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Walz’ Minnesota may be next as ICE detention footprint grows nationwide

Walz’ Minnesota may be next as ICE detention footprint grows nationwide

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz may be the next state leader subject to ICE’s expanding detention center network, after major facilities were opened or repurposed in Florida, New Jersey, Texas and elsewhere. A private prison that shut down over a decade ago—and rendered obsolete by a 2024 law banning non-governmental state penitentiaries–may be next on ICE’s list. The defunct Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, near the South Dakota line, is reportedly under consideration, according to documents reported by Minnesota Public Radio News. An Appleton official told the outlet his city is not in communication with ICE at this time, but that the owner of the prison – who operated it until 2010 – is seeking a federal contract. BOSTON’S WU FIRES BACK AT BONDI, CITING REVOLUTION, AS OTHER CITIES SLAM FEDS OVER ‘SANCTUARY’ WARNINGS The state law reportedly does not cover federal usage of private prison facilities. Fox News Digital reached out to Walz – a staunch opponent of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement framework during the 2024 presidential sweeps – for comment – but did not hear back by press time.  In addition to Minnesota’s potential prison, several other potential locations popped up on a map curated by the Washington Post that geotagged present and potential future facilities – including Alligator Alcatraz in Ochopee, Florida, which is currently in limbo due to an Obama-appointed judge’s ruling. Another private prison that currently holds ICE detainees among its inmates is also one of the world’s largest such penitentiaries. The RCDC or Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos, Texas, has a capacity of 3,700 beds, overall. AMERICA’S ORIGINAL SANCTUARY STATE REBUKE’S BONDI’S WARNING; DENIES OBSTRUCTION OF ICE Also in Texas, documents reviewed by the Post included a facility dubbed “Brownsville Family” near the border-area city, which would have a 3,500-person capacity. The feds already utilize Fort Bliss in El Paso for immigration-related detentions. The move to repurpose part of the historic installation enraged the local ACLU chapter, which compared ICE’s behavior to when former President Franklin Roosevelt used similar sites to intern Japanese Americans. In California City, California. – outside Bakersfield – plans are already in the works to house ICE detainees at another former private prison. CoreCivic, the same vendor as the prison in Walz’ Minnesota, forged a deal with the feds in a different blue state to repurpose its 2,560 facility, according to the Los Angeles Times. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has opposed private prisons, and a ban he signed in 2019 was overturned at the last moment by a federal court who ruled it unconstitutional if applied in federal respects, the paper reported. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The largest ICE detention center in the northeastern U.S. sits not far from Penn State in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. The Moshannon Valley Processing Center – another privately-contracted facility – can hold about 1,800 people, according to reports. Texas, Louisiana and California also rank in the top-three in migrant detentions, per the Times. The Post reported that at least 19 states could have the capacity for or have detention-purposed facilities by New Year’s.

EPA urged to axe funds for ‘radical’ climate project accused of training judges, state AGs rally

EPA urged to axe funds for ‘radical’ climate project accused of training judges, state AGs rally

First on Fox: Nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin Tuesday, calling on him to cancel funding to a left-wing environmental group accused of training and lobbying judges on climate policy, Fox News Digital exclusively learned.  “As attorney general, I refuse to stand by while Americans’ tax dollars fund radical environmental training for judges across the country,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen told Fox News Digital of his push to encourage the EPA to end its funding of the Climate Judiciary Project.  “The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project is using woke climate propaganda, under the guise of what they call ‘neutral’ education, to persuade judges and push their wildly unpopular agenda through the court system,” he said. “I commend President Trump’s efforts to cut waste and abuse during the first eight months of his presidency, and I am optimistic that his Administration will do the right thing and halt all funding to ELI.”  Knudsen spearheaded the letter sent to Zeldin Tuesday, which included the signatures of 22 other Republican state attorneys general, calling for the EPA to axe its funding to the left-wing environmental nonprofit, called the Environmental Law Institute, which oversees the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP).  TOP ENERGY GROUP CALLS FOR PROBE INTO SECRETIVE ‘NATIONAL LAWFARE CAMPAIGN’ TO INFLUENCE JUDGES ON CLIMATE The Environmental Law Institute founded the Climate Judiciary Project in 2018, which pitches itself as a “first-of-its-kind effort” that “provides judges with authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.”  The group, however, has been accused of trying to manipulate judges to make them more amenable to left-wing climate litigation.  The letter sent Tuesday called on the EPA specifically to end any grants and awards endowed to the group.  “We write to bring to your attention grants made by EPA to the Environmental Law Institute (‘ELI’),” the letter reads. “According to its 2024 financial statements, ELI received approximately 13% of its revenue in 2023, and 8.4% in 2024, from EPA awards. ELI also apparently still expected to receive funds from the federal government; its financial statement warned that the collectability of federal grant funds ‘is subject to significant uncertainty related to collectability and continual funding due to (the federal grant) funding freeze or other federal actions.’” CLIMATE GROUP SCRUBS JUDGES’ NAMES FROM WEBSITE AFTER UNEARTHED CHATS UNMASKED COZY TIES The Environmental Law Institute received $637,591 from the EPA in 2024 and $866,402 in 2023 from the EPA, according to nonprofit tax documents published by ProPublica detailing the group’s federal expenditures that year.  “The Climate Judiciary Project’s mission is clear: lobby judges in order to make climate change policy through the courts,” 23 state attorneys general wrote in the letter. “An alumni magazine profile said the quiet part out loud, writing that the Climate Judiciary Project co-founder was ‘explaining the science of climate change to a group of people with real power to act on it: judges.’ The Climate Judiciary Project’s tampering raises serious legal and ethical questions.”  The Environmental Law Institute, however, in recent comment to Fox News Digital, has maintained that its educational programs through Climate Judiciary Project are in accordance with the standards established by national judicial education institutions.  Climate Judiciary Project educational events are done “in partnership with leading national judicial education institutions and state judicial authorities, in accordance with their accepted standards,” a spokesperson for the group said in an emailed statement in July. “Its curriculum is fact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus reports and developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards.” “CJP’s work is no different than the work of other continuing judicial education organizations that address important complex topics, including medicine, tech and neuroscience,” an Environmental Law Institute spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital when asked about its educational programs. The call for EPA to slash any funds to the Environmental Law Institute was celebrated by leading groups such as the American Energy Institute and the Alliance for Consumers, who lamented in comment to Fox Digital that taxpayer funds should not be used to fund the group and that “courtroom maneuvering” threatens day-to-day life.  “The State Attorneys General are right to call for the elimination of taxpayer funding for the Environmental Law Institute and its Climate Judiciary Project,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told Fox Digital. “This is a coordinated campaign to advance the Green New Deal through the judiciary using so-called climate litigation in the courts. Its curriculum is developed by climate alarmist allies of the plaintiffs and delivered to judges behind closed doors. Public funds should never be used to finance political advocacy disguised as judicial education.” O.H. Skinner, the executive director of Alliance for Consumers, which is a nonprofit focused on advocating on behalf of American consumers, remarked that “as we have long warned, the left has a plan to reshape American society by using lawsuits in courts all across the country, especially in places like Hawaii and other coastal enclaves.” “The new wave of revelations about ELI is further concerning evidence of how committed the left is to imposing mandatory Progressive Lifestyle Choices through this courtroom maneuvering and how big a threat it really is to all our ways of life,” Skinner added.  CLIMATE LAWFARE CAMPAIGN DEALT BLOW IN SOUTH CAROLINA The Tuesday letter specifically argued: “State consumer protection laws prohibit deceptive and misleading statements to market a product. ELI is representing its training as objective when reality shows that it is not. State Attorneys General are responsible for protecting consumers, and we are concerned by ELI’s statements.” The EPA has taken a hatchet to millions of dollars doled out under the Biden administration to left-wing groups and other programs deemed a waste of taxpayer funds upon Zeldin’s Senate confirmation as EPA chief in January.  The EPA under the Trump administration has canceled $20 billion in grants under the Inflation Reduction

Bolton may be in hot water as FBI investigation expands beyond controversial book

Bolton may be in hot water as FBI investigation expands beyond controversial book

The FBI’s raid on John Bolton’s home and office is tied to an investigation that reaches beyond his controversial book, a source told Fox News Digital, fueling speculation that the former Trump adviser could face criminal charges. The scope of any potential charges against Bolton, who served under President Donald Trump before falling out of favor with him in 2019, is uncertain, but legal experts tend to agree that Bolton has some legal exposure. Prominent D.C.-based attorney Mark Zaid, who specializes in national security, said that while there are many unknowns about the Department of Justice’s investigation into Bolton, his memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” could be an area of vulnerability for him. “With respect to Bolton’s book, he is potentially vulnerable if he maintains any copies of early drafts which were determined to contain ‘voluminous’ amounts of classified information when it was first submitted to the White House for review,” Zaid told Fox New Digital. “Those drafts were likely disseminated, per normal course of business, to his literary agent, publisher and lawyer.” THE HISTORY OF HOW TRUMP AND BOLTON’S RELATIONSHIP FELL TO TATTERS Zaid added that those transmissions could be unlawful under the Espionage Act, a serious set of charges used throughout history to punish spies and leakers of government secrets. During the first Trump administration, Attorney General Bill Barr opened an investigation into Bolton and brought a civil lawsuit against him over the book days before it was set for release. The DOJ alleged in the lawsuit that Bolton skipped over normal prepublication review processes and allowed his publisher to move forward with printing a book that contained several passages of classified national security information. In court papers, Bolton said he did not initially believe his memoir contained classified information, but then he edited some information out of the book after consulting with the National Security Council. Bolton never received a final signoff from the National Security Council before moving forward with publishing. He argued in court papers that the Trump administration’s refusal to approve the memoir’s contents violated his First Amendment rights and that the National Security Council’s review process “had been abused in an effort to suppress” the book, which contained harsh criticisms of Trump. DEMOCRATS OPPOSED JOHN BOLTON FOR YEARS — UNTIL THEY SOUGHT HIM AS AN ALLY AGAINST TRUMP Judge Royce Lamberth, a D.C.-based Regan appointee, denied the Trump DOJ’s request to block publication of Bolton’s book because, among several reasons, it had already been exposed to publishers. Still, Lamberth faulted Bolton. “Defendant Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States,” Lamberth wrote in an order at the time. “He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability.” Lamberth found it was likely Bolton “jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information” in violation of various nondisclosure agreements he signed as part of his national security role. The DOJ never brought charges against Bolton, and the investigation was closed under the Biden administration. The Biden DOJ dismissed the civil lawsuit against Bolton over his book in June 2021. JD VANCE INSISTS FBI SEARCHING BOLTON HOME ‘NOT AT ALL’ ABOUT POLITICAL RETRIBUTION While Bolton’s book controversy has been at the forefront since the raids at his home and office, one well-placed source familiar with the investigation told Fox News Digital on Monday the investigation is far more expansive than the book.  The search warrants, which were authorized by a judge, were based on evidence collected overseas by the CIA, the New York Times reported. Critics note Bolton is the latest target of the Trump DOJ, which despite pledging to end “weaponization” has pursued several of the president’s political rivals. The department has launched grand jury probes into New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and is examining Obama-era national security officials who Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says tried to undermine Trump’s 2016 victory. Trump has also urged an investigation of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, citing “criminal acts” tied to the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal. Former U.S. Attorney John Fishwick of Virginia suggested the line between honest scrutiny of potential wrongdoing and political revenge has become blurred. “Trump DOJ targeting enemies of Trump — Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Federal Reserve Governor [Lisa] Cook and now John Bolton. Trump appears to want them harmed for personal/political reasons but if they broke the law are the investigations justified?” Fishwick told Fox News Digital in a statement. “That question is putting an incredible stress test on our legal system.” Zaid noted that Bolton could bring claims of a selective or vindictive prosecution if he were indicted but that those are difficult to prove. Attorney Jason Kander, an army veteran and former secretary of state of Missouri, said on the podcast Talking Feds that even if the DOJ does not secure a conviction against Bolton, the legal process itself is punishment. “It’s not just harassment. It’s potential financial ruin,” Kander said. “When they come after you like this it doesn’t matter if there isn’t a scintilla of evidence. It’s a minimum half a million bucks in legal fees in a situation like this.”