Summary: Judge Darrin P. Gayles dismisses Trump's defamation case Trump's lawsuit challenges article on Epstein birthday card Wall Street Journal defends accuracy and rigor of reporting  A federal judge on April 13 dismissed Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, a setback for the U.S. president in his legal campaign against media companies he accuses of treating him unfairly. The case was one of several that Trump, a Republican, has filed during his presidency against major media outlets over reporting he has characterized as unfair or false. That has led to concern among Democrats and press freedom advocates that he is seeking to use defamation cases to quell critical coverage. Trump’s lawsuit said the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper tarnished his reputation with an article describing a birthday card to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein bearing Trump’s signature. Trump and his lawyers said the card is fake, even after it was released by lawmakers investigating Epstein’s case. Trump filed the lawsuit in July 2025 as his administration faced criticism from its conservative base and congressional Democrats over its handling of the case against Epstein, a financier who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 after being arrested on child sex trafficking charges. Miami-based U.S. District Court Judge Darrin P. Gayles, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said in tossing the case that Trump had not come close to meeting the "actual malice" standard that public figures must clear in defamation. That means they must prove not only that a public statement about them was false but also that the media outlet or person who made the statement knew or should have known that it was false. "This complaint comes nowhere close to this standard," Gayles wrote. "Quite the opposite." Gayles said Trump could file an amended version of the lawsuit by April 27. A spokesman for Trump's legal team said he would refile the lawsuit. A spokesperson for Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal's parent, said in a statement, "We are pleased with the judge’s decision to dismiss this complaint. We stand behind the reliability, rigor and accuracy of The Wall Street Journal's reporting." DEMOCRATS RELEASED COPY OF LETTER Gayles wrote that the Journal's reporters reached out to Trump for comment beforehand, and printed his denial. That allowed readers to decide for themselves what to conclude, cutting against Trump's assertion that the newspaper acted with actual malice, the judge said. The ruling did not address whether the article was true. The Epstein case generated conspiracy theories that the government covered up the financier’s ties to the rich and powerful and obscured details about his death, which was ruled a suicide. Trump amplified such conspiracy theories about Epstein during the 2024 presidential campaign and vowed to open the government’s investigative files if he won. He reneged on that promise but has called the ensuing scandal a Democratic hoax. Trump and Epstein were once friends, but Trump says he severed ties before Epstein pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in 2008. Trump has consistently denied knowing about Epstein’s crimes. His lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal came in response to an article asserting that Trump’s signature was on a 2003 birthday card for Epstein that included a drawing of a naked woman and a reference to shared secrets in an imaginary dialogue between Trump and Epstein. Trump’s lawsuit repeatedly asserts the card is fake and takes the Journal to task for not publishing it as proof, but a copy was later released by Democrats in Congress who obtained it from Epstein’s estate. WSJ WARNS OF CHILLING EFFECT ON SPEECH In seeking to dismiss the case, the Wall Street Journal said the lawsuit was meritless and threatened to chill the speech of those who would dare to publish content the president does not like. Trump has also sued the BBC, citing misleading editing of a speech, the New York Times over articles and a book about him, and a newspaper in Iowa over a poll that showed him trailing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign. All three outlets have denied wrongdoing. ABC settled with Trump after he sued over an anchor’s inaccurate comments about a civil case accusing him of sexual abuse. CBS struck a similar deal after Trump sued over its edits to an interview with Harris. (Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Daniel Wallis)

Summary: Three-judge panel hears case at U.S. Court of International Trade Tariffs imposed under Section 122 of Trade Act of 1974 States and small businesses challenge tariff authority By Dietrich Knauth NEW YORK, April 10 (Reuters) - A U.S. trade court on Friday considered the legality of a 10 percent global import tax imposed by the Trump administration, which several states and small businesses say sidesteps a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that invalidated most of Trump's previous tariffs. A group of 24 mostly Democratic-led states and two small businesses sued the Trump administration to stop the new tariffs, which went into effect on February 24. The hearing is before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade. Oregon's lawyer Brian Marshall told the judges that the latest tariffs are based on archaic authority that was meant to protect the U.S. dollar from sudden depreciation in the 1970s, when dollars could be exchanged for gold reserves held in Fort Knox. Marshall said that authority was meant to resolve significant "balance of payments deficits," and Trump cannot repurpose it to address routine trade deficits. "They have a different meaning of what 'balance of payments deficits' means," Marshall said at the court hearing. Trump has made ​tariffs a central pillar of his foreign policy in his second term, claiming sweeping authority to issue tariffs without input from Congress. The administration has said that global tariffs are a legal and appropriate response to a persistent trade deficit caused by the fact that the U.S. imports more goods than it exports. Trump imposed the new tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade ​Act of 1974, which authorizes duties of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days on imports during “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits” or to prevent imminent depreciation of the dollar. The states and small businesses argue that the Trade Act's tariff authority is meant only to address short-term monetary emergencies, and routine trade deficits do not match the economic definition of “balance-of-payments deficits." Trump announced the new tariffs on February 20, the same day the Supreme Court handed him a stinging defeat when ⁠it struck down a broad swath of tariffs he had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), ruling that the law did not give him the power he claimed. No U.S. president before Trump had used the IEEPA or Section 122 to impose tariffs. The two lawsuits do not challenge other Trump tariffs made under more traditional legal authority, such as recent tariffs on steel, aluminum and copper imports. (Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Lisa Shumaker and Franklin Paul)

Jasveen Sangha, a drug dealer who pleaded guilty in September to drug-related charges, including providing actor Matthew Perry with the dose of ketamine that killed him, was sentenced on April 8 to 15 years in prison. “These were not mistakes. They were horrible decisions,” Sangha said at the hearing, adding that her choices “shattered people’s lives and the lives of their family and friends,” per the AP. Sangha, 42, was known to her clients as the “Ketamine Queen,” according to court documents. Following an investigation into the “Friends” actor’s fatal overdose in 2023 at age 54, Sangha was charged alongside four others in August 2024. She pleaded guilty to one count of using her home for drug distribution, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death. Before her guilty plea, Sangha’s attorney, Mark Geragos, denied the allegations against Sangha, saying in a documentary last year that she had “never met Matthew Perry.” Sangha, who has been in custody since August 2024, is a dual citizen of the United States and Britain. Ahead of Sangha’s sentencing, prosecutors asked Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett to sentence Sangha to 15 years in prison. “For years … Sangha operated a high-volume drug trafficking business out of her North Hollywood residence,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum. “To cultivate her business, marketed herself as an exclusive dealer who catered to high-profile Hollywood clientele. … While worked to expand and profit from her drug trafficking, she knew — and disregarded — the grave harm her conduct was causing.” In a victim impact statement that read like a poem, Perry’s stepmother, Debbie Perry, asked the court for a maximum sentence for Sangha. “The pain you’ve caused/ to hundreds maybe thousands,” she wrote, “Is irreversible.” Matthew Perry, best known for his role as Chandler Bing on “Friends,” the sitcom that became a cultural behemoth in the 1990s, wrote openly about his struggles with addiction. In his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” he recounted his struggles with Vicodin, alcohol, cocaine, Xanax and Suboxone, as well as scores of rehab stints. “You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season,” Perry wrote of his 10 seasons on “Friends.” “When I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol. When I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.” He also starred in films such as “The Whole Nine Yards” (2000) and “17 Again” (2009), and was Emmy-nominated for his appearances on “The West Wing” and in the TV movie “The Ron Clark Story.” Perry was found dead in a hot tub at his home in October 2023. Around the time of his death, Perry had been receiving ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety, but he was also addicted to the drug, according to prosecutors. The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office concluded the actor had died of the acute effects of ketamine, ruling the death an accident with no signs of foul play, before an investigation was launched into the death. Sangha is the third of the suspects connected to Perry’s death to be charged. In December, Salvador Plasencia was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for multiple drug charges. Later that month, Mark Chavez received a sentence of eight months of home confinement. Both Plasencia and Chavez are physicians. Perry’s acquaintance Erik Fleming and his live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa both pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine in October 2024 and will be sentenced in the coming weeks.