Author: potus

WASHINGTON — The GOP-controlled Senate on Monday voted to advance the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, putting her on a path to be confirmed this week.The party-line vote was 52-46, with all Republicans present voting in favor of Gabbard. Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and John Fetterman, D-Pa., did not vote. Last week, Gabbard’s nomination as the nation’s top-ranking intelligence official squeaked through the Senate Intelligence Committee on a party-line 9-8 vote.“The intelligence community needs to refocus on its core mission, collecting intelligence and providing unbiased analysis of that information,” Senate Majority Leader John…

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The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau risk leaving Americans’ nearly $18 trillion in consumer debt with less supervision or regulation.One CFPB staffer said Monday that every meeting and work item on their calendar, including reviewing investigative actions, had been deleted.“I think at some point, the machinery is going to start to jam up,” said the employee, who asked to speak anonymously out of fear of reprisal. “What is industry going to do on its own?”As of Monday evening, the CFPB’s homepage said “404: Page not found,” though other parts of the site appeared to be…

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Bound. Starved. Wounded. Tortured. These are the conditions that some hostages being held in Gaza still face, according to information their families said they had received from Israeli military and security officials after Hamas released three captives on Saturday as part of a cease-fire agreement.The emaciated appearance of three hostages released in a ceremony in Gaza staged by Hamas last weekend — Eli Sharabi, 52; Or Levy, 34; and Ohad Ben-Ami, 56 — and the details of their captivity have relatives of the remaining captives sounding the alarm about the urgent need for the continuation of the phased cease-fire deal.…

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Two flights carrying Venezuelan migrants from the United States back to Venezuela will arrive late Monday in the capital, Caracas, the country’s communication’s ministry said.The flights are a major victory for the Trump administration, which made a campaign promise to deport millions of undocumented migrants. To accomplish this goal, President Trump needs Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s autocratic president who has found himself increasingly isolated by world leaders, to agree to accept some of those people. Two planes owned by the Venezuelan airline Conviasa left Fort Bliss in Texas, where migrants subject to deportation are being held, at around 10:45 a.m. They…

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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro sued the Trump administration on Thursday over its broad freeze of federal funding, saying in a lawsuit that the effort has “jeopardized at least $5.5 billion that has been committed to Pennsylvania” in federally appropriated money.In the lawsuit, the Shapiro administration said Trump is in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and conducting “an unconstitutional withholding of funds.” The law allows judges to throw out federal agency actions that are “arbitrary and capricious” on various grounds and has commonly been cited in lawsuits targeting elements of Trump’s efforts to rapidly remake the government.Follow live politics coverage“Neither…

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A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to pause a lower court’s order that temporarily halted a massive freeze in federal funding.A judge in Rhode Island on Monday blocked the funding freeze and ordered the government to “immediately restore frozen funding.”In its ruling Tuesday, a three-judge panel for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the “defendants do not cite any authority in support of their administrative stay request or identify any harm related to a specific funding action or actions that they will face without their requested administrative stay.”The Justice Department had sought…

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WASHINGTON — The nation may be edging closer to a constitutional crisis as senior White House officials bristle over a string of court orders stymieing President Donald Trump’s agenda, sparking fears that they may ignore judicial decisions.A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled Monday that the Trump administration failed to comply with his previous directive temporarily halting a sweeping funding freeze, reminding Trump and his top officials in stark terms that “those who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt.”District Judge John McConnell’s order follows other legal setbacks that throw into…

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Musk’s bid could ratchet up longstanding tensions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the future of the startup.A consortium led by Elon Musk said it has offered $97.4bn to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, months after the billionaire sued the artificial intelligence startup to block it from transitioning to a for-profit firm. Musk’s bid, revealed on Monday, could ratchet up longstanding tensions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the future of the startup at the heart of a boom in generative AI technology. Altman promptly posted on X: “No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion…

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(The Center Square) – A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill to limit, not prohibit, the sale of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).The Banning SPR Oil Exports to Foreign Adversaries Act was filed in the U.S. Senate by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, John Fetterman, D-Penn., and Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich. U.S. Reps. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn, Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, and Jay Obernolte, R-Calif. filed the bill in the U.S. House.Instead of repealing provisions of a 10-year-old law to ban the sale or export of SPR oil, the bill seeks to amend the Energy Policy and Conservation…

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Dos vuelos que transportan a migrantes venezolanos de Estados Unidos a Venezuela llegarán a su destino a última hora del lunes, informó el Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Comunicación y la Información del país.Los vuelos representan una importante victoria para el gobierno de Donald Trump, que durante su campaña prometió deportar a millones de migrantes indocumentados. Para lograr este objetivo, el presidente Trump necesita que Nicolás Maduro, el autocrático mandatario de Venezuela, acceda a recibir a algunas de esas personas.Dos aviones de la aerolínea venezolana Conviasa salieron de Fort Bliss, en Texas, donde se encuentran recluidos los migrantes sujetos…

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