13 US states sue Trump administration over cancelled funding for clean energy projcts
The attorneys general of California, Colorado and Washington filed a lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday on behalf of a coalition of 13 states, seeking to force the federal government to pay billions of dollars in grants approved by Congress for clean energy projects.
The Trump administration terminated some funding already allocated under environmentally focused laws, including the Inflation Reduction Act, that passed during the presidency of Joe Biden to support wind, solar and other fossil-free power sources.
Donald Trump, long known for his irrational hatred of wind power, has instead focused on fossil fuel production.
“The President claims to seek ‘American Energy Dominance’ but, in California, his unlawful termination of over $1.2 billion in total funding for crucial clean energy projects means over 200,000 union job cuts, rising energy prices, and higher rates of pollution that wreak havoc on our health,” California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said in a statement. “The President is cherry-picking this funding at the expense of hardworking Americans and stifling innovation and the economy for the sake of partisan retribution. My office will continue to hold the President and his administration accountable for breaking the law.”
“We will not allow Trump to sell out our future to his biggest donors,” California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, added. “Trump didn’t just tear up a contract: he defied Congress, jeopardized more than 200,000 good-paying jobs, and robbed billions of dollars in health savings from communities that have been hit the hardest by pollution. We’re not letting that stand. California will fight for these jobs, this infrastructure, and the global clean energy competitiveness that the Trump administration has ceded to China.”
The lawsuit alleges that the termination of billions of dolalrs in federal funding for ARCHES (Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems) and millions under the Resilient and Efficient Codes Implementation (RECI) program violates the constitutional separation of powers, since the funding was approved and appropriated by bipartisan majorities in Congress before Trump took office.
In his rambling speech today, Donald Trump repeated the longstanding lie that Joe Biden didn’t actually win the 2020 election. “We had a man that was not a president,” Trump said at a reception celebrating Black History Month at the White House.
Even though it’s an official event, it’s resembling a campaign-style stump speech. Trump has listed – what he sees as – the crowning achievements of his second term in office, and inspired the crowd to heckle the reporters in the room.
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At a reception today honoring Black History Month, Donald Trump kicked off the event by remembering the late civil rights trailblazer Jesse Jackson, calling him a “force of nature”.
“He really was special, with lots of personality, grit and street smarts,” Trump said. “He was gregarious and someone who truly loved people.”
The president noted that Dr Ben Carson – who served as the housing and urban development secretary during Trump’s first term – will be honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. This will be Carson’s second, as he was first awarded with the honor in 2008.
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White House says it is 'deeply unfortunate' that Vatican declines invitation to join Trump's Board of Peace
Earlier today, the Vatican announced that Pope Leo XIV would not join Donald Trump’s Board of Peace – focused on the reconstruction of Gaza. Ahead of the board’s first meeting in Washington DC on Thursday, the Vactican’s secretary of state said that at the international level it should “above all be the United Nations should that manages these crisis situations”.
White House press secretary said the snub was “deeply unfortunate” while addressing reporters today.
“I don’t think that peace should be partisan or political or controversial,” she added. “The administration wants all those who were invited to join the Board of Peace to join because, again, the board of peace is overseeing the reconstruction of a territory that has been plagued with violence, with bloodshed, poverty, for far too long.”
Leavitt went on to underscore that the board is a “legitimate” organization. This, despite major European allies declining to join the group, and the $5bn entry fee that Trump has touted for member states to join the board.
Karoline Leavitt said today that the next step to contain the sewage spill in the Potomac River is for the leaders of Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC to “step forward and to ask the federal government for help” so they can “take control of this local infrastructure that has been abandoned and neglected by Governor Moore in Maryland for far too long”.
Moore has rejected the White House’s criticism, saying Trump is “lying”, noting that the federal government is responsible for the sewage pipe as it sits on federal land. “If the president wants me to ask nicely, my response is this: ‘Please Mr President, do your job,’” Moore said on Wednesday.
When asked about the governor’s comments today, Leavitt simply replied:
The federal government has been preparing plans. The White House has been in contact with Fema, with the Army Corps of Engineers, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Again, we’ve been standing by this is a problem we want to fix, not just for the federal government, but for everyone who lives in District of Columbia, including all of you.
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White House says 'diplomacy' is 'always' top option for Trump on Iran
When asked about the possibility of US strikes against Iran, Leavitt said that the Trump administration “totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities” and has been clear that “diplomacy” is always the president’s “first option”.
“Iran would be very wise to make a deal with president Trump,” Leavitt added today.
She also noted that while there was a “little bit of progress” following Tuesday’s talks in Geneva between the US and Iran, “we’re still very far apart on some issues”.
Leavitt did not answer a question about an exact deadline that Donald Trump would give Iran to achieve a deal, before engaging in military action.
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Leavitt defends development of ICE detention facility in New Hampshire, amid outrage in the state
Karoline Leavitt defended the ongoing development of an immigration detention facility in her home state of New Hampshire today.
“Obviously, there are a lot more illegal alien criminals left in our homeland. That includes in New England, there are many within our communities, in New Hampshire, in Maine and definitely in Massachusetts and in the Boston suburbs that need to be arrested, detained and deported back to their home countries,” Leavitt said.
The possible construction in Merrimack, New Hampshire, has caused controversy in the state, with the Republican governor Kelly Ayotte saying that she initially received limited information from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about the facility – which many local organizers and lawmakers have opposed. Ayotte’s office published plans of the facility last week, after ICE acting director Todd Lyons claimed he had worked with the governor’s office – Ayotte denied that the agency had shared the requisite documents. The governor is now facing pressure to prevent the federal government to expand its detention footprint and signing off on the facility.
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Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has started today’s briefing by noting that Donald Trump will travel to Georgia tomorrow where he’ll visit two local businesses and give a speech on his “efforts to make life affordable for working people”.
White House says parties are 'still pretty far apart' when it comes to DHS funding bill negotiations
A White House official tells the Guardian the parties remain “pretty far apart”, after Democrats sent the Trump administration their counter-proposal for a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill.
Currently, the department has been shut for days, following stalled negotations over legislation to secure DHS funding through September with tougher guardrails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The White House official said that the administration “remains interested in good faith conversations to end the Democrat shutdown before more Americans feel the impacts” but also remains “committed to carrying out the President’s promise to enforce federal immigration law”.
On Monday, a spokesperson for Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats had sent the White House their latest offer. For their part, GOP lawmakers say that Democrats’ demands – which include the use of judicial warrants for at-home arrests and ensuring officers no longer wear masks – are red lines.
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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) found there was “no violation” of its rules during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show performance, Reuters reports.
The FCC had requested transcripts of the performance from NBC, after a Republican lawmaker suggested that Bad Bunny’s performance may have violated federal indecency regulations.
The FCC commissioner, Anna Gomez, said she reviewed the transcripts of the performance in Spanish after the commission requested them.
“I reviewed them carefully, and I found no violation of our rules and no justification for harassing broadcasters over a standard live performance,” Gomez said.
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The Trump administration is working to block states and cities from offering free transportation to undocumented immigrants, according to reporting from Politico.
The outlet reported today that the Department of Transportation is drafting a law that would prohibit local jurisdictions from using federal transit money to assist undocumented migrants.
In some states and cities, officials have offered free buses to help migrants reach sources, including intake shelters or shelters.
“The change wouldn’t stop undocumented immigrants from using public transportation,” Politico reports. “However, it would seek to prevent local agencies or towns from using public transportation to move unauthorized immigrants around the city or outside it to another state, a person familiar with the plan said.”
The transportation department’s proposal is part of a package of measures that the White House is considering to include in the transportation reauthorization bill slated to go to Congress this year.
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Democratic voters are still lacking optimism about their political party since President Donald Trump’s 2024 win, a recent poll reveals.
Only around seven in 10 Democrats have a positive view of the Democratic party, the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found.
“While the overwhelming majority of Democrats still feel good about their party, they’re much less positive than they’ve been in the past,” the AP reports.
The midterm elections are still months away. Increasing negative views of Trump and other Republicans may help their party later this year. Favorable views of the Democratic party plummeted after the 2024 election.
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Several Democratic lawmakers plan to boycott State of the Union for National Mall rally
Several Democratic lawmakers will boycott Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday 24 February, and instead attend a rally on the National Mall.
So far, at least 12 Democratic members of Congress will skip the State of the Union. These include senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, as well as progressive representatives Pramila Jayapal and Greg Casar.
The event, dubbed the “People’s State of the Union”, is being coordinated by progressive media network MeidasTouch and the liberal advocacy group MoveOn. Attorney and commentator Katie Phang and former anchor Joy Reid will co-host the rally. The event’s organizers say it will spotlight federal workers, immigrants and Americans affected by the Trump administration’s policies.
In a statement, Van Hollen said that he would not attend the joint address to Congress next week. “Trump is marching America towards fascism, and I refuse to normalize his shredding of our Constitution & democracy,” he said. “This cannot be business as usual.”
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Top oversight Democrat says that Wexner deposition is 'very important' for committee
Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, said Les Wexner’s deposition will be “very important” to the ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, in an interview with MSNOW on Tuesday.
“You don’t pay a person the amount of money that Wexner was paying Epstein for just financial advice. They were very close for a long period of time,” Garcia said of the 88-year-old billionaire who employed Epstein as a personal money manager for 20 years. “We have a lot of questions about the finances, the relationship, what Wexner knew, who Jeffrey Epstein also received money from, what was actually Wexner’s larger involvement with Ghislaine Maxwell, and we hope those questions will be answered.”
Garcia added that the questions from lawmakers to Wexner will be “pretty direct” during today’s deposition. “We know he has significant information as to why he was providing so much money to Epstein,” he said. The lawmaker is also determined to understand why Wexner’s name – along with those of other high profile men – were redacted in the justice department’s latest release of documents.
“Why the cover-up? Why we protecting possible co conspirators? Why are we protecting Jeffrey Epstein’s, essentially, benefactors?,” Garcia said.
Talarico says campaign raised $2.5m in the immediate aftermath of Colbert interview controversy
Following the decision by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to air its interview with James Talarico on YouTube, the Texas Democratic Senate candidate said that his campaign raised $2.5m in the 24 hours since Colbert said that CBS told him not to air the segment, for fear of triggering the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) equal-time rule.
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Crockett praises move from Colbert to air Talarico interview on YouTube: 'It probably gave my opponent the boost he was looking for'
In an interview with MSNOW, Democratic congresswoman Jasmine Crockett addressed the claims from Stephen Colbert that CBS told him not to air a television interview with James Talarico, the Texas state lawmaker running for US Senate. Colbert said the decision stemmed from a concern that it would trigger a legal requirement to provide equal access to Talarico’s campaign rivals – which includes Crockett.
The congresswoman said that her team received a call from Paramount Skydance – CBS’s parent company – who told her that Colbert could, in fact, move forward with airing the Talarico interview but would need to offer Crockett equal time.
“I did not get a request from the Colbert show to go on … I’ve been on Colbert multiple times, and frankly, if we would have gotten an offer that would have been great, but we’re in the middle of early voting, so I’m kind of focused on being in Texas at this moment,” Crockett told MS Now.
In the end, the Talarico interview was instead broadcast on Colbert’s YouTube page, which is out of the remit of the FCC. In a statement, CBS said that The Late Show was not prohibited from broadcasting the segment, instead the network “provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates”.
Speaking to MS Now, Crockett added that she had “no love” for CBS News editor Bari Weiss, nor for the FCC chair Brendan Carr. “It is important that we resist,” she said. “I think it probably gave my opponent the boost he was looking for so I think it’s probably better than he didn’t get on, and that they went straight to streaming.”
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Oversight committee to depose Victoria's Secret CEO, amid renewed scrutiny over ties to Epstein
Today, congressional lawmakers on the House oversight committee continue their investigation into the handling of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes with a deposition of Les Wexner, the billionaire and former CEO of Victoria’s Secret.
Wexner is facing scrutiny for his association with Epstein – who served as his personal money manager from the mid-1980s until 2007, when Epstein was under investigation for sex crimes. He then stepped away from managing Wexner’s personal finances. The businessman, who also owned Bath & Body Works, later discovered that Epstein had been mismanaging funds, and severed ties with him.
While Wexner has vehemently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, he is under renewed dissection after his name appeared in the latest tranche of documents released by the justice department, which showed a 2019 FBI document that listed Wexner as a co-conspirator of Epstein. The 88-year old has never been convicted of a crime, and maintains that he has cooperated with officials at each juncture of their investigations into Epstein, who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019.
Last week, congressman Ro Khanna, revealed that Wexner’s name was one of six high-profile men whose names were redacted in the latest document drop by the Department of Justice.
Wexner will testify for lawmakers in New Albany, Ohio, and several Democratic members of the committee will hold a press conference after the deposition.
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Conservative Georgia town pushes back against ICE detention center
On a recent morning Eric Taylor, city manager for a small Georgia town of about 5,000 residents called Social Circle, was contacted by a staffer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“They asked me to turn on the water,” he said of a 1m sq ft warehouse nearby that the federal government recently purchased for $128m, with plans to use it for locking up as many as 10,000 detainees as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan.
“I told them I’m not going to do it,” Taylor said. “Not until they come and talk to me.”
The local official, together with the town’s mayor and police chief, have all publicly opposed the Department of Homeland Security’s plans to open what could become one of the largest immigration detention centers in the US – in a rural town with 19th-century buildings downtown, and horse and cattle farms and hay for sale on the outskirts.
ICE’s warehouse purchase in Social Circle is one of several dozen across the US in recent weeks. In a handful of locations – such as Ashland, Virginia and Kansas City, Kansas – local opposition appears to have thwarted such plans.
In the case of Social Circle, officials and residents alike only learned of the Trump administration’s plans to buy the empty warehouse from a 24 December Washington Post report – and since then have been clamoring for the federal government’s attention, to no avail. Taylor contacted Jon Ossoff, a Democratic senator who has also opposed ICE’s plans for the town, and Mike Collins, a Republican congressman who has told Taylor that the federal government will be in touch.
Read Timothy’s full dispatch from Social Circle, Georgia:
A reminder that my colleagues are covering the latest out of Europe, including the news that Volodymyr Zelenskyy said no agreement has been reached in the US-brokered meetings between Ukraine and Russia, in an attempt to end the four-year conflict in the region.
“We can see that some groundwork has been done, but for now the positions differ, because the negotiations were not easy,”the Zelenskyy told reporters after the talks had finished
A reminder that Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and then president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are representing the US at the talks in Geneva.
Donald Trump is in Washington today. We’ll hear from the president at 3pm ET, when he hosts a Black History Month reception in the East Room of the White House. This comes just weeks after Trump posted and deleted a racist video to social media that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama at apes. The White House ultimately blamed a staffer for the move, and distanced the president from the backlash.
Also today, we’ll hear from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who hold a briefing for reporters at 1pm ET.
More than a dozen health and environmental justice non-profits have sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its revocation of the legal determination that underpins US federal climate regulations.
Filed in Washington DC circuit court, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s rollback of the “endangerment finding”, which states that the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare and has allowed the EPA to limit those emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources since 2009. The rollback was widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.
The suit was brought by the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and 11 other public health and environmental organizations. The lawsuit was filed by green legal organizations Clean Air Task Force and Earthjustice and it names the EPA and the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, as defendants.
“EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding and safeguards to limit vehicle emissions marks a complete dereliction of the agency’s mission to protect people’s health and its legal obligation under the Clean Air Act,” said Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO at the Union of Concerned Scientists, another one of the groups behind the lawsuit. “This shameful and dangerous action by the Trump administration and EPA Administrator Zeldin is rooted in falsehoods not facts and is at complete odds with the public interest and the best available science.”
Fifteen members of Congress have written to Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, demanding to know what steps the United States has taken in response to the mistreatment of a Palestinian-American teenager who spent nine months in Israeli detention.
The letter, led by Senator Peter Welch and first seen by the Guardian, is centered around the case of Mohammed Ibrahim, a Florida resident who was 15 when Israeli soldiers arrested him during a raid on his family’s West Bank home in February 2025. He was charged with throwing objects at moving vehicles before being released on 27 November following a guilty plea and suspended sentence, and was taken directly to hospital upon his return.
The then 16-year-old was severely underweight, having lost roughly a third of his body weight, and had suffered a scabies skin infection a few months into his detention, the state department told his family at the time, according to correspondences seen by the Guardian.
Mohammed told family members and US consular officers that he and other Palestinian minors held in the same cell were beaten, threatened, pepper-sprayed and denied adequate food and medical care over the course of his detention.
In an interview with the advocacy group Defense for Children International – Palestine while still detained, Mohammed described receiving three small pieces of bread and a spoonful of yogurt for breakfast, with no dinner provided.
“There has been case after case of Palestinians, including hundreds of children, swept up in the Israeli military justice system, where they are not only denied basic rights of due process but subjected to systematic physical and psychological abuse,” the lawmakers wrote in the 16 February letter. “While such abuses are never permissible, we are especially concerned that cases involving abuse of US citizens in the West Bank be thoroughly investigated and that those responsible are brought to justice.”
A judge in Florida has set a trial date in US president Donald Trump’s $10bn defamation lawsuit against the BBC over a Panorama programme.
Court documents from the US District Court Southern District of Florida show judge Roy K Altman set a trial date of 15 February next year.
The order, made on 11 February, said:
This matter is set for trial during the Court’s two-week trial calendar beginning February 15, 2027. Counsel for all parties shall also appear at a calendar call at 1:45 p.m. on February 9, 2027.
Unless instructed otherwise by subsequent order, the trial and all other proceedings in this case shall be conducted in Courtroom 12-4 at the Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. U.S. Courthouse, 400 N. Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida 33128.
US judge blocks deportation of Columbia University Palestinian activist
A US immigration judge has blocked the deportation of a Palestinian graduate student who helped organize protests at Columbia University against Israel’s war in Gaza, according to US media reports.
Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested by immigration agents last year as he was attending an interview to become a US citizen, AFP reported.
Mahdawi had been involved in a wave of demonstrations that gripped several major US university campuses since Israel began a massive military campaign in the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas militants’ deadly 7 October, 2023 attack.
A Palestinian born in the occupied West Bank, Mahdawi has been a legal US permanent resident since 2015 and graduated from the prestigious New York university in May. He has been free from federal custody since April.
In an order made public on Tuesday, Judge Nina Froes said that President Donald Trump’s administration did not provide sufficient evidence that Mahdawi could be legally removed from the United States, multiple media outlets reported.
Americans believe that wealthy and powerful people are rarely held accountable, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found after the release of millions of records on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections in elite US business and political circles.
Some 69% of respondents in the four-day poll, which concluded on Monday, said their views were captured “very well” or “extremely well” by a statement that the Epstein files “show that powerful people in the US are rarely held accountable for their actions.“
Another 17% said the statement described their views “somewhat well,” while 11% said it didn’t reflect their thinking. Among both Republicans and Democrats, more than 80% said the statement described their thinking at least somewhat well.
CBS earlier this week attempted to address Stepen Colbert’s allegations about a corporate mandate not to broadcast the James Talarico interview.
“The Late Show was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico,” the network said in a statement.
“The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled.
“The Late Show decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”
Colbert has accused the Trump administration of censoring critics and has been particularly critical of FCC chairman Brendan Carr.
“Let’s just call this what it is,” he said on Monday. “Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV.”
FCC commissioner accuses CBS of 'corporate capitulation' in Colbert row
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with FCC commissioner Anna M Gomez criticizing CBS for what she called “corporate capitulation in the face of this administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech”.
Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, was appointed by former president Joe Biden to the five-person board in 2023. Her comments follow talkshow host Stephen Colbert accusing the Trump administration and CBS of censorship after he said the network told him not to air a television interview with a Texas Democrat running for Senate.
Gomez said in a statement:
This is yet another troubling example of corporate capitulation in the face of this administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech.
The FCC has no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes or to create a climate that chills free expression.
CBS is fully protected under the First Amendment to determine what interviews it airs, which makes its decision to yield to political pressure all the more disappointing.
On his show, Colbert told viewers of the Late Show that network lawyers told him he was also prohibited from talking about their refusal to air his interview with James Talarico, a Texas state representative seeking his party’s nomination to challenge the Republican incumbent, John Cornyn, for a Senate seat in November.
“He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said, stemming from a concern that it would trigger a legal requirement to provide equal access to Talarico’s campaign rivals.
In the end, the interview was instead broadcast on Colbert’s YouTube page, which is out of the remit of the Federal Communications Commission. CBS has disputed Colbert’s account, saying that the network only “provided legal guidance” that broadcasting the interview could violate the FCC directive.
Read our full story here:
In other developments:
Democrats mourned the passing of Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader whose 1988 campaign for the Democratic nomination to be president paved the way for Barack Obama.
Donald Trump’s former receptionist, Chamberlain Harris, 26, will be sworn in on Thursday as the newest member of the US Commission of Fine Arts, just in time to review his ballroom plans.
Police officers “surrounded and arrested a man who ran toward the U.S. Capitol with a loaded shotgun” on Tuesday, the United States Capitol Police said.
A US immigration judge has ended the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia University student who helped lead protests at the school over the Israeli assault on Gaza
After Republican congressman Randy Fine posted an Islamophobic comment to social media over the weekend, the backlash from Democrats has been swift.
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