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A federal judge in Rhode Island accused the Trump administration of "covertly" withholding funds for Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief programs from states that didn't vote for him, Courthouse News reported on Friday.

"In March, U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued a preliminary injunction in favor of 23 states that sued the government over its plan to implement a broad pause to state aid," noted the report.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) delivered a dire warning to American consumers still digesting the effects of President Donald Trump’s massive set of tariffs as he painted a doomsday scenario he said the country is at “a very real risk of.”

The bleak outlook from the Republican senator came Friday on an episode of his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” where he turned the tables on Trump and threw a veiled shot at his fellow Republicans.

The White House issued a cheeky response to a federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled Friday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia's deportation was illegal and unconstitutional. Garcia was deported despite a 2019 court order protecting him from deportation to El Salvador due to fears of persecution. The judge ordered that Garcia be returned by 11:59 p.m. on Monday.

Dr. Peter Marks, the outgoing top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, says that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushed him out because he wouldn't assist in his demands to find nonexistent data that vaccines are dangerous, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

"The outgoing official said he was speaking out to encourage parents to vaccinate their children against measles, as cases mount in Texas and New Mexico. He urged the Trump administration to give a full-throated endorsement of the measles vaccine because it can prevent deaths and recommended a vaccination campaign," reported Liz Essley Whyte. "An HHS spokesman didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Kennedy has said he wants the federal government to step up its work fighting chronic disease. He has said he isn’t anti-vaccine, told senators he would follow the science and called stopping the measles outbreak a 'top priority.'"

A CNN host on Friday had a tough time reining Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) back into the conversation about the devastating market losses that continued for a second straight day once the topic of the network’s treatment of Joe Biden emerged.

The spirited back-and-forth ignited on CNN’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt" after the host peppered the Republican lawmaker with questions surrounding the effects that President Donald Trump’s massive set of tariffs are having on his Tennessee district.

CNN's Jake Tapper began his Friday show by addressing the startling drop in the financial markets at the end of the week and the reaction of Wall Street experts.

President Donald Trump said his tariff plan "is already working," Tapper quoted.

The Department of Homeland Security made the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency submit to a lie detector test as part of their investigation into leaks out of the department, reported Politico on Friday.

Kristi Noem, the leader of the department, previously vowed criminal prosecution for the leaks and already threatened polygraph tests on other lower-level employees.

CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid reported Friday afternoon that President Donald Trump was handed his first "win" by the U.S. Supreme Court, and it "is significant."

According to the High Court ruling, Trump can block $65 million in Department of Education grants that were earmarked to help states with teacher shortages.

Economic uncertainties over President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs sparked a second straight day of the markets continuing to plunge amid fears that the tariffs could unleash a global trade war and cause a recession.

The damage resulted in historic lows in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which dropped 2,200 as the stock market closed on Friday, while the S&P 500 lost 10% in two days, CNBC reported. The grim news comes as China responded to Trump’s trade war threats with its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced there would be 10,000 jobs cut department-wide, with emails that went out to "scientists, senior leaders, doctors, inspectors and others," the Associated Press reported. Now, thousands are being hired back, which Kennedy claimed was all part of the plan.

Kennedy said he always knew he would rehire the people he was told to fire, The Huffington Post reported Friday.

The business community is mired in a "culture of fear" as it wants to oppose President Donald Trump's new round of tariffs but fears reprisal from the U.S. government, Politico reported on Friday.

Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs target practically every country's goods with new import duties ranging from 10 to 49 percent, and for some reason even explicitly include some uninhabited Antarctic volcano islands with no trade or industry.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals has moved to order a recount in a North Carolina Supreme Court race that Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin lost by just 734 votes to Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, reported The Guardian.

Griffin had sought for some 65,000 votes from military and overseas voters, and voters lacking certain registration info, to be thrown out. The court is ordering affected voters to approve their eligibility in just 15 days — a measure which, if allowed to stand, would likely overturn the result of the election and install the Republican.