Politics

The victim claimed that she was a high school junior at the time. The FBI interview, which took place July 15, 2020, records the unidentified woman’s birth year as 1986.

Lindsey Graham, the veteran Republican senator who has been pushing for war against Iran for decades, has issued a dire warning to the Iranian government, saying it was worth spending money to “take this regime down”.

Justice’s new settlement with Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, in a high-profile antitrust lawsuit challenging the entertainment giant’s ticketing sales.

Lawmakers are pressing the Pentagon for more details about the department increasingly acquiring equity stakes in defense companies as part of the effort to strengthen the country’s defense industrial base.

Critics who released the new statistics say it undercuts Republicans’ pitch that the $1 billion program is meant to help low-income Texas families who are unsatisfied with public school afford alternative options.

A former Missouri state house speaker was sentenced on Monday to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud for misusing federal Covid-19 relief funds for his personal benefit, including payments for country club dues and three cars.

A federal judge in Oregon on Monday restricted federal officers from using teargas at protests at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in Portland, in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon on behalf of protesters and freelance journalists.

Fifty-three percent of voters oppose the U.S. military action against Iran, while 40 percent support it. … Seventy-four percent of voters oppose sending U.S. ground troops into Iran, while 20 percent support it.

Two brothers of one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers visited the sex offender’s former New Mexico ranch on Sunday for ​the first time to demand the Trump administration release unredacted documents to reveal ‌the identities of men their late sister alleged sexually abused her at the property.

Agencies were recently expected to put together lists of all positions they intended to convert into the new employment classification. But according to the Office of Personnel Management’s Feb. 6 final rule, those conversions can only be formalized once President Donald Trump orders it.

The seventh American service member killed in the United States war with Iran has been identified as a 26-year-old soldier from Glendale, Kentucky.

Thom Tillis, who called for the resignation or firing of DHS secretary Kristi Noem, says White House adviser ‘should go’

Newly released body camera footage shows the chaotic moments leading up to the fatal shooting of a US citizen by an immigration officer in Texas last year, which only recently came to light.

The Bank of North Dakota is on track to launch the state’s first stablecoin next September, pending a review by state officials later this month.

Three FBI interviews that contain graphic sexual and physical assault allegations against President Donald Trump were released Thursday by the Justice Department.

The settlement was announced during a court hearing Monday morning. Under the agreement, Live Nation will pay roughly $200m in damages to states that participated in the lawsuit, and Ticketmaster will be required to open parts of its platform to rival ticketing companies, reported Politico.

The Justice Department on Thursday released additional Jeffrey Epstein files involving accusations made by a woman against President Donald Trump that the department said had been mistakenly withheld during an earlier review.

Nearly 6 in 10 Fox News viewers disapprove of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with almost half of voters wanting to slash the agency’s funding, according to a new poll from the network.

A report from the Labor Department Friday shows employers cut 92,000 jobs in February, when economists had expected the U.S. would continue adding jobs, albeit at a sluggish pace. The unemployment rate inched up to 4.4%.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection told a Court of International Trade judge on Friday that it is not currently able to comply with his order to begin refunding reciprocal tariffs imposed last year by President Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court recently ruled are illegal.

The Florida Senate approved a bill Thursday giving the governor the ability to label groups as “terrorist organizations,” a move that targets college students and Islamic schools that receive state voucher money.

Google is seeking to bypass data center zoning rules recently adopted by Linn County, Iowa, by annexing the land for its proposed campus into a city two miles away.

On Wednesday, the married father-of-six confirmed he had had a relationship with married staff member Regina Santos-Aviles.

A bill banning law enforcement officers working in Washington state from wearing face coverings looks poised to become law.

Some two dozen states challenged President Donald Trump’s new global tariffs on Thursday, filing a lawsuit over import taxes he imposed after a stinging loss at the Supreme Court.

ProPublica is releasing a trove of disclosure records that detail the finances of more than 1,500 Trump appointees, including former lobbyists, industry executives and at least a dozen officials who declined to identify former clients.

President Donald Trump on Thursday fired his embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and said he will nominate in her place Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin.

In WhatsApp conversations leaked to the Miami Herald, participants used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as “whores,” used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people and mused about Hitler’s politics.

I’m surprised that no one has pointed out that since she and her general counsel were subjects of the complaint, Gabbard and her office have a clear conflict of interest in making any determination. This made it clearly inappropriate for them to have played a substantive or even a procedural role in its handling. This is spelled out under a number of different authorities, including executive branch ethics regulations, which cover the DNI, and intelligence community constraints.

The motion to subpoena Bondi passed by a vote of 24-19. Five Republicans voted for it, including Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who put the motion forward. The Republicans voting with Mace and the Democrats were: Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Michael Cloud of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

“The private park concessionaire executive, Socha, has zero experience in public service or conservation,” Jayson O’Neill, spokesperson for the Save Our Parks campaign, told SFGate. “Instead, he’s made a career out of extracting maximum profit from our national parks, not protecting them, making it abundantly clear he’ll be doing the bidding of special interests and corporate interests.”

Lewandowski has an unusual role at DHS, where he is not a paid government employee but is nonetheless acting as a top official, helping Noem run the sprawling agency. For months, members of Congress have asked the agency to detail the scope of his work and authority.

The Department of Justice has withheld from the public nearly 48,000 files stemming from investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, after publishing more than 2 million pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

The U.S. has launched military operations against “designated terrorist organizations” in Ecuador just three days after starting a war in the Middle East.

Roberts resigned as DeRidder’s mayor one day after authorities began investigating a complaint that she had raped a minor. Her resignation letter omitted any mention of that investigation.

Lutnick has drawn scrutiny for his ties to Epstein. Lutnick had previously claimed he had not seen Epstein since 2005, three years before Epstein’s 2008 conviction on child prostitution charges.

The House ethics committee said on Wednesday that it has opened an investigation of Tony Gonzales, a Republican representative from Texas, over allegations that include having an affair with an aide.

OpenAI says it has agreed changes to the “opportunistic and sloppy” deal it struck with the US government over the use of its technology in classified military operations.

A landmark trial begins Tuesday as the Department of Justice and a bipartisan group of state attorneys general sue Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation, alleging it engages in anticompetitive practices.

Patel fired a dozen FBI agents last Wednesday after learning that his and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ phones had been under subpoena as part of the probe into Trump’s hoarding of top secret records at Mar-a-Lago.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty revealed her office’s creation of the Transparency and Accountability Project in a statement on Monday. Per the announcement, TAP allows users to submit photos and videos “of potentially unlawful behavior by federal agents.”

The United States evacuated diplomats as attacks intensified across the Middle East, with drones striking the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, while President Trump signaled the conflict with Iran could turn into an extended war.

Two days after the U.S. and Israeli militaries killed Iran’s supreme leader, Florida politicians are calling on and preparing for regime change in Cuba.

The Supreme Court on Monday night cleared the way for New York to go forward with the 2026 elections using the state’s existing congressional map. Over the objections of the court’s three Democratic appointees, the justices granted a request from a Republican member of Congress, a group of voters, and state election officials to pause an order by a state trial court that would have required the state to redraw the map to add Black and Latino voters.

Oracle Corporation quietly published a blog post announcing that the U.S. government had authorized it to run generative AI on federal government data. That means pattern recognition, automated data analysis, and decision-making tools now approved to operate on your Medicare records and military systems, cleared at the highest civilian and Department of Defense security levels. (And yes, Oracle also just took over the infrastructure running your Medicaid and ACA data — that happened this week too, and we’ll get there.)

“We will go as far as we need to go to advance American interests… Why in the world would we tell you, the enemy, or anybody what we will or will not do in pursuit of an objective?” he added.

Memorandum Updating All Forms to Collect Baseline Biographic Data, CBP will add several “high value data fields” to the ESTA application, when feasible. This is in addition to the information already collected in the ESTA application. The high value data fields include:

The disapproval rating was 43 percent, while 29 percent said they were not sure.

Note: These were collected by someone else and are what’s missing from the Epstein files. They were previously released.

Airport security screeners across the U.S. received a fraction of their usual pay on Friday as the partial government shutdown drags on, increasing the risk that more officers will call in sick to take second jobs, or even quit.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s preliminary injunction, which briefly kept the administration from waiving collective bargaining rights for employees at more than 20 agencies.

A new lawsuit alleges that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using artificial intelligence to identify bystanders who are recording federal immigration enforcement operations and then adding those people to a secret database.

The picture was located by “jmail,” a site run by two tech workers who have created a searchable version of Epstein’s Gmail inbox by downloading all of the latest releases.

The Trump administration is slowly dismantling the federal disaster management system that protects the nation from chemical catastrophes, such as fires and explosions at high-risk facilities.

The Los Angeles Board of Education, before holding a closed-door emergency meeting Thursday to discuss the employment of school superintendent Alberto Carvalho, whose L.A. home and district office were raided by the FBI on Wednesday, heard from angry parents who blamed the board for inaction and causing a national “embarrassment.”

Their termination on Wednesday, confirmed by the BBC’s media partner CBS News, was announced shortly after FBI director Kash Patel told Reuters that federal agents subpoenaed his phone records when he was a private citizen during the documents probe.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argued the president hadn’t followed proper procedure in tearing down the East Wing of the White House and soliciting private donations to fund the $300-million ballroom. In his opinion Leon wrote that he wasn’t making a determination on the merits because of the way the suit had been framed. He concluded, saying that if the group were to amend its complaint “the Court will expeditiously consider it and, if viable, address the merits of the novel and weighty issues presented.”

Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.

“You have compelled me to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump’s actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers,” she said, according to remarks she shared during the closed-door testimony.

Bucher worked for Bell at two firms Bell had cofounded: Runa Capital and Acronis. In 2022, Bell was one of a handful of Russian expats living in the US who were tracked by the US government for allegedly attempting to export US tech developments to Russia. The government did not find evidence of a security breach, but it did bar Acronis from sensitive government contracts last year. (Bell recently told the Washington Post that he never worked for Epstein, and that he advised others against doing business with him; he has also disavowed his Russian connections.)

California Attorney General Rob Bonta last night filed a request for a preliminary injunction in California’s existing case against Amazon for price fixing. Attorney General Bonta’s 2022 lawsuit alleged that the company stifled competition and caused increased prices across California through its anticompetitive policies in order to avoid competing on price with other retailers. New evidence paints a clearer and more shocking picture. The motion for a preliminary injunction comes after a robust discovery process where California uncovered evidence of countless interactions in which Amazon, vendors, and Amazon’s competitors agree to increase and fix the prices of products on other retail websites to bolster Amazon’s profits. Time and again, across years and product categories, Amazon has reached out to its vendors and instructed them to increase retail prices on competitors’ websites, threatening dire consequences if vendors do not comply. Vendors, bullied by Amazon’s overwhelming bargaining leverage and fearing punishment, comply — agreeing to raise prices on competitors’ websites (often with the awareness and cooperation of the competing retailer), or to remove products from competing websites altogether. Amazon’s goal is to insulate itself from price competition by preventing lower retail prices in the market at the expense of American consumers who are already struggling with a crisis of affordability.

President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered U.S. diplomats to lobby against attempts to regulate U.S. tech companies’ handling of foreigners’ data, saying in an internal diplomatic cable seen by Reuters that such efforts could interfere with artificial intelligence-related services.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against a private prison company facing a lawsuit alleging immigration detainees were forced to work and paid only $1 a day in Colorado.

The Trump administration is loosening restrictions on the sharing of law enforcement information with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, officials said, overriding controls that have been in place for decades to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens.

Summers has been on leave from the school since November, and will not be returning to the university before his final day, according to the New York Times.

The Trump administration is authorizing American companies to resell Venezuelan oil to Cuba’s private sector at a time the administration is blocking oil supplies from Venezuela to the Cuban government.

In a letter to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, Raskin sought a briefing on the role of Trump-connected lobbyists in Slater’s removal, after she tried to block a $14bn merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks, a cloud-computing and software company.

Uline is privately held but is estimated to generate $8bn in revenues per year, and employs about 9,000 people.

A bombshell report revealed Monday that under the first Trump administration, the FBI appeared to have issued a “stand down” order to New York Police Department investigators regarding their criminal probe into Jeffrey Epstein, an order that came just five days after the disgraced financier’s arrest in 2019.

A number of unions and pro-tax groups claim many of those names are fraudulent and are asking the state attorney general to investigate. Names on the “con” list include leaders of unions that heavily support the tax, or even Democratic state Sen. Victoria Hunt, who is one of the co-sponsors.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston proposed a contract with a new provider of license plate-reading cameras on Tuesday, saying it will come with added precautions as the city ends its controversial arrangement with Flock Safety.

Two Democratic state attorneys general announced a multistate lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday over recent changes to the federal government’s childhood vaccine schedule, as medical organizations and public health experts warn the changes could lower inoculation rates.

Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appears to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, and notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor.

A familiar pattern developed during the federal government’s massive deportation operation in Minnesota: Despite showing documents proving active immigration cases, pending visas, or even US citizenship, residents were arrested and detained for days or weeks.

Federal prosecutors in Washington have dropped their case against six Democratic lawmakers who released a video urging military servicemembers to refuse illegal orders.

The Defense Department plans to spend all of the money available through last year’s reconciliation bill in fiscal 2026, despite the funding being available for several years.

A divided Supreme Court sided with the federal government on Tuesday in U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, a dispute over mishandled mail. Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Clarence Thomas explained that a law protecting the U.S. Postal Service from lawsuits over lost or miscarried mail bars lawsuits over mail that was intentionally misdelivered.

More than 20 towns with large warehouses have become stealth targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s $45 billion expansion of detention centers. Some communities complain that ICE isn’t telling them anything until after it has purchased space for thousands of detainees. In some cases, warehouse owners are refusing to sell.

Some other interesting facts about Flock: Its CEO Garrett Langley was 38 as of last September, and has indicated that he believes sufficiently widespread use of his mass surveillance technology, along with the deployment of his other ideas, can eliminate all crime in America. He has all sorts of ideas (Forgive people’s student debt if they become cops, for instance) and talked all about them two months ago on the YouTube channel of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz, by the way, has invested $275 million in Flock.

Under the bill by Reps. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., and Janelle Bynum, D-Ore., CBP would have only 90 days to reimburse businesses. Of note, the bill says importers should not have to formally submit an application to get a refund.

There’s just one problem: Transferring billions of taxpayer dollars would require congressional approval. And Trump has not gotten that.

The new details about the pilot incident suggest Lewandowski may have violated the safety guidelines set out by the U.S. Coast Guard, which operated the plane. Lewandowski entered the cockpit before the plane had reached 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) and while the seatbelt sign remained on, one of the people said.

A federal judge on Monday permanently barred the release of a report by special counsel Jack Smith on his investigation into President Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Earlier this month, Hegseth warned he would consider certifying Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” if it did not yield to his demands.

A Super PAC backed by a $45 million investment from the California tech giant Meta launched an ad campaign in Texas this week to boost state Republicans viewed by the company as friendly to the development of artificial intelligence.

Lutnick’s camp has tried to minimize his involvement with Epstein through their shared investment in AdFin. A spokesperson for the Commerce Department told CBS News, “Secretary Lutnick had limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.” And a source close to Lutnick told the network that Cantor was “a small minority investor” in the venture. This source added that at “the time of doing the deal, as a minority investor, Mr. Lutnick would not have any knowledge of who the other investors were.”

The Trump administration has given immigration officers broader powers to detain legal refugees awaiting a green card to ensure they are “re-vetted,” an apparent expansion of the president’s wide-ranging crackdown on legal and illegal immigration, according to a government memo.

A third-party arbitrator is ordering the Department of Housing and Urban Development to restore telework agreements for thousands of federal employees, after finding HUD breached its union contract when it implemented the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate last year.

Blue states would have a major tool to push back. Whether they would use it is less clear.

Victoria’s Secret founder Les Wexner testified under oath Wednesday that federal law enforcement never interviewed him about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, despite their well-documented close business ties.

New Mexico will reopen its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro ranch in the state following a public pressure campaign for a fuller accounting of the role the location it played in the late financier’s sex-trafficking conspiracy.

Meta launched what’s set to be the largest push to back political candidates in its history, a move that just so happens to come as the social media company faces a wave of negative press and arguably its most precarious legal fights to date.

Police decked out in gas masks and armed with less than lethal munitions move through a cloud of gas.

Detention facilities are seeing more overcrowding and understaffing as the Trump administration ramps up enforcement in the interior of the country, experts said. Unlawful border crossings have plummeted due to the administration’s restrictions. Federal data shows that most current ICE detainees are not accused of crimes beyond civil immigration offenses.

Workers on Thursday began restoring an exhibit on the lives of the nine people once enslaved at the former President’s House in Philadelphia amid a contentious legal fight between the city and the Trump administration.

A 21-page slideshow buried in the massive trove of Epstein-related documents included allegations that sometime between 1983 and 1985, Trump forced a woman to give him oral sex when she was in her early teens. When the woman bit down on Trump’s exposed penis, he allegedly punched her in the head and kicked her out. That same woman told the DOJ that Epstein had introduced her to Trump in 1984.