Two days after he was fired as head coach at the University of Michigan, Sherrone Moore was charged Friday in connection with the home invasion and stalking of a staff member with whom he allegedly had an “intimate relationship.”

Moore, 39, is charged with third-degree felony home invasion, as well as misdemeanor counts of stalking and of breaking and entering. 

The university fired Moore on Wednesday. In a statement, Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said Moore had been “terminated with cause, effective immediately,” adding “this conduct constitutes a clear violation of University policy, and U-M maintains zero tolerance for such behavior.” 

Hours after the firing, Moore was booked in the Washtenaw County Jail after Pittsfield Township police responded to the 3000 block of Ann Arbor Saline Road to an alleged assault.

During Moore’s arraignment on Friday, Washtenaw County First Assistant Prosecutor Kati Rezmierski said Moore had an “intimate relationship” with the victim for a “number of years,” and that the victim ended the relationship on Monday. Prosecutors claim Moore made numerous phone calls and sent messages to the victim from that time period forward, but she did not respond to them. The victim then went to the university and cooperated with an investigation. 

After being fired by the university on Wednesday, prosecutors say Moore went to the victim’s apartment, barged his way in, proceeded to a kitchen drawer, and grabbed several butter knives and a pair of kitchen scissors. 

Moore then threatened his own life, saying, ‘I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to make you watch. My blood is on your hands. You ruined my life,’ according to prosecutors. Moore made a series of intimidating statements, prosecutors allege, but say there is no evidence to suggest that he directly threatened the victim with the knives or scissors. 

The victim then called her attorney and the police, and Moore left her residence. 

“The totality of the behaviour is highly threatening and highly intimidating. She was terrorized,” Rezmierski said. 

Moore was released on a $25,000 bond and ordered not to have any contact with the victim. He must also continue to undergo mental health treatment. As part of his bond conditions, Moore must wear a GPS tether, cannot leave Michigan without the court’s permission and cannot possess any weapons or consume drugs or alcohol. 

Moore’s next court appearance is on Jan. 22, 2026.

A source within Michigan’s program told CBS News Detroit’s Rachel Hopmayer that Manuel was informed of Moore’s mental health issues on Sunday, just days before Manuel fired Moore. Manuel fired Moore without a human resources or security personnel present, according to the source. 

Moore served as head coach for the past two seasons, leading the No. 18 Wolverines to a combined 16-8 record and a victory in the ReliaQuest Bowl last year.   

In the meantime, the university has appointed Baltimore native Biff Poggi as the interim coach. Poggi previously served as associate coach at Michigan from 2021 to 2022 before going on to become head coach at Charlotte until November 2024. He returned to the Michigan staff in the 2025 season.

Michigan is now gearing up for the Citrus Bowl against No. 13 Texas on New Year’s Eve. 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A man convicted of fatally shooting a man and woman during home invasion robbery and later confessing to three other killings is scheduled to be put to death in December under a death warrant signed Tuesday by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is setting a record pace for executions.

Frank Athen Walls, 58, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Dec. 18 at Florida State Prison. Walls would be the 19th person set for execution in Florida in 2025, with DeSantis overseeing more executions in a single year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was set in 2014 with eight executions.

DeSantis signed the death warrant two days before the execution of Richard Barry Randolph. Another convicted killer, Mark Allen Geralds, is set to die Dec. 9.

Walls was convicted of two counts of murder, two counts of kidnapping, burglary and theft and sentenced to death in 1988. The Florida Supreme Court later reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial, where Walls was again convicted and sentenced to death in 1992.

According to court records, Walls broke into the Florida Panhandle mobile home of Eglin Air Force Base airman Edward Alger and his girlfriend, Ann Peterson, in July 1987. Walls tied the couple up, but Alger managed to break free and attack Walls. Walls cut Alger’s throat and them shot him in the head when the airman continued to fight. Walls then went to attack Peterson and shot her as she struggled.

Walls was arrested the day after the bodies were found when his roommate tipped off police about Walls’ odd behavior. During a search of the home, investigators reported finding items from the crime scene, and Walls later admitted to the killings.

After his conviction, DNA evidence linked Walls to the May 1987 rape and murder of Audrey Gygi. Walls pleaded no contest, avoiding another trial and possible death sentence. Walls also admitted responsibility for the killings of Tommie Lou Whiddon in March 1985 and Cynthia Sue Condra in September 1986 as part of a deal with prosecutors.

Attorneys for Walls are expected to file appeals to the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

So far 43 people have been executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida leads the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. The state’s most recent execution was the Nov. 13 lethal injection of Bryan Frederick Jennings, who was convicted of raping and killing his neighbor.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled against President Trump’s use of an 18th century wartime law to rapidly deport Venezuelan migrants, finding “no invasion or predatory incursion.”

The Trump administration deported hundreds of accused Tren de Aragua gang members earlier this year using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an obscure law that allows the president to remove citizens of an enemy country during an “invasion or predatory incursion.” Some of those migrants were later flown to a supermax prison in El Salvador — though many of the detainees were sent to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap in July.

The strategy has drawn a litany of court challenges, many of which argue the U.S. isn’t facing an “invasion” or migrants aren’t receiving enough due process to contest their deportations. A “60 Minutes” investigation found many migrants sent to El Salvador didn’t have criminal records.

Tuesday’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit marks the latest court decision to push back on the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act. The ruling — which was issued by a three-judge panel, with one dissenter — found the situation with Tren de Aragua does not meet the definition of either an “invasion” or a “predatory incursion.”

The Trump administration has argued Tren de Aragua is engaged in an incursion because its members have perpetrated “mass illegal migration.” The appeals court rejected this argument.

“A country’s encouraging its residents and citizens to enter this country illegally is not the modern-day equivalent of sending an armed, organized force to occupy, to disrupt, or to otherwise harm the United States,” the court said. “There is no finding that this mass immigration was an armed, organized force or forces.”

The appellate judges granted a preliminary injunction blocking the use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove migrants who sued in the Northern District of Texas. The court said the government can still remove the migrants under other legal authorities.

CBS News has reached out to the White House for comment.

The ruling came in a case that has darted back and forth through the federal judiciary for months, eventually reaching the Supreme Court in the spring. 

The case was brought by migrants who were detained in Texas and sued to block their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. The district court did not grant them relief, and the Fifth Circuit said they didn’t have jurisdiction to intervene. But the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the migrants’ removal in April, and a month later, the high court said the Fifth Circuit was wrong to dismiss the appeal and sent the case back to the appellate court for further review. 

The Supreme Court also said the government hadn’t given the migrants enough notice of their impending deportations, after they said they were told just 24 hours in advance.

Since then, the government has filed an updated notice that gave migrants seven days’ warning of their deportation. The Fifth Circuit said that is likely enough time to satisfy the migrants’ right to due process, but sent the issue back to the district court for further review.

The ruling was penned by Judge Leslie Southwick, who was nominated by President George W. Bush. Biden-nominated Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez concurred with the part of the ruling that said there isn’t an “invasion” or “predatory incursion,” but said seven days’ notice isn’t enough.

Judge Andrew Oldham, whom Mr. Trump nominated in his first term, dissented.

“For 227 years, every President of every political party has enjoyed the same broad powers to repel threats to our Nation under the Alien Enemies Act (‘AEA’). And from the dawn of our Nation until President Trump took office a second time, courts have never second-guessed the President’s invocation of that Act. Not once,” he wrote, arguing only the president can decide if the law applies. “For President Trump, however, the rules are different.”

CARACAS, Venezuela — U.S. warships steam toward the southern Caribbean. The Trump administration denounces embattled “narco-president” Nicolás Maduro and doubles a bounty on his head to $50 million. Rumors of an invasion, coup or other form of U.S. intervention flood social media.

For the beleaguered people of Venezuela, mired in more than a decade of crisis — hyperinflation, food shortages, authoritarian rule and rigged elections — a new phase of anxiety is once again rattling nerves. Even so, Venezuelans are trying to soldier on.

“We try to keep up our activities, our schedules despite the uncertainty,” said Leisy Torcatt, 44, a mother of three who heads a baseball school in a nation where a passion for sports helps fend off despair.

“Our daily problems continue, but we cannot become paralyzed. … We keep on going forward, trying to work out our differences,” she said.

There is an inescapable sense here that matters are largely out of people’s control. The massive anti-Maduro street protests of past years did little to dislodge, or undermine, Maduro, and the opposition has long been deeply divided. Authorities have jailed dissenters and broken up coup attempts.

And now, once again, Venezuela appears to be in Washington’s crosshairs.

“We have already seen it all,” said Mauricio Castillo, 28, a journalist. “It’s not that we have lost faith in the possibility of real change. But we are fed up. We cannot just stop our lives, put them on hold waiting for ‘something’ to happen.”

Here in the capital, Venezuelans are accustomed to the enhanced martial ritual: more blockaded avenues, more troops on the streets, more barricades shielding the presidential palace of Miraflores, where Maduro launches diatribes against the “imperialist” would-be invaders.

Yet, despite the current naval buildup in the Caribbean, the Trump administration has given very mixed signals on Venezuela.

During Trump’s first presidency, his administration recognized a shadow opposition president, indicted Maduro on drug-trafficking charges and imposed draconian sanctions on the oil and financial sectors. The sanctions effectively collapsed an already shaky economy in what was once South America’s wealthiest nation.

The economic meltdown led to an exodus of some 8 million Venezuelans, almost a third of the population. Most ended up elsewhere in South America, but hundreds of thousands made it to the United States. Trump has signaled emphatically that they are not welcome, ending Biden administration-era protections and stepping up deportations.

During the presidential campaign — and since returning to the White House — Trump has repeatedly said, without evidence, that Venezuela had emptied its prisons and sent the worst offenders to the U.S.

But shortly after taking office for his current term, Trump dispatched a special envoy, Richard Grenell, to meet with Maduro, generating hopes of improved relations. Washington later granted Chevron, the U.S. oil giant, a license to continue operating in Venezuela — home to the globe’s largest oil reserves — in a move that provided much-needed hard cash for Caracas, and oil for the U.S. market.

Then, in July, the Trump administration hailed the release of 10 U.S. citizens and permanent residents being held in Venezuela in exchange for the return of hundreds of Venezuelan nationals who had been deported to El Salvador.

Meantime, the United States has regularly been sending other deportees back to Venezuela in another sign of bilateral cooperation.

“So far we’ve seen President Trump very clearly endorse a policy of engagement with Venezuela,” said Geoff Ramsey, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group. “The U.S. is not going to invade Venezuela anytime soon.”

Others say they’re not so sure, despite Trump’s stated aversion to getting involved in more wars — and the likely negative blowback in much of Latin America, where the prospect of U.S. intervention inevitably revives memories of past invasions, land grabs and support for right-wing dictators.

In the view of U.S. officials, Maduro and drug trafficking are inextricably entwined. The White House labels Maduro the head of the “Cartel of the Suns,” a smuggling network allegedly tied to the Venezuelan government and military. And Trump has reportedly directed the Pentagon to plan possible military action against Latin America cartels. (Maduro denies the drug charges, dismissing them as a U.S. disinformation campaign.)

The massive scope of the U.S. naval employment seems to reflect the policy viewpoint of hawks such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long championed a hard-line stance against Venezuela.

The buildup reportedly includes more than a half-dozen warships, including at least one submarine, and thousands of Marines and sailors. The White House says it’s meant to deter maritime narcotics trafficking, not topple Maduro.

“This is a lot of effort to put into something that’s performance, no?” said Laura Cristina Dib, who heads Venezuelan research at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research group.

In response, Maduro has bolstered militia sign-ups, deployed 15,000 troops to the border with Colombia and insisted there’s “no way” U.S. forces can enter Venezuela. He scoffs at the U.S. contention that the naval buildup is an anti-smuggling effort, noting — correctly — that most cocaine is produced in neighboring Colombia and enters the United States via Mexico.

“It’s ridiculous to say they are fighting drug trafficking with nuclear submarines,” Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s U.N. ambassador, told reporters Thursday.

By most independent accounts, Maduro likely lost last year’s election — monitors disputed his claimed victory — but his many backers are making a high-profile show of support given the U.S. saber-rattling.

The government has orchestrated public sign-ups of militia members demonstrating their eagerness to fight for the socialist legacy of the late Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s mentor and predecessor in Miraflores Palace.

“None of us will be afraid when the moment comes to defend our country from foreign aggression,” said Orlando López, 54, a grandfather and proud militiaman. “It’s not justified that the president of some other country wants to impose his will.”

He rejected the notion of a pervasive sense of nervousness.

“The climate in the city is one of tranquility, of peace,” said López, who is part of a more-than-1-million civilian militia force backing Maduro.

On a recent Sunday at Santo Domingo de Guzmán Roman Catholic Church in the capital’s Baruta district, Father Leonardo Marius urged parishioners to ignore the drumbeat of war pounding the airwaves and internet. Venezuelans, he said, should focus on more basic concerns.

“In Venezuela, a half a million children don’t have enough to eat — no one talks about that,” Marius told parishioners in his sermon. “But we love the Hollywood stories of boats and aircraft carriers, the show. … ‘They are coming! They are are disembarking!’ Please! Hollywood has done a lot of damage. Let the stories be.”

Across town, at an upscale sports club, Javier Martín, a businessman, said the noise was hard to ignore.

“The atmosphere across the country, but especially here in Caracas, is one of fear, distress, uncertainty,” said Martín. “You see hooded officials on the streets and it makes you feel fear, like you are in a war.”

Venezuelans, he explained, live a kind of “surreal” existence, struggling to maintain their lives and families while always anticipating improvements, and changes, that never seem to come.

“We live cornered every day,” he said. “It’s not sustainable.”

What’s next?

“Everyone expects something to happen,” Martín said. “I just hope it’s positive.”

Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Caracas and Times staff writer McDonnell from Mexico City.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” now before the Senate takes the current preoccupation with making every governmental relationship transactional to an immoral extreme. It puts a $1,000 price tag on the right to seek asylum — the first time the United States would require someone to pay for this human right.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” U.S. law incorporates that right, stating that “any alien … irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum.” Neither makes this right contingent on being able to pay.

Bear in mind that asylum seekers in the United States do not have the right to court-appointed attorneys. That means the system already profoundly disadvantages indigent asylum seekers — they can’t afford a lawyer, often don’t speak English and have no road map for navigating arcane immigration law.

The new law would make asylum even more inaccessible for a poor person, in effect, creating two classes of those seeking refuge here. Those wealthy enough to pay $1,000 up front would have their protection claims heard; those unable to pay would be shunted back to face persecution and the problems that drove them from their home countries to begin with.

If this part of the bill isn’t modified before its final passage, Congress will have piled on to the obstacles the Trump administration has already put in place to block the right to seek asylum. On Inauguration Day, President Trump proclaimed an invasion of the United States by “millions of aliens” and “suspend[ed] the physical entry of any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border.” Until the president decides the “invasion” is over, the order explicitly denies the right of any person to seek asylum if it would permit their continued presence in the United States.

Since Jan. 20, asylum seekers trying to enter the United States at the southwestern border have been turned away and, in some cases, loaded onto military planes and flown to third countries — Panama, for example — without any opportunity to make asylum claims.

“I asked for asylum repeatedly. I really tried,” Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a 27-year-old Christian convert from Iran, told Human Rights Watch after being sent to Panama. “Nobody listened to me …. Then an immigration officer told me President Trump had ended asylum, so they were going to deport us.”

On top of the basic fee for asylum seekers, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would also require an asylum seeker to pay a fee of “not less than $550” every six months to be permitted to work in the U.S. while their claim is pending. The bill would also impose an additional $100 fee for every year an asylum application remains pending in the heavily backlogged system, punishing the person fleeing persecution for the government’s failure to provide sufficient immigration judges.

Children are not spared. For the privilege of sponsoring an unaccompanied migrant child, the bill would require the sponsor, often a relative who steps forward to care for the child, to pay a $3,500 fee. Congressional priorities for spending on unaccompanied children who arrive at our borders show a distinct lack of compassion: The bill directs that a $20-million appropriation for U.S. Customs and Border Protection “shall only be used to conduct an examination of such unaccompanied alien child for gang-related tattoos and other gang-related markings.”

Add to these barriers the complete shutdown of the U.S. refugee resettlement program, except for white South Africans; the termination of “humanitarian parole” for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans; the end of temporary protected status programs that have provided protection to people coming from countries of widespread conflict, and the travel ban that bars entry from some of the world’s top refugee-producing countries, including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Iran and Sudan.

In the meantime, Trump hypes the idea of selling $5-million “gold cards” for super rich foreigners who want to buy U.S. permanent residence. When asked who might be interested, Trump replied, “I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.”

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes $45 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention capacity (by my calculations, that would more than triple capacity). It also specifies $14.4 billion for ICE transportation and removal operations, $46.5 billion for the border wall and $858 million to pay bonuses to ICE officials.

With all the money Congress is prepared to spend, it’s a wonder the bill didn’t add a few dollars for sanding down the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty and re-chiseling it to say, “Give me your rich and well-rested … yearning to breathe free.”

Bill Frelick is refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report “‘Nobody Cared, Nobody Listened’: The US Expulsion of Third-Country Nationals to Panama.”

WASHINGTON — Two decades ago, the Bush administration said its “war on terror” prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay were off-limits to the federal courts, but the Supreme Court disagreed.

“A state of war is not a blank check for the President,” said Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2004. “Whatever power the U.S. Constitution envisions for the Executive in its exchanges with other nations or with enemy organizations…, it most assuredly envisions a role for all three branches when individual liberties are at stake.”

Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.

That issue now appears headed back to the Supreme Court.

Although the nation is not at war, President Trump has invoked his war powers under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to round up and deport to El Salvador about 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan crime gang.

Two legal questions arose immediately.

How can Trump rely on the 1798 law which applies only when Congress has “declared war” or a “foreign government” has launched an “invasion”?

And how does the government know all these men are gang members? Their families said they no criminal records and in some instances, fled Venezuela and sought asylum to escape the gangs.

So far, however, the legal fight has focused on the same big question from the Guantanamo era: Do federal judges have the authority to limit the power of the president who says he is protecting the nation from “dangerous aliens”?

On the afternoon of Saturday, March 15, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg convened a hastily arranged hearing in response to an emergency lawsuit brought on behalf of five Venezuelan men who feared they would be deported to El Salvador.

At the same hour, administration officials were arranging for three planes to take off from Texas.

The judge questioned how the 1798 law could authorize such deportations, and “to preserve the status quo,” he ordered a temporary pause on all the deportations.

Although the five named plaintiffs stayed in Texas, the administration essentially ignored the broader order and allowed the three flights to proceed as planned.

Although the judge said he was troubled his orders were ignored, Trump’s lawyers were troubled by his intervention.

“These orders are an affront to the President’s broad constitutional and statutory authority to protect the United States from dangerous aliens who pose grave threats to the American people,” they said on behalf of Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.

“The presidential actions they challenge are not subject to judicial review,” they said.

“The Constitution simply provides no basis for … no basis for second-guessing the policy judgment by the Executive that such an ‘invasion’ is occurring,” they said. The president “has an inherent authority to conduct foreign affairs and address national security risks.”

They took a hard line and refused to even disclose the flight times for airplanes that flew to El Salvador.

That’s a “state secret,” they said in a brief filed on Monday.

Veterans of the legal battles over Guantanamo see some similarities but differences as well.

UC Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, a former Bush administration attorney, said the Guantanamo prisoners were not brought into the United States.

“Here, there is no doubt that the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador were detained within the United States,” he said.

In the past, the Supreme Court has said people who are being held in this country, including non-citizens, have a right to due process of law.

Yoo said “Trump is invoking the same arguments we made after 9/11 that the capture and detention of enemy prisoners during wartime fell exclusively within the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief to conduct war.” He is also “making similar arguments as to why federal judges today should defer to the decisions of the executive branch during what he has determined is an invasion.”

But Yoo said he doubts the courts will uphold Trump’s reliance on the 1798 law.

Earlier this week, Boasberg explained his order was narrow in scope as well as temporary. It would not lead to the release any of the Venezuelans that are being held, and it does not prevent the government from deporting those who have a “final order of removal” under the U.S. immigration laws, he said. It prevents only deportations to El Salvador that are based on the disputed the Alien Enemies Act.

It also resolved nothing about the plight of those who are now held in El Salvadoran.

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out Boasberg’s order but lost in a 2-1 decision.

Each of the judges wrote a lengthy opinion making a separate point.

Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, disputed the use of the Alien Enemies Act. “An invasion is a military act, not one of migration,” she said.

Judge Patricia Millett, an appointee of President Obama, said the detained men deserve a hearing to challenge the claim they were gang members.

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, dissented but said the detained men could file a habeas corpus claim in Texas where they are held.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt who brought the lawsuit said the decision preserving the judge’s order “means that hundreds of individuals remain protected from being sent to a notorious black-hole prison in a foreign country, without any due process whatsoever — perhaps for the rest of their lives.”

Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, called the D.C. Circuit’s decision “an important step for due process and the protection of the American people. President Trump is bound by the laws of this nation, and those laws do not permit him to use wartime powers when the United States is not at war and has not been invaded.”

The next stop is likely to be at the Supreme Court.

Acting Solicitor Gen. Sarah Harris has already filed four emergency appeals at the Supreme Court, and the deportation dispute may be the fifth.

MILAN — A pro-Russian hacker group attacked Italian government websites on Tuesday in what it said was a reaction to a speech by Italian President Sergio Mattarella that compared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the Nazis’ “wars of conquest.”

The NoName57 hacker group, which announced the attacks on social media, hit the websites of the defense, interior and transport ministries, as well as law enforcement agencies. Access to the sites was spotty.

The group on Monday it attacked Italian banks, ports, airports and local transport agencies, but those attacks did not cause major disruptions.

In a speech in Marseille, France on Feb. 5, Mattarella said that patterns that led to World War II were repeating, including “wars of conquest.”

“This was the project of the Third Reich in Europe. Today’s Russian aggression against Europe is of this nature,’’ he said.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, expressed dismay about Mattarella’s remarks.

Mattarella’s office has declined to comment on the attacks.

Over his seven years on the federal bench, James C. Ho has acquired a reputation as one of the most conservative members of a notably conservative court, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

So it’s proper to take heed of Ho’s position on a temporarily blocked issue that Donald Trump has lately placed on the front burner: Birthright citizenship, the principle enshrined in the 14th Amendment that virtually all children born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens.

In an executive order issued on inauguration day, Jan. 20, Trump declared that the right of birthright citizenship doesn’t apply to the children of undocumented immigrants. Trump’s order was temporarily blocked Thursday by a federal judge in Seattle.

Among legal scholars, that’s a minority view, even a fringe view. The 14th Amendment is forthright; it states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Ho has long voiced the broadest view of those words. But not lately.

Let’s trace his intellectual journey on the issue.

Ho, as it happens, is an immigrant himself. He was born in Taiwan to parents who immigrated to the U.S. when he was a child and acquired naturalized U.S. citizenship at age 9.

Ho’s judicial stance has been solidly conservative. Last year, writing in a case in which his colleagues reversed a ruling by a federal judge in Texas that had blocked the distribution of the abortion drug mifepristone nationwide, Ho engaged in what I called a “curious flight of fancy” to advocate for the ban.

He asserted that abortions cause “aesthetic injury” to doctors forced to participate in the procedure, even if only by treating patients for adverse reactions.

“Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them,” Ho wrote. “Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients — and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.” He argued in favor of granting the physician plaintiffs in the case a legal interest in the outcome of abortions achieved via the drug, even though none of the plaintiffs had treated women who had taken it.

“The [Food and Drug Administration] has approved the use of a drug that threatens to destroy the unborn children in whom Plaintiffs have an interest,” Ho wrote. “And this injury is likewise redressable by a court order holding unlawful and setting aside approval of that abortifacient drug.”

Ho’s earliest writing on the birthright citizenship that I could find was published in 2006 in The Green Bag, a law journal. At the time, Ho’s career encompassed service as a counsel to the Senate Republican caucus and service as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He would later serve as solicitor general of Texas, before his appointment to the 5th Circuit appeals court by Trump in 2017.

In his 2006 article, titled “Defining ‘American,’” Ho focused specifically and at length on the argument that children of undocumented immigrants aren’t entitled to birthright citizenship.

Birthright citizenship, he wrote, “is protected no less for children of undocumented persons than for descendants of Mayflower passengers.”

Ho dismissed the assertion by critics of birthright citizenship that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” excludes those who are in the U.S. illegally.” Even they, he wrote, are subject to the authority of the U.S. government, and therefore covered by the citizenship clause. He endorsed the most common interpretation, which is that the “jurisdiction” clause excludes only the children of diplomats serving their home countries in the U.S., and enemy combatants on U.S. soil. Instead, he wrote, the citizenship clause “covers the vast majority of lawful and unlawful aliens.”

Ho wrote again on birthright citizenship in a Jan. 5, 2011, op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. The article addressed an effort by a coalition of red state legislators in support of state-level laws to exclude undocumented immigrants from birthright citizenship. It was subtitled, “Opponents of illegal immigration cannot claim to champion the rule of law and then propose policies that violate our Constitution.”

In that article, Ho reviewed the long history of legal and judicial support for the broad reach of birthright citizenship. As I reported this week, that included an 1898 Supreme Court decision upholding the citizenship of an American citizen of Chinese extraction, and Supreme Court rulings in 1982 and 1985 in which the court “unanimously agreed that a child born to an undocumented immigrant was in fact a U.S. citizen,” as Ho wrote.

Now let’s fast-forward to Nov. 11, days after Trump’s reelection victory. In an interview published by Reason Magazine that Ho gave to conservative lawyer Josh Blackman — who himself supports birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants — Ho backtracked.

“Birthright citizenship obviously doesn’t apply in case of war or invasion,” Ho stated. “No one to my knowledge has ever argued that the children of invading aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship. And I can’t imagine what the legal argument for that would be…. Everyone agrees that birthright citizenship doesn’t apply to the children of lawful combatants. And it’s hard to see anyone arguing that unlawful combatants should be treated more favorably than lawful combatants.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, but Ho certainly seems to be conjuring up a redefinition of “illegal” or undocumented immigrants as “invaders.” He appears to find some equivalence between undocumented immigrants and “invading aliens.” Ho articulated this view in a concurring opinion in an appellate ruling in July that supported efforts by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to have state officials block immigrants at the Texas border. Ho argued that Abbott’s assertion that Texas faced an “invasion” of illegal immigrants from Mexico deserved respect as a “good faith” description of conditions, and that the state arguably had the right to take matters into its own hands.

That’s a view in which Ho may be in a minority of one. In a 1996 case, a federal appeals court panel ruled that for a state to claim it’s being invaded, “it must be exposed to armed hostility from another political entity, such as another state or foreign country that is intending to overthrow the state’s government”—not a flow of individuals seeking jobs.

In his Reason interview, Ho’s definition of “unlawful combatants” is murky, but his free use of the term “invasion” conforms to the observation of legal scholar Rachel Rosenbloom that opposition to birthright citizenship is typically couched “in a highly racialized language of crisis and invasion.”

Why did Ho change his tune, if that’s what he’s done? Paul Blumenthal of Huffpost speculates that Ho’s “rewriting of his previous position on birthright citizenship can be best seen as his audition for the next open Supreme Court seat,” which is likely to be filled by Trump.

I asked Ho via a message to be forwarded to him by his chambers clerk to comment on that conjecture and to clarify his views on birthright citizenship, and how they might have been changed by rhetoric about an “invasion” of Texas or the U.S. by immigrants. He hasn’t replied.