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The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 19, 2025. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block a lower court order restricting the Department of Homeland Security from deporting illegal immigrants to nations other than their home countries.

“On behalf of a nationwide class of aliens with final orders of removal, the district court issued an extraordinary preliminary injunction that restrains DHS from exercising its undisputed statutory authority to remove an alien to a country not specifically identified in his removal order (i.e., a ’third country’), unless DHS first satisfies an onerous set of procedures invented by the district court to assess any potential claim under the Convention Against Torture,” the Justice Department said in a filing on Tuesday.

It added that, “Those judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third country removal process.”

The administration said it had been removing individuals to South Sudan, but was blocked by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts.

The administration “was in the process of removing a group of criminal aliens who had been in the country for years or decades after receiving final orders of removal, despite having committed horrific crimes,” according to the filing.

That included people convicted of murder, sexually abusing a child, and sexually abusing a mentally handicapped woman.

Murphy has issued multiple orders over the past few months blocking potential deportations. In April, he said that individuals should be given a chance to explain why deportation to a new country would “likely result in their persecution, torture, and/or death.”

“This small modicum of process is mandated by the Constitution of the United States,” he added. (💬 Comment)

More Politics:

Health officials on Tuesday said they’re no longer recommendingthe COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a video on social media platform X that the vaccines will be removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s online versions of the schedules, which say they were published in 2024, still list the COVID-19 vaccine.

The latest versions of the vaccines were cleared by the Food and Drug Administration in 2024 without any clinical data. The CDC previously advised pregnant women and children to receive at least one dose of the currently available formulations of the shots, even if they had previously been vaccinated.

Those recommendations came “despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children,” Kennedy said.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, said in the video: “That ends today. It’s common sense, and it’s good science.”

Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA’s commissioner, added: “There’s no evidence healthy kids need it today, and most countries have stopped recommending it for children.”

The CDC, FDA, and National Institutes of Health are all part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which Kennedy heads. (💬 Comment)

More U.S. News

As the international community closely monitors the global spread of Omicron variant NB.1.8.1, China announced on May 23 that it is the primary variant spreading in the country.

On the same day, a World Health Organization advisory group classified NB.1.8.1 as a variant under monitoring, due to its increasing detection in monitoring efforts around the globe.

The WHO said they currently consider the NB.1.8.1 variant, first detected in January this year, to have a low risk to public health “at the global level.”

As of May 18, 518 sequences of the new variant had been submitted by 22 countries to GISAID, a global influenza and COVID-19 virus genome sequence database, accounting for 10.7 percent of global sequences in for the week of April 21-27. This represents a significant increase in detection of the variant from 2.5 percent in the week from March 31 to April 6.

NB.1.8.1’s dominance is particularly pronounced among China’s immediate neighbors in Asia.

China last month reported a sharp increase in reported COVID cases, mostly driven by the NB.1.8.1 variant, with residents reporting symptoms including severe burning throat pain, cough, and fever. (More)

More World News:

📷 Photo of the Day: Two men wash sheep in the river ahead of Eid al-Adha in Srinagar, India, on May 27, 2025. This year’s celebrations are subdued after the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 25 civilians. Faisal Khan/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Our photography editors comb through the best images in the world every day. See their picks for today here ➞ Day in Photos: Dragon Boat Race, Heavy Rainfall in Pakistan, and Young Malay Bear

🇺🇲 American Thoughts Leaders: Jonah Platt: The Incredible Story of Muslims and Jews Visiting Auschwitz Together (Watch)

🎙 Podcast: Li Shaomin is a professor of international business at Old Dominion University in Virginia. He shares his intriguing life story of how he lived through China’s communist propaganda, painted it, and suddenly broke free from it. (Listen)

✍️ Opinion: Beijing Turns Its Eye Toward Latin America, by Milton Ezrati (Read)

🎵 Music: Bach – Brandenburg Concertos (Listen)

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While the physical toll of obesity is well-known, mounting research shows that excess body fat changes the brain, affecting how we think, feel, and understand.

The connection is made worse because calorie-rich, highly tasty foods can hijack our brain’s reward system, making them almost impossible to resist.

The relationship between obesity and the brain is fueled by a continuous, self-reinforcing loop, in which obesity stems from certain behaviors while also reinforcing and perpetuating them.

Our brains are wired to find pleasure in calorie-dense foods, a deeply ingrained evolutionary trait that once served us well in times of scarcity. However, in today’s abundant food environment, this wiring becomes a problem.

Foods high in sugar, fat, and salt trigger a strong release of dopamine in the brain, create a powerful sense of pleasure, and reinforce the desire to keep eating them. Ultra-processed foods are designed to overstimulate this reward pathway, effectively hijacking our natural satiety signals and making it harder to know when we’ve had enough.

Research also suggests that people with obesity are more likely to make riskier choices in situations involving calculable risks, particularly when the potential downside is low. This might explain certain food choices, even when the health consequences are known.

Adding fuel to this cycle is the relentless marketing of unhealthy foods. The average person is exposed to around 2,000 ads for food every day, Dr. Eric Akin, a neurosurgeon who reversed his prediabetes, told The Epoch Times. Most of those ads are for very calorie-dense, nutrient-poor, sugar-laden foods. (More)

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Thanks for reading.

Have a wonderful day.

—Ivan Pentchoukov, Madalina Hubert, and Kenzi Li.

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