Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to the US, charged with transporting people in the country illegally

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador became a political flashpoint in the Trump administration's stepped-up immigration enforcement, was returned to the United States on Friday to face criminal charges related to what the Trump administration said was a large human smuggling operation that brought immigrants into the country illegally.

His abrupt release from El Salvador closes one chapter and opens another in a saga that yielded a remarkable, months-long standoff between Trump officials and the courts over a deportation that officials initially acknowledged was done in error but then continued to stand behind in apparent defiance of orders by judges to facilitate his return to the U.S.

The development occurred after U.S. officials presented El Salvador President Nayib Bukele with an arrest warrant for federal charges in Tennessee accusing Abrego Garcia of playing a key role in smuggling immigrants into the country for money. He is expected to be prosecuted in the U.S. and, if convicted, will be returned to his home country of El Salvador at the conclusion of the case, officials said Friday.

“This is what American justice looks like,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in announcing Abrego Garcia's return and the unsealing of a grand jury indictment.

Abrego Garcia's attorneys called the case “baseless."

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Trump administration asks Supreme Court to leave mass layoffs at Education Department in place

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause a court order to reinstate Education Department employees who were fired in mass layoffs as part of his plan to dismantle the agency.

The Justice Department’s emergency appeal to the high court said U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston exceeded his authority last month when he issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs of nearly 1,400 people and putting the broader plan on hold.

Joun’s order has blocked one of the Republican president’s biggest campaign promises and effectively stalled the effort to wind down the department. A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed.

The judge wrote that the layoffs “will likely cripple the department.”

But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on Friday that Joun was substituting his policy preferences for those of the Trump administration.

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Sean 'Diddy' Combs' ex-girlfriend sobs in court, saying he ignored her pleas to end sex marathons

NEW YORK (AP) — A woman who was dating Sean “Diddy” Combs at the time of his arrest last year broke down Friday describing their many drug-fueled sex marathons, saying the music mogul ignored her signals to stop and scolded her for crying after another encounter.

Testifying under the pseudonym “Jane” for a second day, the woman recounted how Combs pushed her to continue having sex with men while he watched even after she gave “subtle cues” — saying she was tired and hungry, making faces and gestures — that she wanted to stop. Instead, she said, he told her to “finish strong.”

Asked why she didn't tell him outright, Jane sobbed, “I just, I don’t know.” Later, she said Combs would shut her down when she tried to talk about ending the encounters, which she called “dark" and "sleazy.”

Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to running his business empire as a racketeering enterprise that enabled and concealed the abuse of women over two decades. If convicted, he faces 15 years to life. The defense has asserted the sexual activities were all consensual and nothing Combs did amounted to a criminal enterprise.

Jane’s account in the trial's fourth week has closely mirrored that of R&B singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, another former girlfriend who testified Combs assaulted her and forced her into “hundreds” of encounters with male sex workers dubbed “ freak-offs.” Jane called them “hotel nights” and the men “entertainers.”

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Ex-police chief and convicted killer who escaped from an Arkansas prison has been captured

A former police chief and convicted killer known as the “Devil in the Ozarks” was captured by law enforcement 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) northwest of the prison he escaped from following a massive, nearly two-week-long manhunt in the rugged mountains of northern Arkansas, authorities announced Friday.

Grant Hardin, a former police chief in the small town of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was serving lengthy sentences for murder and rape. Eventually, his notoriety led to a TV documentary, “Devil in the Ozarks.”

Hardin briefly attempted to run from officers when he saw them approach Friday afternoon, but he was quickly tackled to the ground, said Rand Champion, a spokesperson for the Arkansas prison system.

“He’d been on the run for a week and a half and probably didn’t have any energy left in him,” he added.

Hardin’s identity was confirmed through fingerprinting, the Izard County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.

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Employers add a solid 139,000 jobs in May, though hiring slows as some potential weaknesses appear

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers slowed hiring last month, but still added a solid 139,000 jobs amid uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s trade wars.

Hiring fell from a revised 147,000 in April, the Department of Labor said Friday. The job gains last month were above the 130,000 that economists had forecast.

Healthcare companies added 62,000 jobs and bars and restaurants 30,000. The federal government shed 22,000 jobs, however, the most since November 2020, as Trump's job cuts and hiring freeze had an impact. And factories lost 8,000 jobs last month.

Average hourly wages rose 0.4% from April and 3.9% from a year earlier – a bit higher than forecast.

There were a few signs of potential weakening. Labor Department revisions shaved 95,000 jobs from March and April payrolls. The number of people in the U.S. labor force – those working or looking for work – fell by 625,000 last month, the biggest drop since December 2023. And the percentage of those who had jobs fell last month to 59.7%, the lowest since January 2022.

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Measles outbreaks in Michigan and Pennsylvania end, while Texas logs just 4 new cases

The U.S. logged 122 more cases of measles this week — but only four of them in Texas — while the outbreaks in Pennsylvania and Michigan have officially ended.

There are 1,168 confirmed measles cases in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. Health officials in Texas, where the nation's biggest outbreak raged during the late winter and spring, said they'll now post case counts only once a week — yet another sign the outbreak is slowing.

There are three other major outbreaks in North America. The longest, in Ontario, Canada, has resulted in 2,009 cases from mid-October through June 3. The province logged its first death Thursday in a baby that got congenital measles but also had other preexisting conditions.

Another outbreak in Alberta, Canada, has sickened 761 as of Thursday. And the Mexican state of Chihuahua had 1,940 measles cases and four deaths as of Friday, according to data from the state health ministry.

Other U.S. states with active outbreaks — which the CDC defines as three or more related cases — include Colorado, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio and Tennessee.

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Federal vs. state power at issue in a hearing over Trump's election overhaul executive order

BOSTON (AP) — Democratic state attorneys general and government lawyers argued Friday over the implications of President Donald Trump's proposed overhaul of U.S. elections and whether the changes could be made in time for next year's midterm elections, how much it would cost the states and, more broadly, whether the president has a right to do any of it in the first place.

The top law enforcement officials from 19 states filed a federal lawsuit after the Republican president signed the executive order in March, saying its provisions would step on states' power to set their own election rules.

During a hearing in U.S. District Court in Boston, lawyers for the states told Judge Denise J. Casper that the changes outlined in the order would be costly and could not be implemented quickly. Updating the voter registration database just in California would cost the state more than $1 million and take up to a year, said the states' lead attorney, Kevin Quade, a deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice.

The lawyers said making the changes would take time away from preparing for the next round of elections, potentially undermining public confidence in the voting process.

"The provisions of the executive order cast doubt and shadow on the ability of states to fairly implement federal elections at the local level, and those types of goodwill and reputational harm ... are not the type that can be easily repaired,” Quade said.

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Wall Street gains ground following a solid jobs report and marks another winning week

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks gained ground on Wall Street Friday following a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market.

The gains were broad, with every sector in the S&P 500 rising. That solidified a second consecutive winning week for the benchmark index, which has rallied back from a slump two months ago to come within striking distance of its record high.

The S&P 500 rose 61.06 points, or 1%, to 6,000.36. It is now within 2.3% of its record.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 443.13 points, or 1%, to 42,762.87. The Nasdaq rose 231.50 points, or 1.2%, to 19,529.95.

Technology stocks, with their outsized values, led the broad gains. Chipmaker Nvidia jumped 1.2% and iPhone maker Apple rose 1.6%.

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Republicans urge Donald Trump and Elon Musk to end their feud

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the Republican Party braces for aftershocks from President Donald Trump's spectacular clash with Elon Musk, lawmakers and conservative figures are urging détente, fearful of the potential consequences from a prolonged feud.

At a minimum, the explosion of animosity between the two powerful men could complicate the path forward for Republicans' massive tax and border spending legislation that has been promoted by Trump but assailed by Musk.

“I hope it doesn’t distract us from getting the job done that we need to,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington state. "I think that it will boil over and they’ll mend fences.”

As of Friday afternoon, Musk was holding his fire, posting about his various companies on social media rather than torching the president. Trump departed the White House for his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, without stopping to talk to reporters who shouted questions about his battle with Musk.

“I hope that both of them come back together because when the two of them are working together, we’ll get a lot more done for America than when they’re at cross purposes,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night.

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Appeals court hands AP an incremental loss in its attempt to regain its access to Trump events

Digging deep into free-speech precedents in recent American history, a federal appeals panel handed The Associated Press an incremental loss on Friday in its continuing battle with the Trump administration over access by its journalists to cover presidential events.

By a 2-1 margin, judges on the three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington granted Trump a stay in enforcement of a lower-court ruling that the administration had improperly punished the AP for the content of its speech — in this case not renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Trump's liking.

The news outlet's access to events in the Oval Office and Air Force One was cut back starting in February after the AP said it would continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico in its copy, while noting Trump's wishes that it instead be renamed the Gulf of America.

For decades, a reporter and photographer for the AP — a 179-year-old wire service whose material is sent to thousands of news outlets across the world and carried on its own website, reaching billions of people — had been part of a “pool” that covers a president in places where space is limited.

The decision itself was aimed only at whether to continue the stay. But the majority and dissenting opinions together totaled 55 pages and delved deeply into First Amendment precedents and questions about whether places like the Oval Office and Air Force One were, in effect, private spaces.

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