El presidente Emmanuel Macron hizo este jueves un llamado a la calma a dos días de las nuevas protestas convocadas para este sábado en Francia y acusó a grupos de extrema izquierda de haber querido “hacer caer la República” durante los recientes disturbios

“Queremos un regreso a la calma”, afirmó.

Poco después, la policía de París decretó una extensión del toque de queda en algunas zonas de la capital francesa todas las noches desde las 23:00 hasta las 06:00 del lunes próximo.

La Prefectura de Policía también anunció la prohibición de “cualquier reunión no declarada” durante la tarde y la noche del jueves al viernes, especialmente en los alrededores del Elíseo, la Asamblea Nacional, el Senado, la avenida de los Campos Elíseos y las estaciones de tren. Esta medida se aplica tanto a adultos como a menores.

Macron anunció que el sábado solo se permitirán las manifestaciones organizadas por sindicatos y se ofrecerán circuitos alternativos para proteger los “centros urbanos” y los “comercios y edificios”.

“La recomendación general es que no haya manifestaciones en los próximos días”, afirmó el jefe del Estado después de un consejo de seguridad. Las peticiones formuladas por “gente que no tiene ninguna legitimidad para ello” serán rechazadas, advirtió.

Francia vive un estado de enorme agitación social con protestas que que culminaron con una ola de violencia el sábado pasado que dejó 3000 tiendas saquedas, vehículos incendiados y choques entre manifestantes y policías.

“Hemos tenido a la vez actos políticos e incluso sediciosos llevados a cabo por grupos organizados de ultraizquierda cuyo objetivo es hacer caer la República”, afirmó Macron al término de una reunión en el Elíseo con los servicios de inteligencia, acusados de no haber previsto la magnitud de la movilización del sábado.

Reunión multipartidaria

En este contexto tenso, el primer ministro, Sébastien Lecornu, recibió este jueves por la tarde a los partidos en presencia de los ministros del Interior, Laurent Nuñez, y Justicia, Gérald Darmanin, y de los responsables de los servicios de inteligencia y de las fuerzas del orden.

La mayoría de los partidos envió a sus líderes, pero el ultraderechista Agrupación Nacional (RN) de Marine Le Pen estuvo representado por un responsable de menor rango.

Lecornu tenía previsto reunirse con alcaldes y, el lunes, con grupos de estudiantes, sindicatos y la patronal. Macron aseguró que la opción de declarar el estado de emergencia no está sobre la mesa.

El ministro de Justicia, Gérald Darmanin, indicó este jueves que 217 de las 2700 personas detenidas durante y desde el pasado fin de semana fueron encarceladas, y que otras 1000 aún están siendo procesadas.

Protestas prohibidas

Después de los actos violentos, las autoridades ordenaron tres noches de toque de queda en zonas de varias ciudades como París y Lyon, la tercera más grande del país.

En París, cientos de personas participaron este jueves en una manifestación estudiantil cuya prohibición por parte de la policía fue anulada in extremis por un juez.

Macron

Two Minnesota federal judges who took the unusual step of publicly criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown to the New York Times are now fighting the administration’s efforts to disqualify them from cases involving immigration enforcement.

One of those judges, Patrick Schiltz, is overseeing the Justice Department’s effort to strip U. S. citizenship from Salah Osman Ahmed, a Somali-born man who pleaded guilty in 2009 to providing material support to terrorists after joining al- Shabaab. The other, John Tunheim, is presiding over the prosecution of a South African national accused of falsely claiming U. S. citizenship and illegally voting in the 2024 election. The Justice Department filed separate motions asking Schiltz and Tunheim to recuse themselves, arguing that their participation in the New York Times report criticizing President Donald Trump’s Operation Metro Surge has raised questions about whether they can fairly preside over the cases.

«Impartiality is imperative to ensuring public trust in our Nation’s judiciary,» the Justice Department said in a statement posted to X this week. «Judge Schiltz’s and Judge Tunheim’s on-the-record participation in a recent highly partisan New York Times Article, along with Judge Schiltz’s subsequent public comments, unquestionably calls into doubt whether they can be impartial in these cases.»

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The Justice Department’s formal recusal demand follows reporting by Digital last month detailing unusual behind-the-scenes coordination among Minnesota’s federal bench as judges confronted a massive influx of immigration cases stemming from the administration’s enforcement operation. The report came after Schiltz and Tunheim were among seven Minnesota federal judges who spoke with the Times in September about Operation Metro Surge. Schiltz sat for a roughly 90- minute interview during which he described the administration’s handling of the operation as having created a «grave threat to the rule of law,» while Tunheim suggested to the Times that agents carrying out the administration’s immigration crackdown were not primarily apprehending dangerous criminals.

DOJ had already raised the prospect that judges who publicly discussed the administration’s immigration cases might need to step aside when the Times report was released in September. Last month, DOJ filed a judicial misconduct complaint against Schiltz, Tunheim and other Minnesota judges who participated in the Times report, accusing them of violating judicial ethics rules and asking the Eighth Circuit to investigate. Attorney General Todd Blanche said their conduct had «undermined public confidence in an impartial judiciary in Minnesota.»

«It is remarkable that sitting federal judges are giving on-the-record interviews attacking this Administration’s policies rather than ruling from the bench,» a Justice Department spokesperson told Digital in September. «Judges who have made public comments on pending or related matters should consider whether recusal is warranted going forward.»

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The Times report in question revealed that Schiltz, Tunheim and the other Minnesota judges handling the flood of Operation Metro Surge cases regularly met, communicated through running email threads and used an informal spreadsheet created by court clerks to identify judges to consult about recurring legal questions. Chief Judge Eric Tostrud previously told Digital that the judges nevertheless independently decided every case assigned to them.

«The bottom line is that each of us made an independent decision with respect to the merits of each and every petition we were assigned,» Tostrud said at the time.

The Justice Department, however, has accused Schiltz and the other judges of «publicly» taking sides in the ongoing battle over Trump’s deportation agenda.

«A judge who has publicly taken sides on the political issue of immigration enforcement cannot then preside over a case concerning one of the Justice Department’s key immigration initiatives: pursuing the largest denaturalization effort in Department history to restore trust and integrity in U.S. citizenship,» Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward wrote.

Schiltz declined to comment on the Justice Department’s new effort to disqualify him when reached by Digital this week. But when Digital asked him about the possibility of recusal in September, Schiltz argued there was no basis for him to step aside — and pointed to the fact that DOJ had not asked him to do so.

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«I have seen suggestions from the Administration that I might have to recuse in immigration cases, but no one has yet identified any basis for my recusal, which is presumably why the Justice Department has not asked me to recuse,» Schiltz said at the time.

«Neither in the New York Times article nor anywhere else have I commented on the merits of a particular case,» he continued. «Instead, I have spoken in defense of the rule of law, a component of which is compliance with court orders. That is not a cause for recusal.»

Tunheim did not respond to Digital’s request for comment.

Charles «Cully» Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation who previously served as a federal prosecutor and military judge, told Digital that judges ordinarily avoid publicly commenting on matters that could intersect with cases before them.

«These judges did something extraordinarily imprudent, and that is to talk to any newspaper, much less the New York Times,» Stimson said. «That was a big no-no.»

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Asked what he would do if the New York Times interviews were the only facts at issue, Stimson said he would step aside.

«If we were to just go off of the New York Times interview … I would recuse myself,» Stimson said, noting the recusal would only be from the particular case at issue as opposed to all future cases adjudicating the same principles.

Stimson cautioned, however, that recusal motions put judges in the unusual position of effectively judging their own impartiality and said it would be inappropriate to predict how either motion should ultimately be resolved without the complete record.

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If either judge denies DOJ’s request, Stimson said the government could seek review from the Eighth Circuit, where a three-judge panel would determine whether the government has met the legal standard for recusal.

DOJ declined to comment further Thursday beyond its public statement. A DOJ spokesperson also did not answer Digital’s question about whether the department would appeal if Schiltz or Tunheim denies the recusal motions.

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A top federal prosecutor in California said federal investigators have determined that all 20,000 people they flagged on the state’s voter rolls as «likely noncitizens» are not U.S. citizens.

Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for California’s Central District, told Digital that federal investigators have evidence that these 20,000 individuals received mail ballots this month. His office sued California last week seeking a court order to prevent any ballots they return from being counted.

«We’re not asking California to take any drastic steps other than to sequester the ballots from the suspected noncitizens,» Essayli said in an interview on Wednesday. «We believe it’s at a minimum of 20,000. That’s the floor.»

The potential ceiling, he said, is much larger. Essayli referenced a letter Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent to California in July that flagged nearly 200,000 voters as possible noncitizens.

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Since then, federal investigators have been sifting through those records to identify people they believe they can verify as noncitizens.

He said 20,000 is only the current tally and expects thousands more names to be added in the coming days.

Earlier this week, Essayli got into a social media spat with Gov. Gavin Newsom over the state’s safeguards against noncitizen voting.

Essayli argued that California is allowing people without citizenship onto the voter rolls through its supposedly lax verification processes, while Newsom said the state follows all relevant federal law governing the integrity of elections.

In court filings, California election officials have pushed back against the Justice Department’s demands, arguing that county election offices lack both the authority and access to federal records needed to verify voters’ citizenship status.

They have also said that sequestering ballots from people on the DOJ list is impossible in cases where the ballots have already been processed. Once a ballot’s signature is verified, it is removed from its identifying envelope and processed alongside other ballots, meaning it can no longer be traced back to an individual voter.

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«That is true. That’s why we’re getting an emergency court order requiring them to put those ballots aside,» Essayli said. «Ballots have already gone out, people are filling them out and they’re being returned in process as we speak. So, the crime is occurring in real time.»

The DOJ escalated its push for immediate court intervention Wednesday, asking the judge to rule on its emergency request by noon Thursday. In Los Angeles County alone, officials have already processed 331,000 ballots, according to court records.

Essayli’s office filed suit on Oct. 15, roughly two weeks after California sent out mail ballots, including to the possible noncitizens on the DOJ list, according to the federal government.

When asked why the Justice Department didn’t act sooner, Essayli explained that investigators did not know exactly which voters would receive ballots until they were sent.

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He said California should cooperate with the federal government to expedite the process of verifying voters’ citizenship.

That would involve providing additional identifying information, including driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers when available, that federal investigators could cross-check against government databases.

California and dozens of other states treat this information as confidential and have refused to turn it over to the federal government, prompting the DOJ to take several of them to court.

In a separate lawsuit from Sept. 2025, the DOJ tried to compel California to provide its complete, unredacted voter-registration database, including names, Social Security numbers, home addresses and voting histories.

In January, a district court sided with California and dismissed the case, calling the government’s request «unprecedented and illegal.» The DOJ appealed the ruling and litigation is ongoing.

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«If California will make available or submit its records, we can quickly put them through our established systems to determine who’s a citizen and who’s not,» Essayli told Digital. «They’re forcing us to do it the hard way, which we’re willing to do because this is very important.»

He said every person on the current 20,000-name list was individually reviewed by a federal employee at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security Investigations.

California officials, however, have questioned the reliability of the DOJ list.

Monica Flores, an assistant registrar-recorder in Los Angeles County, said in a court declaration that her office conducted a preliminary review of a sample of 200 records from the list that were associated with LA County addresses.

Of those, 112 corresponded to canceled or inactive voter registrations, meaning no ballot was mailed to those individuals for the November election, Flores said.

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«I don’t believe that, actually,» Essayli said. «The information we have is that they likely received ballots. So we are asking for the names of people they claim whose registration has been canceled.»

Essayli added LA County did not say when these registrations were canceled. He raised the possibility at least some were canceled after federal officials provided the state with their list.

«If they’re canceling now based on the records we provided, that’s great news,» Essayli said. «But that’s all to be determined.»

In the 200-person sample reviewed by LA County, Flores said that among records where birthplace was «meaningfully reported,» 38.9% indicated the person was born in the United States, which she called «strong evidence of citizenship.»

Essayli similarly disputed this conclusion, arguing that the birthplace information — much like the citizenship information itself — was provided by the registered voters themselves.

«They’re not independently checking any of this information,» Essayli said. «They’re going off the information that was provided to them by the person who registered to vote.»

The California Secretary of State’s office and the LA County Registrar-Recorder’s office did not immediately respond to Digital’s requests for comment.

Essayli said that his office is determined to follow through with its investigation because «one noncitizen voting is too many.»

«One illegal vote cancels out the vote of an American citizen. There are a lot of local elections that are decided on very few votes,» he said. «Noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections, and we intend to enforce that law.»

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