Trump administration asks Supreme Court to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelan migrants

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to strip temporary legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to being deported.

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The Justice Department asked the high court to put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelans that would have otherwise expired last month.

A federal appeals court had earlier rejected the administration’s request.

President Donald Trump’s administration has moved aggressively to withdraw various protections that have allowed immigrants to remain in the country, including ending TPS for a total of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians. TPS is granted in 18-month increments to people already in the U.S. whose countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.

St. Paul brewery Burning Brothers, state’s only gluten-free beer maker, to shut down May 10

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Burning Brothers, the state’s first and only gluten-free brewery, is shutting down after 11 years in St. Paul.

Their last day will be May 10.

“The factors affecting this decision are numerous, complex, and varied, and we have fought hard to avoid reaching this point, but alas, the day we had hoped to avoid has arrived,” co-owners Dane Breimhorst and Thom Foss wrote in a social media announcement.

The pair have been friends since they were teenagers and had long planned to open a brewery together, but in the middle of planning it in the early 2010s, Breimhorst was diagnosed with Celiac disease, a strong autoimmune reaction to gluten. So they tweaked their plans, learned how to brew beer without gluten and set up shop in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood in 2014.

In their 20s, both Breimhorst and Foss performed as Renaissance Festival fire-breathers — hence the name of the brewery — and revived the trick to celebrate the brewery’s fifth and tenth anniversaries.

Out of some 9,900 breweries across the country, only around a dozen are currently dedicated to producing exclusively gluten-free beer. With the closures of Burning Brothers and another brewery in Michigan last year, the only gluten-free brewery remaining in the Midwest is ALT Brew in Madison.

Burning Brothers’s taproom will be open regular hours (4 to 10 p.m. Tues/Wed/Thurs, 4 to 11 p.m. Fri, 1 to 11 p.m. Sat, 1 to 7 p.m. Sun, closed Mon) through Saturday, May 10.

Burning Brothers Brewery: 1750 W. Thomas Ave; 651-444-8882; burnbrosbrew.com

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Justice Department sues Hawaii, Michigan over plans to sue fossil fuel companies for climate harm

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By ALEXA ST. JOHN

DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan over their planned legal action against fossil fuel companies for harms caused by climate change, claiming the state actions conflict with federal government authority and President Donald Trump’senergy dominance agenda.

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The suits, which legal experts say are unprecedented, mark the latest of the Trump administration’s attacks on environmental work and raises concern over states’ abilities to retain the power to take climate action without federal opposition.

In court filings, the DOJ said the Clean Air Act — a federal law authorizing the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate air emissions — “creates a comprehensive program for regulating air pollution in the United States and “displaces” the ability of States to regulate greenhouse gas emissions beyond their borders.”

DOJ argues that Hawaii and Michigan are violating the intent of the Act that enables the EPA authority to set nationwide standards for greenhouse gases, citing the states’ pending litigation against oil and gas companies for alleged climate damage.

Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel last year tapped private law firms to go after the fossil fuel industry for negatively affecting the state’s climate and environment.

Meanwhile, Democratic Hawaii Governor Josh Green plans to target fossil fuel companies that he said should take responsibility for their role in the state’s climate impacts, including 2023’s deadly Lahaina wildfire.

When burned, fossil fuels release emissions such as carbon dioxide that warm the planet.

Both states’ law claims “impermissibly regulate out-of-state greenhouse gas emissions and obstruct the Clean Air Act’s comprehensive federal-state framework and EPA’s regulatory discretion,” DOJ’s court filings said.

The DOJ also repeated the Republican president’s claims of America’s energy emergency and crisis.

“At a time when States should be contributing to a national effort to secure reliable sources of domestic energy,” Hawaii and Michigan are “choosing to stand in the way,” the filings said.

A spokesperson for Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office deferred to Nessel when asked for comment.

“This lawsuit is at best frivolous and arguably sanctionable,” Nessel said in a statement, which noted that Michigan hasn’t filed a lawsuit. “If the White House or Big Oil wish to challenge our claims, they can do so when our lawsuit is filed; they will not succeed in any attempt to preemptively bar our access to make our claims in the courts. I remain undeterred in my intention to file this lawsuit the President and his Big Oil donors so fear.”

Green’s office and the Hawaii Attorney General’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But legal experts raised concern over the government’s arguments.

Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Columbia University Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said usual procedure is the DOJ asking a court to intervene in pending environmental litigation — as is the case in some instances across the country.

While this week’s suits are consistent with Trump’s plans to oppose state actions that interfere with energy dominance, “it’s highly unusual,” Gerrard told The Associated Press. “What we expected is they would intervene in the pending lawsuits, not to try to preempt or prevent a lawsuit from being filed. It’s an aggressive move in support of the fossil fuel industry.

“It raises all kinds of eyebrows,” he added. “It’s an intimidation tactic, and it’s telling the fossil fuel companies how much Trump loves them.”

Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has previously consulted on climate litigation, said this week’s lawsuits look “like DOJ grasping at straws,” noting that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said his agency is seeking to overturn a finding under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

“So on the one hand the U.S. is saying Michigan, and other states, can’t regulate greenhouse gases because the Clean Air Act does so and therefore preempts states from regulating,” Carlson said. “On the other hand the U.S. is trying to say that the Clean Air Act should not be used to regulate. The hypocrisy is pretty stunning.”

Trump’s administration has aggressively targeted climate policy in the name of fossil fuel investment. Federal agencies have announced plans to bolster coal power, roll back landmark water and air regulations, block renewable energy sources and double down on oil and gas expansion.

Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment.

Associated Press writer Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Mich. contributed to this report.

Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

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.

NASA astronauts step outside space station to perform the 5th all-female spacewalk

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By MARCIA DUNN

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An astronaut who missed out on the first all-female spacewalk because of a spacesuit sizing issue got her chance six years later on Thursday.

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NASA’s Anne McClain emerged from the International Space Station alongside Nichole Ayers. Both military officers and pilots, they launched to the orbiting lab in March to replace NASA’s two stuck astronauts, who are now back home.

Minutes before floating out, McClain noticed strands of string on the index finger of her right glove. Mission Control briefly delayed the start of the spacewalk to make sure her glove was safe.

Outside for nearly six hours, the spacewalkers prepared the station for another new set of solar panels and moved an antenna on the 260-mile-high (420-kilometer-high) complex. They were welcomed back inside by the space station’s commander, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.

“We are so happy to have you back, and your dinner is ready so don’t worry about it,” Onishi said.

The space station had to be raised into a slightly higher orbit Wednesday evening to avoid space junk: part of a 20-year-old Chinese rocket.

McClain, an Army colonel and helicopter pilot, should have taken part in the first all-female spacewalk in 2019, but there weren’t enough medium-size suits. The first women-only spacewalk was by Christina Koch and Jessica Meir. The latest was the fifth all-female spacewalk in 60 years of spacewalking.

Koch soon will become the first woman to fly to the moon. She and three male astronauts will fly around the moon without landing next year under NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo.

Men still outnumber women in NASA’s astronaut corps.

Of NASA’s 47 active astronauts, 20 are women. And of the seven astronauts currently living at the space station, McClain and Ayers are the only women. It was the first spacewalk for Ayers, an Air Force major and former fighter pilot, and the third for McClain.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.