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Immigration News Today: Trump Pauses Visa Appointments Worldwide

Immigration News Today: Trump Pauses Visa Appointments Worldwide

Donald Trump

Trump, Kennedy, and the Monkey’s Paw

​Dozens of Trump supporters showed up to the annual St. Patricks Day Parade along Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Why is Trump's Base Still Loyal To Him?

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$40 Trillion National Debt & Future of Failed Supply-Side Economics

California court expedites Trump challenge to new tax returns requirement

California court expedites Trump challenge to new tax returns requirement

California's Supreme Court is expediting President Trump's challenge to a new state law that would require him to release five years of tax returns in order to get on the state ballot for the 2020 election.

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
Bill Theobald
By Bill TheobaldAug 22, 2019
Bill Theobald

Bill Theobald is senior writer at The Fulcrum, where he focuses on everything to do with voting. This December marks his 40th anniversary in the business, and he still believes -- now more than ever -- that the glow from great journalism can truly light the world.

See More Writings by author

The California Supreme Court is fast-tracking its review of a challenge to a new law that would require President Trump to make public his tax returns in order to get on the state's ballot for the 2020 election.

A lawsuit seeking to block implementation of the law was filed August 6 by the California Republican Party against Secretary of State Alex Padilla. It claims the law violates California's constitution.

Two other challenges, one filed by Trump's personal lawyers, are pending in federal court.

Trump refused to release his tax returns during the 2016 election campaign, bucking a practice followed by every presidential candidate for decades.

The court issued an expedited schedule on Wednesday requiring attorneys on both sides to file legal papers by mid-September, including anyone who wants to file briefs supporting either side.

The California law requires presidential candidates to release five years of tax returns in order to appear on the ballot. Democrats control both houses of the California Legislature and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill in late July.


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U.S. Capitol.

A rundown of the House bills most likely to become law this week — from seafood fraud enforcement to a sanctions bill critics call a tariff bill.

Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash

Both Chambers in Session this Week

Last Minute Rush

We’re not going to describe every bill the House aims to take action on this week because there’s lots. Instead, we’re going to focus on the ones that will become law if passed by the House and pull a few notable bills at the beginning of the legislative process. We’ll use the same level of discretion at the end of this week when we review what actually happened between today, Monday Sept. 14 and Friday, Sept. 18.

Probable New Laws

In addition to the bills listed below are also a couple of park renamings. All of these will, if passed, then go to the President for signing and once that’s done, become law.

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The White House, Washington, DC
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Photo by Tomasz Zielonka on Unsplash

We Can and Should Reform the President’s Pardon Power

On August 21, Congressman Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, released a report entitled “Pardons, Inc.: How Trump and His Clemency-for-Cash Racket Let White-Collar Criminals and International Drug Dealers Walk Free and Dodge Billions in Restitution Owed to Their Victims.” As the title suggests, the report documents the president’s startling abuse of his constitutional power to grant pardons and reprieves.

If that problem were limited to Trump, we might look to the ballot box to remedy it. But it is not.

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The Trump Administration’s Plan for Protecting Consumers? Politely Ask Companies to Behave.

Russell Vought, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, testified before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in July.

Samuel Corum/Sipa USA via AP Images

The Trump Administration’s Plan for Protecting Consumers? Politely Ask Companies to Behave.

In mid-July testimony before Congress, Russell Vought boasted that, as the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he’d refashioned the agency’s approach to pursuing banks and other financial companies accused of exploiting Americans — the role Congress had created for the agency after the 2008 economic crash.

Vought had spent the first 18 months of the new Trump administration trying to dismantle the bureau, much as he and other appointees had done with the U.S. Agency for International Development. At CFPB, he’d ordered mass layoffs, tried to choke off the bureau’s funding and ended the lease on its headquarters, attempting to make good on his vow to put civil servants “in trauma.” But federal courts blocked Vought’s efforts to close the CFPB, with a judge at one point saying the administration had acted with “complete disregard” for Congress.

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man walks near the Punta Cardon refinery, on Jan. 23, 2026. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world with an estimated 303 billion barrels.

(Jesus Vargas/dpa via ZUMA Press/TNS)

Americans should be concerned about the fine print on Trump’s new oil deal

So, it was a war for oil after all.

On social media Friday, President Trump announced that the United States and Venezuela have struck an agreement for “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY.”

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