Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster who turned a tiny Virginia station into the global Christian Broadcasting Network, tried a run for president and helped make religion central to Republican Party politics in America through his Christian Coalition, has died, the network announced Thursday. He was 93.
Robertson died at his home in Virginia Beach, Virginia, early Thursday morning, according to the network. No cause was given.
Robertson’s enterprises also included Regent University, an evangelical Christian school in Virginia Beach; the American Center for Law and Justice, which defends the First Amendment rights of religious people; and Operation Blessing, an international humanitarian organization.
The Supreme Court’s unexpected affirmation of part of the Voting Rights Act was not just a win for Black voters in Alabama — it could also send new Democrats to Congress in as many as four states, advocates said, as the precedent is applied in similar cases around the country.
The court, divided 5-4, struck down Alabama’s congressional map Thursday, agreeing with a lower court that the state had diluted the power of Black voters by drawing just one majority-Black district when there were enough voters for two seats.
Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the court’s three liberals.
A federal grand jury has indicted Donald Trump on seven criminal charges in connection with his mishandling of more than 100 classified documents that were discovered last year at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, making the twice-impeached former commander-in-chief the first former president to face federal criminal charges.
Trump said Thursday night that his attorneys were informed that he has been indicted in the special counsel’s investigation into his handling of classified documents. Two sources familiar with the matter confirmed the indictment, one adding that Trump had received a summons to appear in U.S. District Court on Tuesday.
NBC News’s Jacob Soboroff sat down with California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) for an interview set to air Thursday morning on Today. In the interview, Newsom doubled down on his strongly-worded criticism of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and his vow to investigate and potentially prosecute anyone involved in the deceitful shipping of migrants to his state.
“These flights of asylum seekers that are being brought to Sacramento. There’s been two of them, now. They’ve been described as state-sanctioned kidnaping by the attorney general of the state of California,” Soboroff began.
A small bloc of conservative bomb-throwers is holding the floor of the House of Representatives hostage, forcing GOP leaders to cancel votes for the rest of the week.
For the second straight day, the conservatives blocked several leadership-backed bills from moving forward Wednesday in protest of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s handling of the debt deal he struck with President Joe Biden.
The brazen revolt means this hard-right faction, made up mostly of House Freedom Caucus members, has ground legislating on the chamber floor to a halt, undermining the Republican majority and McCarthy’s power.
Steve Bannon, a longtime supporter and ex-adviser to former President Donald Trump, was subpoenaed in Washington, D.C., by a federal grand jury in an investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, several news outlets reported Wednesday.
The subpoena, which was first reported by NBC News, is the latest update in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol and Trump’s actions following his loss of the 2020 election.
Sources told NBC News that the subpoena was sent out in late May and calls for documents and testimony. CNN later confirmed that reporting.
Federal prosecutors have notified President Donald Trump’s legal team that he is a target of the criminal investigation into his handling of classified documents, according to multiplereports.
The move, first reported by The Guardian, reflects a major uptick in the inquiry and comes amid reports that Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is nearly finished collecting testimony and evidence in the case. Prosecutors are also using a grand jury in Florida in their investigation as those in the Trump camp fear charges against the former president could be imminent.
The PGA Tour, the dominant force in men’s professional golf for generations, and LIV Golf, which made its debut just last year and is backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in Saudi money, will together form an industry powerhouse that is expected to transform the sport, executives announced Tuesday.
The rival circuits had spent the last year clashing in public, and the tentative agreement that emerged from secret negotiations blindsided virtually all of the world’s top players, agents and broadcasters. The deal would create a new company that would consolidate the PGA Tour’s prestige, television contracts and marketing muscle with Saudi money.
About two dozen Secret Service agents have been subpoenaed or have appeared before a federal grand jury in Washington that’s looking into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed Tuesday.
The sources said prosecutors have interviewed agents assigned to Trump’s security detail at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, about 24 of whom have been asked to testify before the grand jury. All complied, the sources said.
The testimony occurred in the “past few months,” meaning not recently, since the grand jury has been on hiatus, the sources said.
Former President Donald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has testified before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the special counsel’s investigations into Trump, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Sources said that Meadows answered questions on both Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents while he was out of office.
Meadows’ appearance was first reported by The New York Times. It was not immediately clear exactly when he appeared before the grand jury, which has been meeting regularly in Washington.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie jumped into the 2024 presidential race Tuesday, filing his official paperwork hours before a planned launch event.
Christie has been blunt in his criticism of former President Donald Trump, who remains the Republican front-runner in the polls, and he’s likely to continue those lines of attack now that he’s in the race.
Christie directly took aim at Trump as he announced his candidacy Tuesday night at a town hall at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester.
The legal pursuit of El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is starting to look like a televised bass-fishing tournament. There’s Team Smith in Washington, and Team James in New York, and Team Willis down there in Georgia. At the moment, Team Smith seems to be in the lead on total weight but, down in Georgia, Team Willis is aiming to land a big one that might just close the gap considerably.
Gov. Gavin Newsom took his feud with Gov. Ron DeSantis to new heights on Monday, seemingly threatening him with kidnapping charges after California officials say South American migrants were sent to Sacramento by the state of Florida as a political stunt.
Newsom, a Democrat, cited state kidnapping laws in a tweet to the Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful, whom he called a “small, pathetic man.”
“This isn’t Martha’s Vineyard. Kidnapping charges?” Newsom said in the tweet, referencing DeSantis’ action last year to send a group of Venezuelan migrants to the wealthy liberal vacation spot in Massachusetts.
Former Vice President Mike Pence is filing paperwork on Monday declaring his campaign for president in 2024, setting up a challenge to his former boss, Donald Trump, just two years after their time in the White House ended with an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and Pence fleeing for his life.
Pence, the nation’s 48th vice president, will formally launch his bid for the Republican nomination with a video and kickoff event in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday, which is his 64th birthday, according to people familiar with his plans. He was set to file papers making his candidacy official with the Federal Election Commission.
The FBI privately briefed lawmakers Monday about an unverified tip the bureau received in 2020 that Joe Biden had been involved in a bribery scheme when he was vice president.
Republicans have said the source of the allegation is highly credible while admitting they don’t know whether it’s true or not.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) declared after the briefing on Monday that the FBI had not determined the allegation to be untrue, though he didn’t say it had found the tip credible, either.
Former President Donald Trump suggested Monday that he’s close to being charged in the Department of Justice’s investigation into his handling of classified documents.
In an online post conveying panic, Trump expressed disbelief that he could be indicted and said he’s innocent of all wrongdoing.
“How can DOJ possibly charge me, who did nothing wrong, when no other president’s [sic] were charged,” he posted in all caps on his Truth Social account.
Texas has become the most populous state to ban gender-affirming care for minors after Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation on Friday.
Texas joined at least 18 other states that have enacted similar bans.
Every major medical organization, including the American Medical Association, has opposed the bans and supported the medical care for youth when administered appropriately. Lawsuits have been filed in several states where bans have been enacted this year.
The federal grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the Justice Department’s investigation of former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents is expected to meet again this coming week in Washington, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation.
Prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith have been presenting the grand jury with evidence and witness testimony for months, but activity appeared to have slowed in recent weeks based on observations at the courthouse and sources.
It’s unclear whether prosecutors are prepared to seek an indictment at this point. The Justice Department would not comment on the status of the investigation.
President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a bill extending the debt ceiling for two years, averting an economically disastrous debt default ahead of Monday’s deadline.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 suspends the public debt limit through January 1, 2025, after the 2024 presidential elections.
“If we had failed to reach an agreement on the budget, there were extreme voices threatening to take America, for the first time in our 247 year history, into default on our national debt,” Biden said of the deal Friday night in his first televised address from the Oval Office.
NBC News is passing the baton on its long-running Sunday public affairs program “Meet the Press.”
Chuck Todd told viewers Sunday he is leaving the moderator’s chair on the 75-year-old program in September. He will hand it off to Kristen Welker, the network’s chief White House correspondent.
Welker will be the second female moderator in the long history of “Meet the Press.” Martha Rountree was the first to have the job when the program launched in 1947 and held the position until 1953.
There is one question that I don’t see being asked of right-wing politicians when they start talking about all the things they want to ban from the “public” (and I put “public” in quotes because the real public doesn’t actually give a shit about any of this, but a fantasy public that the GOP pretends exists sure cares a lot about making sure their kids don’t learn that it’s possible for same sex couples to love each other). It’s a simple one: “What’s your end goal here?” Or, to put it more simply, “What are you trying to accomplish?”
As often as Florida governor, GOP presidential candidate, and man who looks like making children cry arouses him Ron DeSantis talks about crushing the “woke mind virus,” which I think means, “Shit I can make sound scary,” as often as he promises to “leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history,” as he does in his truly, laughably shitty campaign website, I haven’t seen a single challenge to him where he’s asked, “The fuck do you want?”
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he doesn’t “know anything” about a reported tape of him discussing a sensitive military document he allegedly took from the White House.
CNN and The New York Times reported Wednesday federal prosecutors had obtained the tape as part of the ongoing investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents. The recording, taken during a July 2021 meeting in New Jersey, reportedly includes audio of Trump referencing a document he said was related to the U.S. attack on Iran. During the conversation, Trump went on to indicate he knew the document was secret.
The Senate voted largely along party lines Thursday on legislation to block President Joe Biden’s student debt relief program after the measure cleared a key procedural hurdle in the chamber.
The 52-46 vote to pass the legislation comes a day after senators took a similarly close vote to proceed to the measure, which would repeal Biden’s debt relief program and end the administration’s pause on federal student loan payments. A few moderate senators — Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana and independent Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — voted with Republicans on the final passage vote as well as the motion to take up the measure.
President Joe Biden fell onstage Thursday at the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony and is “fine,” a White House aide said.
After Biden shook the hands of more than 900 graduates, he turned to head back to his seat and started to motion as if he were going to jog. He then appeared to trip and fell down on the stage.
Biden, 80, was helped up by two Secret Service agents and an Air Force official, and he then turned and pointed to something onstage that he might have tripped over.
The Senate voted Thursday night to pass a bill that would extend the debt ceiling for two years and establish a two-year budget agreement on a broad bipartisan vote.
The vote was 63-36.
Having already cleared the House on Wednesday, it now goes to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it and avert an economically catastrophic debt default with mere days to spare before Monday’s deadline.
Legal experts foresaw serious consequences for Donald Trump following the reported newly-surfaced recording from July 2021 in which the former president allegedly claimed to have classified documents ― about a possible attack on Iran ― after leaving the White House.
CNN’s report Wednesday that federal prosecutors obtained the audio amid special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the classified documents scandal would, if accurate, spell another indictment for Trump, they said.
Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.
The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said.
CNN has not listened to the recording, but multiple sources described it. One source said the relevant portion on the Iran document is about two minutes long, and another source said the discussion is a small part of a much longer meeting.
Mike Pence plans to enter the GOP presidential nomination fray June 7 with a campaign video and a kickoff speech in Des Moines, Iowa, according to a person familiar with his launch schedule.
The former vice president, a longtime advocate of the priorities of traditional conservatives on social and economic issues, will join the race at a time when his onetime boss, former President Donald Trump, claims a majority in most national polls and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in a clear second place.
Redefining himself to Republican voters, most of whom know him primarily as Trump’s vice president, will be a challenge.
With overwhelming bipartisan support, the House voted Wednesday to pass the debt ceiling legislation negotiated by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, sending it to the Senate with days to spare before a potentially disastrous default.
The vote was 314 to 117, with 149 Republicans joining 165 Democrats.
The bill would extend the debt limit for two years alongside a two-year budget agreement if it is signed into law. It is the culmination of months of political warfare and weeks of frenzied negotiations between the two parties that finally broke a lengthy stalemate.
Former President Donald Trump promised to nullify a key clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if he is elected president again, though he does not have the authority to do so.
Trump has long taken issue with the citizenship clause of the amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
This means that under the Constitution, anyone born in the United States is a citizen of the country, regardless of the immigration status of the parents – with very few exceptions (such as cases where a parent has diplomatic immunity). To change this or any other provision of the document, two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states would have to agree to ratify the change. (As an alternative to Congress’s role, two-thirds of the states could request an amendment be considered by the rest of the states.)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he plans to “counterpunch” against former President Donald Trump’s attacks after kicking off his 2024 campaign in Iowa on Tuesday.
The Florida governor implicitly poked fun at his top rival at his first official campaign event. But speaking to reporters after the event, he had plenty to say about Trump, unloading a series of blows designed to depict him as selfish, unprincipled and petty.
“I think our voters are looking at this and they say, yeah we appreciate what he did, but we also recognize there are a lot of voters that just aren’t gonna ever vote for him,” DeSantis told reporters. “I know people in Florida who voted against me in ’18 and for me in ‘22. They said in ‘18, ‘I thought you were too much like him and in ‘22 we realized you were your own guy, we’re gonna do it.’”
As criticism builds in Republican ranks over the debt ceiling deal struck by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and President Joe Biden, some hard-line conservatives have begun floating the idea of toppling the speaker.
On a House Freedom Caucus call Monday night, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., floated using the motion to vacate, a rule that would allow any House member to force a vote to remove the speaker, two sources familiar with the call said. Buck, speaking toward the end of the call, referred to it as the “elephant in the room,” a source said.
A major debt ceiling bill negotiated by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy passed its first test Tuesday, gaining approval from the Republican-led House Rules Committee and setting up a vote Wednesday in the full chamber.
The vote was 7 to 6, with two Republicans — Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Chip Roy of Texas — and all four Democrats voting no. It sends the bill to the House floor.
The 99-page Fiscal Responsibility Act, which faces heavy criticism from some GOP hard-liners, will need a majority of the House to pass. It is sure to rely on some Democratic votes in the narrowly divided chamber.
The shebeen is going dark until Tuesday, barring any major events, like, say, indictments of former presidents*, out of respect for the spirit of Memorial Day. So a new feature is born: Out On The Weekend In The Laboratories Of Democracy.
We begin the latter semi-regular weekly survey in Texas where, as far as Attorney General Ken Paxton is concerned, there are too many chickens for a limited number of roosts. It’s never been a good idea for a state to have an AG who’s been under indictment for nearly a decade but, hey, Texas, boy, I dunno. Anyway, the whole thing has blown up since a legislative investigation found that Paxton allegedly carried over the same attitude into his official duties as he had exercised in the private sector.
A critical deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling was announced over the weekend, and lawmakers in Washington now face one week to pass the bill in both chambers of Congress before the predicted deadline when default would begin.
Unless the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit is increased, the U.S. will run out of cash to pay all of its bills in full and on time — the so-called “X-date” — as early as June 5, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Despite the breakthrough on an agreement between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, legislative hurdles remain to get the 99-page debt and spending bill to Biden’s desk by next Monday.
A historic impeachment trial in Texas to determine whether Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton should be permanently removed from office will begin no later than August in the state Senate, where the jury that would determine his future could include his wife, Sen. Angela Paxton.
Setting a schedule was one of the last orders of business lawmakers took Monday during an acrimonious end to this year’s legislative session in Texas, where the impeachment laid bare fractures in America’s biggest red state beyond whether Republicans will oust one of the GOP’s conservative legal stars.
Shootings across the U.S. left at least 16 people dead and dozens more injured over Memorial Day weekend.
The gun violence occurred at beaches, high schools and motorcycle rallies, among other locations, across at least eight states. The victims were teenagers to people in their 60s.
The weekend concluded as it began — with gunfire. Nine people were injured in a shooting in the Hollywood Beach area of Hollywood, Florida, on Monday evening as people enjoying the holiday amassed along the Atlantic coast north of Miami, police said.
Russia’s Interior Ministry on Monday issued an arrest warrant for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham following his comments related to the fighting in Ukraine.
In an edited video of his meeting on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that was released by Zelenskyy’s office, Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, noted that “the Russians are dying” and described the U.S. military assistance to the country as “the best money we’ve ever spent.”
While Graham appeared to have made the remarks in different parts of the conversation, the short video by Ukraine’s presidential office put them next to each other, causing outrage in Russia.
Donald Trump predictably made Memorial Day all about himself on Monday.
The former president began a post on his Truth Social platform innocuously enough when he wished a “happy Memorial Day to all.”
But it then devolved into a ranting screed as he continued:
“But especially to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for the country they love, and to those in line of a very different, but equally dangerous fire, stopping the threats of the terrorists, misfits and lunatic thugs who are working feverishly from within to overturn and destroy our once great country, which has never been in greater peril than it is right now. We must stop the communists, Marxists and fascist ‘pigs’ at every turn and, Make America Great Again!”
Read the rest of the story at HuffPost
President Joe Biden on Sunday night celebrated a bipartisan “compromise” to raise the nation’s debt ceiling and avert a historic default that could upend the economy.
In a brief speech from the White House’s Roosevelt Room, Biden urged Congress to move swiftly to pass the deal, brokered with House Republicans led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which also imposes some spending limits on the federal government and some regulatory and policy changes.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the U.S. will run out of money to pay all of its bills as soon as June 5, known as the “X-date,” unless the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit is raised.
Seeking to strike a reassuring tone despite days of negotiations, President Joe Biden said Thursday afternoon that he’s had several “productive conversations” with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and their teams are “making progress” on debt ceiling talks as the country inches closer to default.
“I’ve made it clear time and again: Defaulting on our national debt is not an option,” Biden said as he delivered remarks in the Rose Garden before nominating a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But an agreement still remains elusive with just seven days until potential default. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen maintains that the U.S. government could run out of cash to pay all its bills in early June, possibly as soon as June 1.
Two employees at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort moved boxes of papers around the property a day before FBI agents and a federal prosecutor visited in their effort to recover classified documents, multiple media outlets reported Thursday.
The Washington Post first reported that a maintenance employee at the Florida club told federal prosecutors he saw Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, moving the boxes on June 2, 2022, into a storage area before he offered to help without knowing what the boxes contained. That same day, a lawyer for Trump contacted the Justice Department and said DOJ officials could come to Mar-a-Lago to pick up classified files, people familiar with the investigation told the newspaper.
The Supreme Court on Thursday significantly weakened a landmark water pollution law by ruling that an Idaho couple’s property does not include wetlands subject to federal oversight under the law.
The ruling, in which all the justices agreed in the outcome but differed on the legal reasoning, concluded that Mike and Chantell Sackett’s land does not fall under jurisdiction of the 1972 Clean Water Act, so they do not require a federal permit to build on the property.
The decision ends a yearslong battle between the Sacketts and the federal government and is a victory for conservative groups and business interests opposed to the broad application of the water pollution law.
The founder of the far-right Oath Keepers has been sentenced to 18 years in federal prison in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol following his conviction on seditious conspiracy.
The sentence for Stewart Rhodes is the longest imposed on a Jan. 6 defendant to date. In a politically-charged speech in the courtroom just before his sentencing, he called himself a “political prisoner” and said that when he talked about “regime change” in a phone call with supporters earlier this week, he meant he hopes that former President Donald Trump will win in 2024.
The judge disagreed that Rhodes had been locked up for politics, saying it was his actions that led to his criminal convictions.
Tina Turner, the exuberant, heel-stomping, wild-haired rock goddess who sold out stadiums, earned a dozen Grammy Awards and won the adoration of fans around the world in an electrifying music career spanning five decades, died Wednesday at her home near Zurich after a long illness, according to her publicist.
She was 83.
“With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model,” Turner’s publicist, Bernard Doherty, said in a statement. Doherty added that there will be a private funeral ceremony for close friends and family members. He did not specify a cause of death.
Fitch Ratings, a top credit rating agency, put the United States’ AAA long term foreign currency issuer default rating on negative watch on Wednesday evening.
“The Rating Watch Negative reflects increased political partisanship that is hindering reaching a resolution to raise or suspend the debt limit despite the fast-approaching x date (when the U.S. Treasury exhausts its cash position and capacity for extraordinary measures without incurring new debt),” the agency said in a statement.
The Arkansas man who was photographed on Jan. 6, 2021, with his feet on a desk in then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was sentenced Wednesday to four and a half years in prison.
Federal prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Richard “Bigo” Barnett to more than seven years for his actions before, during and after the riot at the U.S. Capitol.
They noted in a court filing that a picture of a smiling Barnett lounging in Pelosi’s office became “one of the best-known images of that day, symbolizing the rioters having wrested control of both the hallowed space and the political process from the nation’s elected leaders.”
The start of a much-anticipated Twitter event in which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis planned to announce his 2024 Republican presidential bid was repeatedly disrupted Wednesday when Twitter’s servers apparently could not handle the surge in traffic.
The app crashed repeatedly as Twitter users tried to listen to the event where Twitter owner Elon Musk joined DeSantis for the announcement.
DeSantis eventually was able to speak, about 20 minutes after the scheduled start, after Musk closed the initial Twitter Spaces event and started a second one on the app. That space attracted about 161,000 users, according to Twitter’s public-facing data, as DeSantis read a short speech.
Former President Donald Trump made a virtual appearance in New York criminal court Tuesday for the first time since pleading not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
A stern-looking Trump appeared before Judge Juan Merchan on video to hear the terms of a protective order barring him from publicly disclosing evidence, which the Manhattan district attorney’s office will be turning over to his lawyers in the hush money payments case. Trump — whose in-person arraignment in the same courthouse last month came with massive security precautions and paralyzed operations there for the day — appeared virtually from Florida, with lawyer Todd Blanche at his side.
The 19-year-old Missouri man accused of deliberately driving a rented box truck into a White House barrier allegedly told authorities that he admires Nazis and wanted to “seize power” and “kill the president,” court documents released Tuesday show.
Sai Varshith Kandula, of Chesterfield, Missouri, rented the U-Haul truck Monday night immediately after flying from St. Louis to Dulles International Airport on a one-way ticket, a Secret Service agent said in a statement of facts filed in federal district court in Washington D.C.
The statement was included with a criminal complaint charging Kandula with depredation of property of the United States in excess of $1,000.
As Washington struggles to reach a debt ceiling deal with little more than a week until potential default, a key hangup in the negotiations is turning out to be — “work requirements.”
A long-sought effort by Republicans to impose stricter conditions on recipients of Medicaid and other federal assistance programs is now front-and-center in the debt ceiling standoff.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has described tougher work requirements as a “red line” in his ongoing negotiations with President Joe Biden to reduce federal spending in exchange for addressing the debt ceiling.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will launch his 2024 presidential campaign during a social media event with Elon Musk on Wednesday night, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
DeSantis will declare he is seeking the Republican nomination during a live, audio-only Twitter Spaces event at 6 p.m. ET Wednesday, the sources said. The Twitter conversation will be moderated by Musk ally David Sacks.
Later Wednesday, DeSantis will appear on Fox News to talk about his campaign. He is also expected to file with the Federal Election Commission this week, which would formally enter him into the 2024 race.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) on Monday inadvertently implied that House Republicans’ high-profile investigation into President Joe Biden’s family members and their finances is actually about helping Donald Trump win the presidency in 2024.
Comer, who is leading the GOP’s probe as chair of the House oversight and accountability committee, appeared to say the quiet part out loud during a “Fox & Friends First” interview.
“We have talked to you about this on the show, about how the media can just not ignore this any longer. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, it says, ‘Millions Flowed to Biden Family Members. Don’t Pretend It Doesn’t Matter,’” said the show’s host, Ashley Strohmier, referring to a piece last week by conservative columnist Jim Geraghty. “So do you think that because of your investigation, that is what’s moved this needle with the media?”
Writer E. Jean Carroll on Monday asked a judge to update her still pending original defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump to add a new claim after he trashed her as a “whack job” during his CNN town hall earlier this month.
In a court filing late Monday, Carroll attorney Roberta Kaplan said her client will be seeking a “very substantial punitive damages award” for Trump’s remarks.
Trump made the comments a day after a federal court jury in New York found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s and then defaming her for calling her claims fraud. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
A driver was detained after a truck crashed into security barriers near the White House on Monday night, officials said.
The white U-Haul box truck crashed into the barriers on the north side of Lafayette Square, at 16th Street, just before 10 p.m. ET.
The Secret Service said the incident, which took place just a few hundred feet from the White House, may have been intentional.
“There were no injuries to any Secret Service or White House personnel and the cause and manner of the crash remain under investigation,” Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service chief of communications, said in a statement Monday night.
A meeting between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday afternoon to discuss a path forward to avert a debt limit breach failed to yield a deal, but both sides agreed that talks were “productive.”
“We don’t have an agreement yet, but I did feel the discussion was productive in areas that we have differences of opinion,” McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters after leaving the Oval Office. He added that the “tone tonight was better than any other night we’ve had discussions.”
A White House official said disagreements remain, but echoed the speaker’s assessment that the meeting was overall “productive,” a word that continued to surface as negotiators fanned out.
Rarely has a government report taken so long — in years and pages — to tell the public so little as Special Counsel John Durham’s report to the Department of Justice this week.
When then-Atty. Gen. Bill Barr appointed Durham to investigate the department’s probe of connections between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Trump and his true believers looked forward to revealing a criminal conspiracy within the FBI. Trump tweeted at the time that Durham would uncover the “crime of the century.”
Instead, four years after Barr first ordered Durham to investigate the investigators, he produced a ponderous, 316-page tome that interminably chews over information that has long been in the public record.
Read the rest of Harry Litman’s piece at The Los Angeles Times
Debt ceiling talks were set to resume Sunday evening as Washington races to strike a budget compromise along with a deal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit and avert an economy-wrecking federal default.
President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy spoke by phone Sunday while the president was returning home on Air Force One after the Group of Seven summit in Japan. Upbeat, McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters at the Capitol that the call was “productive” and that the on-again, off-again negotiations between his staff and White House representatives are focused on spending cuts.
He’s to meet Biden on Monday at the White House.
As an American, it’s easy to be cynical about knife crime in the United Kingdom. I’m here right now, and already I’ve seen multiple TV news segments about all the stabbings and threats of stabbings with knives and machetes. When I saw a BBC report with the chyron “Knives: can we end the violence?” my gut Yank instinct was to think, “Oh, England. You’re adorable that you’re only worried about one-on-one knife attacks. Try living every fucking day of your life damned to be in a country where mass shootings happen with a frequency approaching hourly.”
Last night, I saw the play Dismissed at the Soho Theatre, which I disliked a great deal for being didactic and over-directed and more. But it sure seemed to be relevant to the nodding audience. It’s about a teacher reporting a student who brought a knife to school, and her agony and guilt over the boy’s coming expulsion. Now, in the US, schools do freak out over any weapon brought to school property, even in a student’s car. Hell, they freak out over Advil. But, again, I thought, “Damn, must be nice to live in a place where that knife is the worst of your worries on school grounds.”
Disney has abandoned plans to open up a new employee campus in Lake Nona, Florida, amid rising tensions with the state’s governor.
Citing “changing business conditions” and the return of CEO Bob Iger, Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney’s parks, experiences and products division, penned a memo to employees Thursday, announcing that the company will not move forward with construction of the campus and will no longer be asking more than 2,000 California-based employees to relocate to Florida.
“This was not an easy decision to make, but I believe it is the right one,” D’Amaro told employees.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., experienced more complications than were publicly disclosed from a recent case of shingles that left her absent from Washington for nearly three months.
Feinstein, 89, had also suffered from Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which occurred when shingles spread to her head and neck, and a case of encephalitis, which is swelling of the brain, a person familiar with her situation said Thursday.
The New York Times first reported the previously undisclosed complications.
Two of the three self-proclaimed FBI whistleblowers who testified before a House subcommittee Thursday lost their security clearances because their conduct in Jan. 6 cases brought into question their allegiance to the U.S., a bureau official wrote in a letter to members of Congress this week.
A third FBI employee, a special agent who did not testify before the committee, lost his security clearance because he was on the restricted grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but lied about his conduct, FBI Acting Assistant Director Christopher Dunham wrote in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, which was obtained by NBC News.
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) got into a shouting match outside the Capitol on Wednesday. The two yelled until Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) stepped in to defuse the situation by taking a shot at Greene.
“She ain’t worth it, bro,” Ocasio-Cortez said, tapping Bowman on the shoulder. “She ain’t worth it, bro.”
President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he is “confident” the U.S. will avert default, expressing optimism a crisis could be avoided as he left for a foreign trip even as debt ceiling negotiations were coming down to the wire.
“I’m confident that we’ll get the agreement on the budget that America will not default,” Biden said from the White House Roosevelt Room. He added, “We’re going to come together because there’s no alternative.”
Biden’s remarks come as he embarks on a now five-day trip to Japan to meet with G-7 leaders. The president was due to visit Papua New Guinea and Australia following his appearance in Hiroshima but canceled the back half of the trip to work on a debt ceiling deal.
The House voted Wednesday evening to refer a Democratic-sponsored resolution to expel Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., to the Ethics Committee.
By referring the matter to the House Committee on Ethics, which has been investigating Santos since early March, Republicans for now avoided a vote on the resolution itself, which was introduced Tuesday by Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif.
The referral, approved Wednesday in a 221-204 vote, required only a simple majority to pass. No Republicans voted against the motion, and seven Democrats voted present, including all five Democratic members of the Ethics panel.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., introduced a resolution on the House floor Tuesday afternoon to expel GOP Rep. George Santos.
“I rise to give notice of my intent to raise a question of the privileges of the House. … Rep. George Santos be, and hereby is, expelled from the House of Representatives,” he said.
House Republicans can schedule this vote within two legislative days, needing a two-thirds majority to pass; however, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he would refer the resolution to the House Ethics Committee instead.
An unknown man managed to slip undetected inside the home of White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, according to two people familiar with the incident. The U.S. Secret Service is investigating.
The door was apparently unlocked, and the intruder was able to get inside Sullivan’s home around 3 a.m. last month, the people said. Secret Service is investigating whether the person intentionally went into the home or whether it was some kind of accident; the person appeared to be intoxicated, the people said. The people were not authorized to talk about an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
A White House effort to counter China’s increasing influence in the western Pacific on Tuesday became the first casualty of Republican attempts to make honoring the U.S. debt contingent on cutting medical and food benefits for welfare recipients.
President Joe Biden’s aides for weeks had been touting his planned visit to Papua New Guinea as part of the administration’s outreach to Southeast Asian and Pacific island nations that are also being wooed by China. Now the first-ever presidential visit there and a meeting with Prime Minister James Marape and other leaders of Pacific Islands Forum countries have been canceled to let Biden return to Washington immediately after the conclusion of the G-7 summit of the world’s largest democratic economies in Japan on Sunday.
North Carolina Republicans successfully killed Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban on Tuesday, paving the way for the restriction to soon become law.
When the legislature held an override vote on Tuesday, every Republican voted for the 12-week abortion ban in the Senate, 30-20, and the House, 72-48 ― confirming that the state’s Republican supermajority had the power to override Cooper’s veto. All four Republicans whom Cooper had eyed as possible swing votes — state Reps. Tricia Cotham, John Bradford and Ted Davis Jr., as well as state Sen. Michael V. Lee — voted in favor of the abortion ban.
A person looking for Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly allegedly attacked two of his staffers with a metal baseball bat at his district office Monday, the congressman said in a statement.
Connolly, a Democrat, said the individual was taken into police custody and the two staffers who were injured were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
One of the staffers, a senior aide, was hit in the head, according to Connolly’s office in Fairfax. The other, an intern who had just started working in the office, was hit in the side.
A woman who says she worked as an off-the-books employee for Rudy Giuliani during his stint as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer alleges in court papers that the former New York City mayor coerced her into sex and owes her nearly $2 million in unpaid wages.
Noelle Dunphy said in the lawsuit that she was Giuliani’s business development director and public relations consultant from 2019 to 2021. She initially made her allegations public in January, but she detailed her claims further in a 70-page legal complaint filed Monday in New York.
Giuliani “vehemently” denied the allegations through a spokesperson. His lawyer had also previously denied that Dunphy ever worked for Giuliani.
A woman who said she worked for Rudy Giuliani during the last two years of the Trump administration alleged in a wide-ranging lawsuit that Giuliani, the former president’s personal attorney, discussed selling presidential pardons and detailed plans to overturn the 2020 election results.
In a 70-page complaint filed in state court in New York on Monday, Noelle Dunphy said that after Giuliani hired her in January 2019 he sexually assaulted and harassed her, refused to pay her wages and often made “sexist, racist, and antisemitic remarks,” adding that she had recordings of numerous interactions with him.
Dunphy, who is seeking $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages, said Giuliani had hired her for $1 million a year in addition to expenses and pro bono legal representation for a domestic abuse case against a former partner. But after she was hired, Dunphy alleged, Giuliani kept her employment “secret” and paid her only about $12,000 and reimbursed some of her business expenses, owing her $1,988,000 in unpaid wages. She said she was fired in January 2021.
The special counsel who spent four years investigating the Trump-Russia probe accused the FBI of acting negligently by opening the investigation based on vague and insufficient information in a sweeping 300-page report made public Monday.
Special counsel John Durham, named by then-Attorney General William Barr to examine the origins and conduct of the investigation into whether Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia, criticized the FBI at length in the report.
“The [Justice] Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to law,” the conclusion section of Durham’s report says. “Senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons or entities.”
Did you leave him in the car? Did you look in the pockets of yesterday’s jeans? Have you checked between the cushions of the sofa?
These people are unbelievable.
“You have spoken with whistleblowers,” [Maria Bartiromo] said. “You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information. Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?”
“Well, unfortunately, we can’t track down the informant,” Comer answered. “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible.”
“Hold on a second, Congressman,” Bartiromo said. “Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?”
“Well, we’re hopeful that we can find the informant,” Comer said, explaining the informant was in the “spy business” and “they don’t make a habit of being seen a lot.
(You will note that, while listening to Comer, Bartiromo begins to resemble someone confronting a talking duck.)
It was supposed to be a clash of 2024 GOP presidential primary titans in Iowa on Saturday, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had the state to himself — meeting with voters at several stops — as the threat of tornadoes forced former President Donald Trump to cancel an outdoor rally.
DeSantis, seizing on Trump’s absence, hurriedly scheduled an unannounced stop late Saturday at Jethro’s, a Des Moines barbecue joint a stone’s throw from the park where Trump had planned to hold his rally. Roughly 100 DeSantis supporters packed the restaurant’s patio and the sidewalk outside to take pictures, shake hands and hear him give a short version of his stump speech.
The number of crossings along the U.S. southern border has dropped by 50% since pandemic-related asylum restrictions expired on Thursday, contradicting earlier fears that there would be a surge, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday.
U.S. Border Patrol counted roughly 6,300 crossings on Friday and 4,300 on Saturday, down from more than 10,000 before Title 42 expired on Thursday night, Mayorkas told CNN’s Dana Bash.
It’s still “too early” to say whether the number of crossings has peaked, he said, while crediting harsher penalties for unlawful entry for the immediate drop.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY) revealed on Sunday that Republicans had lost track of a top witness in the investigation of President Joe Biden and his family.
During an interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo asked Comer about evidence he had of Biden’s alleged corruption.
“You have spoken with whistleblowers,” she noted. “You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information. Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?”
“Well, unfortunately, we can’t track down the informant,” Comer replied. “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible.”
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when it was just fine to sexually harass and assault women. Slapping a woman on the ass was supposed to be taken as a compliment. Discussion about women’s looks and their fuckability was a constant in workplaces. And by “fuckability,” I mean “rapeability” because it didn’t matter if the woman wanted to be judged that way. Consent was something that was given the moment a woman agreed to be alone with a man. It was a bullshit, stupid time, and a good many men didn’t buy into it. But a whole fuckin’ lot of them did and not enough of those good men did enough to stop it. So there was a kind of impunity, especially since a woman who didn’t “happily” accept the ass slaps and tit comments and sex propositions was seen as uptight and man-hating while a woman who didn’t give in to fucking when alone with a man who wanted to fuck was seen as a cocktease and prude. And if you were a woman who was raped by a man, your entire sexual history would be questioned, as well as what you wore and what you did to make that man rape you.
Cheers and applause broke out as migrants prepared to cross the border into El Paso, Texas, hours after the lifting of pandemic-era restrictions on Friday.
Once across, men and women, some in hoodies and sweaters to guard against the chilly desert night air, walked in single file to a U.S. Border Patrol van. A man and woman held hands, the woman covering her nose and mouth with her sleeve as dust filled the air.
Dozens of migrants had already boarded three white school buses in small groups, Border Patrol vans partially obscuring the media’s ability to see them. The bus was flanked by members of the National Guard and Border Patrol in green and camouflage uniforms.
One day after making a long-anticipated return to Congress, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., attended her first Judiciary Committee meeting on Thursday after a monthslong absence following a shingles diagnosis in February.
With Feinstein’s “aye” votes, Democrats were able to send three additional judicial nominees to the Senate floor for consideration on party-line votes: Charnelle Bjelkengren to be a district court judge in Washington state; Kato Crews to be a district court judge in Colorado; and Marian Gaston to be a district court judge in California.
Former President Donald Trump’s “whack job” remarks – and others – about E. Jean Carrollmay lead to another defamation lawsuit as her lawyer revealed that “everything’s on the table” in the wake of a CNN town hall event that’s been panned by media figures both inside and outside of the network.
Carroll spoke to The New York Times on Thursday after a Manhattan jury found Trump liable of sexual abuse and defamation, and called on him to pay $5 million in damages.
Trump, in his town hall appearance, claimed he had no idea “who the hell she is” as he rambled on and claimed she has a “fake,” “made-up story” – remarks that led to her telling The Times that she’s been “insulted by better people.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., cast her first two votes on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon after a nearly three-month absence due to health issues.
Upon her arrival on Capitol Hill, she was assisted into a wheelchair and greeted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Feinstein told reporters that she feels “much better.” She did not answer questions about why she decided to return or respond to calls from critics to resign.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., appeared to defend white nationalists in a recent interview by suggesting they should not be barred from serving in the military, prompting his office to clarify the remarks.
In an interview published this week by Birmingham-based radio station WBHM, Tuberville criticized the state of the military and said Democrats were to blame.
“We are losing in the military — so fast — our readiness in terms of recruitment,” said Tuberville, a member of the Armed Services Committee. “And why? I can tell you why. Because the Democrats are attacking our military, saying we need to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists, people that don’t believe in [President Joe Biden’s] agenda.”
For months, Representative George Santos seemed to possess a Teflon-like resistance to repercussions, even as questions mounted over his income, campaign finances and rags-to-riches life story.
Mr. Santos, a first-term Republican representing Long Island and Queens, gave numerous speeches on the House floor and appeared to relish his growing notoriety. Just in the last month, he announced his bid for re-election and tried to leverage his vote with House Republican leadership on a contentious bill to raise the debt ceiling.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Santos was confronted with consequences that may prove difficult to skirt. Federal prosecutors charged him with 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, stealing public funds and lying on federal disclosure forms, and took him into custody.
Donald Trump is still Donald Trump.
His 70 minutes onstage in New Hampshire served as a vivid reminder that the former president has only one speed, and that his second act mirrors his first. He is, as ever, a celebrity performance artist and, even out of office, remains the center of gravity in American politics.
CNN’s decision to give him an unfiltered prime-time platform was a callback to the 2016 campaign, even as the moderator, Kaitlan Collins, persistently interjected to try to cut him off or correct him.
Mr. Trump was so focused on discussing and defending himself that he barely touched on President Biden’s record — which people close to Mr. Trump want him to focus on. But he was disciplined when it came to his chief expected primary rival.
President Joe Biden and congressional leaders failed to resolve the impending default crisis at a contentious meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon, but they plan to meet again Friday.
Each side accused the other of being unreasonable, and Biden — for the first time — said after the meeting that there have been White House discussions about taking the unilateral step of invoking the 14th Amendment to circumvent Congress and ignore the debt ceiling, although he later seemed to dismiss the idea, citing litigation concerns.
A source described the mood in the room as “tense and serious,” and Biden suggested afterward that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was at times out of line.
The Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), CNN is reporting.
The charges haven’t been announced, but the controversial member of Congress is expected to appear as soon as Wednesday at federal court in New York’s Eastern District.
A request for comment to Santos’ office was not immediately returned.
ABC News reported that the nature of the charges are unclear since the charges are under seal. CNN is speculating that the charges could be connected to allegations of false statements in Santos’ campaign finance filings and other claims that have been the subject of investigations by the FBI and the Justice Department’s public integrity prosecutors in New York and Washington.
Conservative commentator and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is launching a new version of his show on Twitter, he said Tuesday.
Speaking in a nearly three-minute video posted on the platform, Carlson gave few details about the show and offered a familiar criticism of the news media.
Carlson called the platform the “last big one remaining in the world” for free speech.
“Twitter isn’t a partisan site,” he said. “Everyone is allowed here.”
A New York jury found former President Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s but not liable for her alleged rape.
The jury awarded her $5 million in damages for her battery and defamation claims.
Asked on its verdict sheet whether Carroll, 79, had proven “by a preponderance of the evidence” that “Mr. Trump raped Ms. Carroll,” the nine-person jury checked the box that said “no.” Asked whether Carroll had proven “by a preponderance of the evidence” that “Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll,” the jury checked the box that said “yes.” Both allegations were elements of Carroll’s battery claim.
E. Jean Carroll was “exactly” Donald Trump’s type, and the former president didn’t show up at her civil trial accusing him of rape because “he knows what he did” to her, her attorney alleged in closing arguments Monday in Manhattan federal court.
Speaking to the six-man, three-woman jury, Roberta Kaplan played a video of the former president’s October deposition in the case, where he looked at a picture of Carroll from the late 1980s and identified it as a photo of Marla Maples, his second wife.
Trump had said in his deposition and in public statements after Carroll accused him of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store that he wouldn’t have done so because she was “not my type.”
The New York state judge presiding over the criminal hush money case against Donald Trump issued an order Monday restricting the former president from posting about some evidence in the case on social media.
Judge Juan Merchan largely sided with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg by limiting what Trump can publicly disclose about new evidence from the prosecution before the case goes to trial.
The order says that “any materials and information provided by the People to the Defense in accordance with their discovery obligations … shall be used solely for the purposes of preparing a defense in this matter.”
President Joe Biden and congressional leaders — including the two top Republicans — will meet Tuesday in the Oval Office to open negotiations to head off an impending default crisis, although neither side expects the summit to make much progress.
With the Treasury Department saying the government will run out of money as soon as June 1 unless Congress raises its borrowing limit, Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have precious little time and virtually no pre-existing relationship.
But even sitting down together is seen as a major step forward, because the White House has so far refused to negotiate over the debt ceiling itself and both sides agree a resolution is essential to avoid the unprecedented economic calamity of a default.
A social media page appearing to belong to a gunman who killed eight people at a Dallas-area outlet mall had shared extremist beliefs with rants against Jews, women and racial minorities posted since September, as well as posts about struggling with mental health.
Mauricio Garcia, 33, maintained a profile on the Russian social networking platform OK.ru, including posts referring to extremist online forums, such as 4chan, and content from white nationalists, including Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic white nationalist provocateur.
In the weeks before the attack, Garcia posted more than two dozen photos of Allen Premium Outlets, where an officer killed him after the shooting Saturday, and surrounding areas, including several screenshots of Google location information, seemingly monitoring the mall at its busiest times.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said the state would focus on addressing “mental health problems” behind gun violence, but didn’t address calls for gun reform after another devastating mass shooting at a shopping center this weekend.
Eight people were killed and at least seven others injured at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, on Saturday after a gunman opened fire on the crowded facility. Authorities identified the shooter as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia, who was killed by a police officer on the scene.
It was the second mass shooting in Texas in recent weeks after another gunman killed five of his neighbors in Cleveland, Texas, after they asked him to stop firing his weapon at home.
Federal officials were looking into whether the gunman who killed eight people at a Dallas-area mall expressed an interest in white supremacist ideology Sunday as they work to try to discern a motive for the attack, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official cautioned the investigation is in its early stages.
Federal agents have been reviewing social media accounts they believe Mauricio Garcia, 33, used and posts that expressed interest in white supremacist and neo-Nazi views, said the official, who could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Garcia also had a patch on his chest when he was killed by police that read “RWDS,” an acronym for the phrase “Right Wing Death Squad,” which is popular among right-wing extremists and white supremacy groups, the official said.
Former President Donald Trump rejected his last chance Sunday to testify at a civil trial where a longtime advice columnist has accused him of raping her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996.
Trump, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, was given until 5 p.m. Sunday by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to file a request to testify. Nothing was filed.
It was not a surprise. Trump has not shown up once during the two-week Manhattan trial where writer E. Jean Carroll testified for several days, repeating claims she first made publicly in a 2019 memoir. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages totaling millions of dollars.
Eight people waiting at a bus stop in a Texas border city were killed and a dozen more were injured early Sunday when a vehicle rammed into them, officials said.
The victims, who are believed to be migrants, were at a stop near a Catholic Charities facility in Brownsville known as the Ozanam Center, a senior law enforcement official said.
Shortly after the crash, around 8:30 a.m., seven deaths were reported. Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez later said an additional person had died.
“Several more remain critical,” Mendez said in a statement on Facebook.
The Justice Department is seeking 25 years in prison for Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors described as a violent plot to keep President Joe Biden out of the White House, according to court papers filed Friday.
A Washington, D.C., jury convicted Rhodes in November in one of the most consequential cases brought in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters assaulted police officers, smashed windows and temporarily halted Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory.
The sentencing recommendations come a day after jurors in a different case convicted four leaders of another extremist group, the Proud Boys — including former national chairman Enrique Tarrio — of seditious conspiracy. The Proud Boys were accused of a separate plot to forcibly keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.
Eight of the so-called “fake electors” in Georgia who were allegedly involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state have accepted immunity in the Fulton County probe into the matter, according to their lawyer.
In a court filing in the case on Friday, an attorney who represents 10 of the fake electors said the Fulton County district attorney’s office reached out in April to provide an immunity offer for eight of her clients.
“After reviewing the actual, written offers of immunity, each of those eight electors accepted their immunity offer,” the filing by the attorney, Kimberly Debrow, said.
King Charles III was crowned monarch of the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland on Saturday, in a ceremony steeped in a millennium of tradition and pageantry.
Shouts of “God Save the King!” were heard, trumpets blared and gun salutes rang out after the Archbishop of Canterbury placed the crown on Charles’s head at Westminster Abbey. The coronation comes almost eight months after Charles ascended the throne following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on Sept. 8.
Charles, 74, and his wife, Queen Camilla, 75, then returned to Buckingham Palace in a sumptuous procession cheered on by crowds lining the roads despite the heavy rain. Soon after, the couple and other members of the family, including Prince William and Kate, Princess of Wales, and their three children appeared on the palace’s balcony and greeted a flag-waving crowd below them.
Nine people, including the suspect, are dead after a shooting Saturday at a Dallas-area outlet mall, authorities said.
Seven people died on scene at Allen Premium Outlets and two more were pronounced dead at a hospital, Allen Fire Department Chief Jonathan Boyd said.
Three people remained in critical condition on Saturday night and four were stabilized, Boyd said.
President Joe Biden has been briefed on the shooting, the White House said in a statement. The White House was “closely monitoring the situation and is in touch with law enforcement and local officials to offer support,” the statement added.
Four members of the far-right Proud Boys organization were found guilty Thursday of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl were found guilty of the rare charge of seditious conspiracy under a Civil War-era statute. Dominic Pezzola, another member of the group, was found not guilty of seditious conspiracy. Tarrio, Biggs, Nordean and Rehl were also found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, while U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly declared a mistrial on that count for Pezzola after the jury said it could not come to an agreement.
First Republic Bank has been taken over by federal regulators and will be sold to JPMorgan — making it the third major bank to go under in less than two months.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) ) announced simultaneously Monday morning that it had seized the bank and that JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in America, would be purchasing substantially all of the bank’s assets and deposits.
With $229.1 billion in total assets at the time of closure, First Republic Bank has eclipsed Silicon Valley Bank ($209.0 billion at the time of closure) to become the second largest bank failure in American history.
A man suspected of using an AR-15 rifle to kill five neighbors execution-style continued to elude an army of law enforcement hunting for him outside Houston over the weekend.
Authorities said Sunday afternoon that Francisco Oropesa, 38, appeared to have slipped past a 2-mile dragnet of more than 150 law enforcement officers in Cleveland, Texas, about 45 miles north of Houston, on Saturday.
On Sunday, they said, more than 250 officers were continuing the search.
President Joe Biden joked about a range of topics at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday but struck a serious tone as he called for the release of wrongfully detained Americans abroad.
The annual dinner, hosted inside the Washington Hilton, drew thousands of guests in support of freedom of the press, something Biden called “the pillar of a free society, not the enemy.”
Donald Trump had one of his weirdest campaign moments yet as he updated an anti-trans rant that included a series of grunts as he imitated a woman lifting weights.
“I will tell you another thing that people can’t even believe: I will keep men out of women’s sports, OK?” the former president told a cheering audience in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Thursday.
Then, as he prepared to break out an impression of a woman struggling to lift weights at a competition, he surveyed the crowd.
“Should I do it?” he asked.
The audience cheered.
Writer E. Jean Carroll, who alleges in a lawsuit that Donald Trumpraped her in the 1990s in a New York department store, was questioned Thursday by a lawyer for the former president who repeatedly suggested her claim was made up.
“You were supposedly raped?” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina asked Carroll early in his cross-examination.
“I was raped,” Carroll responded.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday brushed off a lawsuit by the Walt Disney Co. over the revocation of its Orlando-area theme park’s self-governing privileges as politically motivated.
“I don’t think the suit has merit. I think it’s political,” DeSantis said during a news conference in Jerusalem as part of a trip his office described as an “international trade mission.”
“I think they filed in Tallahassee for a reason, because they’re trying to generate some district court decision,” the governor said. “But we’re very confident on the law.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared Thursday before the federal grand jury convened as part of the special counsel investigation into former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and remain in power, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The testimony is a significant development in the special counsel’s probe, as Pence could provide critical insights into Trump’s thinking in the days leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He published a memoir and a Wall Street Journal opinion article detailing several of his interactions with Trump, but some details were left vague. Special counsel Jack Smith’s team is particularly interested in Trump’s efforts to try to block the certification of the election, NBC News has reported.
Read the rest of the story at NBC News
Tucker Carlson released a video on Wednesday addressing his firing from Fox News several days prior.
“In five years we won’t even remember that we had them,” he said, adding, “Trust me as someone who has participated.”
House Republicans on Wednesday narrowly passed a bill to increase the nation’s debt ceiling while cutting federal government spending — and while the legislation has no prospect of becoming law, GOP leaders hope it will help force negotiations with Democrats.
The proposal, known as the Limit, Save, Grow Act, passed 217-215, with four Republicans joining all Democrats in voting no.
Those Republicans were Reps. Andy Biggs, Ken Buck, Tim Burchett and Matt Gaetz.
Disney filed a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and various Florida officials over a campaign the company alleges was “patently retaliatory, patently anti-business, and patently unconstitutional.”
The lawsuit follows the state oversight board’s decision to void “publicly noticed and duly agreed development contracts which had laid the foundation for billions of Disney’s investment dollars and thousands of jobs,” according to the legal filing.
The company’s lawsuit called the move “a targeted campaign of government retaliation — orchestrated at every step by Gov. DeSantis as punishment for Disney’s protected speech — now threatens Disney’s business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region, and violates its constitutional rights.”
Writer E. Jean Carroll took the witness stand for her lawsuit against former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, telling jurors: “I’m here because Trump raped me.”
When she stepped forward with her allegations in 2019, Trump “lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m trying to get my life back,” Carroll said in her testimony at the civil trial in federal court in lower Manhattan.
Carroll, 79, said she first met Trump — who has said he doesn’t know who she is and had never met her — in 1987 at a party by “Saturday Night Live,” where she was a writer at the time. She said she believes that’s where a picture was taken of her with Trump, his then-wife, Ivana, and Carroll’s husband at the time, who was a popular local news anchor.
In a recorded conversation with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) laid out a plan to create a “commission” to help him overturn the 2020 election to keep Donald Trump in the White House.
“I think that the country deserves to have a credible assessment of these claims and what the evidence shows, and the mechanism to try to force that is denying certification on the 6th,” Cruz says in the Jan. 2, 2021, recording, obtained and aired Tuesday by MSNBC’s Ari Melber.
Cruz played a starring role on Jan. 6, 2021, when he led a group of Republican senators in objecting to certain states’ Electoral College counts in the 2020 presidential election. He then continued to support Trump’s lies about widespread electoral fraud even after a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to disrupt the certification of the electoral votes, which confirmed Joe Biden had won the presidency.
E. Jean Carroll, the writer who says Donald Trump raped her in a New York City department store in the 1990s, sued the former president because “she wants to get her life back,” her attorney said in opening statements Tuesday.
“Donald Trump assaulted her in 1996 and defamed her when she said she made it up,” lawyer Shawn Crowley told jurors.
Carroll, a magazine writer and columnist, alleges the attack took place in a Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, when the “playful banter” she’d been engaged with Trump, then a businessman, took a “dark turn.” She alleges in her lawsuit that Trump “seized” her, “forced her up against a dressing room wall, pinned her in place with his shoulder, and raped her.”
Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday declined an invitation from a high-ranking Democratic senator to testify at a congressional hearing on ethics rules for members of the Supreme Court.
In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Roberts suggested that his participation could pose a threat to judicial independence.
“Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Chief Justice of the United States is exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence,” Roberts wrote.
Hours after announcing his 2024 bid, President Joe Biden promised in a union hall speech on Tuesday to deliver for American workers if re-elected, pitching his economic vision for the country and swiping at Republicans.
Biden’s remarks to the North America’s Building Trades Unions at the Washington Hilton were punctuated by chants of “Four more years.”
“We’re on the cusp of major change,” Biden said, addressing the labor federation. “We’re creating jobs again. Manufacturing has come alive again. People can afford decent health care. Towns that have been forgotten and left behind are coming to life again because of you all — what we’re doing.”
There was a great disturbance in the Force on Wednesday. Don Lemon gets the gate at CNN, which genuinely seems to be floundering under current leadership. (Gayle King and Charles Barkley? This is a chemistry experiment guaranteed to make the cat disappear.) And, over at Fox, Tucker Carlson gets shuffled out the door without even a chance to say goodbye to his vast audience of angry shut-ins. Far be it from me to advise Florida Governor Ronald DeSantis on anything, but I might call out the National Guard to surround The Villages in case of rioting. To paraphrase Neil Young, I see bloody fountains, and 10 million golf carts, coming down the driveway.
As Republican leaders in the Montana legislature doubled down on forbidding Rep. Zooey Zephyr from participating in debate into a second week, her supporters on Monday interrupted proceedings in the House by chanting “Let her speak!”
Zephyr, a first-term Democrat from Missoula, wanted to speak about a proposal that would restrict when children could change the names and pronouns they use in school, with their required parents’ consent.
When lawmakers voted to continue subjecting Zephyr to a gag order, denying her the chance to speak, the gallery, made up mostly of her supporters, erupted, forcing legislative leaders to pause proceedings and clear the room.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday in a civil trial stemming from a lawsuit filed by advice columnist and author E. Jean Carroll against former President Donald Trump.
Carroll says Trump raped her in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s and defamed her when she went public with the story in 2019, when New York Magazine published an excerpt from a book Carroll was soon to publish.
Trump has denied Carroll’s allegations, claiming she fabricated them, and accusing her of doing so for publicity.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said Monday that she’ll announce charging decisions stemming from her probeinto possible interference in the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and his allies as early as mid-July.
Willis said the charging decisions will be revealed during the state Superior Court’s fourth term, which begins July 11 and ends Sept. 1.
The timeline is the clearest that Willis has given about potential indictments since she said in January that an announcement was “imminent.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson and CNN host Don Lemon both abruptly exited their cable outlets on Monday following a series of controversies, marking a seismic shift in the media landscape.
Just hours before Fox News announced Carlson’s departure in a statement, the network was still promoting his primetime show, indicating just how sudden the separation was.
“FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” Fox News said in a statement. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
More than a half-dozen Republicans who are or may be running for president took their pitches to religious conservatives at an Iowa cattle call on Saturday that’s long been one of the premier stops on the GOP primary calendar.
Before a 1,000-person crowd at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s spring kickoff, a bevy of midtier candidates seeking to break out of the pack mingled with attendees, many of whom were influential activists across the state. They called for new restrictions on abortion rights and gender-affirming care, and for expanding school choice programs and shutting down the Department of Education.
The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the most commonly used abortion pill in the U.S. to remain widely available.
The court blocked in full a decision by Texas-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on April 7 that had invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s longtime approval of mifepristone and handed a sweeping victory to abortion opponents.
Two of the nine justices — conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — said they would have let part of Kacsmaryk’s ruling go into effect.
In mid-January 2021, two men hired by former President Donald Trump’s legal team discussed over text message what to do with data obtained from a breached voting machine in a rural county in Georgia, including whether to use it as part of an attempt to decertify the state’s pending Senate runoff results.
The texts, sent two weeks after operatives breached a voting machine in Coffee County, Georgia, reveal for the first time that Trump allies considered using voting data not only to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, but also in an effort to keep a Republican hold on the US Senate.
There was never a chance in heaven or hell that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who looks like a 1980s shop teacher who gets off on breaking the birdhouses the kids make to prove “you can’t build shit, you little pussy,” was going to win the Republican nomination for president. I mean, put aside that Donald Trump owns the GOP no matter how much a few feckless fucks fail to pry it away from his tiny hands. DeSantis has all the personality of an angry Starbucks manager and all the charm of the least charming dung beetle. If you bottled DeSantis’s vibe as a scent, it would be “old scrotum and expired Axe body spray.” I mean, in Vegas terms, DeSantis is pissed off that the drunks at the buffet at the Tropicana aren’t enjoying his terrible magic show while Trump is Siegfried and Roy rolled into one sparkly orange suit.
Ari Melber aired a recording of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) telling Fox host Maria Bartiromo that evidence would be required to prove claims about voter fraud in a court of law.
Bartiromo was one of the several Fox hosts and guests who falsely claimed or suggested the 2020 presidential election was rigged against then-President Donald Trump, who insists to this day it was stolen from him. On Tuesday, Fox Corp. settled a $787.5 million lawsuit with Dominion Votings Systems after the latter sued for defamation when Fox personalities cited Dominion while making their bogus election allegations.
Mike Lindell has to pay $5 million for losing his “Prove Mike Wrong” 2020 election challenge, an arbitration panel has ruled.
In a decision dated Wednesday, the panel found software developer Robert Zeidman had won Lindell’s 2021 contest challenging experts to prove that data he had was not from the 2020 election, and directed the MyPillow founder to pay him the reward money he’d promised in the next 30 days.
Lindell told NBC News on Thursday that the ruling was “a horrible, wrong decision.”
President Joe Biden is preparing to make his intention to seek a second term official next week, with advisers planning to launch his re-election campaign as soon as Tuesday, three sources familiar with the plans said.
Even as advisers have said for months that no formal timetable had been settled on to launch Biden’s 2024 campaign, they have long eyed April 25, the anniversary of Biden’s 2020 campaign announcement, as an informal target. And as he did four years ago, Biden would launch his candidacy with a campaign video message, the sources said.
The Washington Post first reported that Biden is preparing to announce his re-election bid next week.
President Joe Biden lambasted Republicans’ emerging trade-off plans to raise the nation’s debt limit only in exchange for spending cuts and other policy concessions on Wednesday, declaring that GOP lawmakers are threatening a historic default on U.S. obligations “unless I agree to all these wacko notions they have.”
His remarks in a union hall speech came as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who had for months struggled to unite Republicans around a unified budget proposal, released a sweeping spending-restraint plan to offer to the White House along with lifting the debt limit by $1.5 trillion.
An IRS special agent said to be involved in the federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes is seeking whistleblower protections to provide sensitive disclosures about the probe to Congress.
Mark D. Lytle, a lawyer for the unnamed IRS employee, wrote in a letter Wednesday to a bipartisan group of lawmakers that he represents a “career IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent who has been overseeing the ongoing and sensitive investigation of a high profile, controversial subject since early 2020” and would like to make protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress.
A House committee formally silenced Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Wednesday after she lobbed accusations at the homeland security secretary during his congressional testimony.
Democrats on the GOP-led Homeland Security Committee twice sought to strike remarks made by Greene at the hearing, one in which she accused a Democratic member of having an extramarital affair, but the only bipartisan agreement came when she called Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “a liar.”
The first remark that sparked backlash came when it was Greene’s turn to question Mayorkas. She followed Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., who had displayed a poster that depicted a defund-the-FBI campaign with Greene’s face on it.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday delayed making a decision that could prevent patients from obtaining the abortion pill mifepristone in the mail by extending a temporary block on a lower court ruling.
In a brief order issued by Justice Samuel Alito, the court said the hold, first announced last week, would be extended two more days, until just before midnight Friday. The announcement says nothing about how the court will ultimately resolve the case, although the delay could indicate there is division among the nine justices.
The decision means that, at least for now, women can still obtain mifepristone by mail as the legal battle continues.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) returned to work this week after his treatment for depression and quickly engaged in one of his favorite diversions: trolling his critics on the right.
Last month, some conservatives on social media claimed Fetterman had been replaced by a body double while undergoing inpatient treatment at Walter Reed hospital.
Fetterman, who was known for his sharp social media responses during last year’s Senate campaign, posted a video rebutting the “fringy fringies” who claim he has a body double… with himself playing the role of his own supposed double.
Key Senate Democrats are considering a hearing about Supreme Court ethics in the wake of revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas received previously undisclosed gifts and luxury travel from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the chair of the Judiciary Committee, said the “20 years of gift travel on yachts and chartered planes was outrageous.” He added that the failure to disclose Crow’s real estate deals and his reported purchase of Thomas’ mother’s home was “beyond anything I could imagine at the Supreme Court level.”
Senate Republicans blocked a request Tuesday by Democrats to temporarily replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee while the 89-year-old Californian recovers from illness.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asked for unanimous consent to swap out Feinstein for Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., saying that Feinstein “made her wish clear” to be removed “until she returns to the Senate.”
That was met with opposition from Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, effectively dooming the request. “This is about a handful of judges that you can’t get the votes for,” Graham, R-S.C. said, adding that he doesn’t believe those judges that lack GOP support should be confirmed.
Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a $787.5 million settlement agreement Tuesday afternoon, the parties announced, narrowly heading off a trial shortly after the jury was sworn in.
“Fox has admitted to telling lies,” John Poulos, Dominion’s CEO, said at a news conference after the trial ended.
Justin Nelson, lead attorney for Dominion, told NBC News he hopes the settlement will restore faith in elections.
“This alone can’t do it, right? But this shows that there is accountability, that we showed that if you are caught lying, you will be held responsible,” he said.
If Democrats believed Republicans would help them easily solve their Dianne Feinstein dilemma, they’re in for some disappointment.
A pair of Republicans who serve on the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee made clear they won’t vote to replace the 89-year-old California Democrat on the panel as she has requested due to health issues that have kept her away from Washington for nearly two months.
“I will not go along with Chuck Schumer’s plan to replace Senator Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee and pack the court with activist judges. Joe Biden wants the Senate to rubber stamp his unqualified and controversial judges to radically transform America,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) tweeted on Monday.
Fresh off reports that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted luxury travel and accommodations from billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow without any disclosure, a new report reveals Thomas also sold Crow his family home without disclosing it — which experts say is a much more clear-cut violation of federal ethics laws.
ProPublica reporter Josh Kaplan, who broke the story, delved into more detail on CNN’s “The Lead” Thursday.
“Explain the significance of what you found here, this 2014 real estate transaction between Justice Thomas and Mr. Crow,” said anchor Jake Tapper.
“Yes, so we found that Harlan Crow bought property from Justice Thomas in a undisclosed real estate deal,” said Kaplan. “Crow paid roughly $133,000 to Thomas and his relatives for three properties, one of which was the house, that old house that Thomas’ mom was living in. And the other two were vacant lots down the street. And Thomas did not disclose this, which experts told us appears to be a clear violation of government ethics law.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) defended Jake Teixeira, 21, on Thursday, just hours after he was arrested for allegedly leaking highly sensitive military documents online.
Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman serving since 2019, held the highest-level security clearance possible for top-secret information military information and he allegedly shared highly sensitive national defense documents with an online Discord gaming group called “Thug Shaker Central.” The New York Times reported that the group of “about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.”
The leaks caused shock waves of anger and frustration around the globe as key U.S. allies panicked over sensitive information regarding the war in Ukraine, NATO preparedness, and other topics leaked online.
The Georgia Republican, however, brushed all that aside after Teixeira’s arrest and vehemently defended him.
“Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar,” Greene wrote on Twitter
WASHINGTON — Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested Thursday, a U.S. law enforcement official confirmed to NBC News, in connection to the investigation of classified documents that were leaked on the internet.
U.S. officials had been searching for the source of the leak, which exposed potentially hundreds of pages of intelligence about Russian efforts in Ukraine and spying on U.S. allies.
Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen Pat Ryder declined to confirm the leaker’s identity at the press briefing on Thursday and referred reporters to the Department of Justice, which is conducting a criminal investigation because it’s a “law enforcement matter” and ongoing investigation, he said.
Memphis-area officials voted Wednesday to reinstate Justin J. Pearson to the Tennessee Legislature after Republicans expelled him last week for protesting gun violence on the chamber floor.
The seven members of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners present for the vote unanimously approved Pearson’s reinstatement during a special meeting in Memphis. Board members suspended the rules to allow for an immediate vote.
Following the vote, Pearson addressed the commission with an enthusiastic speech.
“Nashville thought they could silence democracy,” he said to cheers from supporters who had filled the chamber. “But they didn’t know the Shelby County Commission … and its fearless leaders.”
He added that he had a “message for all those people in Nashville who voted to expel us”: “You can’t expel hope, you can’t expel justice.”
Federal prosecutors probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have in recent weeks sought a wide range of documents related to fundraising after the 2020 election, looking to determine if Trump or his advisers scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money, eight people familiar with the new inquiries said.
Federal investigators are asking witnesses whether former President Donald J. Trump showed off to aides and visitors a map he took with him when he left office that contains sensitive intelligence information, four people with knowledge of the matter said.
The map has been just one focus of the broad Justice Department investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after he departed the White House.
The nature of the map and the information it contained is not clear. But investigators have questioned a number of witnesses about it, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, as the special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s Trump-focused inquiries, Jack Smith, examines the former president’s handling of classified material after leaving office and weighs charges that could include obstruction of justice.
WASHINGTON — Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller arrived Tuesday at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and was seen entering the area where the grand jury tied to special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation meets.
Neither Miller nor his attorney responded when asked what the former aide was doing there.
The grand jury is investigating the role former President Donald Trump played in the Jan. 6 riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Miller served as a senior adviser to the president and director of speechwriting at the time of the riot.
CNN reports that investigators are looking through the footage, which shows the perpetrator shooting his AR-15 style weapon inside the bank. Officials told the network that the attack lasted approximately a minute before the gunman stopped shooting for about a minute and a half, and the police arrived shortly after.
The Manhattan district attorney on Tuesday sued Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio in an extraordinary step intended to keep congressional Republicans from interfering in the office’s criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump.
The 50-page suit, filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, accuses Mr. Jordan of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on the prosecution of Mr. Trump and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. Mr. Bragg last week unveiled 34 felony charges against Mr. Trump that stem from the former president’s attempts to cover up a potential sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign.
I’m getting the feeling that one of these wrap-ups is going to turn into another semi-regular weekly survey around the shebeen. One of our regulars is a place called The Tennessee Holler, a progressive news site in that benighted state. Naturally, the Holler has been following closely the current dust-up in the Tennessee legislature over gun reform laws. Accordingly, this happened.
President Joe Biden on Monday signed into law a Republican-backed resolution that immediately terminates the coronavirus national emergency first declared in March 2020.
The measure ends the national emergency a month earlier than the Biden administration had planned. A separate public health emergency tied to Covid will remain until May 11.
Biden had signaled his opposition to ending the national emergency but said he wouldn’t veto the legislation.
A gunman opened fire at a bank in downtownLouisville on Monday, killing at least five people — including a close friend of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear — and injuring nine others, authorities said.
The gunman was identified as Connor Sturgeon, 25, who police said was an employee of Old National Bank on East Main Street, where the gunfire erupted at 8:38 a.m.
Parts of the attack were livestreamed, police said.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision to put the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone on hold has thrown future access to medication abortion into question nationwide and laid the foundation for a high-stakes Supreme Court battle.
The ruling, issued Friday, is set to go into effect at the end of this week unless a higher court intervenes. The Justice Department asked an appeals court to block it Monday.
In interviews, several legal and medical experts said Kacsmaryk’s decision was unprecedented and clearly ideological. His language and reasoning, they said, closely mirrored arguments and concepts put forward by the anti-abortion movement — at the expense of scientific consensus in some instances.
The Nashville Metropolitan Council voted Monday to return Justin Jones to the state Legislature after he was removed last week by Republicans for protesting gun violence on the House floor.
The 36 council members at Monday’s meeting unanimously supported reinstating Jones. The council had suspended its rules to allow an immediate vote instead of holding a monthlong nomination period.
Less than an hour later, Jones was sworn in on the steps of the State Capitol. He raised his fist as he entered the House chamber while supporters chanted, “Welcome home!”
Former Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson said Sunday he expects to be quickly reappointed after what he called his “unprecedented” expulsion for participating in a raucous, unrecognized gun violence protest on the Legislature floor.
“I do hope to continue to serve District 86 in the reappointment,” Pearson, a Memphis Democrat, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “If there is a special election, I would definitely run in that special election because our voters have been disenfranchised.”
Pearson was ousted from the Tennessee House of Representatives on Thursday along with Democratic Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville. It was the first such partisan expulsion in the state’s modern history.
Congressional Democrats quickly condemned the decision Friday by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s longtime approval of the key abortion pill mifepristone, while top Republicans in Congress have yet to weigh in.
Kacsmaryk has given the government a week to appeal his decision, and President Joe Biden said his administration will file an appeal. If the ruling does eventually go into effect, it would curtail access to the standard regimen for medication abortion nationwide.
Trump lawyer James Trusty said Sunday that there are no more classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
In an interview on “Meet the Press,” Trusty was asked by NBC News’ Chuck Todd whether he can be certain there are no classified documents or copies of documents at Mar-a-Lago following reportsthat Trump’s legal team turned over additional materials, as well as a laptop, to investigators.
“Yeah, sure,” Trusty responded. “And I can tell you the leak about what happened with this additional document or several documents that were found in the thumb drive is absurd.”
William Barr, Donald Trump’s former attorney general, said he believes Trump’s legal troubles are likely to bolster him during the Republican primaries but “greatly weaken” him during the 2024 general election, which Barr said the former president cannot win.
“He’s already, I think, a weak candidate that would lose, but I think this sort of assures it,” Barr, who has previously said he won’t support Trump’s reelection, told ABC News “This Week” on Sunday.
Barr said it’s not because of Trump’s arrest last week in New York on charges related to hush money payments during his 2016 campaign. The former attorney general called that case “unjustified” and “an abuse of prosecutorial power,” echoing complaints by Trump allies and even some critics.
Read the rest of the story at HuffPost
Progressive representatives on Thursday called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas shortly after a ProPublica report detailed how he took lavish trips funded by a Republican billionaire donor that he did not disclose.
“This degree of corruption is shocking — almost cartoonish,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote on Twitter. “Thomas must be impeached.”
Progressive ally Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., reiterated the call for impeachment, adding that the Supreme Court needs a binding code of ethics. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., joined in on Twitter: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday accused House Republicans of trying to “undermine” his office’s criminal case against former President Donald Trump through an “unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation.”
“Repeated efforts to weaken state and local law enforcement actions are an abuse of power and will not deter us from our duty to uphold the law,” Bragg tweeted in response a subpoena House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, issued to a former prosecutor involved in the investigation.
The White House released a report Thursday about the decisions made regarding the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, including the bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members.
The 12-page report by the National Security Council summarizes the administration’s assessment of the withdrawal and largely blames former President Donald Trump’s administration for the chaos that unfolded as U.S. troops were leaving and as Americans and Afghans evacuated from the country. The Taliban took over the governmentand have remained in power.
Republican legislators in Tennessee voted Thursday to expel two Black Democrats from the state House over their protests on the chamber floor against gun violence last week, while a vote to expel a third, white Democratic representative fell short.
It’s the first time in state history that Tennessee House members have been expelled for alleged chamber rules violations.
In the first vote, Republicans expelled Rep. Justin Jones. The second vote, to kick out Rep. Gloria Johnson, failed. Republicans then voted to remove Rep. Justin Pearson.
Jones and Pearson are Black. Johnson is white.
A Delaware judge said he’s inclined to force Fox Corp. executives Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch to testify live in the defamation suit against Fox News and Fox Corp.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis said Wednesday at a public hearing that lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems would need to issue trial subpoenas to force their testimony.
“I would not quash it, and I would compel them to come,” he said. “It would be my discretion that they come.”
Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, is running for president.
Kennedy filed a statement of candidacy Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.
The 69-year-old’s campaign to challenge incumbent President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination is a long shot. Self-help author Marianne Williamson is also running in the Democratic race.
Former Vice President Mike Pence will not appeal a federal judge’s order that he testify in the special counsel’s probe of former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, his adviser announced Wednesday.
The decision not to fight the order could provide special counsel Jack Smith with remarkable access to one of the key people with critical insight into Trump’s thinking and efforts to cling to power.
Last week, Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, largely dismissed efforts mounted by Pence and Trump to limit his testimony and avoid handing over documents.
Read the rest of the story at NBC News
It finally happened: Former president Donald Trump was charged this afternoon with 34 counts of falsifying business records by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. In a spectacle that played out almost entirely behind closed doors, but was still carried on television news like Trump was flying to the moon to be arraigned by Xenomorphs, Trump surrendered voluntarily at a downtown Manhattan courthouse, was arrested and booked, pleaded not guilty, and then went back to Mar-a-Lago on his own recognizance.
The counts cover 34 separate instances of a false business entry or record. Some refer to false entries into business ledgers. Others refer to false invoices or checks. All 34 counts against Trump are felony charges (class E) instead of misdemeanors. To make that case, Bragg must convince a jury that all of the criminal record-keeping was done in order to cover up some larger crime.
Just hours after he left his fingerprints in a Manhattan courthouse and on American history, former President Donald Trump returned to his home turf at the Mar-a-Lago club here and proclaimed that he is being unjustly persecuted by prosecution.
“They can’t beat us at the ballot box, so they try to beat us through the law,” Trump, the first former president ever charged with a crime, said Tuesday night to a room of supporters that included luminaries of his movement, such as defeated Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, voter fraud evangelist Mike Lindell and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Ronny Jackson, R-Texas.
Brandon Johnson will be the next mayor of Chicago, NBC News projected Tuesday, marking a stunning turn for a staunch progressive and former teacher whose campaign leaned into messages of racial and economic disparities and who overcame blowback over past comments about decreasing police funding.
Johnson defeated the well-financed, tough-on-crime moderate Paul Vallas, a former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools who promised to immediately bulk up the Chicago police ranks to curb a crisis of gun violence.
Vallas told his supporters Tuesday night that he called Johnson and “told him I absolutely expect him to be the next mayor.”
Janet Protasiewicz, a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, has won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, NBC News projects, giving liberals their first majority on the state’s highest court in 15 years.
Protasiewicz defeated conservative Dan Kelly, a former state Supreme Court justice, on Tuesday in what became the most expensive state Supreme Court race in U.S. history and one of the most closely watched elections of 2023.
Protasiewicz’s victory will allow the court’s new liberal majority to determine the future of several pivotal issues the bench is likely to decide in the coming years, including abortion rights, the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps and election administration — including, possibly, the outcome of the 2024 presidential race in the battleground state.
Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his alleged role in hush money payments toward the end of his 2016 presidential campaign — the first time a former president has had to plead to criminal charges.
The indictment was unsealed in a proceeding before Judge Juan Merchan in criminal court in Manhattan. Trump was flanked by his lawyers inside the courtroom as prosecutors outlined their case, alleging he made covert and illegal payments to affect the 2016 election. He faces a maximum of four years in prison if convicted.
Asked for his plea, Trump answered, “Not guilty.”
After a full night and morning digesting The Latest News, I have come to one important conclusion: That any and all political noise out of Washington concerning the events in New York should be treated as completely irrelevant to the criminal charges in New York. And the noise is already at decibels only dogs can hear. From CNN:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted that “The American people will not tolerate this injustice,” as he criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. “The House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account,” he said. The number two House Republican – Majority Leader Steve Scalise – called it “outrageous.” In a tweet, Scalise called the indictment “one of the clearest examples of extremist Democrats weaponizing government to attack their political opponents.” Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House GOP conference chair, released a statement saying the indictment was “a political witch hunt” and a “dark day for America.”
Wisconsinites are set to elect a new justice to the state’s Supreme Court on Tuesday.
State Supreme Court races are often sleepy affairs, not least in Wisconsin, where they occur in the springtime ― months away from elections with greater turnout.
But this particular race has extraordinarily high stakes, eliciting an accordingly larger share of attention and resources.
The contest, prompted by the impending retirement of conservative Justice Patience Roggensack, will determine whether conservatives continue to hold a 4-3 majority on Wisconsin’s highest court, or if liberals hold the balance of power on the bench.
The shooter in last week’s deadly attack at a private Christian school in Nashville planned it for months, police said Monday.
Audrey Hale outlined plans “to commit mass murder at The Covenant School” in journals police found in the shooter’s car and bedroom after the March 27 attack that killed six people, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said.
Police previously said the shooter, a former student at the school, had carefully planned the attack with detailed maps and surveillance.
Judge Juan Merchan will allow five pool still photographers to snap for several minutes before the arraignment formally starts, according to a decision issued Monday night.
No video cameras will be allowed, though Judge Merchan conceded, “That this indictment involves a matter of monumental significance cannot possibly be disputed. Never in the history of the United States has a sitting or past President been indicted on criminal charges.”
Donald Trump is set to appear in criminal court in New York City on Tuesday to be arraigned on dozens of charges related to hush money payments — the first time in American history a former president will face criminal charges.
Trump is expected to appear at the courthouse at 100 Centre St. in lower Manhattan around noon ET for fingerprinting and processing and to go before Judge Juan Merchan to enter a plea of not guilty around 2 p.m.
Security was high in the courthouse and nearby areas as the police department, court officers and the Secret Service braced for protests amid the unprecedented arraignment of a former president. Trump called for “protests” in the event of his arrest last month, and he later ratcheted up his rhetoric, warning of “potential death and destruction” if he was charged criminally.
Former President Donald Trump will deliver remarks Tuesday night in Florida after his scheduled arraignment in New York on charges related to hush money payments, his campaign announced Sunday.
Trump will hold the event at his Mar-a-Lago club after returning from Manhattan, where he is expected to voluntarily turn himself in. He is expected to be joined in Florida by supporters as he tries to project an image of strength and defiance and turn the charges into a political asset to boost his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump is facing multiple charges of falsifying business records, including at least one felony offense, in the indictment handed up by a Manhattan grand jury last week, two people familiar with the matter have told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information that is not yet public because the indictment remains under seal.
The Justice Department has gathered new evidence in its investigation into former President Donald Trump’s removal of classified documents from the White House that may point to possible obstruction, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
Sources familiar with the matter told the newspaper investigators are homing in on whether Trump attempted to impede the government’s efforts to recover sensitive documents from his Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida, or if he directed anyone to do so on his behalf.
The Post reported federal investigators have gathered evidence that Trump might have sifted through boxes of documents after he received a subpoena to return them, possibly to keep some of the files despite the order.
Even for a city accustomed to celebrity appearances, the two-day visit during which Donald J. Trump is expected be arraigned in Manhattan is likely to be a striking spectacle: There will be protests and celebrations, an all-hands-on-deck police presence and a crush of media attention on the moment in which the first American president is charged with a crime.
Mr. Trump is expected to arrive in New York on Monday from his estate in Florida and head to his erstwhile home in Trump Tower, where he began his pursuit of the presidency in 2015 by descending a golden escalator. The exact timing of the former president’s arrival was unclear, though he was expected to stay the night there before heading to a courthouse in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday.
Sen. John Fetterman is speaking publicly for the first time since he entered the hospital in February with severe depression, saying in an interview on “CBS Sunday Morning” that he looks forward to returning to work later this month.
Fetterman, D-Pa., said he also looks forward to “being the kind of dad and the kind of husband and the kind of senator that Pennsylvania deserves. Truly, that’s what my aspiration is.”
Elected in November in one of 2022’s most significant midterm elections, Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed Military Medical Center for treatment for depression on Feb. 15, his staff has said.
It’s pretty fucking simple: If you won’t do anything at all about the number one cause of deaths in children and teenagers in this stupid country, you don’t get to say you care about children. It really is that easy. No matter what policies you support, good or shitty, you are a fucking fraud if you won’t step up on the number of and easy access to firearms, especially high-powered weapons with large magazines. If your house is on fire but you’re ignoring that because you want to spackle a hole in the wall, then your minor repair is worthless. That wall’s gonna burn, too.
After another shooting at another school, this time in Nashville, with 3 kids and 3 adults murdered by a shooter who had bought their guns legally, Republicans practically lined up to tell parents everywhere that they don’t fucking care if your children die. Senator John Cornyn from Texas, who was a Republican co-sponsor of the mild gun legislation that was signed into law in 2022, said, “I would say we’ve gone about as far as we can go” on any additional gun control laws. Profiles in chickenshit.
Former President Donald Trump reacted angrily on Thursday to news that he had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on unknown charges linked to a hush money payment made to an adult film actor. The 2024 candidate is now the first U.S. president in history to be criminally charged.
“These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, seemingly misspelling “indicted.”
He went on: “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. IT IS LIKEWISE A CONTINUING ATTACK ON OUR ONCE FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. THE USA IS NOW A THIRD WORLD NATION, A NATION IN SERIOUS DECLINE. SO SAD!”
A federal judge in Texas has struck down Affordable Care Act provisions that require health insurers to provide some free preventive care services.
The ruling could jeopardize coverage nationwide for people relying on the health care law for preventive services, such as screenings for cancer, as well as HIV drugs.
In the decision, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor mentioned his previous ruling on the structure of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which was created under Obamacare and helps determine preventive services coverage, saying it violates the appointments clause of the Constitution and therefore its related preventive care mandates are unlawful.
Donald Trump’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination jumped to his defense Thursday after he was indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan, a sign of the former president’s continued power within the party.
Many of his declared or potential rivals were quick to assert that the potential prosecution was merely about politics rather than the possibility that Trump may have committed a crime.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called it “un-American” and a “weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda.”
A grand jury in New York City voted Thursday to indict Donald Trump — the first time a former U.S. president has faced criminal charges.
The historic indictment comes in a case centered on $130,000 in payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels claimed she slept with the married Trump in 2006, a claim he has denied. Trump had classified his reimbursement of the payout as a legal expense.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan DA’s office confirmed the indictment in a statement Thursday night.
Former President Donald Trump boasted he “got along” with Vladimir Putinbefore Sean Hannity said the Russian president is “evil.”
Trump declined to join the Fox News host in that assessment.
Wednesday’s Hannity aired the third and final installment of the host’s interview with the former president at Mar-a-Lago. In one segment, Hannity rattled off the names of people so Trump could give quick reactions.
Pope Francis was admitted to a Rome hospital after complaining of breathing difficulties in recent days, the Vatican said Wednesday after canceling his meetings for the next two days.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said medical checks had been carried out on the pontiff at the Gemelli hospital, where Francis underwent surgery in 2021.
“In recent days Pope Francis has complained of some breathing difficulties,” Bruni said in a statement, adding that the tests had picked up a respiratory infection.
A heated debate erupted on Capitol Hill when Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a former middle school principal, yelled at his GOP colleagues Wednesday and repeatedly called them “cowards” for not supporting stricter gun measures in the wake of the Nashville school shooting.
The exchange between Bowman, D-N.Y., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., occurred just outside the House chamber and was widely circulated on social media after several journalists posted video of it.
Bowman, a former principal at Cornerstone Academy for Social Action in the Bronx, can be heard yelling: “They’re all cowards! They won’t do anything to save the lives of our children at all!”
Audrey Hale struggled to cope with the death of a close friend in the months before the rampage that killed six people at a private Christian school, those who knew the school shooter said Wednesday.
The 28-year-old, who attacked The Covenant School on Monday, was devastated by the death in August of Sydney Shere Sims in a traffic accident, former classmate Samira Hardcastle said.
Hale and Sims attended Isaiah T. Creswell Middle School of the Arts and the Nashville School of the Arts.
Lawyers for Fox News were met with skepticism Tuesday when they argued that Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch should be excused from testifying in court as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the company.
At a hearing in Delaware Superior Court, Judge Eric Davis said he’d received a letter from Fox saying it would be an “inconvenience” for Murdoch, 92, to provide testimony in the courtroom.
Murdoch, the judge said, is “hardly infirm.” The judge said that after receiving the letter he was told that Murdoch had just gotten engaged and was discussing plans to travel more in the coming years — an apparent reference to an interview the recently divorced media mogul gave to his New York Post last week, where he announced his engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, 66. The article said the couple planned to spend their time between California, the United Kingdom, Montana and New York.
After another mass shooting took the lives of six people, including three 9-year-old children, at a Nashville, Tennessee, school, Senate Chaplain Barry Black used his opening prayer to urge lawmakers to take action.
“Lord, when babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers,” Black said as the Senate opened for business on Tuesday. “Remind our lawmakers of the words of the British statesman Edmund Burke: ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’ Lord, deliver our senators from the paralysis of analysis that waits for the miraculous.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) managed to shock even the most jaded social media users on Monday with his candid remark on school shootings.
“We’re not going to fix it,” he told reporters just hours after a shooter wielding two “assault-style” rifles and a pistol killed three students and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville.
Burchett, who voted against a bill expanding background checks on gun sales in 2021, called Monday’s shooting “a horrible, horrible situation,” but insisted nothing could be done to prevent future tragedies because, “criminals are gonna be criminals.”
A federal judge has ordered former Vice President Mike Pence to comply with a subpoena in the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to a source familiar with the decision.
The ruling from Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, requires Pence to testify before the grand jury tied to the probe led by special counsel Jack Smith.
The ruling, which was issued Monday, remains under seal because it involves grand jury matters. The order was a partial victory for Pence and his argument that he was shielded from having to testify about Jan. 6 because of his constitutional role as part of the legislative branch.
Read the rest of the story at NBC News
President Joe Biden once again called on Congress to pass a bill that would ban assault-style weapons in the wake of a shooting at a Nashville grade school that left three children and three adults dead on Monday.
“We have to do more to stop gun violence. It’s ripping our communities apart,” the president said from the White House. “Ripping at the very soul of the nation. And we have to do more to protect our schools so they aren’t turned into prisons.”
“I call on Congress, again, to pass my assault weapons ban,” he continued.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Sunday that lawmakers “will be moving forward” with legislation to address national security concerns surrounding TikTok after the social media giant’s CEO faced hours of hostile questioning before a congressional panel last week.
“It’s very concerning that the CEO of TikTok can’t be honest and admit what we already know to be true — China has access to TikTok user data,” McCarthy tweeted.
“The House will be moving forward with legislation to protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party,” he added.
Former President Donald Trump returned to Fox News on Monday night and aired a host of grievances about investigations he’s facing, mail-in voting and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his first interviewwith the network since legal filings showed network leaders privately condemning him.
There was no hint of the acrimony detailed in those communications, made public as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, spoke for nearly an hour with prime-time host Sean Hannity, long one of his most outspoken Fox News backers.
A search of the Nashville school shooting suspect’s residence Monday turned up more firepower, police said in an evening statement.
Officers armed with a search warrant scoured the residence on Brightwood Avenue in Belmont-Hillsboro, a neighborhood of seven-figure, early 20th-century homes, blocking off residential streets and using explosive devices to gain entry.
Nashville police said investigators found two more firearms, described as shotguns, at the residence. At least one of those was described by police as a “sawed-off shotgun,” some of which can be illegal, depending on the exact measurements and whether the owner has filed federal paperwork.
During one of the 2012 presidential debates, when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney engaged in a spirited debate about tariffs, I remember being struck by the fact that they were debating an issue I had previously only read about in books. What was next, I wondered, hammer-and-tongs over the free coinage of silver?
It struck me then that an entire political industry had been built up to re-litigate issues I had thought long settled. In the judiciary, this entailed chipping away piecemeal at landmark decisions. The legislature then used the judiciary’s work to craft laws to render what remained of those landmark decisions impractical in real life.
Tens of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets of cities across the country Sunday night in a spontaneous outburst of anger after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly fired his defense minister for challenging the Israeli leader’s judicial overhaul plan.
Protesters in Tel Aviv blocked a main highway and lit large bonfires, while police scuffled with protesters who gathered outside Netanyahu’s private home in Jerusalem.
The unrest deepened a monthslong crisis over Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the judiciary, which has sparked mass protests, alarmed business leaders and former security chiefs and drawn concern from the United States and other close allies.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said Sunday that he won’t run for the seat of retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein and will endorse Rep. Barbara Leeinstead.
Referring to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Khanna said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “I have concluded that, despite a lot of enthusiasm from Bernie folks, the best place, the most exciting place, action place, fit place, for me to serve as a progressive is in the House of Representatives.”
Khanna said he will be a co-chair of Lee’s campaign, adding, “We need a strong anti-war senator, and she will play that role.”
Facing a potential indictment, Donald Trump took a defiant stance at a rally Saturday in Waco, disparaging the prosecutors investigating him and predicting his vindication as he rallied supporters in a city made famous by deadly resistance against law enforcement.
With a hand over his heart, Trump stood at attention when his rally opened with a song called “Justice for All” performed by a choir of people imprisoned for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Some footage from the insurrection was shown on big screens displayed at the rally site as the choir sang the national anthem and a recording played of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has dismissed another letter by three House Republican chairmen seeking more information related to the hush money probe that could lead to an indictment of former President Donald Trump.
In a letter to Bragg on Saturday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil argued that Congress should be privy to documents and testimony in the ongoing investigation into a $130,000 payment made during Trump’s 2016 campaign to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
A Manhattan grand jury reportedly won’t decide until at least next week whether to charge former President Donald Trump with crimes related to a hush money payment his associate made to a porn actress ahead of the 2016 election.
Despite Trump suggesting he would be arrested this week, the grand jury assembled by the Manhattan district attorney’s office indicated Thursday that they would not meet about the case for the remainder of the week, multiple outlets reported.
The potential charges are connected to a $130,000 hush money payment Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, made in 2016 to Stormy Daniels, who says she had an affair with Trump a decade earlier. Cohen claims he made the payment at the behest of Trump, who reimbursed him. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to charges related to the payment and has met with the grand jury several times.
Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and John Thune, R-S.D., who have authored legislation that could be used to ban TikTok, said Chew’s testimony did not address their concerns about the app’s ties to China.
“Under PRC law, all Chinese companies, including TikTok, whose parent company is based in Beijing, are ultimately required to do the bidding of Chinese intelligence services, should they be called upon to do so. Nothing we heard from Mr. Chew today assuaged those concerns,” they said in a joint statement.
“We are encouraged by the quick momentum and strong bipartisan support for our legislation and expect that it will only grow following today’s testimony,” the senators added. The White House has indicated it backs the bill, known as the RESTRICT Act.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office on Thursday slammed three House Republican chairmen and argued they overstepped in their request for DA Alvin Bragg’s testimony related to the hush money probe involving former President Donald Trump.
In a letter obtained by NBC News, Leslie Dubeck, general counsel for the Manhattan DA’s office, called their request “an unprecedent inquiry into a pending local prosecution” which “only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene.”
The White House COVID-19 team will wind down as the country moves out of the emergency phase of the pandemic, multiple administration officials confirmed to ABC News.
The public health emergency is set to expire on May 11 after being in place since early 2020. The end will impact public health measures afforded by the pandemic, like expanded Medicaid enrollment, subsidized costs of COVID tests, and data gathering on cases and deaths across the country.
It will also mark a “new phase” of COVID response, an administration official said, which will be mirrored by a restructuring within the White House.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis′ administration is moving to forbid classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in all grades, expanding the controversial law critics call “Don’t Say Gay” as the Republican governor continues a focus on cultural issues ahead of his expected presidential run.
The proposal, which would not require legislative approval, is scheduled for a vote next month before the State Board of Education and has been put forth by state Education Department, both of which are led by appointees of the governor.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office presented sufficient evidence to establish that former President Donald Trump committed a crime through his attorneys, a U.S. district judge ruled Friday night, a source briefed on the proceedings confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, based in Washington, D.C., wasn’t ruling on whether Trump was guilty of a crime but was making a decision about whether his attorney could be compelled to testify.
As a result of the decision, Howell ruled in favor of applying the “crime fraud” exception, which would let prosecutors sidestep protections afforded to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran through attorney-client privilege. Howell also ruled in favor of ordering Corcoran to testify before the federal grand jury. The development was first reported by ABC News.
The Manhattan DA plans to convene the grand jury again Thursday, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was seen leaving his office shortly before 5 p.m. ET Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, his office told members of the grand jury that they should be on standby for tomorrow, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Communications between adult-film star Stormy Daniels and an attorney who is now representing former President Donald Trump have been turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Daniels’ lawyer told CNN.
The exchanges – said to date back to 2018, when Daniels was seeking representation – raise the possibility that the Trump attorney, Joe Tacopina, could be sidelined from his defense of the former president in a case pertaining to Trump’s alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to Daniels.
Daniels’ communications with Tacopina and others at his firm include details relating to Daniels’ situation, according to her current attorney Clark Brewster, who believes the communications show a disclosure of confidential information from Daniels.
Several sources close to former President Donald Trump say he is currently huddling at his private club at Mar-a-Lago and meeting with his team, including his lawyers and senior advisers from his campaign operation, as he awaits a possible indictment in New York City.
Trump posted on social media over the weekend that he expected to be arrested this week by the Manhattan district attorney, who has been investigating whether Trump was involved in allegedly falsifying business records to hide campaign finance violations tied to payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The former president did not post any details about what the charges would be, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been probing whether Trump violated New York bookkeeping law by allegedly directing Michael Cohen to pay Daniels in exchange for her silence ahead of the 2016 election.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday again ripped into the Manhattan district attorney when asked about the potential charges against Donald Trump at a news conference at the House GOP retreat in Orlando while seemingly growing frustrated with reporters after multiple questions about the former president who has continued to dominate the news cycle.
McCarthy was asked directly if had concerns specifically about Trump’s alleged conduct regarding a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels and quickly pivoted to talking about Hillary Clinton and did not answer the question — before instead targeting the Manhattan DA.
Prosecutors in the special counsel’s office have presented compelling preliminary evidence that former President Donald Trump knowingly and deliberately misled his own attorneys about his retention of classified materials after leaving office, a former top federal judge wrote Friday in a sealed filing, according to sources who described its contents to ABC News.
U.S. Judge Beryl Howell, who on Friday stepped down as the D.C. district court’s chief judge, wrote last week that prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith’s office had made a “prima facie showing that the former president had committed criminal violations,” according to the sources, and that attorney-client privileges invoked by two of his lawyers could therefore be pierced.
Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his handling of classified documents.
A subcommittee to investigate the committee that investigated the January 6th riots is the most goddamn useless exercise in democratic government since the Buchanan Administration.
The subcommittee will be led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., a Trump ally who had his own run-in with the Jan. 6 committee. The panel accused Loudermilk of giving tours of the Capitol in the days leading up to the riot. Video footage showed Loudermilk guiding a tour of House office buildings during a time when the complex was closed off to visitors because of pandemic restrictions. Loudermilk has strenuously denied that the group he was leading was using the tour to inspect the facility ahead of the riot.
Oh, good. The tour guide for the Bear Spray Caucus will be leading this particular fishing expedition, which apparently was planned as the follow-up to Tucker Carlson’s game-changing use of security footage. That, of course, turned into the Al Capone’s vault of political television, and now the Republicans are stuck with a subcommittee dedicated to proving that we all didn’t see what we actually saw, led by a dude who compared the first impeachment of the former president* to the trial of Jesus.
In 2007, Stormy Daniels starred with Randy Spear in the porn film Black Widow (sorry, not a porn parody of the Marvel film, although, yeah, those exist. Look up The Assvengers). It was one of the first films she made after she had sex with Donald Trump one time in 2006. And, in context, I gotta tell you: there’s a dissertation that could be written about this confluence of fucked-up history and fuck film.
Lemme set this up for you: Stormy plays Peyton, a poor young women from an abusive mother and a cruel, neglectful father, and she grew up in south Louisiana (like me). The movie takes place after Stormy/Peyton is grown up. She has decided that the way to get anywhere is to find a sugar daddy, marry him, and then murder him. When the movie starts, we know that Peyton is married to Randy Spear or “Charles,” a wealthy corporate lawyer with a heart of gold. She’s 20 and he’s 56. She says, “He was just attractive enough to fuck…He was quiet, gentle, and suffered from chronic depression.” Nothing like hearing about mental illness in the midst of jacking off to porn.
Former President Donald Trump’s effort to keep key evidence out of his civil rape trial next month was rejected by a federal judge Monday.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in Manhattan ruled that key witnesses will be allowed to testify and misogynistic remarks Trump made about women in 2005 when he apparently didn’t realize he was being recorded can be played for a jury that will hear quarter-century-old rape allegations made by a former magazine columnist.
A trial in the case filed by E. Jean Carroll is scheduled to start April 25. Carroll and Trump are expected to testify.
The leadership of the New York Young Republican Club, a far-right group, wants to be very clear: It’s actually a good thing that only a handful of Donald Trump supporters showed up to the pro-Trump rally held Monday outside the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
“We purposefully kept it small,” the club’s president, Gavin Wax, told HuffPost.
“I think there’s more cameras here than people,” observed Vish Burra, the club’s executive secretary and a staffer for Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.).
“I would prefer a lower turnout,” said Troy Olson, sergeant-at-arms.
Frustrated by what it sees as the U.S.’s determination to thwart its rise as a global superpower, China is pushing ahead with efforts to promote a new international order that has Beijing at its center.
In recent weeks, China has spoken more robustly about the prospect of conflict unless the U.S. changes course and reveled in a major diplomatic victory in the Middle East. Now its leader, Xi Jinping, is in Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, signaling Beijing’s growing embrace of its rising power on the global stage and the potential for it to further deepen conflict with the U.S. and its allies.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy urged calm Sunday and said Americans should not protest if former President Donald Trump is indicted and arrested in a hush-money investigation in New York, contradicting Trump, who called on his supporters Saturday to “Protest, take our nation back!”
“I don’t think people should protest this, no. And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that, either,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said in response to a question from NBC News during House Republicans’ retreat in Orlando.
He said later: “Nobody should harm one another … We want calmness out there.”
Days after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a defiant visit to the city of Mariupol in his first trip to Ukrainian territory that Moscow illegally annexed in September.
Putin flew into the port city by helicopter and “traveled around several districts of the city,” the Kremlin said in a statement Sunday, adding that he met several residents and went into one family’s home after they invited him in.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said in a separate post on his Telegram channel that Putin “personally inspected one of the residential areas, the building of the Philharmonic Society and assessed the roads, driving a car around the city.”
UBS agreed to buy its embattled rival Credit Suisse for $3.2 billion Sunday, with Swiss regulators playing a key part in the deal as governments looked to stem a contagion threatening the global banking system.
“With the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS, a solution has been found to secure financial stability and protect the Swiss economy in this exceptional situation,” read a statement from the Swiss National Bank, which noted the central bank worked with the Swiss government and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority to bring about the combination of the country’s two largest banks.
Former President Donald Trump claimed in a post on his social media platform that he will be arrested on Tuesday related to the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
As part of the post, Trump also called on his supporters to protest.
In a statement, a Trump spokesperson appeared to walk back the comments.
The Senate on Thursday, in a procedural move, cleared the way for a final vote on repealing decades-old war powers measures that authorized two wars with Iraq — first under former President George H. W. Bush in the Gulf War, and then by his son, former President George W. Bush — with supporters fearing that the outdated authorizations could be misused by a future president.
In a strong bipartisan showing, the Senate voted 67-27 in a test vote to repeal the authorizations.
It’s now all but certain to pass the Senate in a final vote next week, but it’s less clear is how a Republican-controlled House will handle the legislation.
A group of financial institutions has agreed to deposit $30 billion in First Republic Bank in what’s meant to be a sign of confidence in the banking system, the banks announced Thursday afternoon.
Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase will contribute about $5 billion apiece, while Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will deposit around $2.5 billion, the banks said in a news release. Truist, PNC, U.S. Bancorp, State Street and Bank of New York Mellon will deposit about $1 billion each.
“This action by America’s largest banks reflects their confidence in First Republic and in banks of all sizes, and it demonstrates their overall commitment to helping banks serve their customers and communities,” the group said in a statement.
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign attacked the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Thursday ahead of possible charges linked to his effort to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The former president’s campaign released the fiery statement just days after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office invited Trump to testify in front of a grand jury, seen as a signal that charges could be near. Any indictment would be historic: No former American president has been indicted, and any charges are sure to upend the 2024 race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said the highest levels of the Kremlin approved the aggressive actions of Russian military fighter jets against a U.S. military drone over the Black Seaon Tuesday.
The Russian jets dropped jet fuel on the MQ-9 Reaper, an unprecedented action, and two of the officials said the intelligence suggests the intent seemed to be to throw the drone off course or disable its surveillance capabilities.
It was “Russian leadership’s intention to be aggressive in the intercept,” said one of the officials.
A judge appointed by former President Donald Trump heard arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that aims to ban an abortion medication that women in the U.S. have used widely for over two decades.
During the four-hour hearing, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk appeared sympathetic to arguments from the lawyers for a coalition of anti-abortion groups called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Their goal in filing the suit was to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the pills used to terminate pregnancies, which account for more than half of abortions in the U.S.
Porn actor Stormy Daniels met Wednesday with prosecutors who are investigating hush money paid to her on former President Donald Trump’s behalf, her lawyer said Wednesday.
The news emerged as Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney who orchestrated the payment, was giving a second day of testimony before a New York grand jury looking into the matter.
The $130,000 payment was made in 2016, as Trump’s first presidential campaign was in its final weeks and Daniels was negotiating to go on television to air her claims of a sexual encounter with him a decade earlier. Cohen made the payment and arranged another payout — at Trump’s direction, he says.
