Another federal judge heard arguments Thursday about the legitimacy of a top Trump administration prosecutor as New York Attorney General Letitia James challenged the authority of the acting U.S. attorney probing two of her high-profile cases. The court hearing focusing on the role of John Sarcone, who is acting as U.S. attorney for northern New York, comes as President Donald Trump's effort to install political loyalists as federal prosecutors has run into a legal buzz saw.
An effort to regulate college sports backed by the NCAA, the U.S. Olympic organization and the White House has faltered in Congress, with opponents raising concerns over the wide-reaching power it gives the NCAA and its most powerful programs. House Republican leaders had planned to push the bill, known as the SCORE Act, to a final vote this week. But those plans were abruptly scrapped after a procedural vote to advance the bill earlier this week nearly failed.
A new survey of Americans currently enrolled in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace finds that most would not be able to afford even modest increases in costs. The poll comes as tax credits intended to help some on the program afford their health expenses are just weeks away from expiring. According to KFF, which administered the poll, if no action is taken to remedy the situation, premium payments will increase, on average, by 114 percent for 22 million Americans currently receiving those tax credits. Collectively, those individuals and families will likely see costs increase by $23 billion over the next year alone.
Her supporters claimed Johnson kept Grijalva officially out of office because she had vowed to cast the 218th vote needed to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Johnson's stalling prompted a lawsuit filed by Arizona's attorney general that argued the Speaker was obligated to act. When confronted, Johnson disparaged Grijalva on Fox News, saying, She doesn't know how it works around here. We're going to give her the oath of office as soon as we get back to regular session.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order deferring a decision in Trump v. Perlmutter, a case in which President Donald Trump is asking the Court to stay an interlocutory injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in September restoring Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter to her post pending her lawsuit against Trump for removing her from office.
Newly-hired LSU head football coach Lane Kiffin on Thursday had some fun at the expense of ESPN's Paul Finebaum by referencing the commentator's rumored move to politics. Days earlier, Kiffin announced that he'd stepped down as the head coach of Ole Miss and taken the job at rival LSU. The move sent shockwaves across the sports landscape and even reached the world of politics, with many criticizing Kiffin's sudden departure from a team with national championship aspirations.
Bradley gave the go-ahead to launch a second strike on September 2 that killed two survivors hanging on to the wreckage of an already demolished boat, according to the White House. Targeting shipwrecked survivors is against the military's Law of War Manual, and some legal observers have gone as far as to call it a "war crime."
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth definitely broke the rules when he sent sensitive information to a Signal chat group, say Pentagon auditors, but he's not the only one using insecure messaging, and everyone needs better training. The Pentagon Office of Inspector General on Thursday released two reports, one specifically dealing with the "Signalgate" incident, and a second that found Hegseth's massive OPSEC failure was just the latest in a long line of similar failures among DoD employees with regard to the use of improper methods of communication.
Footage of the U.S.'s "double tap" boat strike in the Caribbean on September 2 is extremely disturbing, says a lawmaker who was shown the video in a closed door briefing by top military officials on Thursday. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Caine and Special Operations Command head Frank Bradley visited Capitol Hill on Thursday. During that visit, officers briefed the top Republicans and Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the House Intelligence Committee regarding the strikes.
Trump has been fighting a battle over affordability since the Election Day bloodbath, insisting concerns over prices are a con job, and repeatedly claiming he's already solved the issue. A raft of new new polls show Trump getting clobbered on the economy but Trump continues to call the issue a hoax or a con job.
where hundreds of New Yorkers recently blocked a federal immigration raid targeting street vendors from West Africa before it even started. "This has never been about vetting. This has never been about security and safety. It's about cruelty," says Awawdeh about the Trump administration's persecution of immigrants. "His war on immigrants and his mass deportation agenda is all to lead to making America white again."
Lawmakers passed the All-Electric Buildings Act, which requires most new buildings to have only electric appliances, in 2023 as a step toward reducing pollution from the state's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and advancing New York's legally mandated emissions targets. It was set to take effect in January. Delaying the law's implementation past then would cause the state "irreparable harm," lawyers argued in an Oct. 1 brief. They'd spent two years successfully defending the law against industry opponents.
I know some people have given up on finding the perpetrator. But not the FBI and not our partners, said Darren Cox, a deputy assistant director in the FBI. He explained that the investigation involved sorting through 3 million lines of data. We do not forget, we do not give up, and we do not relent. Though it had been nearly five years, our team continued to churn through massive amounts of data and tips that we used to identify this suspect, Cox said.
The 84-page report concludes that Hegseth's decision to share highly sensitive military plans on the commercially available encrypted messaging app, using his personal cell phone, could have jeopardized the safety of American servicemembers and the mission. "The Secretary sent nonpublic DoD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes," according to the report.
The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Vulcan Elements - a tiny startup of 30 employees that specializes in producing rare-earth magnets used in drones, radars, and other pieces of military equipment - has scored a $620 million loan from the Pentagon as part of "a $1.4 billion deal to increase the supply of magnets for industries alongside partner ReElement Technologies."
The law is meant to offer hope to people who are facing long sentences for crimes related to their victimization: women who kill their abusers, for instance, or victims of sex trafficking who harm the people who have trafficked them. These people are often referred to as criminalized survivors, recognizing their dual status as victims and defendants. Similar laws have already been passed in California, Illinois, New York, Georgia, and Oklahoma and proposed in several other states.
Authorization for the revolving fund set up to financially back government technology projects will expire in just over a week without congressional action. The General Services Administration, which houses the Technology Modernization Fund, has been quiet about the fund since the second Trump administration started in January, opting not to publicly announce either of the two new projects the fund financed this year.
The trip hints the dilemma faced by Trump. He wants to take credit for rewiring the U.S. economy with his large tariff hikes and extension of income tax cuts, but he also continues to blame Biden for the increase nationwide in inflation rates that occurred this year during his own presidency. Overall, inflation is tracking at 3% annually, up from 2.3% in April when Trump rolled out a sweeping set of import taxes.
On Wednesday, president Trump announced plans to drastically lower fuel efficiency standards for new cars and pick-up trucks, the New York Times reports, claiming the move will save over $100 billion over the next five years and lower the average price tag of new vehicles by $1,000. But both symbolically and in actual effect, the move would be firmly putting Biden era environmental policy in the rear view mirror, ditching regulations and consumer incentives to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles.
In the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump carried Tennessee's Seventh Congressional District by 22 points. Last night, in a special election to represent the district, the Republican Matt Van Epps won by only nine points, defeating the Democratic State Representative Aftyn Behn. Trump celebrated the outcome on Truth Social as a "BIG Congressional WIN," but the margin of victory in a deep-red district is ominous for Republicans. Van Epps underperformed Trump by 13 percentage points, a sign that the party is vulnerable heading into the 2026 midterms.
The authors of the report, now in its 25th year, warn that this massive upheaval is threatening the country's stability. "Instability is shaping nearly every part of young people's lives," said John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, in a Zoom with reporters and students involved in the survey. By the numbers: A majority of respondents (57%) say the country is headed in the wrong direction - a six-point rise from last year, and one point down from the record high notched in the spring of 2024.
