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Category: National Politics

  • Trump came to a Pa. casino to promise prosperity. Gamblers here had a mixed view of the economy.

    Trump came to a Pa. casino to promise prosperity. Gamblers here had a mixed view of the economy.

    A smattering of people pushed their luck Tuesday at the Mount Airy Casino Resort, tapping neon slot buttons, flipping dice onto felt craps tables, and wandering the rows of glowing, dinging machines.

    A floor below, President Donald Trump was set to speak in a sprawling ballroom, where event staff hung a huge blue banner: LOWER PRICES, BIGGER PAYCHECKS.

    Trump picked this casino in the Pocono Mountains to deliver the first big economic speech of his presidency as polls show Americans are feeling the pain of high prices — and many are blaming him.

    Politically, the setting made sense. This northeastern corner of the state is where Trump saw the largest swing from 2020 to 2024, and it will be a key congressional battleground next year. It’s also a region home to a large population of aging, non-college-educated voters — the core of Trump’s comeback coalition.

    But the contrast at the casino was hard to miss: the steady slot machine chimes of financial risk and uncertainty above and a president’s promises of stability and revival on the floor below.

    How’s the economy working for Rosemary Migli?

    “It could be better,” said the 73-year-old retired bartender from Tobyhanna, taking a puff of a cigarette before winning 35 cents on a spin.

    Despite a frenzy of police and Secret Service, many gamblers, focused on their own troubles or celebrations, did not realize the president was coming. An older retired couple enjoyed an afternoon together with no obligations. Nearby, a recently widowed woman said the monotony of the slots helps her cope with her loss.

    Peter Jean-Baptiste celebrated his 33rd birthday at the casino with his fiancee. The Philadelphia-based couple are saving for a wedding next year.

    “It’s tough for everyone just trying to make a living, honest people trying to make a living,” Jean-Baptiste said. “One day you feel like [Trump’s] got your back, the next day he doesn’t.”

    Jean-Baptiste, who works in property insurance, said he has also seen housing prices rise. And, as a child of Haitian immigrant parents, he is struggling with how Trump’s anti-Haitian verbal attacks and immigration crackdowns have affected his family.

    “He does a bunch of hot takes and causes division between American citizens,” Jean-Baptiste said. “When, I feel, we really all just want to get along and get by.”

    Mount Pocono is a region with mixed fortunes: Wealthy retirees have second vacation homes here, while lower-income workers are employed in warehouses and hold up the tourism industry. The area is also a hub for New York City commuters who moved here for more affordable housing.

    “We live on a fixed income. We watch what we spend,” said Julie Dietz, sitting beside her husband, Glenn, as she played a buffalo-themed slot game. The Toms River, N.J., couple gamble for a few hours every now and then. She was a paralegal and he worked evaluating industrial facilities for safety before they retired.

    “We know what our limitations are,” Dietz, 71, said. “Yes, food prices have gone up, but I’ve also seen some things come down — gas prices in our area. And the economy took so many years to get to this point.”

    Dietz, who supported Trump in the last election, thinks an economic rebound is just going to take more time.

    “He’s been in office 11 months. Eleven months. So I feel full confidence that he is going to do what he said he’s going to do. Everybody wants things immediately.”

    Kathy F., who didn’t want to give her last name talking about politics and gambling, joined her husband at the casino Tuesday, despite her misgivings about losing money at a time when prices are going up.

    “I go to Costco and everything is $5 more than it used to be. That’s a lot,” she said, bundled in a puffy black coat as her husband gambled nearby.

    “I really don’t understand politics,” said the retired New York City civil servant, who voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris last year. “It seems like they just fight with each other nonstop when all people want is to be able to afford to live.”

    As he stretched his legs between games, Stephen Miller — “not that Stephen Miller,” he clarified — laughed off the notion of going to see Trump in person a floor below.

    “If I want to see him, all I have to do is turn on the TV. He’s on at 12, he’s on at 3, he’s on at 5, seven days a week.”

    The 75-year-old retired contractor supports Trump, though, and called the economy “half-decent.” He said food prices are high but eggs have gone down.

    “The economy is glacial, so it moves slow. Democrats are definitely locked onto the affordability. But affordability means, what? It means whatever you want it to mean.”

    Miller glanced down at a few vouchers in his hand to set off for the next set of machines.

    “I’m not winning yet, but I will be and the Donald will be,” he said. “Give it time.”

  • Trump slams pardoned Democratic congressman as ‘disloyal’ for not switching parties

    Trump slams pardoned Democratic congressman as ‘disloyal’ for not switching parties

    Donald Trump is angry that Rep. Henry Cuellar is running again as a Democrat rather than switch parties after the president pardoned the Texas congressman and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case.

    Trump blasted Cuellar for “Such a lack of LOYALTY,” suggesting the Republican president might have expected the clemency to bolster the GOP’s narrow House majority heading into the 2026 midterm elections.

    Cuellar, in a television interview Sunday after Trump’s social media post, said he was a conservative Democrat willing to work with the administration “to see where we can find common ground.” The congressman said he had prayed for the president and the presidency at church that morning “because if the president succeeds, the country succeeds.”

    Citing a fellow Texas politician, the late President Lyndon Johnson, Cuellar said he was an American, Texan, and Democrat, in that order. “I think anybody that puts party before their country is doing a disservice to their country,” he told Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures.

    Trump noted on his Truth Social platform that the Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration had brought the charges against Cuellar and that the congressman, by running once more as a Democrat, was continuing to work with “the same RADICAL LEFT” that wanted him and his wife in prison — “And probably still do!”

    “Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like. Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!” Trump said. Cuellar’s two daughters, Christina and Catherine, had sent Trump a letter in November asking that he pardon their parents.

    Trump explained the pardon he announced Wednesday as a matter of stopping a “weaponized” prosecution. Cuellar was an outspoken critic of Biden’s immigration policy, a position that Trump saw as a key alignment with the lawmaker.

    Cuellar said he has good relationships within his party. “I think the general Democrat Caucus and I, we get along. But they know that I’m an independent voice,” he said.

    A party switch would have been an unexpected bonus for Republicans after the GOP-run Legislature redrew the state’s congressional districts this year at Trump’s behest. The Texas maneuver started a mid-decade gerrymandering scramble playing out across multiple states. Trump is trying to defend Republicans’ House majority and avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats dominated the House midterms and used a new majority to stymie the administration, launch investigations, and twice impeach Trump.

    Yet Cuellar’s South Texas district, which includes parts of metro San Antonio, was not one of the Democratic districts that Republicans changed substantially, and Cuellar believes he remains well-positioned to win reelection.

    Federal authorities had charged Cuellar and his wife with accepting thousands of dollars in exchange for the congressman advancing the interests of an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico. Cuellar was accused of agreeing to influence legislation favorable to Azerbaijan and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the floor of the U.S. House.

    Cuellar has said he and his wife were innocent. The couple’s trial had been set to begin in April.

    In the Fox interview, Cuellar insisted that federal authorities tried to entrap him with “a sting operation to try to bribe me, and that failed.”

    Cuellar still faces a House Ethics Committee investigation.

  • Trump administration plays up pipe bomb suspect’s arrest. Jan. 6 violence goes unmentioned

    Trump administration plays up pipe bomb suspect’s arrest. Jan. 6 violence goes unmentioned

    WASHINGTON — After the arrest of a man charged with placing two pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national parties on Jan. 5, 2021, the warning from the Trump administration was clear: If you come to the nation’s capital to attack citizens and institutions of democracy, you will be held accountable.

    Yet Justice Department leaders who announced the arrest were silent about the violence that had taken place when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol and clashed with police one day after those bombs were discovered.

    It was the latest example of the Trump’s administration’s efforts to rewrite the history of the riot, through pardons and the firings of lawyers who prosecuted the participants of the siege, and of the disconnect for a government that prides itself for cracking down on violent crime and supporting law enforcement but has papered over the brutality of the Jan. 6 attacks on police officers.

    “The administration has ignored and attempted to whitewash the violence committed by rioters on Jan. 6 because they were the president’s supporters. They were trying to install him a second time against the will of the voters in 2020,” said Michael Romano, who prosecuted the rioters before leaving the Justice Department this year. “And it feels like the effort to ignore that is purely transactional.”

    The White House referred comment to the Justice Department, which referred comment to the FBI. The bureau did not immediately respond to an email from the Associated Press on Friday.

    Bongino once suggested pipe bomb incident was ‘inside job’

    FBI Director Kash Patel, as a conservative podcast host during the Biden administration, had called the Jan. 6 rioters “political prisoners” and offered to represent them for free. But on Thursday, he said the arrest of the pipe bomb suspect, 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr., was in keeping with Trump’s commitment to “secure our nation’s capital.”

    “When you attack American citizens, when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack the nation’s capital, you attack the very being of our way of life,” Patel said. “And this FBI and this Department of Justice stand here to tell you that we will always combat it.”

    Patel’s deputy, Dan Bongino, had suggested before joining the FBI that federal law enforcement had wasted time investigating Jan. 6 rioters and anti-abortion activists.

    “These are threats to the United States?” he said on a podcast last year. “Grandma is in the gulag for a trespassing charge on January 6th.”

    Bongino indicated last year he believed the pipe bomb incident was an “inside job” that involved a “massive cover-up.” After joining the FBI, Bongino repeatedly described the investigation as a top priority that was receiving significant resources and attention.

    “We were going to track this person to the end of the earth. There was no way he was getting away,” he said Thursday.

    No public link has emerged between the pipe bombs and the riot, and Cole’s arrest was a significant development in a long-running investigation that had confounded authorities, who are now are assembling a portrait of Cole. People familiar with the matter told the Associated Press that among the statements Cole made to investigators is that he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, which Trump has insisted was stolen from him in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. The people were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    There was no widespread fraud in that election, which a range of election officials across the country, including Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed. Republican governors in key states crucial to Biden’s victory have also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies were dismissed by the courts.

    Administration played down Jan. 6 and aftermath

    The tough-on-crime words heard during Thursday’s announcement about Cole’s arrest were at odds with the Republican administration’s repeated efforts to play down the violence of Jan. 6, absolve those charged in the insurrection, and target those who investigated and prosecuted the rioters.

    Trump’s clemency action on his first day back in the White House in January applied to all 1,500-plus people charged with participating in the attack on the foundations of American democracy. That included defendants seen on camera violently attacking police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a crutch, and a hockey stick. More than 100 police officers were injured, including some who have described being scared for their lives as they were dragged into the crowd and beaten.

    Earlier this year, the Justice Department asked the FBI for the names of agents who participated in Jan. 6 investigations, a demand feared within the bureau as a possible precursor to mass firings. In August, Patel fired Brian Driscoll, who as the FBI’s acting director in the early days of the Trump administration resisted handing over those names.

    Trump’s administration, meanwhile, has fired or demoted numerous prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases, including more than two dozen lawyers who had been hired for temporary assignments to support the investigation but were moved into permanent roles after Trump won the 2024 election.

    In October, two federal prosecutors were locked out of their government devices and told they were being put on leave after filing court papers that described those who attacked the Capitol as a “mob of rioters.” The Justice Department later submitted a new court filing that stripped mentions of the Jan. 6 riot.

    One man whose case was dismissed because of Trump’s pardons was accused of hurling an explosive device and a large piece of wood at a group of officers who trying to defend an entrance to the Capitol. Some officers later said they had “believed they were going to die,” prosecutors wrote in court papers, and several reported suffering temporary hearing loss.

  • Jeffrey Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, details how school vouchers drive his massive political spending operation in rare interview with Washington Post

    Jeffrey Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, details how school vouchers drive his massive political spending operation in rare interview with Washington Post

    It’s no secret that Jeffrey Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, is a big political spender.

    Just within the past year, the billionaire megadonor and founder of the Bala Cynwyd-based Susquehanna International Group largely bankrolled the unsuccessful effort to oust three Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices and has helped pay for President Donald Trump’s presidential transition and controversial White House ballroom.

    But in a rare interview with the Washington Post, published Thursday, Yass shared details on the key motivation behind his political spending: school vouchers, which supporters say will allow parents and students to choose their school. Yass’ unwavering support for vouchers and other school choice measures has led him to throw his dollars to Pennsylvania, other states, and to Trump, whose candidacy he once opposed.

    And in 2026, he said he’ll continue to financially back pro-voucher candidates across the nation.

    “I have come across what I think is a great way to relieve the suffering of tens of millions of kids,” Yass told The Washington Post. “To most people it’s like if you’re a libertarian billionaire, you must be Lex Luthor trying to do something nefarious. If I gave to a hospital, you wouldn’t be saying that.”

    School vouchers, which are opposed by teacher unions and public school advocates, have been a high-profile issue in Pennsylvania’s state budget talks in years past, but they’ve failed to pass it. Yass poured money into that effort, but Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has embraced — though softened — his support for a voucher program, vetoed the measure from the state budget after it couldn’t pass a Democratic-controlled state House in 2023.

    Yass told the Post that “It was a dramatic failure. We thought we had it.“

    The billionaire saw better success in Texas where he contributed to help defeat anti-voucher Republicans in the primary, creating a more favorable atmosphere for passing the state’s $1 billion voucher program.

    But these instances were hardly the beginning — or the end — of Yass’ involvement with politics. He gave $3.2 million in political contributions in Pennsylvania in 2018, and by last year, that had risen to $35 million, the Post reported.

    Though now known as a major backer of GOP candidates, he has supported Democrats who he believes can help champion the school choice message. The first major beneficiary of Yass’ contributions was State. Sen. Anthony Williams (D., Philadelphia) who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010 and Philadelphia mayor in 2015.

    And in 2007, Yass conversed with then-Sen. Barack Obama, who received a $2,300 donation from Yass for his 2008 presidential campaign, the Post reported. Yass believed that Obama would support school choice if elected, but his administration ended up opposing voucher programs for children in the D.C. school system.

    According to the Post, this may have been an indication to Yass that Democrats would not be an ally for the school choice cause.

    His allegiance to school choice also appears to have made him switch his perspective of Trump from an opponent — who spent millions of dollars to back GOP primary opponents in 2024 — to a supporter.

    But after the November 2024 election, where Trump was victorious, Yass changed his tune and helped bankroll Trump’s $14 million presidential transition and donated at least $2.5 million to the president’s proposed White House ballroom.

    The billionaire owed his change of thought on Trump to the president being “a true champion” of school choice, Yass told the post, crediting him for the passage of the Texas voucher bill and a new federal tax credit for donations to scholarship organizations.

    His support for the president also coincides with Yass having business in front of the Trump administration. Yass’ trading firm is a top stakeholder in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. Trump is mulling the fate of the popular social media app in the United States and Yass could benefit from a deal supported by Trump to keep TikTok operational here.

  • Grand jury rejects new mortgage fraud indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James

    Grand jury rejects new mortgage fraud indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James

    NORFOLK, Va. — The Justice Department failed Thursday to secure a new indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James after a judge dismissed the previous mortgage fraud prosecution encouraged by President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Prosecutors went back to a grand jury in Virginia after a judge’s ruling halting the prosecution of James and another longtime Trump foe, former FBI Director James Comey, on the grounds that the U.S. attorney who presented the cases was illegally appointed. But grand jurors rejected prosecutors’ request to bring charges.

    It’s the latest setback for the Justice Department in its bid to prosecute the frequent political target of the Republican president.

    Prosecutors are expected to try again for an indictment, according to one person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

    James was initially charged with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a home purchase in Norfolk, Va., in 2020. Lindsey Halligan, a former White House aide and Trump lawyer, personally presented the case to the grand jury in October after being installed as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia amid pressure from Trump to charge Comey and James.

    James has denied any wrongdoing and accused the administration of using the justice system to seek revenge against Trump’s political opponents. In a statement Thursday, James said: “It is time for this unchecked weaponization of our justice system to stop.”

    “This should be the end of this case,” her attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “If they continue, undeterred by a court ruling and a grand jury’s rejection of the charges, it will be a shocking assault on the rule of law and a devastating blow to the integrity of our justice system.”

    The allegations related to James’ purchase of a modest house in Norfolk, where she has family. During the sale, she signed a standard document called a “second home rider” in which she agreed to keep the property primarily for her “personal use and enjoyment for at least one year,” unless the lender agreed otherwise.

    Rather than using the home as a second residence, James rented it out to a family of three, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties, prosecutors alleged.

    It’s the latest example of pushback by grand jurors since the beginning of the second Trump administration. It’s so unusual for grand jurors to refuse to return an indictment that it was once said that prosecutors could persuade a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” But the Justice Department has faced setbacks in front of grand juries in several recent cases.

    Even if the charges against James are resurrected, the Justice Department could face obstacles in securing a conviction against James.

    James’ lawyers separately argued the case was a vindictive prosecution brought to punish the Trump critic who spent years investigating and suing the Republican president and won a staggering judgment in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements. The fine was later tossed out by a higher court, but both sides are appealing.

    The defense had also alleged “outrageous government conduct” preceding her indictment, which the defense argued warrants the case’s dismissal. The judge hadn’t ruled on the defense’s arguments on those matters before dismissing the case last month over the appointment of Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney.

    U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie took issue with the mechanism the Trump administration employed to appoint Halligan to lead one of the Justice Department’s most elite and important offices.

    Halligan was named as a replacement for Erik Siebert, a veteran prosecutor in the office and interim U.S. attorney who resigned in September amid Trump administration pressure to file charges against both Comey and James.

    The following night, Trump said he would be nominating Halligan to the role of interim U.S. attorney and publicly implored Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against his political opponents, saying in a Truth Social post that, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility” and “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

    Comey was indicted three days after Halligan was sworn in by Bondi, and James was charged two weeks after that.

    The Justice Department had defended Halligan’s appointment but has also revealed that Bondi had given Halligan a separate position of “Special Attorney,” presumably as a way to protect the indictments from the possibility of collapse. But Currie said such a retroactive designation could not save the cases.

  • Supreme Court lets Texas use congressional map favored by Trump

    Supreme Court lets Texas use congressional map favored by Trump

    WASHINGTON – Texas can use a congressional map drawn to give President Donald Trump and Republicans an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections, the Supreme Court said Dec. 4 in a decision that may help the GOP keep control of the U.S. House.

    An ideologically divided court paused a lower court’s ruling that the map likely discriminates against racial minorities by diluting the voting power of Hispanic and Black Texans.

    That opinion, which replaces a temporary freeze on the ruling issued by Justice Samuel Alito on Nov. 21, keeps the map in place for the midterm elections as litigation over the boundaries continues.

    The court said the order blocking the map from being used next year was improper because it came too close to the election.

    “The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” the majority wrote in a brief, unsigned opinion.

    The court’s three liberal justices dissented.

    Texas started redistricting push

    At the urging of the Trump administration, the GOP-controlled Texas legislature drew new district lines midway through the usual 10-year redistricting cycle, setting off a race among states to get in the game. Some of those other efforts are also being challenged in court.

    Despite the uncertainty about what the playing field will look like, Democrats remain favored to flip the House next year, according to nonpartisan handicappers at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

    That could change, however, if the Supreme Court issues a ruling in a pending case from Louisiana that could open the door to more redistricting attempts in southern states. Depending on what the court says and how quickly the justices rule, Republicans could create multiple districts they’d be expected to win, analyst Kyle Kondik estimates.

    The new Texas map was designed to help Republicans win five more seats, although that’s not a sure thing.

    Republicans currently hold 25 of the state’s 38 seats in the U.S. House, where they have a slim majority. If Democrats seize control, they can block Trump’s legislative agenda and launch investigations into his administration.

    Racial gerrymandering?

    In redistricting battles, the Supreme Court has said federal courts can review whether race was improperly used to draw new lines, but not whether partisan politics was a factor.

    Civil rights groups and others challenging Texas’ new map argue it has fewer districts where Hispanic and Black voters together make up the majority, diminishing their voting power.

    “This is as stark a case of racial gerrymandering as one can imagine,” lawyers for some of the challengers said in a filing.

    A three-judge panel in Texas that reviewed the map ruled 2-1 that Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott directed the legislature to use race to redraw the lines following a demand from the Trump administration that discussed the racial makeup of some districts.

    “The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics,” Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump in 2019, wrote. “Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

    In an irate and unusually personal dissent, Judge Jerry Smith – who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan – called the decision “the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed.”

    Texas says race wasn’t main factor

    Texas’ attorneys told the Supreme Court that partisanship – not race – drove the redistricting. And the lower court’s ruling has caused chaos because candidates have already gathered signatures and filed applications to run in the new districts, they argued.

    Weighing in on behalf of Texas, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court that the lower court “misconstrued” the direction the administration gave the state.

    “Indeed, the record here affirmatively shows that the 2025 map was drawn in a race-blind manner,” the Justice Department wrote in a filing.

    The civil rights groups and voters challenging the map said the lower court’s decision was based on a nine-day hearing that included dozens of witnesses and hours of footage of legislators and Abbott discussing their motives.

    The challengers also said the impending December 8 filing deadline for Texas candidates running in the spring primary is not a reason to allow the new map to be used.

    Texas created its own emergency by unnecessarily choosing to create new maps, they told the Supreme Court, and “can’t insulate unconstitutional conduct from judicial review by deliberately timing that conduct close to an election.”

  • National Guard can stay in D.C. for now, appeals court says

    National Guard can stay in D.C. for now, appeals court says

    The Trump administration will be allowed to continue its National Guard deployment in D.C. at least temporarily, pending another appeals court decision, a panel of U.S. Court of Appeals judges said Thursday.

    The ruling means the deployment of troops to the nation’s capital could persist beyond Dec. 11, the date a lower-court judge had previously set as a deadline for the administration to halt the mission.

    Judges with the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals granted an administrative stay in the case, meaning the drawdown of troops in the capital will be delayed at least until the appeals court makes an additional ruling. The court emphasized that Thursday’s decision had nothing to do with the merits of the Trump administration’s arguments in the case.

    “The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the motion for stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion,” the judges wrote.

    The appeals court ruling comes the week after an attack in which prosecutors say a man targeted National Guard members, killing one and critically injuring another in a busy downtown area of D.C. blocks from the White House. For Trump administration officials, the attack – allegedly carried out by a lone gunman who was resettled in the United States from his native Afghanistan after work for a CIA-backed counterterrorism squad – only deepened their resolve to keep the troops in the capital city.

    Trump called for an additional 500 troops; South Carolina’s governor said this week he would send up to 300 members of his state’s National Guard in response.

    “Our warriors are strong and we will not back down until our capital and our cities are secure,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said at a news briefing Tuesday.

    For D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, who sued the Trump administration in September over the National Guard deployment, the shooting and its aftermath offered further proof that the deployment of troops was ill-advised and unsafe. D.C. police officers have since paired up with National Guard troops for the troops’ safety, potentially diverting officers from other public safety tasks, he said in a court filing this week.

    “The deployment impinges on the District’s home rule, requires the diversion of scarce police resources, and exposes both the public and Guard members to substantial public safety risks, as Defendants themselves acknowledged at the outset of the deployment, and as the horrific attack on two National Guard members last week tragically underscored,” Schwalb wrote.

    President Donald Trump deployed the D.C. National Guard to city streets on Aug. 11 as part of a broader crime crackdown he initiated in the city. He also took temporary control of the D.C. police department and launched a surge of federal law enforcement into D.C. neighborhoods. Multiple Republican governors heeded Trump’s call for reinforcements and sent troops from their National Guards to the District. As of Wednesday, about 2,300 National Guard members were stationed in the city – about 100 more than the previous day.

    The National Guard members have stood watch at Metro stations and picked up trash at national parks. They also carry weapons and have been instructed to use them only as a last resort.

    Unlike in states, where governors control their National Guards, the president is commander in chief of the D.C. National Guard – a role the administration argues gives Trump vast power over the deployment and legally authorizes his actions in the District. But Schwalb, in his lawsuit, has argued that the president’s power over the Guard has limits. Schwalb also has alleged that the troops in D.C. have been illegally engaged in law enforcement, in violation of a federal law that prohibits military troops from engaging in domestic policing.

    In November, U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb sided with D.C. in a preliminary ruling, writing that the National Guard deployment was illegal and that Trump lacked the authority to activate the Guard for the mission. Cobb ordered the Trump administration to halt the deployment in D.C. while litigation continued over whether the troops should be permanently withdrawn. However, she delayed her order from going into effect until Dec. 11 to give the Trump administration time to appeal.

    In response, the administration asked an appeals court for an emergency ruling to allow the deployment to continue while litigation continues, arguing in court documents that Cobb’s order “impinges on the President’s express statutory authority as Commander-in-Chief of the D.C. National Guard and impermissibly second-guesses his successful efforts to address intolerably high crime rates in the Nation’s capital.” The appeals court on Thursday did not rule on that request; the administrative stay means the deployment can continue while the appeals court considers it.

    The Trump administration has argued that the troops have not been engaged in city law enforcement and merely deter crime through their presence, freeing up police for other tasks.

    Questions of the mission’s safety implications have taken on new weight in the aftermath of last week’s attack, but each party in the lawsuit has argued that the city would be safer if the court sided with them.

    A group of retired senior military officers and the Vet Voice Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization representing veterans and their supporters, filed a brief in the appeals court that they said was “in support of neither party.” They argued that the use of the National Guard in D.C. “threatens to undermine the apolitical reputation of the military as an institution, places service members in situations for which they are not specifically trained, and pulls the Guard away from its critical missions.”

    But attorneys general from 24 Republican-led states – including some that sent their troops to D.C. – argued that crime is high in D.C. and while the mission “has already produced strong results,” there is more to be done. Violent crime is down 28 percent in D.C. compared to last year, although crime in the city began to fall steeply well over a year before Trump surged federal law enforcement in August.

    “Danger still lingers,” the states’ attorneys general wrote in their brief, filed in support of the Trump administration. “Just last week, an Afghani national committed a heinous terror attack, shooting two National Guardsmen at close range and murdering one.”

    In arguing that the Guard troops should stay, they also cited a few actions that Guard members had taken to keep the city safe.

    “National Guard troops have stopped at least one fight near the metro,” they wrote, “helped provide first aid to elderly residents of the district, and aided in the successful search for a missing child.”

  • Immigration crackdown in New Orleans has a target of 5,000 arrests. Is that possible?

    Immigration crackdown in New Orleans has a target of 5,000 arrests. Is that possible?

    NEW ORLEANS — Trump administration officials overseeing the immigration crackdown launched this week in New Orleans are aiming to make 5,000 arrests with a focus on violent offenders, a target that some city leaders say is not realistic.

    It’s an ambitious goal that would surpass the number of arrests during a two-month enforcement blitz this fall around Chicago, a region with a much bigger immigrant population than New Orleans.

    In Los Angeles — the first major battleground in President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration plan — roughly 5,000 people were arrested over the summer in an area where 10 million LA county residents are foreign-born.

    “There is no rational basis that a sweep of New Orleans, or the surrounding parishes, would ever yield anywhere near 5,000 criminals, let alone ones that are considered ‘violent’ by any definition,” New Orleans City Council President J.P. Morrell said Thursday.

    Census Bureau figures show the New Orleans metro area had a foreign-born population of almost 100,000 residents last year, and that just under 60% were not U.S. citizens.

    “The amount of violent crime attributed to illegal immigrants is negligible,” Morrell said, pointing out that crime in New Orleans is at historic lows.

    Violent crimes, including murders, rapes, and robberies, have fallen by 12% through October compared to a year ago, from a total of 2,167 violent crimes to 1,897 this year, according to New Orleans police statistics.

    A flood of messages about arrests

    Federal agents in marked and unmarked vehicles began spreading out across New Orleans and its suburbs Wednesday, making arrests in home improvement store parking lots and patrolling neighborhoods with large immigrant populations.

    Alejandra Vasquez, who runs a social media page in New Orleans that reports the whereabouts of federal agents, said she has received a flood of messages, photos and video since the operations began.

    “My heart is so broken,” Vasquez said. “They came here to take criminals and they are taking our working people. They are not here doing what they are supposed to do. They are taking families.”

    Several hundred agents from Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are participating in the two-month operation dubbed “Catahoula Crunch.”

    House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is from Louisiana, is among the state’s Republicans supporting the crackdown. “Democrats’ sanctuary city policies have failed — making our American communities dangerous. The people of our GREAT city deserve better, and help is now on the ground,” Johnson posted on social media.

    Operation is being met with resistance

    About two dozen protesters were removed from a New Orleans City Council meeting Thursday after chants of “Shame” broke out. Police officers ordered protesters to leave the building, with some pushed or physically carried out by officers.

    Planning documents obtained last month by The Associated Press show the crackdown is intended to cover southeast Louisiana and into Mississippi.

    Homeland Security Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said agents are going after immigrants who were released after arrests for violent crimes.

    “In just 24 hours on the ground, our law enforcement officers have arrested violent criminals with rap sheets that include homicide, kidnapping, child abuse, robbery, theft, and assault,” McLaughlin said Thursday in a statement. Border Patrol and immigration officials have not responded to requests for details, including how many have been arrested so far.

    She told CNN on Wednesday that “we will continue whether that will be 5,000 arrests or beyond.”

    Immigration arrests go beyond violent criminals

    To come close to reaching their target numbers in New Orleans, immigrant rights group fear federal agents will set their sights on a much broader group.

    New Orleans City Councilmember Lesli Harris said “there are nowhere near 5,000 violent offenders in our region” whom Border Patrol could arrest.

    “What we’re seeing instead are mothers, teenagers, and workers being detained during routine check-ins, from their homes and places of work,” Harris said. “Immigration violations are civil matters, not criminal offenses, and sweeping up thousands of residents who pose no threat will destabilize families, harm our economy.”

    During the “Operation Midway Blitz” crackdown in Chicago that began in September, federal immigration agents arrested more than 4,000 people across the city and its many suburbs, dipping into Indiana.

    Homeland Security officials heralded efforts to nab violent criminals, posting dozens of pictures on social media of people appearing to have criminal histories and lacking legal permission to be in the U.S. But public records tracking the first weeks of the Chicago push show most arrestees didn’t have a criminal record.

    Of roughly 1,900 people arrested in the Chicago area from early September through the middle of October — the latest data available — nearly 300 or about 15% had criminal convictions on their records, according to ICE arrest data from the University of California Berkeley Deportation Data Project analyzed by The Associated Press.

    The vast majority of those convictions were for traffic offenses, misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies, the data showed.

    New Orleans, whose international flavor comes from its long history of French, Spanish, African, and Native American cultures, has seen a new wave of immigrants from places in Central and South America and Asia.

    Across all of Louisiana, there were more than 145,000 foreign-born noncitizens, according to the Census Bureau. While those numbers don’t break down how many residents of the state were in the country illegally, the Pew Research Center estimated the number at 110,000 people in 2023.

  • N.Y. attorney general challenges authority of acting U.S. attorney investigating her Trump lawsuits

    N.Y. attorney general challenges authority of acting U.S. attorney investigating her Trump lawsuits

    ALBANY, N.Y. — President Donald Trump’s effort to install political loyalists as top federal prosecutors has run into a legal buzz saw lately, with judges ruling that his handpicked U.S. attorneys for New Jersey, eastern Virginia, Nevada, and Los Angeles were all serving unlawfully.

    On Thursday, another federal judge heard an argument by New York Attorney General Letitia James that the administration also twisted the law to make John Sarcone the acting U.S. attorney for northern New York.

    James, a Democrat, is challenging Sarcone’s authority to oversee a Justice Department investigation into regulatory lawsuits she filed against Trump and the National Rifle Association. It’s one of several arguments she is making to block subpoenas issued as part of the probe, which her lawyers say is part of a campaign of baseless investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s perceived enemies.

    Her attorney Hailyn Chen argued in court that since Sarcone lacks legitimate authority to act as U.S. attorney, legal steps taken by him in that capacity — like the subpoenas — are unlawful. In response to a question from U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield, Chen said Sarcone should be disqualified from the investigation and the office.

    “Sarcone exercised power that he did not lawfully possess,” Chen told the judge.

    Justice Department lawyers say Sarcone was appointed properly and the motion to block the subpoenas should be denied. Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Belliss argued that disqualifying Sarcone would be “drastic and extreme.”

    “We don’t think that’s a proper remedy,” Belliss said.

    Schofield, after peppering both attorneys with questions, did not say when she would rule.

    The fight in New York and other states is largely over the legality of unorthodox strategies the Trump administration has adopted to appoint prosecutors seen as unlikely to get confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

    The hearing came a week after a federal judge in Virginia dismissed indictments brought there against James and former FBI Director James Comey. That judge concluded that the interim U.S. attorney who brought the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed. The Justice Department is expected to appeal.

    On Monday, a federal appeals court ruled that Alina Habba, Trump’s former personal lawyer, is disqualified from serving as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor.

    Under federal law, the president’s nominees for U.S. attorney must be confirmed by the Senate. If a position is vacant, the U.S. attorney general can appoint someone temporarily, but that appointment expires after 120 days. If that time period elapses, judges in the district can either keep the interim U.S. attorney or appoint someone of their own choosing.

    Sarcone’s appointment didn’t follow that path.

    Trump hasn’t nominated anyone to serve as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Sarcone to serve as the interim U.S. attorney in March. When his 120-day term elapsed, judges in the district declined to keep him in the post.

    Bondi then took the unusual step of appointing Sarcone as a special attorney, then designated him first assistant U.S. attorney for the district, a maneuver federal officials say allows him to serve as an acting U.S. attorney.

    Chen called it an abuse of executive power.

    The New York subpoenas seek records related to a civil case James filed against Trump over alleged fraud in his personal business dealings and records from a lawsuit involving the National Rifle Association and two senior executives.

    Belliss argued in court that the U.S. attorney general has broad authority to appoint attorneys within her department and to delegate her functions to those attorneys. Belliss said that even if Sarcone is not properly holding the office of acting U.S. attorney, he can still conduct grand jury investigations as a special attorney.

    Sarcone was part of Trump’s legal team during the 2016 presidential campaign and worked for the U.S. General Services Administration as the regional administrator for the Northeast and Caribbean during Trump’s first term.

    Habba also served as an interim U.S. attorney. When her appointment expired, New Jersey judges replaced her with a career prosecutor who had served as her second-in-command. Bondi then fired that prosecutor and renamed Habba as acting U.S. attorney.

    A similar dynamic is playing out in Nevada, where a federal judge disqualified the Trump administration’s pick to be U.S. attorney there. And a federal judge in Los Angeles disqualified the acting U.S. attorney in Southern California from several cases after concluding he had stayed in the job longer than allowed by law.

  • Donald Trump will visit Northeast Pa. on Tuesday to promote his economic agenda ahead of 2026 midterms

    Donald Trump will visit Northeast Pa. on Tuesday to promote his economic agenda ahead of 2026 midterms

    President Donald Trump will visit Northeast Pennsylvania on Tuesday to promote his economic agenda, including efforts to lower inflation, the White House confirmed to The Inquirer on Thursday.

    The trip will kick off what is expected to be a national tour of Trump touting his economic policies ahead of the 2026 midterms, when Democrats and Republicans will battle for control of Congress.

    The specific location for Trump’s visit has not yet been made public, but Northeast Pennsylvania will be a major battleground in next year’s midterms.

    Democrats believe that they can oust freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, of Lackawanna County, threatening the GOP’s slim House majority. Democrats are also specifically targeting the districts of U.S. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, of Bucks County; Ryan Mackenzie, of Lehigh County; and Scott Perry, of York County.

    Democrats are already planning for 2026 and think they can flip these four Pa. congressional seats

    Trump endorsed Bresnahan and most of Pennsylvania’s GOP delegation on his social media platform, Truth Social, last month. Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, a Democrat, is mounting a campaign to unseat Bresnahan, who won by roughly a percentage point last election.

    Affordability — which Trump called a “fake narrative” used by Democrats — has been a top issue for voters, including during November’s blue wave when Democrats won local contests throughout Pennsylvania, in addition to the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.

    The president has repeatedly claimed that prices have fallen since he took office in January, but a CNN fact-checking report from November said prices and inflation have increased. Many experts have pointed to Trump’s tariff policies as contributing to increased prices.

    Tuesday’s visit appears to be the president’s first to the Keystone State since attending an energy summit in Pittsburgh in July. In November 2024, Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris and won the presidency with the help of battleground Pennsylvania, garnering more votes than any statewide Republican candidate in history.

    The president had a particularly strong performance in Northeast Pennsylvania. last year, making some of his top gains compared with his 2020 performance in Lackawanna and Luzerne Counties.