US politics

US politics

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott has launched a campaign against the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. He has declared that the Muslim civil rights group is a foreign terrorist organization. Syed al-Ferdous attends services at the Maryam Islamic Center in Sugar Land, southwest of Houston, every evening. Al-Ferdous says Governor Abbott's calling CAIR a terrorist organization shows a lack of education about Islam. SYED AL-FERDOUS: I think it's very juvenile, to say the least. It's very immature, and it just doesn't hold any water.

Don't give up the day job. On Tuesday, Donald Trump came to the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony at the White House ready to serve up some political satire. It went about as well as you would expect. Like a startled turkey flapping in zigzags, the US president's speech ricocheted bafflingly from topic to topic. He told jokes in the worst possible taste and watched them arc through the Rose Garden sky before landing with a thud.

Prosecutors in Oregon are warning the US justice department to rein in federal agents who've repeatedly used excessive force on protesters, immigrants and even local police. A joint letter from Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and district attorneys from Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington Counties, demands the US Department of Justice "immediately halt unlawful and reckless actions by federal officers operating in Oregon."

Eight others, largely erased from public discourse, served during and after Reconstruction, clearing a path that made his tenure possible. A framed image of the eight's portraits hangs in his office. Over the years, Clyburn says that image sparked what ultimately led him to write The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation. The book, which was published this month, restores these men to the historical record and draws lessons from their lives.

The CROWN (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) Act expands Pennsylvania's Human Relations Act to include hair texture and protective hairstyles under the definition of race, making any discrimination against hairstyles in schools or the workplace a criminal act in the same way as discrimination against skin color. For too long, many Pennsylvanians have faced discrimination simply for hairstyles that reflect their identity and culture.

Ferreira's attorney said his client came to the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She's in the process of actually getting her residency and she was abruptly arrested and taken from her young child right before Thanksgiving, her attorney Todd Pomerleau told WCVB, which published a statement from a source familiar with the situation. This individual is the mother of Karoline's nephew and they have not spoken in many years, the source said.

The legal analysis rests on a premise for which there is no immediate public evidence that the cartels are waging armed violence against the security forces of allies like Mexico, and that the violence is financed by cocaine shipments. As a result, according to the legal analysis, the strikes are targeting the cocaine, and the deaths of anyone on board should be treated as an enemy casualty or collateral damage if any civilians are killed, rather than murder.

The good news for Trump is that his administration has a new sex scandal that for once has nothing to do with him, said Kimmel during his monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live. After explaining Kennedy's alleged digital affair with Nuzzi, which was further detailed by Nuzzi's ex-fiance Ryan Lizza in an article last week, Kimmel then proceeded to read out several of the poems Kennedy allegedly sent Nuzzi while she was engaged.

Witkoff said he believed the land concessions were necessary all while advising Ushakov to congratulate Trump and frame discussions more optimistically. Now, me to you, I know what it's going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere, Witkoff told Ushakov during the five-minute conversation, according to Bloomberg's transcript. But I'm saying instead of talking like that, let's talk more hopefully because I think we're going to get to a deal here.

Pressley has not officially entered the race or clearly indicated that she intends to do so. But she is reportedly considering a run and quietly speaking to allies about the possibility. Pressley, 51, could make a similar age-related argument as Moulton. She is also one of the most notable progressives in the House of Representatives, and could eat away at Markey's more left-leaning base of support. The poll results released this week could further embolden her.

Contractors would confirm home and work addresses for people targeted for removal by-among other techniques-photographing residences, documenting comings and goings, and staking out workplaces and apartment complexes. Those filings cast the initiative as a substantial but limited pilot program. Contractors were guaranteed as little as $250 and could earn no more than $90 million each, with the overall program capped at $180 million. That structure pointed to meaningful scale but still framed the effort as a controlled trial, not an integral component of ICE's removal operations.

The meeting between Morath and Turning Point USA Senior Director Josh Thifault took place on Nov. 3 in Austin, according to records obtained by The Texas Tribune. The two gathered in person weeks after Thifault reached out to the agency to ask when the commissioner "would like to speak with me" about the possibility of a partnership to establish Turning Point USA chapters in high schools across Texas, similar to initiatives launched in other states.

On Friday, Judges Amber George, Jeremiah Johnson, Louis Gordon, Shuting Chen and Patrick Savage were fired from San Francisco's immigration court, which at the start of the year had more than 20 judges, according to Milli Atkinson, the director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program with the Bar Association of San Francisco.

Yesterday, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie tossed the Trump administration's slapdash effort to criminally prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, noting that the purported U.S. Attorney behind the prosecution had all the legal authority of three raccoons in a trench coat. Alas, the role of "Kinda Sorta Interim-ish U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia," is not so much "real," with the statutory authority provided to the actual interim U.S. Attorney having expired months ago.

Beth Weinberger's proposed "progressive" parcel tax based on square footage would, in fact, be regressive, selectively over-burdening those in larger homes without any consideration of their location. It could further devastate shops, restaurants, startups, and small industrial and R&D companies, many of whom rent in, or own, large old buildings, but have low revenues and are often unprofitable and struggling to survive.

Because they lack a legitimate official purpose, these kinds of prosecutions tend to be riddled with errors and irregularities, such as the resignation of upstanding government officials who refuse to bring trumped-up charges, the refusal of career attorneys to sign their names to otherwise routine charging documents, and the search for lackeys who may be willing to bring the charges before a grand jury anyway.

The city's police department is no closer to ending two decades of direct oversight by a federal judge, having failed once again to investigate enough complaints against officers within a timeframe set by the court. Between January and March of this year, the Oakland Police Department's internal affairs unit finished vetting just 65% of the most serious complaints within six months far short of a required 85% threshold.

If you need a quick recap: in September, her predecessor, Erik Siebert, was forced out of his post for refusing to prosecute Trump's political enemies. Shortly after, Trump announced via Truth Social that he would nominate Halligan as his replacement-and in another post, ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to immediately swear her in. (Our cognitively sound president seemingly thought he was sending a text.)

Because if you look at this ruling, I will tell you, as a Justice Department alum, Kaitlan, it's painful. The way this broke. I was 10 minutes into teaching a class of college students, in a class about DOJ and the need to be independent of politics. And so, we stopped. We did breaking news is what happens if you take my class. Put it up on the screen, and started sort of reading the highlights.

The 70th and final conviction in a sweeping New York City corruption probe was secured on Tuesday, concluding a decade-long bribery scheme in which public housing employees steered work to contractors in exchange for bribes. The arrests in February 2024 were the largest single-day bribery takedown in the history of the U.S. Justice Department, prosecutors said, and targted current and former employees of the New York City Housing Authority, many of them former supervisors.

Bacon told Axios he was "so angry" at the Trump administration's proposed 28-point Russia-Ukraine peace plan last week that he "thought about" resigning early.

It features six Democratic lawmakers who previously held positions in the military and intelligence services: Kelly, Representatives Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Representative Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Representative Jason Crow of Colorado and Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. Slotkin wrote on X in a post accompanying the video that they wanted to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community. The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution. Don't give up the ship, Slotkin wrote.