The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it will block imports from Chinese biotechnology firm BGI Group and two of its affiliates, citing alleged links to forced labor in Xinjiang, China's far-western ethnic region.

Beginning Thursday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection will stop goods from BGI Group, a major player in genetic sequencing, along with BGI Genomics and MGI Tech. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the companies either source materials from Xinjiang or work with the regional government in the recruitment and movement of forced labor drawn from persecuted ethnic groups there, including Uyghurs. DHS said BGI Group holds controlling stakes in both affiliates.

DHS cites genetic testing in Xinjiang

In its announcement, DHS said credible information, including corporate and government reports, shows the three companies have supported genetic testing in Xinjiang. The department said the collection and analysis of genetic material helps Chinese authorities monitor, surveil and repress ethnic minorities, including through forced labor.

The action falls under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law at the end of 2021 in response to allegations of human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. In August, the Trump administration added 43 Chinese companies to the law's blacklist, bringing the total to 187 entities. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has pledged to protect American workers from being undercut by foreign companies that rely on forced labor.

Beijing and BGI push back

China rejected the forced labor accusations and denounced the ban as political manipulation and bullying carried out in the name of human rights. In a statement Thursday morning, China's Ministry of Commerce said the listings contradict the consensus reached by the two countries' leaders, threaten the stability of bilateral trade relations, and that China will take necessary measures to protect its interests. Beijing has long dismissed the Xinjiang allegations as false, describing its policies in the region as counterterrorism and stability efforts.

BGI Group also denied the claims, stating Wednesday that it "has not engaged in any form of forced labor" and opposes forced labor in all forms.

Biotech becomes a new front

The move highlights biotechnology as a growing area of economic and technological rivalry between Washington and Beijing. Last week, the Treasury Department proposed new limits on U.S. investment in biotechnology, artificial intelligence and supercomputing in countries such as China.

BGI Group has drawn scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers and officials for years over concerns that its alleged government ties and access to vast amounts of genetic data could threaten U.S. national security and commercial interests. The company has emphasized that it is privately owned, does not serve patients in the United States and has no access to Americans' genetic data. The Pentagon has designated BGI Group, BGI Genomics and MGI Tech as Chinese military companies.

Congress did not pass a bill that would have barred BGI from working with federally funded medical providers, but late last year it approved a similar measure that did not name specific companies and instead called for a list of biotechnology companies of concern.

The latest trade action comes ahead of an expected meeting next month between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump in Shenzhen, where BGI Group is headquartered. Xi may also travel to Florida in December for the Group of 20 leaders summit, which would mark a fourth meeting between the two leaders this year as they seek to keep relations steady under a trade truce.

The Trump administration on Wednesday filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to set aside a lower court order that has stopped construction of border barriers through the Big Bend region of Texas.

The order is a significant obstacle for one of President Donald Trump's signature initiatives. The administration has been moving quickly to build walls and related infrastructure along the southern border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

Local opposition and the October injunction

In Big Bend, the project has drawn pushback from ranchers, residents, business owners and environmental groups. They contend that the plan, which combines walls, vehicle barriers and surveillance technology, wastes money in a region where illegal crossings have historically been low, and that construction threatens the area's landscapes. Opponents have brought several lawsuits challenging the work.

In one of those cases, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone on Oct. 2 issued a preliminary injunction halting construction across the roughly 500-mile project area while the litigation continues. The order covers Big Bend National Park as well as state-owned and privately owned land upriver and downriver from the park. Opposition had been building for months but intensified in August, when bulldozers were seen clearing land inside the national park.

The waiver dispute

At the center of the case are broad waivers issued by the Secretary of Homeland Security that let U.S. Customs and Border Protection skip environmental and other regulatory requirements that would otherwise slow a project of this size.

The government maintains that Big Bend sees a high level of illegal entry and that a 1996 law expressly gives the secretary authority to waive such rules when needed to build barriers and roads near the border. Challengers counter that Congress limited that power to areas of high illegal entry, and that the remote, rugged Big Bend region does not qualify.

Judge Cardone agreed with the challengers, finding that they "are likely to succeed on the merits of their major questions doctrine claim that the Big Bend Waivers were issued in excess of the Secretary's authority."

What is at stake

Trump has long promised a wall along the approximately 2,000-mile southwest border. Last summer, congressional Republicans provided the Department of Homeland Security with $46 billion to complete it, using a combination of 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers and surveillance systems.

The administration warns that if Big Bend remains one of the few stretches without barriers, illegal crossings could shift there. Opponents respond that drones, surveillance towers and similar tools would be equally effective at a far lower cost than a wall.

Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against two former FBI officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, accusing them of giving false statements to Congress about their role in the bureau's handling of the Hunter Biden laptop matter before the 2020 presidential election.

Both previously helped lead an FBI task force focused on foreign interference in U.S. elections, a unit that has since been disbanded. Prosecutors allege that when questioned by lawmakers, the two denied taking part in FBI investigative work involving Biden, and that those denials were untrue.

The pair made their first appearance in federal court in Washington on Friday. Their lawyers asked the court to move quickly so they can challenge the allegations.

The case stands out for several reasons. Criminal prosecutions of former FBI employees by the Justice Department are uncommon. The charges were also brought by criminal complaint rather than grand jury indictment, a route prosecutors usually take when they need to detain someone quickly, for example because of flight risk or danger to the public. Both the defense and the judge commented on that choice in court. The Justice Department has had trouble in recent high-profile cases persuading grand juries in the capital to return indictments.

Timing has also drawn attention. The complaint came less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, as part of a wider review under FBI Director Kash Patel of past bureau episodes that have long been criticized by President Donald Trump's supporters. Patel was a vocal critic of the FBI before he took over the agency.

Lawyers for both defendants rejected the charges. Floris's attorneys described her as a career FBI intelligence officer with nearly two decades of service and argued the case was driven by politics rather than evidence, pointing to its timing so close to an election. Benavides's legal team called the complaint baseless and politically motivated, and said they expect the court process to clear him.

Because the case was filed by complaint, prosecutors have not yet presented it to a grand jury. Both defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a ban on distilling spirits in private homes more than 150 years ago.

Plaintiffs challenging the prohibition on home distilling claim the 1868 law is an antiquated relic of Reconstruction-era politics. They argue that Congress overstepped its taxation powers when it enacted the home distilling ban as part of a tax reform measure designed to curb fraud by commercial distillers.

Government attorneys counter that Congress properly restricted where spirits can be distilled to prevent producers from evading federal excise taxes. They warn that lifting the ban would violate Supreme Court precedent and erode congressional powers.

Federal law makes home distilling a crime punishable by a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Separate challenges to the law divided two federal circuit courts, which issued conflicting decisions in April, only 11 days apart.

A three-judge panel from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal ban in a case brought by John Ream, a brewpub owner from Newark, Ohio, who wants to distill whisky at home for his personal consumption.

A Fifth Circuit panel ruled in favor of different plaintiffs — members of the Texas-based Hobby Distillers Association — and concluded that statutory prohibitions on in-home distilling are outside the scope of Congress' taxing power under the Constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed to review the Fifth Circuit decision, which was the Justice Department's preference. Plaintiffs' attorney Robert Alt said they are "thrilled" that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

"Our country's founders would be rolling over in their graves to learn that a pastime in which even George Washington partook, which is as American as apple pie and certainly a lot older, has quite absurdly been turned into a federal crime," Alt said in a statement.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in both cases argue that Congress could ban a broad array of activities inside private homes — including cooking, gardening and remote work — under the government's interpretation of the 19th century law.

"The importance of this case and the questions it presents could hardly be overstated," the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote. "It presents fundamental questions of the extent of federal power and the powers reserved to the states and the people."

Justice Department attorneys said the government's regulation and taxation on the production of distilled spirits is as old as Congress itself. They noted that Congress outlawed home distilling to prevent those producers from evading taxes or government inspections.

"And because the location restrictions were enacted only after lengthy experience with tax evasion, upholding those restrictions would not open the door to hypothetical laws restricting other conduct lacking that history," they wrote. The government says Ream asked the Supreme Court to resolve an "additional question" of whether location restrictions on home distilling exceed the scope of Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. But the government urged the high court to avoid that question, saying it wasn't part of Ream's case or the government's current arguments in either case.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear arguments in a watchdog's lawsuit seeking public records about billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

The high court is intervening for a second time in Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's case, which seeks access to DOGE records from its operations in the early days of President Donald Trump's second term. The Trump administration asked the court to hear the case.

Last year, the high court reined in a district court's order for the government to produce DOGE-related records to CREW. The high court's conservative majority concluded in June 2025 that U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled too broadly in ordering documents to be turned over to the group.

CREW claims DOGE is a federal agency and therefore is subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The Trump administration argues that DOGE is exempt from FOIA's requirements as a presidential advisory body.

Cooper ruled in CREW's favor and ordered expedited processing of the group's records request. An appeals court panel also sided with CREW.

The Trump administration claims the panel ignored the Supreme Court's direction to consider separation-of-powers concerns and intruded on the "autonomy and confidentiality" of presidential advisers.

"Subjecting advisory bodies to intrusive discovery triggers the very concerns that Congress sought to avoid by excluding presidential advisory bodies from FOIA's reach," Justice Department attorneys wrote.

The administration also says the appeals court impermissibly authorized the plaintiffs to take a sworn deposition of DOGE acting administrator Amy Gleason.

CREW says the appeals court fully complied with the Supreme Court's previous order. The group also asserts that the public has a right to know how DOGE helped the administration carry out a sweeping overhaul of government operations in 2025.

"Undisputed facts in the public record — including the President's statements — confirmed that (DOGE) was wielding enormous independent authority across the federal government," its attorneys wrote.

In a statement Tuesday, CREW attorney Nikhel Sus said the lower courts have uniformly ruled that it is entitled to records that could help the court determine whether DOGE wields the type of authority that would make it subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

"We will continue to pursue transparency for the American people, who deserve to know the details of the Trump Administration's efforts to unilaterally remake the federal government," Sus said in the statement.