A viral video alleging fraud at several Minnesota daycare centers has triggered intensified federal and state scrutiny of how public money is spent. At the same time, officials stress that the claims remain unproven and under active investigation. The clash between online allegations and official audits has put Governor Tim Walz's administration and the state's oversight systems under a national spotlight.
The suit, filed in circuit court earlier this month, claims that Multnomah County is unlawfully agreeing to hold individuals detained by the U.S. Marshals Service for violations of federal immigration law even after they have posted bail or a judge has ordered their release. In one case, the organizations filing the suit allege, Multnomah County held a man for three days for immigration-related reasons after a judge ordered his release.
It seems possible that what will ultimately emerge is a clarified sense of principles and a deeper commitment to them (which is why part of the conflict is over American history itself). On one hand, there are the heads of the federal government and their spokespeople, whose lies are part of their disdain for the electorate and the rule of law.
The Republican chair of the Minnesota Fraud Committee, state representative Kristin Robbins, accused Governor Tim Walz of ignoring her repeated warnings about widespread fraud in the state's taxpayer-funded daycare system. Robbins, a declared GOP candidate for governor seeking to challenge Walz next year, says she alerted his administration last year to serious concerns that some daycare providers were siphoning off public funds despite extensive compliance violations. According to Robbins, those warnings were met with inaction.
But Jeanine Pirro did. She want on social media and repeated the apparent miscitation of Cole's own words I laid out here, treating a comment made in the present tense this month - "I really don't like either party at this point" - as if it were a comment about his mindset on January 5, 2021.
The Democratic National Committee's decision to block the release of its own autopsy report on the 2024 election is stunning but not surprising. Averse to unpleasant candor, the Democrats' governing body functions more like a PR firm than a political organization devoted to grassroots capacities for winning elections. The party's leaders pose as immune from critique, even if they have led the party to disaster.
Her student debt had been double-counted, making it look as though she owed a quarter of a million dollars and putting home ownership out of reach. Jones disputed the items with Experian, one of the major credit reporting agencies, multiple times in writing and over the phone, but got nowhere. "They kept saying it's been verified, it's been verified...They never investigated. They never tried to remove it," Jones said in an interview.
2025 was a tumultuous year that tested our resolve from federal funding cuts to local road safety and climate resilience projects, a lengthy government shutdown that caused federal workers to miss paychecks and suspended nutrition assistance programs and the loss of subsidies for health insurance premiums for those who buy their insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft is the mayor of Alameda.
The great sports sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards has described athletes as "the canary in the coal mine," meaning that the politics and struggles in sports prefigure what will come elsewhere in society. Think of Jackie Robinson integrating baseball nearly a decade before the Montgomery bus boycotts or Billie Jean King signaling the coming of Title IX legislation by standing for women's liberation in a traditionally male and hostile space.
The morning of Jan. 17, 2025, federal prosecutors filed into a windowless room at the San Francisco federal building and lined up solemnly behind the podium. They were about to announce a bombshell political corruption case. Hours earlier they had unsealed an indictment charging Oakland's newly recalled mayor Sheng Thao, her romantic partner Andre Jones, and two local recycling moguls, David and Andy Duong, with orchestrating an elaborate bribery scheme.
It was April, just a few months since the new administration took over in the White House, and Cynthia Verduzco walked into an office for the most important interview of her life: She was applying to be a United States citizen. After she was born in Mexico, her family moved to Los Angeles when she was an infant, then to Newark when she was in middle school. She raised three kids here.
For too long it has been everyday people, workers and communities who have paid the price for crisis after crisis not of their making. In 2026, this must stop. The government needs to decide what it stands for and who it stands for. If we have to ask, it is not working. The party faithful can agonise about its failing leadership and a night of the long knives'. But a new Labour leadership with the same policies simply won't cut it.
Now, the Trump Administration wants to reprivatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, indicating that an IPO could occur as early as year's end, yet providing few policy details. This lack of transparency raises concerns that a hasty insider-driven exit from conservatorship will erode the safeguards that have kept the housing market stable, exacerbate systemic risks, and primarily enrich shareholders.
US presidents have redecorated the Oval Office in different ways since it was first built in 1909. Most presidents have sat at the Resolute Desk, but others brought in their own personal furniture. President Donald Trump has added numerous gold embellishments to the Oval Office. It's been nearly 100 years since the Oval Office was first built under President William Howard Taft. Throughout that time, US presidents have each made different design choices to redecorate the formal workspace.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. 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.
He has refused to rule out using military force to take control of Greenland and repeatedly floated the idea of making Canada the 51st state. He threatened to seize the Panama canal. He has imposed swingeing tariffs on key partners, and says he might abandon the Canada-Mexico trade pact signed in his first term. He has meddled outrageously in elections in Honduras and Argentina, and sought to interfere with Brazilian justice.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday told reporters that President Donald Trump is considering sending U.S. troops to his country. In recent days, Trump has spoken with both Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war in the region. Those peace efforts were further complicated when Russia launched strikes on Kyiv over the weekend the day before Trump and Zelensky met at Mar-a-Lago.
There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs, Trump said as he met in Florida with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They load the boats up with drugs, so we hit all the boats, and now, we hit the area. It's the implementation area. That's where they implement. And that is no longer around.
