A Florida state lawmaker has filed a bill that would ban some public colleges and universities from admitting immigrants who are in the country without legal permission. The proposal comes the day after Gov. Ron DeSantis called for a special legislative session to help implement President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

The proposal was filed Tuesday by Republican state Sen. Randy Fine, who is currently running for a seat in Congress to replace Rep. Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security advisor.

“Is it fair to allow an illegal immigrant to take a spot that could be taken by a Floridian or an American? I would argue no,” Fine said.

Representatives for Florida’s public college and university systems did not immediately respond to questions on how many students could be affected by Fine’s bill, which would ban public schools of higher education with an acceptance rate of less than 85% from admitting students in the country without legal authorization.

The University of Florida, Florida State University, the University of Central Florida and Florida International University are among institutions that would be affected, according to the schools’ admissions data.

Fine’s proposal would mark a significant policy shift in the state, which is home to an estimated 1.2 million immigrants living in the U.S. without permission, according to the Pew Research Center. Currently, Florida students who are without such permission can qualify for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities. Fine has also filed a bill that would repeal that provision.

During the 2023-2024 school year, about 6,500 unauthorized students qualified for a waiver from paying out-of-state tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities, according to the nonprofit Florida Policy Institute.

Three states bar students without legal authorization from enrolling in at least some colleges, while half of states have policies allowing unauthorized students to qualify for in-state tuition, according to the National Immigration Law Center.

Gaby Pacheco was once an unauthorized college student in Florida and now leads TheDream.US, a national organization that provides scholarships to immigrant students who don’t have legal authorization. She called Fine’s proposal “harmful” and “self-defeating” at a time when Florida schools are seeing enrollment declines.

“We’re failing to see as Floridians the impact that is going to have when you’re removing people who have been here for 10, 15 years,” she said. “This is their home.”

DeSantis, who scheduled the special session to begin the week after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, has said the state must take action to support the incoming president’s promised immigration crackdown and ensure that “we don’t have any lingering incentives for people to come into our state illegally.” DeSantis pushed his own anti-immigration agenda during his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

The governor has faced pushback from the legislature’s Republican leaders, who labeled his call for a special session “premature” and “irresponsible.” Trump thanked DeSantis in a social media post on Tuesday, saying “hopefully other Governors will follow!”

Fine is among the Republican lawmakers who have pledged support for Trump and his agenda but have criticized the governor’s push for a special session as rushed.

President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to call off Friday’s sentencing in his hush money case in New York.

Trump’s lawyers turned to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday after New York courts refused to postpone the sentencing by Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump has denied wrongdoing.

The justices asked for a response from prosecutors by Thursday morning. Trump’s team sought an immediate stay of the scheduled sentencing, saying it would wrongly restrict him as he prepares to take office. While Merchan has indicated he will not impose jail time, fines or probation, Trump’s lawyers argued a felony conviction would still have intolerable side effects.

The sentencing should be delayed as he appeals the conviction to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government,” they argued.

The emergency motion is from lawyers John Sauer, Trump’s pick for solicitor general, who represents the government before the high court, and Todd Blanche, in line to be the second-ranking official at the Justice Department.

They also pointed to the Supreme Court ruling giving Trump and other presidents broad immunity from prosecutions over their actions in office, saying it supports their argument that his New York conviction should be overturned.

Their filing said the New York trial court “lacks authority to impose sentence and judgment on President Trump — or conduct any further criminal proceedings against him— until the resolution of his underlying appeal raising substantial claims of Presidential immunity, including by review in this Court if necessary.”

The Republican president-elect’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, called for the case to be dismissed in a statement. Trump simultaneously filed an emergency appeal in front of New York’s highest court.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, said it will respond in court papers. Trump’s convictions arose from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election.

Daniels claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. He denies it.

The Supreme Court’s immunity opinion came in a separate election interference case against him, but Trump’s lawyers say it means some of the evidence used against him in his hush money trial should have been shielded by presidential immunity. That includes testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office.

Merchan has disagreed, finding they would qualify as personal business. The Supreme Court’s immunity decision was largely about official acts of presidents while in office.

Faced with the never-before-seen dilemma of how, when or even whether to sentence a former and future U.S. president, the judge in President-elect Donald Trump ‘s hush money case made a dramatic decision that could nevertheless bring the case to a muted end.

In a ruling Friday, Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan scheduled the sentencing for 10 days before Trump’s inauguration — but the judge indicated that he’s leaning toward a sentence that would amount to just closing the case without any real punishment. He said Trump could attend the Jan. 10 proceeding remotely because of his transition duties.

Still, that would leave Trump headed back to the White House with a felony conviction.

Will it come to that? Trump wants the conviction thrown out and the case dismissed, and communications director Steven Cheung said the president-elect will “keep fighting.” But it’s tough to predict just what will unfold in this unprecedented, unpredictable case. Here are some key questions and what we know about the answers:

Trump was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying his business’ records. They pertained to a $130,000 payment, made through his former personal lawyer in 2016, to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from publicizing her story of having had sex with Trump a decade earlier. He denies her claim and says he’s done nothing wrong.

Trump’s sentencing was initially set for July 11. But at his lawyers’ request, the proceeding was postponed twice, eventually landing on a date in late November, after the presidential election. Then Trump won, and Merchan put everything on hold to consider what to do.

That won’t be final until the judge pronounces it, and he noted that by law, he has to give prosecutors and Trump an opportunity to weigh in. The charges carry potential penalties ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison.

But the judge wrote that “the most viable option” appears to be what’s called an unconditional discharge. It wraps up a case without imprisonment, a fine or probation. But an unconditional discharge leaves a defendant’s conviction on the books.

And by law, every person convicted of a felony in New York must provide a DNA sample for the state’s crime databank, even in cases of an unconditional discharge.

Can Trump appeal to stop the sentencing from happening?

It’s murky. Appealing a conviction or sentence is one thing, but the ins and outs of challenging other types of decisions during a case are complicated.

Former Manhattan Judge Diane Kiesel said that under New York law, Friday’s ruling can’t be appealed, but that “doesn’t mean he’s not going to try.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers have been trying to get a federal court to take control of the case. Prosecutors are due to file a response with the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by Jan. 13, three days after Trump now is to be sentenced.

The defense also has suggested it would seek the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention if Merchan didn’t throw out the case. In a Nov. 25 letter to the judge, Trump’s attorneys contended that the U.S. Constitution permits an appeal to the high court because the defense is making arguments about presidential immunity.

Much of their argument concerns the Supreme Court’s July ruling on that topic, which afforded considerable legal protections to presidents. Trump’s attorneys might try to convince the Supreme Court that it needs to follow up by getting involved now in the hush money case.

A Trump spokesperson said no decision had been made on whether to challenge Merchan’s ruling.

Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a civil lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices.

The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in an Oakland, California, federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade.

The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn't seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, "Hey, Siri." Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted.

The allegations about a snoopy Siri contradicted Apple's long-running commitment to protect the privacy of its customers — a crusade that CEO Tim Cook has often framed as a fight to preserve "a fundamental human right."

Apple isn't acknowledging any wrongdoing in the settlement, which still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. Lawyers in the case have proposed scheduling a Feb. 14 court hearing in Oakland to review the terms.

If the settlement is approved, tens of millions of consumers who owned iPhones and other Apple devices from Sept. 17, 2014, through the end of last year could file claims. Each consumer could receive up to $20 per Siri-equipped device covered by the settlement, although the payment could be reduced or increased, depending on the volume of claims. Only 3% to 5% of eligible consumers are expected to file claims, according to estimates in court documents.

The settlement represents a sliver of the $705 billion in profits that Apple has pocketed since September 2014. It's also a fraction of the roughly $1.5 billion that the lawyers representing consumers had estimated Apple could been required to pay if the company had been found of violating wiretapping and other privacy laws had the case gone to a trial.

The attorneys who filed the lawsuit may seek up to $29.6 million from the settlement fund to cover their fees and other expenses, according to court documents.

President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a "political resolution" to the issue.
After President Biden signed a law banning TikTok unless it divests from its China-based owner ByteDance, the viral video app sued to block it, arguing the act violates the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans.

The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk.

"President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act's deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case," said Trump's amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case and was written by D. John Sauer, Trump's choice for solicitor general.

The argument submitted to the court is the latest example of Trump inserting himself in national issues before he takes office. The Republican president-elect has already begun negotiating with other countries over his plans to impose tariffs, and he intervened earlier this month in a plan to fund the federal government, calling for a bipartisan plan to be rejected and sending Republicans back to the negotiating table.

Trump has also reversed his position on the popular app, having tried to ban it during his first term in office over national security concerns. He joined the app during his 2024 presidential campaign and his team used it to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, by pushing content that was often macho and aimed at going viral.

He said earlier this year that he still believed there were national security risks with TikTok, but that he opposed banning it. This month, Trump also met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. The filings Friday come ahead of oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 10 on whether the law, which requires TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company or face a ban, unlawfully restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment. The law was was signed by President Joe Biden in April after it passed Congress with broad bipartisan support. TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge afterwards.

Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the statute, leading TikTok to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. The brief from Trump said he opposes banning TikTok at this junction and "seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office."

In their brief to the Supreme Court on Friday, attorneys for TikTok and its parent company ByteDance argued the federal appeals court erred in its ruling and based its decision on "alleged 'risks' that China could exercise control" over TikTok's U.S. platform by pressuring its foreign affiliates.

The Biden administration has argued in court that TikTok poses a national security risk due to its connections to China. Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok's U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information.

But the government "concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so," TikTok's legal filing said, adding that the U.S. fears are predicated on future risks.

In its filing Friday, the Biden administration said because TikTok "is integrated with ByteDance and relies on its propriety engine developed and maintained in China," its corporate structure carries with it risk.