标签： North America

In an extremely rare public appearance before lawmakers on Capitol Hill, two sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justices from opposite ideological sides joined forces Tuesday to urge Congress to approve a massive $228 million budget request that would dramatically increase security funding for the nation’s highest court. The proposed budget marks a 53% jump from the previous year’s allocation, with the overwhelming majority of the new funding earmarked for expanded safety protections for justices and their families amid a documented surge in violent threats.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court in 2020, opened her testimony before the House Appropriations Committee by detailing the daily toll that constant safety risks have placed on her personal life, including two alarming incidents that brought threats directly to her door. Just six weeks before her testimony, Barrett was targeted in a dangerous swatting attack, a harmful prank where bad actors send false emergency reports to draw heavily armed police responses to a target’s home. Barrett described the chaos of dozens of law enforcement vehicles surrounding her residential property after a caller falsely reported an active shooting with multiple casualties at her home.

Barrett also recalled a troubling moment shortly after she joined the 2022 majority vote to overturn the federal constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade: her own security detail provided her with a bulletproof vest to wear at all times outside the court. She told the committee that the hardest part of the constant threat has been explaining safety measures to her children, saying, “I didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.”

Joining Barrett was veteran liberal Justice Elena Kagan, who echoed the call for increased funding, citing official court police projections that violent threats against Supreme Court justices will jump 38% this fiscal year alone. Kagan emphasized that growing political polarization across the United States has supercharged threats, while rapid advances in artificial intelligence have opened new dangerous vectors of attack, including exponentially more sophisticated and frequent cyberattacks targeting court infrastructure.

“For some of us, those threats have come very close, and all of us live with the knowledge that they may again materialize,” Kagan told lawmakers, adding that AI-powered cyber threats have grown “by magnitudes” in recent years, outpacing the court’s existing security capacity.

Data presented during the hearing backed up the justices’ concerns. Citing a recent report from the U.S. Marshals Service, committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro noted that as of July 1, more than 370 threats against federal judges have already been documented in the current fiscal year – a 31% increase compared to the same period last year, a trend DeLauro called “deeply alarming.”

One of the most high-profile recent threats targeted Chief Justice John Roberts: in October, a woman was sentenced to eight years in federal prison after law enforcement found a vehicle stocked with multiple firearms and discovered she had explicitly planned to harm Roberts. The incident underscored the immediate nature of the risks justices face.

Barrett told committee members that the court currently assigns between four and eight security personnel to each justice for around-the-clock protection, depending on the context and threat level. She explained that the additional funding would allow the court to expand security details to bring protection for Supreme Court justices in line with that provided to U.S. cabinet-level officials, who receive more robust permanent security support.

“The threats are constant and they’re always there,” Barrett said.

Tuesday’s hearing marked the first time sitting Supreme Court justices have testified before this congressional committee since 2019, a rare break from the court’s usual tradition of keeping public engagements with lawmakers limited. Multiple committee members used the hearing to note that more frequent public engagement between the court and Congress could help rebuild fading public trust in the nation’s highest judicial body. Recent polling from the Pew Research Center finds that just 50% of U.S. adults now hold a favorable view of the Supreme Court, down sharply from 70% just two years ago.

The appearance comes just weeks after the Supreme Court wrapped up its 2025-2026 term, which saw the court issue landmark divisive rulings on high-profile issues ranging from trade tariffs and voting rights to birthright citizenship. As with most recent terms, the decisions drew both fierce praise and fierce criticism from across the political spectrum, with a wave of targeted harassment directed at justices in the aftermath of the most contentious rulings.

Three years after a U.S. civil court found former President Donald Trump legally liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, Carroll’s legal team has confirmed that the full awarded damages plus accrued interest, totaling more than $5.62 million, have been successfully transferred to Carroll.

In a brief public statement released Tuesday, Roberta Kaplan, lead counsel for Carroll, confirmed that the long-awaited payment aligned with the damages grant originally handed down by the jury. The resolution comes after a drawn-out series of appeals and efforts by Trump’s legal team to delay the disbursement, which concluded only after a court order forced the payout last week. A spokesperson for Trump’s legal camp declined to issue any on-the-record comment about the completed transfer.

The case at the center of the payment dates back to the mid-1990s, when Carroll, now an 82-year-old former magazine columnist, alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her inside a fitting room at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. Years later, Carroll filed her civil suit after Trump issued a categorical denial of her claims on his Truth Social platform in 2022, which she argued amounted to defamation.

In 2023, a jury seated in New York reached a unanimous verdict upholding Carroll’s claims and ordered Trump to pay $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Immediately after the ruling, Trump deposited the awarded sum into a court-managed holding account, where it remained frozen through the multi-year appeals process.

Trump and his legal team have repeatedly denounced the entire proceedings as a politically motivated “hoax” and “witch hunt”, claiming the case was improperly financed by Democratic political opponents. They have also argued that presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan improperly allowed evidence that biased the jury against their client, creating unfair prejudice. These legal challenges were rejected repeatedly by higher courts: a federal appeals court upheld the jury’s original verdict last year, finding that Kaplan had not committed legal errors that would justify overturning the ruling or ordering a new trial. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Trump’s appeal, removing the final legal barrier to the release of funds to Carroll.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, Carroll celebrated the outcome in a post on her Substack blog, writing: “WE WON!” and adding, “THIS WIN IS FOR EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD!”

This is not the only outstanding legal defeat for Trump related to his interactions with Carroll. In a separate 2024 defamation case brought by Carroll, a second jury found Trump liable and awarded Carroll nearly $84 million in additional damages. Trump has appealed that ruling as well, but a panel of federal judges has already rejected his challenge to that verdict.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has issued an urgent directive ordering its agents to pause nearly all routine vehicle stops across the country, a sweeping policy change triggered by two recent fatal shootings of immigrants by agency personnel in Texas and Maine that have reignited widespread anger over the agency’s use of force. Multiple U.S. media outlets, citing anonymous law enforcement sources, confirmed that the suspension only excludes stops targeting individuals linked to serious criminal activity.

This policy shift comes as ICE has faced mounting scrutiny over the last year, with repeated accusations of excessive force and growing public and political backlash over multiple deaths that have occurred during the agency’s immigration enforcement operations. The BBC has formally reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, to request official comment on the new suspension order.

The most recent deadly incident unfolded in Biddeford, Maine, roughly 15 miles south of Portland, where an ICE agent shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian national during a routine enforcement operation. DHS officials have claimed the officer opened fire “fearing for public safety” after the man attempted to drive away from the scene when agents tried to stop his vehicle, but the department has offered no specific details about what threat the man was alleged to pose.

Immigration advocates have pushed back on the official account, confirming that the man — who has not yet been formally identified publicly — held valid work authorization in the U.S. and had a Social Security number. In a joint statement condemning the killing, the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine called the death “devastating, enraging, and unacceptable.”

Less than one week before the Maine shooting, a second fatal incident left 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who had lived in the U.S. for decades, dead after an ICE officer shot him during a morning stop in Houston, Texas. Araujo was shot while driving to his job at approximately 7 a.m. local time. DHS later clarified that agents initiated the stop after mistaking Araujo for a target in an ongoing operation, claiming the officer acted in self-defense during the encounter. However, witnesses who were passengers in Araujo’s van and the victim’s family have directly disputed DHS’s version of events, and the agency’s independent watchdog has launched a formal investigation into the killing.

Protests have broken out across the country in response to both of the latest fatal shootings. The two deaths are not isolated incidents: earlier this year, nationwide protests erupted after two U.S. citizens, 37-year-old Renée Good and 37-year-old Alex Pretti, were shot and killed by ICE agents during January raids in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since January 2025, at least seven people have been killed during ICE enforcement operations, according to reporting from Reuters.

The growing backlash over these deaths has already triggered leadership changes at the top of DHS. After returning to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump — who fulfilled a core campaign promise by launching a large-scale mass deportation campaign shortly after taking office — replaced former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem with U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. Former Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino was also removed from his post not long after the leadership shakeup at the agency.