis.’ It means too many things, it’s overused,” he said. “That aside, what the country has been waiting for … some with happy anticipation, is for a flat-out refusal to obey a legal court order. This is pretty close.”

A Miami company that owns three cryptocurrency ATMs in Stillwater is asking the city to repeal an ordinance banning the machines.

Officials from Athena Bitcoin, which operates more than 3,500 cryptocurrency ATMs across 35 states, say the city’s new ordinance banning crypto ATMs violates state law. The ordinance, which had its second reading and was adopted by the Stillwater City Council on Tuesday night, will go into effect as soon as it is published in the Stillwater Gazette later this month.

Company officials say the ordinance is “preempted” under state law. The ordinance bans an activity that Minnesota law expressly permits, and the state already regulates crypto ATMs, they say.

The company owns crypto ATMS at the BP gas station at 1750 Greeley St. S., the Amoco station at 103 Main St. N., and at Haskell’s at 2225 Curve Crest Blvd.

Since Jan. 1, 2023, Stillwater police have taken more than 30 crypto-related scam reports from residents totaling almost $213,000, with at least half of that amount having been deposited into cryptocurrency ATMs located in the city. In October, police received a report that a 75-year-old woman was feeding $20 bills — one after the other — into the Athena Bitcoin ATM at the Amoco station. By the time police arrived, the woman had deposited $5,820 into the machine and was planning on depositing another $14,180 she had in cash.

“While state laws attempt to regulate the crypto currency business itself by requiring certain messaging at kiosks, scammers have found ways around the laws and continue to induce victims into feeding significant amounts of money into the kiosks,” City Attorney Korine Land wrote in a April 15 memo to the council.

All transactions conducted at cryptocurrency ATMs are accompanied by high percentage-based fees, sometimes 20 to 30 percent, Land wrote.

“Frequently, the hosting business (where the kiosk is located) also receives a percentage of this markup. When you consider the high volume of scam transactions being performed at kiosks, coupled with the excessive fees that are being charged at the kiosks, both the operator and the host are profiting from the victims.”

Athena Bitcoin “regularly works with law enforcement agencies and is genuinely committed to fighting financial crimes, especially those targeting the elderly population,” Robert Musiala, an attorney representing Athena Bitcoin, wrote in an April 14 letter to Land.

“Athena Bitcoin would like to work with the city of Stillwater to address the problem of scams involving (Virtual Currency) Kiosks. However, the Ordinance banning VC Kiosks is not the solution,” he wrote.

He said the company looked forward to working with Stillwater on solutions “that respect Athena Bitcoin’s right to operate its business under Minnesota state law.”

Forest Lake ordinance

Rather than banning cryptocurrency ATMs, Forest Lake officials are moving forward with a plan that would require that all cryptocurrency ATMs located within the city be registered.

The proposed ordinance would require owners of businesses where cryptocurrency ATMs are located to register each machine with the city; complete an application; pay a $2,000 fee, and provide written confirmation from the Forest Lake Police Department that the ATM operator had no more than two instances of substantiated fraud within the city in the past six months, according to the proposed ordinance.

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They also must post a city-provided sign warning of the danger for fraud and scams; install a dedicated, closed-circuit camera; agree to provide video footage to the police department within 48 hours of request, and pass compliance checks. In addition, if a business has had a previous registration denied, suspended or revoked, the owner of the business may not apply for a new registration for two years.

The goal of the ordinance is to balance the protection of the community without instituting a ban on the cryptocurrency ATMs, City Attorney Amanda Johnson told the Pioneer Press earlier this month. “If you are not doing something that’s harming the people who live or work or play in Forest Lake, then you get to continue,” she said.