At the end of this month, Tennessee’s health department starts reporting sick children to ICE.
The Children’s Special Services program is the last resort for the sickest children in the state, the ones on ventilators and feeding tubes and partway through chemo. The department told about 400 immigrant families that if their child keeps getting care past June 30, their information goes to immigration enforcement. The state chose this even though no federal law required it.
Defenders say critically ill children can still go to the emergency room, as if an ER runs a child’s chemo. Nobody had to end the program. They just had to make a parent too frightened to accept it, and it is already working. Families are pulling their kids out rather than risk a van outside the house.
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HHS Secretary Kennedy overrules his own department's medical reviewer to keep a symptom-free cruise passenger locked in a federal quarantine facility against her doctors' recommendation.
Today’s GovBrief News
The FBI arrests five men in four states over an alleged plot to use explosive drones against the White House UFC fights.
Source: ABC News
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Federal prosecutors indict 15 Minnesota anti-ICE protesters on conspiracy charges that allege no specific act of violence, months after dropping half their earlier surge cases.
Source: Minnesota Public Radio
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Israel strikes Lebanon and says the U.S.-Iran deal does not bind it, days before Friday's signing.
Source: CBS News
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Congressional staff tour the Texas prison camp where Maxwell got transferred after clearing Trump, but prison officials block questions about her treatment.
Source: Politico
June 16, 2026
New Mexico orders JPMorgan, Google, and two dozen companies to preserve Epstein records, going around a Justice Department it says withholds unredacted files.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
June 16, 2026
A federal judge recuses herself from the Justice Department's lawsuit over Georgia's voter rolls after it questioned her ties to Trump's former prosecutor there.
Source: WAGA Atlanta
June 16, 2026
The Justice Department joins a conservative legal group's suit to dismantle Evanston's first-in-the-nation reparations program, calling race-based eligibility unconstitutional.
Source: The Evanston Roundtable
June 16, 2026
A Tennessee law drafted with Stephen Miller will report roughly 400 chronically ill immigrant children to ICE if they keep getting lifesaving state-funded care past June 30.
Source: USA Today
June 16, 2026
Social Security chief Bisignano tells Congress the agency has not marked living people as dead, after a whistleblower described a DOGE and DHS plan to do exactly that.
Source: FedScoop
June 16, 2026
The Education Department moves special education oversight to HHS and school civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department, advancing its own elimination.
Source: EdWeek
June 16, 2026
The TSA plans to fly thousands of supervisors to Nevada or Georgia for overnight stays to attend a four-hour training, despite the administration's efficiency push.
Source: NOTUS
June 16, 2026
The Trump administration blames Obama after the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turns green days after its $14 million renovation.
Source: The Independent
June 16, 2026
Fired Homeland Security Secretary Noem, still serving as a Trump special envoy, joins a Canadian mining firm's advisory board as it pursues critical minerals.
Source: The Hill
June 16, 2026
Internal documents show the White House ballroom will cost $600 million with taxpayers covering more than half, despite Trump's repeated promise of zero public funds.
Source: USA Today
June 16, 2026
Massachusetts commits $1 million to help at least 20 towns and school districts fix cybersecurity holes the state's own free assessments uncovered.
Source: GovTech
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A federal judge blocks most of Idaho's law making transgender bathroom use a crime, two weeks before it would have taken effect.
Source: The Idaho Capital Sun
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