US politics

US politics

"The executive branch is getting very creative using the pockets of money at their disposal with no congressional oversight," Ed Al-Hussainy, portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle, tells Axios.

The scene in the East Room of the White House last Friday was almost like something out of a medieval court. At the center was an emperor U.S. President Donald Trump euphoric after his country's military operation in which U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, and surrounded by his top advisers. Around him were executives from the major multinational oil companies, who had come from around the world to pay homage and vie for a piece of Venezuela's energy sector.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

In December, President Donald Trump called Somali people "garbage." Weeks later, a YouTube influencer began surveilling Somali-run child care centers in Minnesota and making unverified claims of fraud. The San Diego Chapter of the United Domestic Workers of America said it's heard of at least seven incidents since Monday of strangers surveilling, harassing, and even stalking Somali child care providers - and the incidents are likely underreported.

The purge began late Friday night, four days after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Seventeen inspectors general-internal watchdogs embedded throughout the federal government-received emails notifying them of their termination. Three weeks later came the Valentine's Day Massacre: the ousting of tens of thousands of federal employees with little discernible pattern, across agencies and across the country. By April, entire departments-the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau-had been gutted.

This is a drug. It is nothing else but a drug.

"This reflects the direct effects of the tariffs on manufacturing, transportation and distribution, and ag-related businesses, which are steadily losing jobs, as well as the indirect uncertainty hit to hiring by most other businesses," he explained.

As it turns out, neuroscience might be able to explain why. In a new study whose findings will surprise absolutely no one who's endured a fiery holiday dinner debate, researchers discovered that conservative and liberal brains don't just arrive at fundamentally different conclusions, but take strikingly different paths to get there. It's a fascinating piece of research which just might explain something about the yawning political divides currently tearing society apart.

Open up a news story from this past Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton fires, and the answer to what, precisely, they're made about is muddled. Bloomberg asked its newsletter subscribers What's holding LA back? before trying to peg a decline in property values to climate change and a cooling of investor sentiment, along with $33.9 billion in federal disaster aid being held hostage as possible answers.

In the final moments of a tense, marathon interview on CNN's State of the Union Sunday, Tapper played Jan. 6 footage and compared it to the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Those are law enforcement officers being physically attacked, Tapper said of the Jan. 6 officers. By this standard, would any of those officers be justified in shooting and killing the people causing them physical harm? Noem's answer suggested that she believes the Capitol police would have indeed been justified in shooting Jan. 6 rioters.

As you know, in an undercover operation in 2024, the FBI recorded you accepting a bag, which was determined to contain $50,000 from agents posing as business executives who said you indicated you could help win government contracts in the second Trump administration, Welker said. I want to stress there was an investigation. It was closed, last year. The Justice Department said it found, No credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.'

The freeze could have a major effect on the financial health of child day care centers across Silicon Valley, with the region already struggling with a dearth of providers. One provider who operates a day care center in East San Jose said 80% of her clients rely on these federal subsidies to put their children in her care - and a majority of her business operates with federal dollars.