US politics
fromAxios
24 minutes agoInside Democrats' brewing war over the resurgence of "defund ICE"
Democrats debate reducing ICE funding: progressives push defund or abolish, centrists seek reforms but reject full defunding.
When a president says his authority is limited only by his own morality, the Constitution has already been violated. The oath of office binds the president to law, not conscience, not instinct, not personal judgment. Claiming otherwise is a declaration that constitutional limits are optional. This is not rhetoric. It is an imminent danger. A president who believes only he restrains himself is asserting personal sovereignty. That is the definition of autocracy.
Revolution Wind has "demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits of its underlying claims" and is is "likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction," Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in a Monday order. Catch up quick: It's one of five under-construction wind projects off the Atlantic Coast that Trump administration officials halted last month, citing classified national security risks.
The Trump administration secretly reimposed a policy limiting Congress members' access to immigration detention facilities a day after a federal immigration officer fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, attorneys for several congressional Democrats said Monday in asking a federal judge to intervene. Three Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota were blocked from visiting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Minneapolis on Saturday, three days after an ICE officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in the city.
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 killing of 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis last Wednesday has shocked the world and become a political nightmare for the Trump administration. The proper response to this horrific killing would be an independent and transparent investigation. Instead, the Trump administration has chosen the path of stonewalling, cover-up, and demonizing the victim-including by making sexist and homophobic attacks against Good.
Step one: praise the boss, effusively, as a hero. (A sample post from Rubio's X account: "Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before.") Step two: explain that whatever unprecedented thing the President has just done-capturing the head of state of another country in the middle of the night, promising to take control of Greenland -is, in fact, entirely normal.
Embattled Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey announced Monday he will not seek reelection to the office he has held since 2010, ending a decades-long career in public office. "After thorough consideration, I have decided not to seek reelection this November," Morrissey said in a statement. "I am extremely proud of the work I have accomplished during my 15 years as Norfolk District Attorney, and I believe the time is right for me to start a new chapter in my life."
On Jan. 3, soon after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro at his compound in Caracas, the political researcher Tyson Brody noticed strange activity on Polymarket. Brody is one of a growing group of observers who monitor for unusual trades on the platform, which allows people to gamble on the outcome of future events, from the weather to NFL games to governmental upheavals.
Hegseth announced last Monday that he censured Kelly over the former Navy pilot's participation in a video that called on troops to resist unlawful orders. Hegseth said the censure by itself simply a formal letter with little practical consequence was a necessary process step to proceedings that could result in a demotion from Kelly's retired rank of captain and subsequent reduction in retirement pay.
The trigger point for the long shutdown that began in October, the deadline for extending Obamacare premium subsidies, has come and gone, and while all Democrats and some Republicans still want to resurrect them, the issue isn't time sensitive in quite the way it was. Plus, Congress is actually making progress on regular spending bills covering agencies till the end of the year, which could make the scope of government operations vulnerable to a shutdown significantly smaller.
Pete Hegseth is coming after what I earned through my twenty-five years of military service, in violation of my rights as an American, as a retired veteran, and as a United States Senator whose job is to hold him-and this or any administration-accountable," Kelly said in a statement.