SmartNews

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) laid a smackdown on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on MSNBC, over the ongoing effort to prosecute Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka.

Baraka, a progressive candidate for governor, joined a protest along with several members of Congress at Delaney Hall, a large, privately-operated detention facility being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in contravention of local laws prohibiting such facilities from operating in the area. He was arrested on trespassing charges, which he disputes and claims he had every right to investigate the facility for the well-being of his community. Noem defended all of this at a congressional hearing this week, which Ramirez is a member of.

Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) found himself at the center of a MAGA-inspired revolt over his push to raise taxes on sports betting – even triggering the president’s son to angrily weigh in on Thursday.

DeWine, who is reviving a plan to hike Ohio’s sports gaming tax, says the revenue would go toward funding future stadiums and youth sports programs, according to local media reports. But some of President Donald Trump’s allies say the proposal is a betrayal of the MAGA leader’s agenda.

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) laid out clearly on CNN Thursday evening that Northeast Republicans trying to play hardball for full repeal of the state and local tax deduction cap are not going to get their way, and they had better get with the program and accept a compromise in President Donald Trump's budget bill.

Repealing the SALT cap, which was itself passed in Trump's first tax bill in 2017, has become a massive sticking point for Republicans in New York in particular, triggering faction-fighting within the caucus. GOP leadership is currently offering to raise the SALT cap rather than repeal it outright, but multiple GOP lawmakers are refusing to accept that as the deal.

Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell sounded the alarm Thursday as she warned that President Donald Trump is losing steam among his own voters amid growing economic worries – particularly over grocery prices.

Appearing on MSNBC, Longwell, who also hosts The Focus Group Podcast, told host Nicolle Wallace that voters in weekly focus groups – many of them Trump voters – are increasingly frustrated with the cost of living and are blaming Trump’s economic agenda, especially his sweeping set of tariffs.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), speaking to CNN, tore into President Donald Trump's move to strip deportation protections away from thousands of Afghans who risked their lives to help U.S. troops carry out their mission against the Taliban in that country.

The decision has sparked intense backlash, including from faith leaders, which prompted the Trump administration to consider walking back the move at least for the handful of Afghan refugees who are Christians.

MAGA allies melted down Thursday afternoon over former FBI Director Jim Comey's beach photo referencing President Donald Trump.

Comey posted on Instagram a photo of shells on a sandy beach that spell out "86 47." He captioned the photo, "Cool shell formation on my beach walk."

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is pushing back hard against new reporting by the Wall Street Journal that President Donald Trump personally intervened to talk her out of running for Senate.

For weeks, Greene had publicly entertained the idea of a run conditional on Gov. Brian Kemp not running, which he confirmed earlier this month. Shortly thereafter, Greene issued a lengthy statement saying she would not run after all, even though she felt confident she could win, because the "uniparty" controls the Senate and she wouldn't be able to get anything done there.

President Donald Trump lost another court case on Thursday regarding his crackdown on immigration.

One of the administration's ideas was to make part of New Mexico's border with Mexico a National Defense Area. It would allow the Justice Department to charge border crossings as a more severe crime.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is facing a new round of questioning after a failed fraud crackdown created even more chaos at the Social Security Administration — and found little to no fraud.

Already reeling from office closures, staff shortages and service cuts, the struggling agency is now reportedly being slowed down even further by an anti-fraud tool that barely caught any fraud while dramatically slowing down the system.

The Trump administration is preparing to sell off the longtime home of Voice of America, marking the latest push to downsize the federal government and shut down the international news agency, according to a new report in Bloomberg.

The Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which houses VOA, its parent agency, the Agency for Global Media, and the Department of Health and Human Services, sits just south of the National Mall and two blocks from the Capitol. The historic, million-square-foot facility is now among several high-profile government-owned properties listed for “accelerated disposal,” Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Law professor and former Justice Department official Andrew Weissmann took issue with two Supreme Court justices while listening to oral arguments on Thursday.

Before the court was a nationwide injunction from a lower court that paused President Donald Trump's executive order, which redefined who qualifies for birthright citizenship in the United States.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), now a star at the far-right One America News Network, took the lead with a delegation of mostly Republican lawmakers to visit an infamous megaprison in El Salvador that President Donald Trump is using as part of a deal with that country's autocratic President Nayib Bukele to house large numbers of deportees the administration accuses of being gang members.

But the narrative he and some other outlets have pushed about what the cameras saw when they visited the wing for U.S. deportees at the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, is completely false, one immigration expert wrote.

President Donald Trump's former acting deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security was asked about the oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Thursday concerning birthright citizenship.

Upon entering office, Trump issued an executive order that eliminates some birthright citizenship for babies born to migrants.