Coalition files lawsuit over Obama’s actions on immigration
Coalition files lawsuit over Obama’s actions on immigration
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas is leading a 17-state coalition suing over President Barack Obama’s recently announced executive actions on immigration, arguing in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that the move “tramples” key portions of the U.S. Constitution.
Many top Republicans have denounced Obama’s unilateral move, which was designed to spare as many as 5 million people living illegally in the United States from deportation.
But Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott took it a step further, filing a formal legal challenge in federal court in the Southern District of Texas. His state is joined by 16 other mostly conservative states, largely in the south and Midwest, such as Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana and the Carolinas.
The states aren’t seeking monetary damages, but instead want the courts to block Obama’s actions.
The lawsuit could make things awkward come Friday, when Abbott travels to Washington to meet with Obama as part of a group of newly elected governors.
Iran uses old American-made planes to strike IS in Iraq
WASHINGTON — Iranian jets have carried out airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq in recent days, Pentagon officials and independent analysts say, underscoring the strange alliances generated by the war against the extremist group that has beheaded Americans and killed and terrorized Iraqi civilians.
Washington and Tehran are locked in tough negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. But the two adversaries have been fighting parallel campaigns on the same side in Iraq to defend the Shiite-dominated government — and the region’s Kurds — from IS militants who seized a large section of the country.
It has long been known that Iranian troops and advisers have been fighting alongside Iraqi forces, but until this week there had been no confirmation of Iranian air activity. The timing and nature of the strikes are not clear, but a senior U.S. official said they occurred in Diyala province, which extends from northeast Baghdad to the Iranian border. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose that information.
The Qatari-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera filmed a jet flying over Iraq on Nov. 30 that was identified by Jane’s Defence Weekly as an American-made F-4 Phantom. The Phantom, a twin-engine fighter bomber that was sold to Iran’s U.S.-backed shah in the 1970s, was last produced by McDonnell Aircraft Corp. in 1981.
Iran in the 1980s fought a brutal, ultimately stalemated war with Iraq when that country was led by Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-controlled Baath Party. But the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam left an Iraqi government closely aligned with Iran. A majority of Iraqis are Shiite, as are most Iranians. The Islamic State group, which also controls parts of Syria, is led by Sunni extremists and has attracted many Sunnis who felt disenfranchised by Baghdad.
Qatar lifts travel ban on U.S. couple cleared in daughter’s death
DOHA, Qatar — An American couple left the Gulf nation of Qatar on Wednesday after being cleared of charges in their adopted 8-year-old daughter’s death, ending a nearly two-year legal saga they contend was rooted in confusion over cross-cultural adoption.
The Los Angeles couple, Matthew and Grace Huang, caught international attention after they were arrested in January 2013 on murder charges following the death of their African-born daughter Gloria.
The Huangs, who are of Asian descent, had adopted Gloria in Ghana when she was 4 years old, and are the parents of two other African-born adopted boys.
By wire sources