By SUDHIN THANAWALA, Associated Press

A federal judge investigating whether Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should face a contempt charge over flights carrying migrants to El Salvador said Monday he wants to hear from a whistleblower and top Justice Department official.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington ordered the government to make Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign available for testimony on Dec. 16. Boasberg wants to hear a day earlier from fired Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni.

The order for testimony ratchets up the extraordinary clash between the judicial and executive branches.

In March, Boasberg ordered the Republican administration to turn around two planes carrying Venezuelan migrants.

Instead, the planes landed in El Salvador hours later, touching off the contempt probe. Boasberg is trying to determine whether the administration willfully ignored his order and should be referred for prosecution on a contempt charge.

Reuveni has filed a whistleblower complaint alleging a Justice Department official suggested the Trump administration might have to ignore court orders as it prepared to deport Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members. The administration has said the allegations are untrue.

The Justice Department has said Ensign conveyed Boasberg’s oral order and a subsequent written order to the Department of Homeland Security.

In a written declaration submitted to the court Friday, Noem said she made the decision not to return the planes to the U.S. after receiving “privileged legal advice” from the Homeland Security Department’s acting general counsel and “through him from the senior leadership of the Department of Justice.”

Boasberg, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, called Noem’s declaration “cursory.”

“As this declaration does not provide enough information for the Court to determine whether her decision was a willful violation of the Court’s Order, the Court cannot at this juncture find probable cause that her actions constituted criminal contempt,” the judge wrote in Monday’s order.

The administration has said it did not violate Boasberg’s order. The judge’s directive to return the planes was made verbally in court but not included in his written order, government attorneys said in a court filing in November.

That order blocked the administration from removing “any of the individual Plaintiffs from the United States for 14 days,” but said nothing about the flights already airborne, they said.

The two planes had already departed U.S. territory and airspace, so the migrants aboard them had already been “removed” and therefore fell outside of the court’s order, Justice Department lawyers said in the court filing.

Justice Department attorneys in a court filing Friday objected to any “live testimony,” urging Boasberg instead to “proceed promptly” with a criminal contempt referral if he believed his order was “sufficiently clear in imposing an obligation to halt the transfer of custody for detainees who had already been removed from the United States.”

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The first Farm Aid held in Minnesota raised more than $1.3 million that will support family farmers, organizers announced Monday.

Farm Aid’s end-of-year grant program advances the on-the-ground work of farm and food organizations across the country. This year’s grantmaking focuses on four issue areas: racial equity, farmer-led solutions to climate change, stopping the growth of industrial agriculture and providing support for farmers experiencing crisis and farm stress.

“These organizations are the heart of the farm movement, with family farmers at the center of their work and leadership. We are so proud and grateful to stand with them,” said Farm Aid president, founder and performer Willie Nelson in a news release. “Like Farm Aid, many of these folks have been working since the 1980s to be crucial sources of strength for farmers and rural communities. This is especially important as farmers once again face trying times reminiscent of the crisis that gave rise to Farm Aid and the movement of which we’re a part.”

The all-day event, which took place in September at Huntington Bank Stadium, featured Nelson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds and Margo Price, among others.

Grant programs include $60,000 in emergency and disaster grants to individual farmers, $66,500 in disaster grants related to extreme weather events and climate disasters, $40,000 in farmer leadership grants and $20,000 in scholarship funds to support students majoring in agriculture and related fields.

For further details, see farmaid.org.

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A snowstorm will sweep across Minnesota on Tuesday afternoon dumping as much as 8 inches of snow in some spots and creating hazardous travel conditions in areas such as southern Minnesota, where high winds will cause blowing snow.

“We’ll have a potent little clipper system beginning to move in roughly midday with flakes as early as 11 a.m. and the heart of the system will hit by two o’clock at the latest,” said Tyler Hasenstein, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Twin Cities.

The system, coming in from west to east, will move across the entire state and then begin swooping toward the southeast later in the day.

Snowfall rates are expected to be as much as one to two inches an hour with a total that may reach 6-8 inches of snow overall. The majority of the snow will be in northern Minnesota, from St. Cloud to Duluth, but those as far south as Mankato will also see snow.

More of a concern than the snow in the southeast parts of the state are high winds, which could create blizzard conditions, he said.

“If you are in those areas, travel will be difficult because of blowing snow,” he said, noting the winds will kick up snow from Granite Falls to Mankato and further south in the afternoon.

Southern portions of the Twin Cities metro could see a mix of snow and rain and some freezing rain.

“The Twin Cities will see periods of a wintery mix of all three types that will trend toward mainly snow,” he said.

The storm system will move through the state “pretty quickly” he said. By 6 a.m. Wednesday there will be light snow continuing but it should end by noon.

The average highs this time of year are in the upper 20s and Tuesday will see a high of 33 degrees.

“It will be one of the warmer days over the past few weeks but the trade off is that it comes with the snow.”

Hasenstein said there is another chance for light snow showers beginning Thursday morning through the afternoon and then most of Friday before the snow ends. Thursday through Friday will bring between up to an inch of snow, he said, similar to what was expected Monday evening.

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By JOSH BOAK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that he would allow Nvidia to sell an advanced type of computer chip used in the development of artificial intelligence to “approved customers” in China.

There have been concerns about allowing advanced computer chips to be sold to China as it could help the country better compete against the U.S. in building out AI capabilities, but there has also been a desire to develop the AI ecosystem with American companies such as chipmaker Nvidia.

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The chip, known as the H200, is not Nvidia’s most advanced product. Those chips, called Blackwell and the upcoming Rubin, were not part of what Trump approved.

Trump said on social media that he had informed China’s leader Xi Jinping about his decision and “President Xi responded positively!”

“This policy will support American Jobs, strengthen U.S. Manufacturing, and benefit American Taxpayers,” Trump said in his post.

Trump said the Commerce Department was “finalizing the details” for other chipmakers such as AMD and Intel to sell their technologies abroad.

The approval of the licenses to sell Nvidia H200 chips reflects the increasing power and close relationship that the company’s founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, enjoys with the president. But there have been concerns that China will find ways to use the chips to develop its own AI products in ways that could pose national security risks for the U.S., a primary concern of the Biden administration that sought to limit exports.

Nvidia has a market cap of $4.5 trillion and Trump’s announcement appeared to drive the stock slightly higher in after hours trading.