SmartNews

'I can hear James Carville’s head exploding': Gen Z DNC official claps back at Dem critic

Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg escalated the firestorm he created this week when he announced a new multimillion-dollar campaign targeting incumbents in his party – an effort he made clear that he isn’t backing down from.

Hogg on Friday jabbed critics inside his party who have slammed his new campaign, including longtime Democratic strategist James Carville, who called it “the most insane thing I ever heard.”

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DOJ intervenes for Trump as he fights E Jean Carroll's civil judgment: report

The Department of Justice is filing to intervene on behalf of President Donald Trump in his appeal of the $83 million civil defamation judgment against him won by writer E. Jean Carroll, The Daily Beast reported on Friday.

"In a joint motion filed last week with Trump’s legal team, the Justice Department said the federal Westfall Act, which provides immunity to government employees for actions taken within the scope of their duties, should apply to Trump," reported Erkki Forster. "The department argued that the U.S. government should therefore be substituted as the defendant in the case, CBS News reported."

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'Not their smoking gun': CNN analyst takes sledgehammer to Trump admin's new 'huge leap'

CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig tore into the Trump administration’s newest attempt to justify its deportation of the Maryland man who was mistakenly sent to El Salvador under the president’s hardline immigration agenda.

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday released a 2022 traffic stop report, the agency claimed contained “bombshell” proof that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a suspected human trafficker.

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'White House is giving high-fives': Ex-DNC official weighs in on Dem's El Salvador visit

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) delivered a fiery speech in defense of the rights of wrongly deported Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia after meeting with him following nearly a month of lockup in a notorious Salvadoran megaprison. But to former Democratic National Committee official Mo Elithee, he may have spent too much time focusing on the wrong thing.

Specifically, Elithee told a follow-up panel on CNN he had concerns with how much time Van Hollen devoted to debunking the idea that the drinks at the table where he was photographed meeting with Abrego Garcia were "margaritas," or at least that they had been ordered willingly.

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'Sweeping wartime authority': Judge calls emergency meeting over another mass deportation

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, the same judge who has threatened to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt of court for ignoring judicial orders on how to handle mass migrant deportations, called an emergency meeting on Friday evening over another potential round of removals, CNN's Priscilla Alvarez reported.

"There is a group of Venezuelan migrants at a detention facility in Texas who are concerned that they are going to be deported under the sweeping wartime authority known as the Alien Enemies Act," Alvarez told anchor Jake Tapper. "Now, there have been court rulings across the country to block some people from being removed under this authority. This particular district in Texas, the Northern District, is not — is not the case."

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'Power struggle': Trump ousts IRS head days after appointment as ally clashes with Musk

President Donald Trump reportedly ousted his acting IRS commissioner after just a few days in the role as a "power struggle" unfolded between a Cabinet member and Elon Musk.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent complained to Trump that, as the head of the department, he should hire the commissioner of the IRS. Instead, Trump appointed Gary Shapley after a recommendation from Musk, bypassing Bessent.

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'Absolute nadir’: Experts fear US vulnerable to attack after latest Trump moves

Adversaries targeting the United States through covert cybersecurity campaigns aimed at amplifying political discourse have been given more freedom to conduct their missions thanks to President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the country's disinformation campaign.

That’s according to a new report in The New York Times, which detailed Friday how efforts to combat disinformation by U.S. cybersecurity agencies have come to a screeching halt under President Donald Trump’s administration.

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‘Margarita-gate’: Senator insists photos of boozy beverages are a plot to 'deceive people'

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) tried to dispel notions Friday that he and Kilmar Ábrego García — the Maryland man mistakenly deported to a notorious Salvadoran megaprison — were drinking margaritas during their meeting earlier in the week.

Van Hollen landed at Dulles International Airport on Friday after a two-day trip to El Salvador, where he asked to see Ábrego García. The U.S. government has previously admitted he was wrongfully deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.

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'Don’t let his unearned smugness fool you': Ex-GOP chair rips JD Vance over latest remark

A former Republican National Committee chair tore into Vice President JD Vance over his ongoing demonization of a Maryland father mistakenly deported to El Salvador and trapped in the infamous CECOT megaprison — and for his dismissal of the very concept of due process rights.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia has never been convicted of any crime, and the basis of the allegation that he was a member of the criminal MS-13 gang was the word of one police informant. Moreover, he had a protective order in place requiring that if he was deported, it couldn't be to El Salvador. Trump administration attorneys have acknowledged the deportation was an "administrative error."

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'Flat-out lies': Senator demands 'end' to Trump's 'illegal abductions'

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) delivered a speech at Dulles International Airport on Friday, detailing his experience traveling to El Salvador to track down the wrongfully deported Maryland family man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom he finally managed to get into contact with on Thursday evening after days of getting the run-around from government officials.

"We need to end the illegal abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and bring him home," said Van Hollen, who has previously accused the Trump administration of misinformation on the case.

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'Angry': First female Thunderbird pilot 'shocked' after Air Force yanked articles on her

Col. Nicole Malachowski was celebrated for being the first woman selected to fly Thunderbird #3 with the USAF Air Demonstration Squadron and the first woman to fly on any Department of Defense military jet demonstration team. But all articles about her were yanked from websites in accordance with President Donald Trump's directive to remove all diversity, equity and inclusion content from government sites.

The Air Force later told CNN in a statement that the content was being restored. When CNN looked at the stories, they are now headlined saying, "DEI_A Life in flight for the first woman 'Thunderbirds' pilot."

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‘Should no longer have a job’: Trump lashes out at federal workers with new threat

Federal workers on Friday were put on notice by Donald Trump that their jobs could be in jeopardy if they don’t fall in line with the president’s MAGA agenda.

Trump escalated his attacks against civil servants after his administration moved forward earlier in the day with a new rule known as “Schedule F” that effectively strips about 50,000 people, or 2% of the federal workforce, of their civil service protections, according to media reports.

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'Extortionist!' Columnist flags Trump move 'deserving of an exclamation point'

President Donald Trump's dealings with everything from Ukraine to Ivy League universities amount to blatant extortion, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote Friday.

"Trump isn’t a dealmaker; he is closer to an extortionist," Parker wrote. "At least he meets the definition of the term: someone who uses coercion or punishment to get what he wants."

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