New Mexico sued the Justice Department after waiting seven years for the Epstein files it was promised. In 2019, federal prosecutors asked the state to shut down its investigation of Zorro Ranch and pledged to share everything when their case ended. New Mexico finally reopened the investigation this year and has asked ten times for … Read more
Kansas beat the anti-abortion movement twice in two days. On Monday, Judge Christopher Jayaram issued a 260 page ruling that the state cannot force women to wait 24 hours or answer questions about their finances or their reasons before ending a pregnancy. He wrote that under the Kansas Constitution’s guarantee of bodily autonomy, his ruling … Read more
Border agents swabbed a four-year-old’s cheek and uploaded her DNA to the FBI’s criminal database. Federal agents sent more than 2,700 records into that database every day last year, nearly a million in all, most from people never charged with any crime. Immigration enforcement now captures more profiles than any police force in the country, … Read more
Illinois went and found the people Washington stopped feeding. About 148,000 Illinois residents have lost food assistance since new federal work rules hit in May, veterans, people in their sixties, and parents of teenagers among them. On Saturday the state began depositing $400 onto the grocery cards of every affected person. Nobody had to fill … Read more
Donald Trump spent his Saturday posting fake pictures of himself again. Between attacking his own prosecutor and declaring victory in Iran, he made time to publish 43 posts in an afternoon. In one he kisses a golden Jesus. In another he looms over Greenland, a day after telling a radio host to bet that America … Read more
A lie about paint put a 67-year-old Olympian in handcuffs. We knew nobody in Ohio was eating cats and dogs, and the vice president admitted he would “create stories” to get attention. We knew a Sharpie stretched that hurricane map into Alabama. And we knew there was no 300-foot gash in the Reflecting Pool. Trump … Read more
Senator John Cornyn refuses to vote for Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney general, until the Justice Department documents what it already claims is true. Blanche settled Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS with a $1.8 billion fund for his allies and a shield protecting his family’s past tax returns from audit, forever. Blanche testified the fund is … Read more
The morning after a federal judge ruled that a contract cannot erase state law, ICE wrote the same words into four more contracts. Washington spent three years in court getting health inspectors inside ICE’s largest Northwest detention center, where detainees filed 3,500 complaints and inspectors with every legal right to enter were turned away at … Read more
Samuel Tunick gave border agents a passcode that wiped his phone, and the government made him the first American ever charged with that crime. The agents had no warrant. They pulled him into a back room at the Atlanta airport and refused his requests for a lawyer. The Justice Department wants to put him in … Read more
America chose sides. When the UN voted Friday to keep its human rights chief, 144 countries said yes. The United States and nine others, including Russia and North Korea, said no. France counted the votes out loud and posted that the world no longer listens to America. American diplomats answered Monday by walking out of … Read more
The Pentagon told Congress that the war it has been fighting since February started three weeks ago. That bought another 60 days of fighting before anyone in Congress can stop it. The books got adjusted this weekend. A second file opened in the casualty record, the dead and wounded were split between two wars that … Read more
A federal appeals court showed up Saturday morning to stop Donald Trump from deciding who gets a mail ballot. His March executive order told Homeland Security to build citizen lists, ordered the Postal Service to refuse mail ballots to any voter not on them, and told prosecutors to charge election officials who sent ballots to … Read more
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said politics never decided which grants got canceled, and his own lawyers just told a court it was the only thing that did. They agreed in writing on Friday that all but one of the 284 canceled grants, $7.5 billion worth, went to a state Kamala Harris won, and that nothing … Read more
Two men looked at your electric bill today, and only one put money on the table. Rhode Island Energy announced a 15% winter rate hike this morning. Within hours, Gov. Dan McKee declared an energy affordability emergency and moved $28 million in carbon fees paid by power plants so the average family won’t pay a … Read more
ICE arrested more people in June than in any month in its history, and July is on pace to break that record. The agency is averaging nearly 1,600 arrests a day this month and has held as many as 70,000 people in custody on a single day this year. ICE officials privately called the crowding … Read more
Donald Trump gave Saudi Arabia a path to enriched uranium while bombing Iran for already having one. American companies have long been legally barred from helping Saudi Arabia go nuclear. AP sources say Trump just approved a 30-year deal that allows US firms to help the Saudis enrich uranium on their own soil without the … Read more
Iranian missiles killed 19-year-old Pvt. Isabella Gonzales in Jordan on Friday, one year after she graduated from her Texas high school. 1st Lt. Tyler Feehan, 25, died the next day, weeks from finishing his MBA and set to be married when he came home. The Army named them today and will posthumously promote Feehan to … Read more
The FBI ordered its agents to stop investigating ICE confrontations. The written order went out Thursday, The New York Times reports, though the Justice Department denies it. The FBI’s role had already shrunk to one question: was the agent attacked before he fired? When ICE killed men in Houston and Maine this month, answering that … Read more
Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke warned the Justice Department on Friday that he will prosecute masked federal agents operating in his city. His warning came on his office’s letterhead, after DOJ demanded that Milwaukee not enforce its ban on masked law enforcement. It points to Biddeford, Maine, where ICE killed a father this week who … Read more
Ordinary people just cost ICE’s jailers their lender. For months they protested outside Citizens Bank branches from Washington to Vermont and moved $300 million to other banks. On Friday, Citizens said it will stop lending to GEO Group and CoreCivic, the private prison companies that run ICE’s biggest detention centers. The bank swears the decision … Read more
Donald Trump turned years of election lies into orders. He stood in the East Room Thursday night repeating claims his own declassified documents don’t support, the same story he’s told since 2016. The orders came after: he directed DHS to tell states to purge their voter rolls and told the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department … Read more
The federal government rewrote the story of slavery in the middle of last night. Park Service crews entered Philadelphia’s Independence Park and stripped the memorial to the nine people George Washington enslaved. The new display says they enjoyed “a greater modicum of autonomy” under the man who owned them. A federal judge quoted Orwell when … Read more
Senate Democrats just refused to pay for Trump’s war. Congress has passed a defense bill every year since 1961. The streak survived Vietnam, both wars in Iraq, and every shutdown fight since. On Tuesday the Senate blocked this year’s bill rather than hand over $1.15 trillion for a war Congress never authorized. Four senators missed … Read more
ICE agents killed the wrong man this morning in Biddeford, Maine, and left his body handcuffed in the street for five hours. Joan Sebastian Guerrero was 26, married, with a 3-year-old daughter. Agents staking out an address on his street rammed his car as he left for work and fired up to seven shots, four … Read more
The soldiers who survived one of the deadliest attacks on Americans in the Iran war just told the country that six of their own didn’t have to die. Seventeen soldiers talked to The Washington Post about the drone strike at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait. They say their generals were briefed that the port was on … Read more
Kash Patel spent Friday inside the White House running a criminal investigation of The New York Times. The Times reported that Trump’s $400 million Qatari gift plane still hasn’t been fitted with missile defenses, so the Secret Service flew him home from the NATO summit in Turkey on the old Air Force One. The White … Read more
A Trump-appointed judge erased the Proud Boys’ seditious conspiracy convictions today and wrote that no one should mistake his ruling for agreement. Judge Timothy Kelly sat through the six-month trial where a jury convicted the group’s leaders of plotting to keep Trump in power by force on January 6. The Justice Department asked him to … Read more
Donald Trump emailed termination notices to the two Democrats who oversee America’s voting machines and let the lone Republican resign. Congress built the Election Assistance Commission with two Democrats and two Republicans so that neither party controls it. Four months before the midterms, the commission cannot legally act. The White House says the president can … Read more
A federal judge pried loose the $5.8 million Donald Trump has owed E. Jean Carroll for three years and told him it’s time to pay. Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that Trump “has been stalling this case for years.” A unanimous jury found he sexually abused and defamed Carroll, every appeal failed, and the Supreme Court … Read more
ICE forced detained Iranians to sit down with officials of the government they fled, and those officials had already read their asylum files. A federal lawsuit filed today says the Trump administration cut a deal with Tehran in March 2025 and handed over the immigration files of hundreds of Iranian detainees at monthly meetings for … Read more
The office ICE created to investigate its own agents is instead investigating 131 Americans for criticizing the agency. David Streever is believed to be one of the 131. Two agents visited his Rochester home over an angry email and handed his wife a formal warning that he may have violated federal law. They later tracked … Read more
Three Supreme Court justices just voted to end birthright citizenship, and the Speaker of the House wants to finish the job. The Court ruled 6 to 3 that the 14th Amendment protects citizenship for every child born on American soil. Donald Trump demanded Congress end it anyway, promising his “Complete and Total Support.” By Sunday, … Read more
A Black woman rode the DC Metro alone on the Fourth of July, surrounded by masked men on their way to march for a white America. Patriot Front brought about 400 members and their Confederate flags to the capital’s 250th birthday. None were arrested, and they were gone before lunch. But a photographer caught that … Read more
Three weeks ago I started showing you government getting it right, and I wish I’d started sooner. The Good Government category debuted at issue #500, and your comments keep saying the same thing: thank you for the hope that good government still exists. Since then I’ve run 19 of these stories: Oregon teamed with Dolly … Read more
Kash Patel just ordered every FBI field office in America to send analysts to recount an election Donald Trump lost six years ago. The directive pulls 260 analysts and gives them two weeks to comb through Fulton County’s 2020 records. Georgia counted those votes three times, once by hand, and got the same answer every … Read more
ICE agents took a nun’s rosary and handcuffed her while she walked to Sunday Mass. Sister Letty Ugboaja is a 56-year-old nurse who has served South Texas for a decade. She spent the day in a detention cell until members of Congress from both parties called the Homeland Security secretary to demand her release. Her … Read more
You were always going to pay for Donald Trump’s ballroom. He told you private donors would cover it. Then the Washington Post got hold of the contract: a secret, no-bid deal worth up to $500 million, run through a government office that is exempt from getting multiple estimates, with taxpayers covering half. He knew every … Read more
The Supreme Court just gave Donald Trump the power to fire almost any watchdog in Washington who crosses him. For 90 years, the two dozen or so agencies Congress built were meant to be independent of the president. Now they answer to him, and he can fire anyone inside them who won’t do what he … Read more
While American forces stand in harm’s way across the Gulf, Donald Trump spent his weekend choosing trees. Iran attacked Bahrain and Kuwait, two American allies, and threatened to walk away from peace talks. The U.S. struck back. Both sides say they want the ceasefire to hold even as they keep trading fire. And on Sunday, … Read more
A reporter walked into North Carolina’s booth at the America 250 fair and found the Confederate battle flag grafted onto the state flag. North Carolina has never carried that emblem on its flag, not even when it seceded. Somebody built this version on purpose, celebrating a Confederate North Carolina. There is no gentle reading of … Read more
Barack Obama said elections have consequences, and today the Supreme Court proved it again. Senate Republicans refused to let Obama fill a court vacancy during his second term and held it open for a year, then handed it to Trump, who filled it and named two more. That refusal created the 6 to 3 majority … Read more
Barack Obama said elections have consequences, and today the Supreme Court proved it again. Senate Republicans refused to let Obama fill a court vacancy during his second term and held it open for a year, then handed it to Trump, who filled it and named two more. That refusal created the 6 to 3 majority … Read more
Only 32 members of the House voted against the housing affordability bill. The Senate passed it 85 to 5. In a Congress that can’t agree on lunch, a margin like that shows real pain back home. Washington moved fast, before the midterms, with something to finally point to. Then Trump pulled the plug without a … Read more
General Chris Donahue was at the Pentagon on 9/11 and the last American soldier out of Kabul, and Pete Hegseth is forcing him out of the Army. Hegseth downgraded Donahue’s command from four stars to three. He did not demote the general; he demoted the job, and a four-star general with no four-star job has … Read more
A federal judge ordered the government to shut down a voter database it built knowing it was illegal. The system started as a way to verify immigration status for government benefits, but the administration rebuilt it into a tool to hunt for noncitizens on the voter rolls. More than sixty million people were analyzed. Some … Read more
JD Vance finally sat down with Iranian leaders in a Swiss resort on Sunday to end a war his own boss spent the day threatening to restart. The talks were set for Friday and called off when Israeli strikes on Lebanon put the ceasefire back in doubt, and Vance boarded the plane only once a … Read more
A three-time Olympian reached into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to feel a strip of peeling paint, and Park Police led him away in handcuffs. The paint is peeling and the water has gone swamp green, two weeks after a $14 million renovation. Donald Trump ordered the pool drained and repainted, then rushed the job … Read more
Giorgia Meloni recorded a video and told the president of the United States that Italy does not beg. He felt sorry for her, Trump volunteered on Italian television, because she had begged him for a photo she wanted so badly. That never happened, she says, and the woman he tried to diminish is the same … Read more
Donald Trump’s best birthday present came two days early, right before he had cage fighters and a few thousand guests over to the White House. The present was more than a third of a billion dollars, which his budget director Russ Vought pulled out of the Secret Service and moved into a White House construction … Read more
Marco Rubio’s State Department named it the America First Global Health Strategy, and the name is the confession. For decades the United States helped the world’s sick and asked for nothing, and the world was a little better for it. Now it refuses unless the country hands over the personal health records of its citizens. … Read more
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