Focused search for Democrat topics

18+ min ago (382+ words) Bruna Ferreira, the mother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's nephew, said she "made a mistake" by "trusting" her in-laws after she was arrested by ICE and cast by the administration as a "criminal" and absent parent. Ferreira was arrested on November 12 by ICE and faces deportation to Brazil, after overstaying a visa from when she was a child in 1998. Her arrest was captured on video as multiple unmarked SUVs surrounded her car. She shares an 11-year-old son with Michael Leavitt, the press secretary's brother, and claimed in an exclusive video interview with the Washington Post from a detention center in Louisiana on Sunday that at one point she even asked Karoline Leavitt to be her son's godmother. "I asked Karoline to be godmother over my only sister," she said Thursday. "I made a mistake there, in trusting. Ferreira…...

19+ min ago (296+ words) Happy Monday! Get your week started the right way by joining our live blog during today's oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter. Our conversation will kick off at 9:30 a.m. EST. The executor's effort to recover backpay made it to the Supreme Court in 1935, which considered whether the Federal Trade Commission Act's removal restrictions " it states that commissioners can only be removed "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office" " unlawfully limit the president's executive power. In Slaughter, the Trump administration contends that the FTC has changed significantly over the past 90 years and now exercises much more executive power than "Humphrey's Executor attributed to the 1935 FTC." But the administration also argues that Humphrey's Executor should be overturned altogether, because it places impermissible limits on presidential authority. We shall see if a majority of the justices agree. " Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in…...

19+ min ago (452+ words) Japan has summoned China's ambassador over an incident in which Chinese military aircraft allegedly twice locked fire-control radar onto Japanese fighter jets, as tensions between the two countries surge. The move by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday was to protest against what it called the dangerous and "extremely regrettable" behaviour of the Chinese J-15 fighter jets over international waters southeast of Okinawa's main island the previous day. It said China's Liaoning aircraft carrier fighter jets aimed radar beams at Japanese aircraft scrambled to shadow the vessel " claims denied by the Chinese embassy. Illuminating aircraft with radar signals a potential attack that could force targeted planes to take evasive measures, making it among the most threatening actions a military aircraft can take. The summoning of Ambassador Wu Jianghao came amid deeply strained relations between Beijing and Tokyo since Japanese…...

21+ min ago (572+ words) On Thursday, Navy Admiral Frank "Mitch" Bradley met behind closed doors with members of the House and Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, and they watched video of the incident that the most transparent administration in history is quite keen to not make public. And the story gets even more ghoulish. Apparently 41 minutes elapsed between strikes, where the survivors were clinging and waving from the overturned hull of the boat, not armed, and not a threat. And not radioing for backup like Defense WAR department sources had claimed at one point. And the boat was not even pointed in the direction of the US, but headed to Suriname, in the exact opposite direction. Also, it was not two strikes, some Shirley Temple double-tap, but at least four. And "FOG OF WAR," come the fuck on, this guy was watching a…...

23+ min ago (402+ words) Not wasting any time, a federal judge issued a weekend temporary restraining order against the Trump administration, including U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, after finding James Comey's former lawyer and friend is "likely to succeed on the merits of his claim" that the government conducted "unreasonable" and warrantless searches of files kept since they were seized in 2017. Senior U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, sitting in Washington, D.C., on Saturday issued a four-page order preliminarily siding with Daniel Richman, an attorney and law professor, following the collapse of the DOJ's case against ex-FBI Director Comey. Before the case was tossed on the grounds that Bondi "unlawfully appointed" Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, a startled U.S. magistrate judge said the DOJ displayed a "cavalier attitude towards a basic tenet of the Fourth Amendment" by searching, without a new warrant, Richman's…...

24+ min ago (196+ words) Scott Presler at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 16, 2023 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr) GOP organizer Scott Presler is an unlikely figure in the Republican Party. The 37-year-old Presler is openly gay, yet his history is that of a far-right MAGA culture warrior " from anti-Islam events to defending Christian nationalists. In an article published by Slate on December 8, journalist Aymann Ismail stresses that Presler is trying to put his past behind him but may have difficulty doing so. The Slate journalist, a Muslim, notes that Presler "hates talking about his past," including "a long stint trafficking in anti-Muslim propaganda" as well as "'Stop the Steal' activism." "Can someone build a shiny new political identity on top of years of dehumanizing rhetoric aimed at people like me, and simply bury that past altogether?," Ismail writes. "Presler clearly…...

24+ min ago (486+ words) EU weighing ways to boost Lebanon's internal security forces Arab nations congratulate Syria on anniversary of Assad's ouster Turkish police officer dies from gunshot wounds in drug raid One year after Assad's fall, Syrians await transitional justice One year ago, Syria toppled Assad. Is rebuilding the hard part? One year of a free Syria The structural ignorance behind declaring Islam 'a death cult' Syria reclaims life: Culture and freedom return post-Assad Syria's dawn: Diaspora families return after 14 years The European Union is studying options for strengthening Lebanon's Internal Security Forces to help free up the Lebanese army to focus on disarming the armed group Hezbollah, according to a document seen by Reuters on Monday. A 2024 truce between Lebanon and Israel remains fragile, with Israel carrying out regular strikes on Lebanese territory that it says are targeting Hezbollah's efforts to rearm....

28+ min ago (364+ words) PERKINS: Supply, Demand, and The War on Drugs PERKINS: Supply, Demand, and The War on Drugs PERKINS: Supply, Demand, and The War on Drugs ... China-Japan Tension Underscores Significance of Taiwan Independence In a departure from protocol, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi indicated potential Japanese military support for Taiwan should China hypothetically attack its eastern neighbor. Takaichi made these remarks last month in response to an opposition lawmaker who asked about "survival-threatening situations" which legally allow Japan to utilize its Self-Defense Forces. This break from the typical Japanese posture of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan triggered fierce words from China. Influential Climate Alarmist Paper Retracted Emerging Facts Shift Focus of Drug Boat Strike Controversy "Persecution & Prevailing: Leaders Call Every Believer to Do Their Part, Stand Firm, and Be Bold PERKINS: Supply, Demand, and The War on Drugs Christian AI vs. Secular AI…...

30+ min ago (619+ words) Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson writes in The Guardian with women's rights champion Julie Roginsky that while President Donald Trump was a close friend of deceased convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, he wasn't his most powerful ally. Carlson's 2016 sexual harassment lawsuit against former Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes became a pivotal moment in the global #MeToo movement and led to landmark legislative changes. Along with Roginsky, Carlson in 2022 helped pass The Ending Forced Arbitration for Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, which ensures that survivors can bring their claims to court rather than being sent into the secret chamber of forced arbitration, and The Speak Out Act, which limits the use of NDAs that silence survivors before misconduct even occurs. "Focusing on the lurid details of his life and eventual death obscures the far more unsettling truth…...

33+ min ago (732+ words) In 2016, as then-presidential candidate Donald Trump vowed that US troops would carry out even his most extreme battlefield orders as commander in chief " some of which former military leaders said would be illegal " Pete Hegseth warned that service members had a duty to refuse unlawful orders from a potential President Trump," CNN reports. The Best Laptop I've Ever Used In 25 years of running Political Wire, no computer has ever served me better than the latest MacBook Air. It's the rare machine that's powerful enough to handle my entire workflow yet light enough to take everywhere " and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's on sale now for an astonishing 21% off. Paul Krugman: There was a time, not so long ago, when America was the leader of the free world. It was the first among equals within an alliance of nations…...