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A convicted drug dealer whose sentence President Donald Trump commuted is back behind bars after he was charged with assaulting a 3-year-old child and violating his supervised release, The New York Times reported Friday.

It was the fifth time Jonathan Braun has been arrested since Trump commuted his 10-year sentence as he left office in 2021, according to the report. The decision came as a “last-minute” clemency request that made its way to the president through Braun’s family connection with Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, the Times added.

Federal prosecutors are pursuing a prison sentence of just over seven years for disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY), reported CBS News' Scott MacFarlane on Friday evening, in a motion describing him as a "pathological liar and fraudster."

"Prosecutors argue George Santos engaged in a 'craven' attempt to leverage his lawbreaking to gain celebrity and riches — including by musing about book deal while on courthouse steps," noted MacFarlane on X.

Some Ukrainians living in the United States after fleeing Russia's invasion mistakenly received "terse and threatening" email notices this week informing them to leave, according to a report.

The notices told the Ukrainians their provisional legal status were being terminated in a week, The Washington post reported Friday night. They were told to to leave the United States “immediately."

Legislation is being introduced in the House to curb President Donald Trump's tariff power — and a Republican is introducing it.

According to Politico, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a representative from a competitive Omaha-based district who is known for occasionally criticizing the president, "said he plans to introduce a companion bill to the bipartisan Senate legislation aimed at reclaiming Congress’ authority over tariffs, becoming the first House Republican to openly challenge the powers President Donald Trump is using to launch a massive global trade war."

The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board delivered a one-two punch over President Donald Trump’s “tariff blunder” – and the White House’s creative spin of the fallout – as Friday brought the second straight day of steep market losses.

The stinging criticism came hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt continued to insist that “the economy is starting to roar” as she touted a better-than-expected March jobs report.

Democratic AGs sue National Institutes of Health over disrupted medical research grants

by Jacob Fischler, Daily Montanan
April 4, 2025

A federal judge in Rhode Island accused the Trump administration of "covertly" withholding funds for Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief programs from states that didn't vote for him, Courthouse News reported on Friday.

"In March, U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued a preliminary injunction in favor of 23 states that sued the government over its plan to implement a broad pause to state aid," noted the report.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) delivered a dire warning to American consumers still digesting the effects of President Donald Trump’s massive set of tariffs as he painted a doomsday scenario he said the country is at “a very real risk of.”

The bleak outlook from the Republican senator came Friday on an episode of his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” where he turned the tables on Trump and threw a veiled shot at his fellow Republicans.

The White House issued a cheeky response to a federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled Friday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia's deportation was illegal and unconstitutional. Garcia was deported despite a 2019 court order protecting him from deportation to El Salvador due to fears of persecution. The judge ordered that Garcia be returned by 11:59 p.m. on Monday.

Dr. Peter Marks, the outgoing top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, says that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushed him out because he wouldn't assist in his demands to find nonexistent data that vaccines are dangerous, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

"The outgoing official said he was speaking out to encourage parents to vaccinate their children against measles, as cases mount in Texas and New Mexico. He urged the Trump administration to give a full-throated endorsement of the measles vaccine because it can prevent deaths and recommended a vaccination campaign," reported Liz Essley Whyte. "An HHS spokesman didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Kennedy has said he wants the federal government to step up its work fighting chronic disease. He has said he isn’t anti-vaccine, told senators he would follow the science and called stopping the measles outbreak a 'top priority.'"

A CNN host on Friday had a tough time reining Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) back into the conversation about the devastating market losses that continued for a second straight day once the topic of the network’s treatment of Joe Biden emerged.

The spirited back-and-forth ignited on CNN’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt" after the host peppered the Republican lawmaker with questions surrounding the effects that President Donald Trump’s massive set of tariffs are having on his Tennessee district.

CNN's Jake Tapper began his Friday show by addressing the startling drop in the financial markets at the end of the week and the reaction of Wall Street experts.

President Donald Trump said his tariff plan "is already working," Tapper quoted.

The Department of Homeland Security made the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency submit to a lie detector test as part of their investigation into leaks out of the department, reported Politico on Friday.

Kristi Noem, the leader of the department, previously vowed criminal prosecution for the leaks and already threatened polygraph tests on other lower-level employees.