A federal judge in Florida on Friday tossed President Donald Trump’s $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.

The lawsuit named a book and an article written by Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig that focuses on Trump’s finances and his pre-presidency starring role in television’s “The Apprentice.”

Trump said in the lawsuit that they “maliciously peddled the fact-free narrative” that television producer Mark Burnett turned Trump into a celebrity — “even though at and prior to the time of publications defendants knew that President Trump was already a mega-celebrity and an enormous success in business.”

A stopgap spending bill that would avert an Oct. 1 government shutdown fell short in the U.S. Senate on Friday, as Democrats withheld support for the legislation while demanding higher spending for healthcare.

The 44-48 vote, coming on the eve of a week-long congressional recess, raises the chances that federal agencies will shut down if a deal between Republicans and Democrats cannot be struck before current funding expires at midnight on Sept. 30.

What Senate Republicans did is they changed the rules so that they could pass nominees in large groups. Until now, they needed the approval of everyone in the chamber to be able to do that.

Now, that may not sound like a big deal, but it is a very big deal when you have 1,300 filled — positions that need to be filled by the Trump administration. And Senate Democrats have done something unique this time around. They have slow-rolled every single one of those nominations. So it has really bogged down the Senate.

President Trump has made threats about other ways he would try to get his nominations through. Senator Thune, the lead Republican, didn't want to go that way. So they decided to change the rules here, which also has its partisan risks with it.

Over the past several years, federal law enforcement agencies have gotten increasingly creative in their surveillance techniques, hiding cameras in, among other things, streetlights, traffic cones, toolboxes and vacuum cleaners.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has been especially forward-thinking in its placement of high-tech but unseen monitoring devices. In 2018, the DEA quietly installed automatic license plate readers in an unknown number of the ubiquitous radar speed signs that show approaching drivers how fast they’re going. It has only grown in the years since.

Now, according to federal procurement data reviewed by The Independent, the DEA – which has recently diverted agents from their usual drug-fighting mandate to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts – is outfitting agents, presumably undercover, with audio-video recorders camouflaged to look like everyday credit cards.

Republicans’ outlook on the direction of the country has soured dramatically, according to a new AP-NORC poll that was conducted shortly after last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The share of Republicans who see the country headed in the right direction has fallen sharply in recent months, according to the September survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Today, only about half in the GOP see the nation on the right course, down from 70% in June. The shift is even more glaring among Republican women and the party’s under-45 crowd.

Overall, about one-quarter of Americans say things in the country are headed in the right direction, down from about 4 in 10 in June. Democrats and independents didn’t shift meaningfully.

The Trump administration is working to give some MAGA-friendly businesses special relief from President Donald Trump’s tariffs, per documents reviewed exclusively by Salon.

“We are trying to help him from the SBA side with a loan,” Grayson said of his own efforts to help Busbice’s business.

What is unusual about the exchange between Busbice and Grayson is that the former’s case was being directly handled by the deputy chief of staff, a senior SBA position.

Busbice’s social media displays clear pro-Trump messaging, including multiple favorable references to Trump and his allies. A pinned post on Instagram from last year includes a photo of him and the president together. The documents also reveal that the two were connected by Tyler Daniel, a former political director at the Scalise Leadership Fund, a fundraising committee for Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. and other Republican political efforts. Daniel currently works at FTI Consulting.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from immediately deporting Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country, the latest step in a court struggle over one of the most sensitive issues in Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly comes after the Republican administration’s Labor Day weekend attempt to remove Guatemalan migrant children who were living in government shelters and foster care.

Trump administration officials said they were seeking to reunify children with parents who wanted them returned home. “But that explanation crumbled like a house of cards about a week later,” Kelly wrote. “There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told the House Judiciary Committee that he thinks the FBI has the names of at least 20 people tied to Epstein, including prominent figures in the music industry, finance, politics and banking.

Massie’s statement comes as FBI Director Kash Patel testified under oath before Congress over two days of contentious hearings, during which he continued to insist that there is no “client list” and no credible evidence that Epstein trafficked underage girls to anyone other than himself.

But Massie cited files used by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York which summarize interviews with witnesses and suspects.

The lawmaker claimed those files include “one Hollywood producer worth a few 100 million dollars, one royal prince, one high-profile individual in the music industry, one very prominent banker, one high profile government official, one high profile former politician, one owner of a car company in Italy, one rock star, one magician, at least six billionaires, including a billionaire from Canada. We know these people exist in the FBI files, the files that you control.”

Advocates swiftly objected to the reopening of Camp J, noting its history of brutality and violence. Ronald Marshall served 25 years in the Louisiana prison system, including a number of them in solitary confinement at Camp J, and called it the worst place he ever served time.

“It was horrible,” Marshall said.

It turns out, however, that Landry’s emergency order and the renovation of Camp J was not done to accommodate the state’s own growing prison population. It was in service of Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.

Under the new law, which will take effect 4 December, abortion providers could face penalties of at least $100,000 if they mail pills into the state, which bans virtually all abortions. Pharmaceutical manufacturers who make drugs that Texans use for abortions could also be found liable, but they may be able to defend themselves by proving in court that they adopted and implemented “a policy to not distribute, mail, transport, deliver, provide, or possess abortion-inducing drugs” – though the language of the law is somewhat ambiguous on whether that provision applies to Texas or more broadly. Women who take abortion pills are not eligible to be sued.

Her Safe Harbor, an organization that uses shield laws to mail abortion pills to people and received one of Paxton’s cease-and-desist letters, has no plans to block Texans from its services, said Debra Lynch, a nurse practitioner who works with the group, in an interview before Abbott signed the law. In fact, as the Texas law neared passage in the state legislature, Her Safe Harbor started receiving so many requests for help from patients that it had to double its number of abortion providers, according to Lynch.

“Even if a law was passed that said they would come after us criminally and not civilly – that would not have any impact whatsoever on the services that we provide,” Lynch said. “It’s important that women know that.”

Starts around 2 minutes.

Note: He could have been fired over mentioning that the billionaire friend of trump's was sold TikTok's assets.

The American companies include the investment firm Silver Lake, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and the technology company Oracle. The latter two are controlled by some of Trump’s most prolific supporters.

Marc Andreessen and his partner Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to Trump’s super PAC during the 2024 election.

Andreessen, who said at the end of 2024 he was spending roughly “half” his time at Mar-a-Lago, was tapped as an economic adviser to Trump earlier this year, where he helped to recruit staffers to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). After unleashing a bevy of false claims, Andreessen led the charge for DOGE to virtually kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he’d long loathed for its investigations into his investment firms.

The former head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said she was fired last month for refusing to sign off on changes to vaccine policy "regardless of the scientific evidence."

Dr Susan Monarez also told a Senate committee on Wednesday she was sacked for refusing a request from Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to dismiss CDC vaccine experts "without cause."

"He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign," she said.

Kennedy fired Dr Monarez less than a month after she was sworn in as head of the agency that leads the US response to infectious and chronic diseases, adding to a heated political fight over the changes he has made to his department this year.

Texas Republicans, at the behest of President Donald Trump, redrew the state’s congressional map this summer to eliminate Houston’s largest Black district — the 9th, in south Houston — and pack many of its residents into the city’s other historically Black-led district, the 18th.

Race was at the center of the redistricting effort throughout. The Trump administration’s Justice Department set the process in motion when it sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott alleging that race was illegally used as a factor in the current congressional maps drawn just four years ago.

The House Judiciary Committee will vote on Raskin's motion at the end of its oversight hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel, who has been hammered with questions about his handling of the Epstein case and whether evidence was being withheld about his relationship with President Donald Trump, reported Politico.

Only one Republican vote is need to adopt the motion, which would likely get support from all the panel's Democrats and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who has been leading congressional efforts to get the Epstein files into public view.

Four men have been arrested after images of Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were projected on to Windsor Castle on Tuesday, as the US president arrived in the UK for a state visit.

They were arrested on suspicion of "malicious communications following a public stunt in Windsor" and remained in custody, Thames Valley Police said.

Those arrested were a 60-year-old from East Sussex, a 36-year-old and a 50-year-old from London, and a 37-year-old from Kent.

The force said an investigation was under way after officers responded "swiftly" to stop the projection on the castle, where Trump will meet King Charles during the first full day of his state visit on Wednesday.

PayPal mafia OG Peter Thiel, whose data firm Palantir is currently assisting the Trump administration’s deportation machine, recently began taking time out of his day job (ghoulish billionaire defense contractor) to engage in some part-time work as a Christian evangelist spreading the word about the rise of the Antichrist. It’s been a bizarre sight, indeed, and this week, Thiel kicked things up a notch by launching the first of a four-part lecture series he’s doing about the Dark Lord.

Thiel’s super-exclusive lecture series, which began on Monday in San Francisco, was said to have been about “how his Christian faith informs his understanding of the world,” according to an online ad. The event was organized by a nonprofit called ACTS 17 Collective: Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society. Thiel has previously spoken at several events put on by ACTS 17, according to reporting by the New York Times. The group’s modus operandi is to court Silicon Valley executives and attempt to convert them to the Christian faith.

It’s unknown to the public just what exactly Thiel said about his “Christian faith” and Christ’s chief antagonist during Monday night’s secretive seminar, but there were plenty of people outside of the venue who were more than happy to publicly share their thoughts about Thiel. That is to say, a group of several dozen protesters showed up to the demon-centric event and offered ample criticism of the speaker, seeming to imply he was, himself, demonic.

Hernandez is one of a growing number of crime victims and relatives who have been arrested and indefinitely detained pending removal proceedings during the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

In January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement rescinded a policy that had shielded many victims from detention and removal. The number of people applying for visas that allow some victims and their families to remain in the country has plummeted since then. Others are being detained as they go through the lengthy application process. Of those detained, many have been declared ineligible for release under another ICE policy change.

More than 50 people have faced federal charges in Washington, D.C., since President Donald Trump’s emergency law-and-order surge began last month. Already, prosecutors have dropped at least 11 of those cases, an unusually high collapse rate that judges say is wasting court resources.

The dismissals highlight the risks of Trump’s emergency surge strategy: an unprecedented flood of arrests that has produced headline-grabbing numbers but faltered under judicial scrutiny, with some of the most serious cases — from assaults on federal agents to gun charges — unraveling before they ever reach trial.

On Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh dismissed two felony assault cases at the request of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office. He delivered a blunt warning from the bench as he questioned whether prosecutors are making charging decisions before cases are properly investigated and vetted.

“That’s not the way it’s supposed to work, and it has real-world consequences,” Sharbaugh said. “This is becoming a real concern for the court just given the sheer numbers.”

Democrat Xp Lee was elected to the US House of Representatives in a special election in Minnesota on Tuesday, filling the seat left vacant after former state House Rep. Melissa Hortman—alongside her husband, Mark—were the victims of a politically-motivated murder in June.

Lee, a state employee and union member who previously served on the Brooklyn Park City Council, beat Republican nominee Ruth Bittner, a local real estate agent who had never held public office before, in a district that has long favored Democrats and which Hortman held for two decades.

The assassination of Hortman, a Democrat, shocked the state and the nation. In the early morning of June 14, an individual posing as a law enforcement officer came to the Hortmans’ house and shot both Hortman and her husband. Vance Boelter, 57, faces both federal and state murder charges for the killing of the Hortmans as well as the attempted murder and other charges for a similar attack on the same day against Minnesota State Sen. John Hofmman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette. Both John and Yvette Hoffman were shot, but survived, and the assailant also targeted their daughter, Hope Hoffman.

The New York Times on Monday published a blockbuster report detailing how US President Donald Trump’s administration gave the United Arab Emirates access to high-powered artificial intelligence chips just days after receiving a massive investment in Trump’s cryptocurrency startup.

As the Times report documented, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) ruling family, had one of his investment firms deposit $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, the startup founded by members of the Trump family and the family of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Just two weeks later, wrote the Times, “the White House agreed to allow the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips, a crucial tool in the high-stakes race to dominate artificial intelligence,” despite national security concerns about these chips being shared with China.

NYT Archive Article: https://archive.is/IIcca

FBI director Kash Patel on Tuesday blamed Alex Acosta for mistakes in the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, claiming the former U.S. attorney cast the “original sin” in the case.

Acosta, while U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, signed off on the 2008 non-prosecutorial agreement that was later described as a “sweetheart deal,” allowing Epstein to plead guilty to a lesser charge and obtain work-release from his county jail sentence.

“The original sin in the Epstein case was the way it was initially brought by Mr. Acosta,” Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Patel claimed Acosta, who went on to become labor secretary in President Donald Trump’s first term, hamstrung further investigation and prosecution efforts.

“Mr. Acosta allowed Epstein to enter — in 2008 — to plea to a non prosecution agreement which then the courts issued mandates and protective orders legally prohibiting anyone from ever seeing that material ever again without the permission of the court. The non-prosecution also barred future prosecutions of those involved at that time,” Patel charged.

Georgia’s highest court has declined to consider Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ appeal of her removal from the Georgia election interference case against President Donald Trump and others.

Citing an “appearance of impropriety” created by a romantic relationship Willis had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to lead the case, the Georgia Court of Appeals in December ruled that Willis and her office could not continue to prosecute the case.