By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to clear the way for the deportation of several immigrants to South Sudan, a war-ravaged country where they have no ties.

The motion comes a day after the justices allowed immigration officials to restart quick deportations to third countries, halting a lower-court order that had allowed migrants to challenge removals to countries where they could be in danger.

But Judge Brian Murphy in Boston found the deportation flight diverted to Djibouti in May couldn’t immediately resume its path to South Sudan. While he acknowledged the Supreme Court decision pausing his broader order, he said his ruling on that flight remained in place. The migrants must still get a chance to argue in court that they’d be in danger of torture if sent there, he found.

The Trump administration pushed back in a court filing, calling the judge’s finding “a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the Executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals.”

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Attorneys for the migrants say they could face “imprisonment, torture and even death” if sent to South Sudan, the world’s newest and one of its poorest countries. South Sudan has endured waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, and escalating political tensions in the African nation have threatened to devolve into another civil war.

The push comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Trump’s Republican administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally. Because some countries do not accept their citizens deported from the U.S., the administration has reached agreements with other countries, including Panama and Costa Rica, to house immigrants.

Murphy, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, didn’t prohibit deportations to third countries. But he found migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in serious danger of torture if sent to another country.

He ruled immigration officials violated his order with the South Sudan flight that left on short notice with eight men from countries including Myanmar, Vietnam and Mexico who had been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S.

The administration then appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the judge had overstepped his authority. The high court’s conservative majority agreed to halt the order in a brief decision handed down without a detailed explanation, as is typical on the court’s emergency docket. All three liberal justices on the nine-member court joined a scathing dissent.

By MATT BROWN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Robert Garcia was elected the top Democrat on the powerful House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, charting a new direction for the party’s opposition to congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump’s administration.

Garcia, of California, won the job overwhelmingly in a closed-door vote of the House Democratic caucus. He beat out Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, 150-63.

Afterward, Garcia thanked colleagues who also sought the top job and promised the Democratic side of the committee would be focused on rooting out government corruption and increasing government efficiency.

“Efficiency is not DOGE,” Garcia said, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency. “Efficiency is actually making government work better for our constituents across the country, and that’s what we’re going to focus on.”

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House Oversight is among the most prominent committees in Congress — and one of its most consistently partisan. As the top Democrat, Garcia will be thrust into the spotlight as Republicans conduct several high-profile investigations, including the unfolding inquiry into Democratic President Joe Biden’s health in office.

Garcia said the committee’s Democratic staffers are “ready for consistent leadership” and promised “to get immediately to work.”

The ranking Democrat spot opened up after Rep. Gerry Connelly of Virginia died in late May following treatment for esophageal cancer. Other Democrats who ran for the job included Lynch, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland.

Crockett and Mfume dropped out of the race after Garcia on Monday won the support of the Democrats’ steering committee, which sets party priorities.

Garcia will be the first Latino and openly gay person to serve as the committee’s ranking member. His election comes at a time of generational change for Democrats, with internal debates raging over how to fix what went wrong in the elections last year.

Democrats made a different choice last December, when Connolly defeated Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, one of the party’s progressive stars, for the Oversight ranking member job in a race that also featured heavy debates over generational change. This time around, many senior Democratic lawmakers expressed openness to reassessing seniority as the main consideration for top committee posts.

Lynch has served on the Oversight panel for 14 years, while Garcia has served on it for two.

“I think what’s important is that this party and us at this moment is looking at expanding the tent,” Garcia told reporters. “And I think experience is incredibly important. I think I can bring that experience. I feel ready. But I also think it’s an opportunity to bring in newer voices to the leadership and to this committee.”

Garcia had pitched himself as a compromise candidate to colleagues. He emphasized his experience as mayor of Long Beach, California, as a reason that he would be skilled at steering the party’s conversation on government reform and efficacy. And he stressed to lawmakers that combating potential government corruption in the Trump administration would be both good governance and a winning political message.

Multiple Democratic members in competitive districts were persuaded by his pitch to not stake out positions that would hurt the party’s broader brand and thus chances of winning back the majority.

By ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Democrats will decide Tuesday whether to reboot Andrew Cuomo’s political career, elevate liberal upstart Zohran Mamdani, or turn to a crowded field of lesser-known but maybe less-polarizing candidates in the party’s mayoral primary.

Their choice could say something about what kind of leader Democrats are looking for during President Donald Trump’s second term.

The vote takes place on a sweltering day about four years after Cuomo resigned as governor following a sexual harassment scandal. Yet the 67-year-old has been the favorite throughout the race, with his deep experience, nearly universal name recognition, strong political connections and juggernaut fundraising apparatus.

The party’s progressive wing, meanwhile, has coalesced behind Mamdani, a 33-year-old self-described democratic socialist. A relatively unknown state legislator when the contest began, Mamdani gained momentum by running a sharp campaign laser-focused on the city’s high cost of living and secured endorsements from two of the country’s foremost progressives, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

FILE- This combination photo shows on left, Democratic mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo speaking during a Democratic mayoral primary debate, Wednesday, June 4, 2025, in New York and on right, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani talking to people after the New York City Democratic Mayoral Primary Debate at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the Gerald W. Lynch Theater on Thursday, June 12, 2025 in New York City. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, file and Vincent Alban/The New York Times via AP, Pool, file)

While preliminary returns will be released after the polls close at 9 p.m. Tuesday, a winner might not emerge for a week because of the city’s ranked choice voting system, which allows voters to list up to five candidates in order of preference. If a candidate is the first choice of a majority of voters, they win outright. If no candidate reaches that threshold, the tabulation of the rankings wouldn’t begin until July 1.

The primary winner will go on to face incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who decided to run as an independent amid a public uproar over his indictment on corruption charges and the subsequent abandonment of the case by Trump’s Justice Department. Republican Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, will be on the ballot in the fall’s general election.

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The mayoral primary’s two leading candidates — one a fresh-faced progressive and the other an older moderate — could be stand-ins for the larger Democratic Party’s ideological divide, though Cuomo’s scandal-scarred past adds a unique tinge to the narrative.

The rest of the pack has struggled to gain recognition in a race where nearly every candidate has cast themselves as the person best positioned to challenge Trump’s Republican agenda.

Comptroller Brad Lander, a liberal city government stalwart, made a splash last week when he was arrested after linking arms with a man federal agents were trying to detain at an immigration court in Manhattan. It was unclear if that episode was enough to jump-start a campaign that had been failing to pick up speed behind Lander’s wonkish vibe.

Among the other candidates are City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, hedge fund executive Whitney Tilson and former city Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Mamdani’s energetic run has been hard not to notice.

His army of young hipster canvassers relentlessly knocked on doors throughout the city seeking support. Posters of his grinning mug were up on shop windows. You couldn’t get on social media without seeing one of his well-produced videos pitching his vision — free buses, free child care, new apartments, a higher minimum wage and more, paid for by new taxes on the rich. He would be the city’s first Indian-American and first Muslim mayor.

Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani arrives at the NBC studios to participate in a Democratic mayoral primary debate, Wednesday, June 4, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, Pool)

Cuomo and some other Democrats have cast Mamdani as unqualified. They say he doesn’t have the management chops to wrangle the city’s sprawling bureaucracy or handle crises. Critics have also taken aim at Mamdani’s support for Palestinian human rights.

In response, Mamdani has slammed Cuomo over his sexual harassment scandal and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

In one heated debate exchange, Cuomo rattled off a long list of what he saw as Mamdani’s managerial shortcomings, arguing that his opponent, who has been in the state Assembly since 2021, has never dealt with Congress or unions and never overseen an infrastructure project. He added that Mamdani couldn’t be relied upon to go toe-to-toe with Trump.

Mamdani had a counter ready.

“To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace,” he said.

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, center, waves as he walks in the Puerto Rican Day Parade, Sunday, June 8, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)

Cuomo resigned in 2021 after a report commissioned by the state attorney general concluded that he had sexually harassed at least 11 women. He has always maintained that he didn’t intentionally harass the women, saying he had simply fallen behind what was considered appropriate workplace conduct.

During the campaign, he has become more aggressive in defending himself, framing the situation as a political hit job orchestrated by his enemies.

The fresh scandal at City Hall involving Mayor Eric Adams, though, gave Cuomo a path to end his exile.

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — There is a history-rich part of London that few people have seen, where the city braced for the Blitz, James Bond’s creator got inspiration and secret Cold War messages passed between Washington and Moscow.

It’s a network of tunnels 100 feet below the streets that was secret for decades — but could be the city’s next big tourist destination. Local authorities have approved plans to fill the 90,000 square-foot site with an intelligence museum, an interactive World War II memorial and one of the world’s deepest underground bars.

“It’s an amazing space, an amazing city,” said Angus Murray, chief executive of The London Tunnels, as subway trains rattled overhead. “And I think it tells a wonderful story.”

Angus Murray, CEO of The London Tunnels, gestures as he shows photos and diagrams relating to the history of the tunnels speaking during a press tour in London, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Joanna Chan)

A vast bomb shelter

The tunnels lie directly below London Underground’s Central Line in the city’s Holborn area. Work to dig them began in secret in 1940, when Britain feared invasion by Nazi Germany. They were designed to shelter up to 8,000 people in a pair of parallel tunnels 16½ feet wide and 1,300 feet long.

The tunnels were never used for that purpose; by the time they were finished in 1942 the worst of the Blitz was over, and Underground bosses had opened up subway stations as air raid shelters for Londoners.

Instead, the tunnels became a government communications center and a base for the Special Operations Executive, a clandestine unit that sent agents — many of them women — on perilous sabotage missions in Nazi-occupied territory under orders from Prime Minister Winston Churchill to “set Europe ablaze.”

Skittles left in one of the tunnels are seen during a press tour in London, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Joanna Chan)

A naval officer named Ian Fleming was a liaison officer to the SOE, and the subterranean HQ may have provided inspiration for the world of secret agent 007 that he went on to create.

“This truly is the Q Branch of James Bond,” said Murray, referring to the thrillers’ fictional MI6 quartermaster and gadget-maker.

After the war, more tunnels were added to the complex and the site became a secure telephone exchange. From the mid-1950s it was a terminus of the first trans-Atlantic undersea telephone cable. After the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, a “red telephone” hotline between the Pentagon and the Kremlin was established and ran through here.

Up to 200 people worked underground, bound to secrecy but with the compensation of an onsite canteen and bar. For a time, the site also housed a bunker to be used by the government in the event of nuclear war.

By the 1980s, technology had moved on and British Telecom moved out. The tunnels lay largely forgotten until BT sold them in 2023 to Murray’s private equity-backed group.

Plans include a memorial to the more than 40,000 civilians killed by German bombing in the war, cultural exhibitions and a nightspot that Murray boasts will be “the deepest bar in the world in a city.”

Bottles and glasses left on the counter of one of the bars that operated from the 1980s, are seen during a press tour in London, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Joanna Chan)

Secret wartime history

It also will house Britain’s Military Intelligence Museum, which is currently tucked away on a military base north of London with limited public access. Museum bosses have agreed to move a collection covering more than 300 years of history to the tunnels, bringing a much higher profile for a story they believe needs to be told.

”It’s not targeted at people who already have an interest in military topics,” said the chair of the museum’s board of trustees, who gave only his first name, Alistair, because of the museum’s connection to Britain’s armed forces.

“A heavy theme that will run through the new museum is that there are skills and tools that military intelligence has developed over years and centuries … and the fundamental one is, how do you tell truth from lies?” he said. “That’s a very big theme of now.”

A general view of one of the tunnels during a press tour London, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Joanna Chan)

The museum also will flesh out the secret story of the Special Operations Executive. The museum’s collection contains agent messages, supplies, weapons and sabotage equipment from the SOE’s wartime adventures.

“Most of the people that worked in SOE never talked about it, either at the time or afterwards, and many of the records have disappeared,” Alistair said. “So a lot is known about SOE, but we don’t know everything, and the chances are we will never know everything.”

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A unique attraction

For now, the tunnel entrance is through an unmarked door in an alley, and walking the cool, dim corridors brings the thrill of discovering a hidden corner of history. Within the thick steel and concrete walls are chunky old generators and telecoms equipment, a staff canteen with its kitchen still intact, and the bar, its 1960s orange and brown décor giving off retro “Austin Powers” vibes

Here and there are graffiti tags and a few items left by urban explorers who snuck in over the years, including a set of bowling pins with ball, and — incongruously — a bear costume.

London Tunnels aims to open in 2028, and to attract up to 4.2 million tourists a year. That may sound ambitious, but Murray says the site’s mix of “history and heritage and novelty” makes it a unique draw.

“If you go home and say, ‘I went to this really cool tunnel today,’ then we’re halfway there,” he said. “If what’s inside of it is even better, you’re going to go ‘Oh that’s fantastic.’”