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American R&B singer Chris Brown, former boyfriend of superstar Rihanna, was Friday remanded in custody until June 13 by a UK court, charged with assault over a 2023 incident.The judge’s decision to reject his bail request throws into doubt the start of Brown’s next tour, with shows already sold-out in the Netherlands on June 8 and Germany on June 11.Brown, 36, was arrested in the early hours of Thursday at a Manchester hotel and then charged over the alleged assault at a London nightclub in 2023, police said.He appeared at Manchester Magistrates’ Court on Friday, where District Judge Joanne Hirst remanded him in custody until a plea and trial preparation hearing at London’s Southwark Crown Court on June 13.Brown is due to play in Germany that day, and has a series of shows planned in the UK and Europe during June and July, before heading to the United States. The singer is known for mid-2000s hits such as “Kiss, Kiss” as well as a litany of legal troubles including a felony conviction for assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. He has also faced criminal accusations including sexual assault and domestic violence.- Hotel arrest -Brown was charged with “grievous bodily harm with intent” in relation to “an assault, which reportedly took place at a venue in Hanover Square in London” on February 19, 2023, police said.Brown allegedly attacked music producer Abe Diaw with a bottle at Tape nightclub in London’s exclusive Mayfair district, The Sun daily reported.The singer, who has sold tens of millions of records worldwide, was touring the UK at the time of the alleged assault.Brown reportedly flew into Manchester airport by private jet on Wednesday afternoon.Police detained Brown at the five-star Lowry Hotel in Manchester, according to media reports.The two-time Grammy winner rose to fame at a young age with his rich R&B voice and later rap, but his reputation was later tarnished by allegations of domestic violence and other abuse.He was convicted of having beaten Rihanna before the 2009 Grammy Awards, forcing the pop star to miss the annual gala.In 2012, Brown was involved in an altercation at a New York nightclub with members of hip hop star Drake’s entourage, during which French basketball star Tony Parker suffered an eye injury after being hit by a thrown glass bottle.Two years later, he pleaded guilty to assaulting a fan in Washington.Brown, who rose from a local church choir in Virginia to sudden fame, was also arrested in 2016 after a woman alleged that he pointed a gun at her.

Russians and Ukrainians sat face-to-face for under two hours Friday in Istanbul for the first direct talks in over three years aimed at ending their war, with expectations low for breakthroughs.Kyiv is seeking an “unconditional ceasefire” in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II which has also destroyed large swathes of Ukraine and displaced millions of people.Moscow says it wanted to address the “root causes” of the conflict and revive failed 2022 negotiations in which it made sweeping territorial and political demands of Ukraine.Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan sat at the head of a table in front of Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian flags at Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace — with Russian and Ukrainian delegations facing each other, footage from the room showed.The talks concluded around 1220 GMT after just over 90 minutes, a Turkish foreign ministry source said.While the talks were ongoing, a Ukrainian diplomatic source told AFP that Russia was making “unacceptable” territorial demands in a bid to derail negotiations.Further talks may take place later on Friday but are not planned, a senior Ukrainian official told AFP.Speaking at a European summit in Albania, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged a “strong reaction” from the world if the talks fail, including new sanctions.The two sides spent the 24 hours before the talks slinging insults at each other with Zelensky accusing Moscow of sending “empty heads” to the negotiating table.- Putin ‘afraid’ -Nevertheless, the fact the meeting was taking place at all was a sign of movement, with both sides having come under steady pressure from Washington to open talks.Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to travel to Turkey for the talks, which he had proposed, sending a second-level delegation instead. Zelensky said Friday Putin was “afraid” of meeting, and criticised Russia for not taking the talks “seriously”.Both Moscow and Washington have also talked up the need for a meeting between Putin and US President Donald Trump on the conflict.”Contacts between presidents Putin and Trump are extremely important in the context of the Ukrainian settlement,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday, adding that “a meeting is undoubtedly necessary.”Trump had said Thursday that nothing would be settled until the two leaders met.”Our number one priority is a full, honest and unconditional ceasefire,” Zelensky said as talks were underway.”This must happen immediately to stop the killing and create a solid basis for diplomacy.”If a ceasefire cannot be agreed, “it will be 100 percent clear that Putin continues to undermine diplomacy,” he added.And in that case, “the world must respond. There needs to be a strong reaction, including sanctions on Russia’s energy sector and banks,” Zelensky said.- Rubio in Istanbul -Ahead of the talks, Ukrainian officials in Istanbul held meetings with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy Keith Kellogg and the national security advisors of Britain, France and Germany.Rubio urged a “peaceful” end to the war and said “the killing needs to stop”, according to State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce.A Ukrainian diplomatic source in Istanbul told AFP the delegation also wanted to discuss a possible Putin-Zelensky meeting.But while the talks were ongoing, the source said Russia was advancing hardline territorial demands.”Russian representatives are putting forward unacceptable demands… such as for Ukraine to withdraw forces from large parts of Ukrainian territory it controls in order for a ceasefire to begin,” the source said.They accused Moscow of seeking to “throw non-starters” so the talks end “without any results”.Leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and NATO chief Mark Rutte slammed Putin for skipping the Istanbul talks.Putin sent Vladimir Medinsky — a former cultural minister who is not seen as a key Kremlin decision-maker.Rubio acknowledged that the Russian representation was “not at the levels we had hoped it would be at” and downplayed expectations for a breakthrough. Russia’s Medinsky said Moscow saw Friday’s negotiations as a “continuation” of failed 2022 talks, which he led — a sign that Moscow’s hardline demands have not changed.But he pushed back against Zelensky’s criticism and insisted the Russian delegation has a mandate from Putin to “find possible solutions.”Russia has repeatedly said it will not discuss giving up any territory that its forces occupy. Kyiv’s chief negotiator is Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who has roots in Crimea, the peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014. Russia continued its attacks in the hours ahead of the talks, with Kyiv saying at least two people were killed.burs-jc/cad/jm

World Press Photo suspended on Friday the credit for who took one of the most iconic pictures in history, the Vietnam War image “Napalm Girl”, after doubts were raised over the photograph’s authorship.The organisation, which awards one of the world’s most prestigious photojournalism prizes, said it carried out its own investigation into the haunting 1972 photo — which shows a nine-year-old girl fleeing naked from a napalm strike — after the premiere of the film “The Stringer”.The documentary chronicles an investigation into rumours that the image, which helped change global perceptions of the US war in Vietnam, was taken by a little-known local freelancer, not the Associated Press (AP) staff photographer Nick Ut, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo.World Press Photo, which awarded its own Photo of the Year prize to Ut in 1973 for the black-and-white image — whose official title is “The Terror of War” — said the film had “prompted deep reflection” at the organisation.After investigating from January to May, it determined that “based on analysis of location, distance, and the camera used on that day”, two other photographers “may have been better positioned to take the photograph than Nick Ut”.”World Press Photo has suspended the attribution of ‘The Terror of War’ to Nick Ut, from today,” it said in a statement.The organisation named the two other photographers as Nguyen Thanh Nghe and Huynh Cong Phuc, both present for the infamous scene in the southern village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972.In “The Stringer”, which premiered at the Sundance film festival in January, Nguyen told the documentary’s makers he was certain the photo was his.AP, which said earlier this month it would continue crediting the photo to Ut, said in a statement it stood by that decision.But it acknowledged its own investigation had raised “real questions that we may never be able to answer” about the picture’s authorship.”We have found that it is impossible to prove exactly what happened that day on the road or in the bureau over 50 years ago,” it said.Ut insisted the image was his in a February Facebook post, calling claims to the contrary “a slap in the face”.The girl in the picture, Kim Phuc, survived her injuries, and is today a Canadian citizen and outspoken advocate for child war victims.World Press Photo emphasised that the authenticity of the image itself was not in question.”It is without question that this photograph represents a real moment in history that continues to reverberate in Vietnam, the United States, and globally,” said executive director Joumana El Zein Khoury.

Hundreds of Voice of America contractors are expected to lose their jobs over the coming days, campaigners said, as the Trump administration moves to dismantle the US government-backed news service’s parent agency.Most of VOA’s roughly 1,300 staffers have been placed on administrative leave and its broadcasts suspended after a March 14 executive order gutted the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees US-funded international media.The Trump administration decided to terminate “hundreds of contractors over the following days,” advocacy group Save VOA wrote on social media on Thursday night. Some of the terminations affect J-1 visa holders who will have to leave the country within 30 days, it added in a statement.”Several of these journalists come from countries where they could be arrested or worse because of their reporting for VOA,” Save VOA wrote, adding that it was working with lawyers to try and reinstate the contractors. US President Donald Trump’s appointee to oversee USAGM, Kari Lake, told the Washington Post that 584 employees across the federal agency had been terminated, the majority from VOA. “In accordance with President Trump’s executive order dated March 14, we are in the process of rightsizing the agency and reducing the federal bureaucracy to meet administration priorities,” Lake told the Post.VOA director Michael Abramowitz said in a Facebook post that he was “heartbroken to learn about today’s mass terminations of personal service contractors.””Some of VOA’s most talented journalists have been [personal service contractors] — many of whom have escaped tyranny in their home countries to tell America’s story of freedom and democracy,” he wrote. VOA supervisory editor Fatima Tlis posted on social media on Thursday that her “entire team got terminated today, all of us granted political asylum by US administrations.” “How does throwing on the streets the journalists you brought in on a promise of liberty and security help the American people?” she wrote.Almost all of the networks affected by the March executive order — including VOA — have sued, accusing Trump of executive overreach. Created during the Second World War as an instrument of American soft power, USAGM is an independent agency tasked with promoting democracy and countering propaganda overseas through entities that include VOA, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. Before suspending service, Washington-based VOA broadcast in 49 languages to a weekly audience estimated at 354 million people. The White House has criticised the news service for its alleged leftist bias, dubbing it “Voice of Radical America” in official documents.

An American-Lebanese man will be sentenced on Friday for trying to kill novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 knife attack at a New York cultural center.Hadi Matar, 27, faces up to 25 years in prison after being convicted of attempted murder and assault charges in February this year.During the trial, Rushdie told jurors about Matar “stabbing and slashing” him during an event at the upscale cultural center.”It was a stab wound in my eye, intensely painful, after that I was screaming because of the pain,” Rushdie said, adding that he was left in a “lake of blood.”Matar — who shouted pro-Palestinian slogans on several occasions during the trial — stabbed Rushdie about 10 times with a six-inch blade.He previously told media he had only read two pages of Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” but believed the author had “attacked Islam.”Matar’s legal team had sought to prevent witnesses from characterizing Rushdie as a victim of persecution following Iran’s 1989 fatwa calling for his murder over supposed blasphemy in the novel.Iran has denied any link to the attacker and said only Rushdie was to blame for the incident.- Severe wounds -The optical nerve of Rushdie’s right eye was severed in the attack, and he told the court that “it was decided the eye would be stitched shut to allow it to moisturize. It was quite a painful operation — which I don’t recommend.”His Adam’s apple was also lacerated, his liver and small bowel penetrated, and he became paralyzed in one hand after suffering severe nerve damage to his arm.British-American Rushdie — now 77 — was rescued from Matar by bystanders. Last year, he published a memoir called “Knife” in which he recounted the near-death experience.His publisher announced in March that “The Eleventh Hour,” a collection of short stories examining themes and places of interest to Rushdie, will be released on November 4, 2025.Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai but moved to England as a boy, was propelled into the spotlight with his second novel “Midnight’s Children” (1981), which won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for its portrayal of post-independence India.But “The Satanic Verses” brought him far greater, mostly unwelcome, attention.Rushdie became the center of a fierce tug-of-war between free speech advocates and those who insisted that insulting religion, particularly Islam, was unacceptable under any circumstance.Books and bookshops were torched, his Japanese translator was murdered and his Norwegian publisher was shot several times.Rushdie lived in seclusion in London for a decade after the 1989 fatwa, but for the past 20 years — until the attack — he lived relatively normally in New York.

There are not many fans of Donald Trump’s dream to save Hollywood with tariffs among the dealmakers at the Cannes film festival — even among those who voted for him. Unlike Robert De Niro — a vocal critic who called Trump “America’s philistine president” at the festival’s opening ceremony — they told AFP they have no political or personal axes to grind with him.But they see his idea of 100-percent tariffs on movies produced “in foreign lands” as a “massive potential disaster” for an industry already shaken by streaming platforms.”I don’t see any benefit to what he is trying to do. If anything it could really hurt us,” Scott Jones, the head of Artist View Entertainment, told AFP.”A lot of people are out of work right now, and this is not going to make it better. There needs to be method to the madness,” said the producer, in Cannes with a Tennessee-shot Civil War epic “The Legend of Van Dorn”.Trump’s own “special ambassadors” to the industry, actors Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, both signed a letter Tuesday thanking him for drawing attention to “runaway” US productions being shot overseas, but asking for tax breaks to keep them in the United States rather than tariffs.A wide coalition of Hollywood producers, writers and directors groups also put their names to the call.”More than 80 countries offer production tax incentives and as a result, numerous productions that could have been shot in America have instead located elsewhere,” they said.The biggest American film at Cannes is Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” — which was mostly shot in Britain and South Africa.- ‘Catastrophic’ -“Hollywood movies are made all over the world,” said Louise Lantagne, head of Quebecreatif, which supports the Canadian industry. And producers have been going north to make movies in Canada for decades “because we are cheaper and we have tax credits, great facilities and really top technical talent”, she added. “Of course it is going to be hell if (tariffs) happen,” she told AFP,  but “for the moment it is just a tweet — even if everyone is really stressed by these declarations”.Many, like American sales agent Monique White of California Pictures, think tariffs are “unfeasible” and Trump will quietly drop the idea. “Tariffs are legally and technically impossible without changing the law in Congress, which doesn’t look likely,” she told AFP.But others worry that the damage has already been done.One veteran producer who voted twice for Trump, and asked not be named, said the threat of them alone has already been “catastrophic for confidence”. “Investors, particularly foreign ones, don’t want to get burned down the line. He’s killing us,” he told AFP.- ‘Too expensive’ -Even if Trump manages to push tariffs through, Lantagne argued it would be a “bureaucratic nightmare to rule on what is a US film”, as financing and talent is now so international.Sylvain Bellemare, who won the Oscar for sound editing in 2017 for “Arrival”, gave two clear examples from his own recent work.He is in Cannes for the red carpet premiere of the US film “Splitsville” starring Dakota Johnson.”It was completely shot in Quebec,” he told AFP, but with American money.And last year he worked on the Paramount film “Novocaine”, which was set in San Diego but shot in South Africa with its post-production in Quebec.American producers “do not have the money anymore to shoot in the US like they used to in California, it is so expensive”, he told AFP.California’s governor Gavin Newsom has been struggling to push through plans to double tax breaks to $750 million (670 million euros) a year to stem the flight — a sum White said “is still way too small”.Meanwhile, Cannes’ bustling industry market is crammed with countries offering generous fiscal incentives to tempt US movie and TV makers their way.

A 62-year-old man known as the “Cross-Country Killer” was executed by lethal injection in the southern US state of Florida on Thursday.Glen Rogers was put to death at 6:16 pm (2216 GMT) at the Florida State Prison in Raiford for the November 1995 murder of Tina Marie Cribbs.The Tampa Bay Times reported his last words, wherein he cryptically referred to how his victims’ families’ questions would be answered “in the near future… and I hope in some way will bring you closure.”Then, Rogers addressed US President Donald Trump.”Keep making America great,” he said. “I’m ready to go.”Cribbs, a 34-year-old mother of two children, was stabbed to death and her body was found in a hotel bathtub.Rogers was also convicted of the murder in that same year of Sandra Gallagher, 33, in California and was a suspect in the murders of at least two other women, one in Mississippi and another in Louisiana.There have now been 16 executions in the United States this year: 12 by lethal injection; two by firing squad; and two using nitrogen gas.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

Motown legend Smokey Robinson is under criminal investigation, law enforcement in Los Angeles said Thursday, just days after he was sued by four former housekeepers who allege the soul singer repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted them.”The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Special Victims Bureau is actively investigating criminal allegations involving William Robinson AKA ‘Smokey Robinson,'” said a statement sent to AFP.”The investigation is in the early stages, and we have no further comment,” it added.The development comes after a multimillion dollar lawsuit was filed in a Los Angeles court claiming the 85-year-old forced himself on female employees multiple times over a number of years, often when his wife was not at home.The sheriff’s department would not confirm the substance of their investigation, but lawyers for the women in the suit told AFP their clients were cooperating with the probe.”We are pleased to learn that the LA County Sheriff’s Dept has opened a criminal investigation into our clients’ claims of sexual assault against Smokey Robinson,” John Harris and Herbert Hayden told AFP in a joint statement.”Our clients intend to fully cooperate with LASD’s ongoing investigation in the pursuit of seeking justice for themselves and others that may have been similarly assaulted by him.”In the suit filed this month, one plaintiff alleges the “Tracks of My Tears” singer would summon her to his bedroom in his Los Angeles area home, and greet her wearing only his underwear.He would then sexually assault her, despite her protestations, with the suit claiming there were seven such attacks between March 2023 and when she felt compelled to resign in February 2024.Another former housekeeper alleges Robinson assaulted her more than 20 times over a four-year period, while a third says in the suit that she was “sexually harassed, sexually assaulted and raped” throughout her 12-year employment until 2024.The fourth woman says the singer began assaulting her in 2007 when she traveled with him to his Las Vegas home.None of the women are named in the suit, which is common in cases involving claims of sexual assault.The suit, which is seeking at least $50 million in damages, says none of the women reported the assaults at the time because they were intimidated by Robinson’s celebrity, and feared attacks on their character.Robinson was one of the founding members of The Miracles, a Detroit-based outfit that came together in the 1950s.The group had dozens of chart hits, including the smash “The Tears of a Clown” in 1967.

Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs on Thursday tried to chip away at the credibility of Casandra Ventura, the music mogul’s former girlfriend, after two days of her grueling testimony in his trial on sex trafficking charges.Ventura, the singer widely known as Cassie, told jurors that Combs raped, beat and forced her into drug-fueled sex parties during their more than 10 years together — excruciating accounts that opened her up to scrutiny from Combs’s legal team.Defense attorney Anna Estevao’s line of questioning Thursday sought to imply that drug addiction played a key role in Combs’s violent outbursts, along with a pattern of toxic jealousy that both Ventura and the rapper were party to.Ventura said she and Combs both suffered from addiction to opioid drugs, and individually dealt with intense withdrawal symptoms.In her final question of the day, Estevao asked if the MDMA drugs taken prior to one of the “freak-off” sex performances that led to a 2016 assault at a Los Angeles-area hotel were a “bad batch” — Ventura replied she had no idea.Much of the day consisted of a relatively calm, meticulous focus on a ream of texts between the couple.The defense highlighted tender moments, pointing out messages in which Combs and Ventura expressed love for each other. Other messages were sexually explicit.When asked why she would look forward to seeing Combs, 38-year-old Ventura replied: “Because I had fallen in love with him and cared about him very much.”One of the messages from Ventura to Combs, dated 2009, read: “I’m always ready to freak off lolol.””Freak-offs” were elaborate sexual performances that involved Combs, Ventura and male escorts — sessions directed by the music mogul that sometimes lasted days, according to Ventura.In her third day on the witness stand in Manhattan’s federal court, Ventura — who is heavily pregnant with her third child — was collected and matter-of-fact. She answered many defense questions with a simple “yes.”And when it came to the messages, she emphasized the subtext.”Knowing somebody… you know what how they speak and you know what they mean,” she said, implying that even when Combs appeared kind and open, an alternative reading was apparent to her.At another moment, as Estevao directed her past a batch of texts, Ventura indicated the defense lawyer might be cherry-picking those elements that cast Combs in the best light.”This isn’t about what I feel is relevant, right? Because there’s a lot that we skipped over,” Ventura said of the voluminous text records she was given to read.- Domestic abuse or sex trafficking? -Combs, 55, was once one of the most powerful figures in the music industry.He is now incarcerated on charges of sex trafficking and leading an illegal sex ring that enforced its power with crimes including arson, kidnapping and bribery.He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.Ventura spent two days on the stand giving vivid accounts of coercive sex parties demanded by Combs — she participated in hundreds, she testified — and his routine brutal beatings of her.But the defense contends that while Ventura’s relationship with Combs was complicated and included domestic abuse, it did not amount to sex trafficking, and that she behaved erratically and even violently herself.Estevao implied Thursday that Ventura was taking an active role in planning the sexual encounters, though the singer reiterated that it was with Combs that she wanted to be intimate, not random escorts, and that her efforts were a bid “to make him happy.”- ‘Humiliating’ -On Wednesday, Ventura alleged that in 2018, as she and Combs were breaking up, he raped her in her living room.And she said her time with the once-revered artist left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, drug addiction and suicidal thoughts.In a graphic hotel surveillance clip from March 2016 shown to jurors Monday, Tuesday and again Wednesday, Combs is seen brutally beating and dragging Ventura down a hallway.Judge Arun Subramanian on Thursday urged the defense to move more quickly in cross-examining Ventura given her late-stage pregnancy, and attorneys said they would attempt to wrap up by Friday.Prosectuors indicated Dawn Richard — a singer who found fame on MTV’s reality show “Making the Band,” which Combs produced — will be among the next witnesses.Richard sued Combs last year on allegations including sexual assault and battery. She said in the court documents she had witnessed Combs physically abuse Ventura.Trial proceedings are anticipated to continue well into the summer.

The US Supreme Court appeared divided on Thursday on whether federal judges have the right to issue nationwide blocks to presidential decrees, as they heard arguments about President Donald Trump’s bid to scrap birthright citizenship.The case before the court involved Trump’s executive order ending automatic citizenship for children born on American soil, but the question at hand was whether a single district court can freeze an executive branch move with a universal injunction.Other Trump initiatives have also been blocked by judges — both Democratic and Republican appointees — leading the president to make an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, where conservatives make up a 6-3 majority.A ruling by the court in favor of the administration could have far-reaching ramifications for the ability of the judiciary to rein in Trump or future American presidents.Both conservative and liberal justices expressed concerns during oral arguments about the increasing use of nationwide injunctions by district courts in recent years, but appeared divided and uncertain about how to tackle the issue.Arguments had been scheduled for an hour but went on for more than two and barely touched on the legality of Trump’s birthright citizenship order, which has been paused by courts in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state that deemed it unconstitutional.Justice Samuel Alito, an arch-conservative, said nationwide injunctions pose a “practical problem” because there are hundreds of district court judges and every one of them is “convinced” they know best. Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three liberals on the court, noted that justices across the ideological spectrum have “expressed frustration at the way district courts are doing their business,” but said in the birthright case, “the courts keep deciding the same way.””You just keep losing in the lower courts,” Kagan told the government’s lawyer, Solicitor General John Sauer.- ‘Nuclear weapon’ -Sauer compared nationwide injunctions to a “nuclear weapon,” saying they “disrupt the Constitution’s careful balancing of the separation of powers.”The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to restrict the application of a district court’s injunction solely to the parties who brought the case and the district where the judge presides.”Courts grant relief to the people who sue in front of them,” Sauer said. “So the notion that relief has to be given to the whole world because others who have not taken the time to sue are not before the courts results in all these problems.”Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal, pushed back.”Your argument seems to turn our justice system… into a ‘catch me if you can’ kind of regime,” Jackson said, “where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights.”And I don’t understand how that is remotely consistent with the rule of law.”Sauer responded that the government is the one being forced to go “racing from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, having to sort of clear the table in order to implement a new policy.”Past presidents have also complained about national injunctions shackling their agenda, but such orders have sharply risen under Trump, who has seen more in two months than Joe Biden did during his first three years in office.- ‘Chaos’ -Jeremy Feigenbaum, solicitor general of New Jersey, one of 23 states opposing the bid to end birthright citizenship, said there is an “extraordinary basis” for a nationwide injunction in this case.Allowing separate court rulings on the birthright issue would lead to “chaos on the ground where people’s citizenship turns on and off when you cross state lines,” Feigenbaum said.Trump’s executive order decrees that children born to parents in the United States illegally or on temporary visas would not automatically become citizens.The three lower courts ruled that to be a violation of the 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”Trump’s order “reflects the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens or temporary visitors,” Sauer said.The Supreme Court rejected such a narrow definition in a landmark 1898 case.Whatever the justices decide on nationwide injunctions, the actual question of whether Trump can legally end birthright citizenship is expected to be back in front of the top court before long.