Military lawyer swiftly fired from immigration bench after defying Trump deportation push

MIAMI (AP) — A U.S. Army Reserve lawyer detailed as a federal immigration judge has been fired barely a month into the job after granting asylum at a high rate out of step with the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals. Christopher Day began hearing cases in late October as a temporary judge at the immigration court in Annandale, Virginia. He was fired around Dec. 2, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges. It wasn’t made public why Day was fired. But federal data from November shows he ruled on asylum cases in ways at odds with the Trump administration’s stated goals.

Brown attack suspect died the two days before his body was found, autopsy finds

(AP) — An autopsy has found that the man suspected in last weekend’s attack at Brown University and the fatal shooting of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor days later had been dead for two days when found. Authorities found Claudio Neves Valente dead at a New Hampshire storage facility on Thursday night. New Hampshire’s attorney general announced Friday that Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who had been living in the U.S., died on Tuesday, the same day that his countryman, MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, died at a hospital. Authorities believe that after killing two students and wounding nine others at Brown last Saturday, Neves Valente shot Loureiro at his Boston-area home on Monday night.

Supreme Court sides with immigration judges in speech case for now

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is siding with immigration judges and rebuffing the Trump administration for now in a case that could have wider implications for federal workers as the justices weigh expanding presidential firing power. Friday’s decision is a technical ruling in a long-running case. But the decision touches on questions raised by President Donald Trump’s high-profile firings and his push to downsize the federal workforce. The justices let stand a ruling that raised doubts about the Republican administration’s handling of federal workforce issues, though they also signaled that lower courts should move cautiously.

Trump announces lower drug price deals with 9 pharmaceutical companies

(AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday that nine drugmakers have agreed to lower the cost of their prescription drugs in the U.S. Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi will now charge Medicaid what they charge in other developed countries. New drugs made by those companies will also be charged at the so-called “most-favored-nation” pricing across the country, including commercial and cash pay markets as well as Medicare and Medicaid. Merck, GSK and Bristol Myers Squibb also agreed to donate significant supplies of active pharmaceutical ingredients to a national reserve.