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WH challenges judges’ compliance probes on deportation orders

NEW YORK (Reuters) — The Trump administration is appealing efforts by two judges to investigate whether government officials defied their rulings over the deportation of migrants to El Salvador, escalating a confrontation between the executive and judicial branches

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On Wednesday night, the Justice Department said it would appeal Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s finding that there was probable cause to believe the government had violated his order to return alleged members of a Venezuelan gang who were deported to El Salvador on March 15 under an 18th-century wartime law. Boasberg said administration officials could face criminal contempt charges.

Also late on Wednesday, government lawyers asked the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stop U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland from ordering U.S. officials to provide documents and answer questions under oath about what they had done to secure the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.

In both cases, the Trump administration has denied it violated court orders and accused judges of overstepping their authority.

“A single district court has inserted itself into the foreign policy of the United States and has tried to dictate it from the bench,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote in its filing with the Fourth Circuit. “Emergency relief is needed.”

The Trump administration faces more than 150 legal challenges to its policies. Democrats and some legal analysts say officials in some cases are dragging their feet in complying with unfavorable court orders, signaling a potential willingness to disobey an independent, coequal branch of government.

Cable car falls and breaks apart in Italy, killing at least 4 people

ROME (NYT) — At least four people were killed on Thursday afternoon after a cable car plunged to earth, rolled down a mountainside and broke apart on Monte Faito, south of Naples, Italian officials said.

A fifth person was in critical condition, according to Luca Cari, a national spokesperson for Italy’s firefighters. “These are very ugly situations,” he said in a phone interview.

The cause of the crash was not immediately clear. The nationalities and identifications of four of the victims, described by officials as tourists, were not immediately released. One victim was an employee of EAV, the public transportation company that manages the cable car, officials said.

Nine people became trapped on another cable car that had stalled lower in the valley, near the town of Castellammare di Stabia, because of the crash, Cari said. They were rescued by firefighters who managed to bring them to the ground one by one using harnesses.

Prosecutors in the nearby town of Torre Annunziata, which has judicial oversight over Castellammare di Stabia, have opened an investigation into the crash.

More than 50 firefighters were involved in the rescue operations. Some worked to remove a piece of cable that had fallen on a local railway and onto the roof of a house, according to a statement by the firefighters.

Bad weather conditions — high winds and fog — made rescue operations difficult “even on foot,” Vincenzo De Luca, the governor of the Campania region, which contains Monte Faito, told the national broadcaster, RAI.