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President Donald Trump raged at Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Thursday night over what the president described as an "old and ridiculous custom" that is preventing him from confirming more U.S. attorneys.

"I have eight GREAT U.S. Attorneys, Highly Respected ALL, who will not be confirmed for their positions in various Highly Consequential States only because they’re Republicans, and the Democrats have convinced Chuck Grassley to honor the stupid and outdated 'Blue Slip' tradition, which precludes very talented and dedicated people from attaining High Office," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), a decades-long statesman who has served in multiple Democratic Party leadership roles, had some choice words on MSNBC Thursday evening for one of his Republican colleagues who is trying to persuade state lawmakers to redraw House districts to eliminate his seat.

"I do have to ask you really quick before we have to go, Congressman," said anchor Alicia Menendez. "Just in the last hour, there was this op-ed by Representative Ralph Norman, who, of course, is running for governor in your state, in a very crowded Republican field: 'Trump should lean on South Carolina to eliminate Jim Clyburn's district.' What would you like to say to Representative Norman?"

A court filing in the Smartmatic case against Fox News revealed that a survey of employees done by Fox's human resources department found that the staff has a "resounding lack of confidence" in the company as a news organization.

Among the problems employees had with the company were ethics, fair treatment, and their efforts to fact-check and report things fairly and accurately, Fox's own filing says.

CNN anchor Erin Burnett was taken aback on Thursday by a KFile report that revealed deleted social media posts in which a rising star in the Democrat Party once called himself a "communist," said all police are "b-------," and described people who live in rural America as "racist" and "stupid."

Graham Platner, an oyster farmer running for Senate in Maine against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), made several inflammatory social media posts, according to the report. He told KFile that the post no longer reflects his views on a range of issues.

U.S. attorneys, acting or officially confirmed, are struggling amid President Donald Trump's ongoing demands to target his political enemies.

Already, the Justice Department has indicted former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Former White House ethics counsel Norm Eisen appeared amped up on MSNBC's "The Weeknight" Thursday about the criminal indictment of President Donald Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton, going so far as to compare it to the purges of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Eisen's co-panelist, former prosecutor Kristy Greenberg, noted this case stands apart from many of Trump's other politically charged indictments, including against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, because the charges — which involve mishandling of classified information — appear to have more merit than the others, and perhaps even comparable to the criminal indictment of Trump himself for hoarding documents at Mar-a-Lago.

A House Republican is blaming a "ruse" targeting multiple GOP offices on Capitol Hill after photos surfaced of an American Flag altered to feature a swastika hanging in his office.

Rep. Dave Taylor (R–OH) garnered national headlines this week when an image made the rounds on social media showing an American flag altered to display a swastika inside his Washington, D.C. office. The image was a screenshot from a Zoom call with one of Taylor’s staffers and showed the doctored flag hanging on a cubicle wall in the background.

Historian and author Anne Applebaum said during a podcast interview on Thursday that President Donald Trump's planned renovations at the Internal Revenue Service resemble the way Russian President Vladimir Putin rose to power in the early 2000s.

Applebaum joined Tim Miller on "The Bulwark Podcast" on Thursday, where the two discussed the state of American democracy under Trump. Applebaum noted that Trump's plan to install loyalists in the IRS and relax rules that allow the agency to go after left-leaning groups were similar to the tactics used by Putin to silence dissent in Russia.

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance doesn't consider the Justice Department's indictment of President Donald Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton to be in quite the same category as the controversial and politically-motivated indictments of other Trump critics, like former FBI Director James Comey or New York Attorney General Letitia James.

That's because the indictment, which centers on Bolton's handling of classified information, actually outlines real charges, she said on Thursday's edition of MSNBC's "The Beat" — and in particular, one detail that looks very bad for him.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee plan to make public a compilation of "damning" incidents where federal troops used excessive force against civilians, according to a new report.

The group of more than a dozen lawmakers sent some examples in a five-page letter to the White House on Thursday, according to a report by NOTUS. In the letter, the lawmakers called on President Donald Trump to "halt this attack" against American cities and citizens.

A Milwaukee Brewers fan has been fired from her job and resigned from her role in the Make-A-Wish Foundation after she was recorded on video shouting obscenities and threatening to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on a Latino fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, according to a report.

In a video making the rounds on social media, Dodgers fan Ricardo Fosado records himself taunting Brewers fans, including a woman identified by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as Shannon Kobylarczyk.

The Justice Department has charged executives at the voting equipment company Smartmatic with a bribery scheme involving the Philippines, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.

The alleged bribes to election officials in that country, which total $1 million and took place between 2015 and 2018, "were made to obtain a contract with the Philippines government to help run that country’s 2016 presidential election and secure the timely payment for its work, according to a superseding indictment filed Thursday in a Florida federal court," reported Joshua Goodman.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper fact-checked House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Thursday's edition of "The Lead" about a key claim Johnson and other Republicans have made about the ongoing government shutdown.

"The democrats keep deciding to keep the government shut down; they are forcing the administration to triage federal spending," Johnson said. "Why? Because they have turned off the funding streams, Jake. That is what's happened. They can make this stop immediately."