US News

The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump another victory Monday by expanding his authority to fire heads of independent agencies, a decision that Zeteo’s Andrew Perez argued was just the latest example of the court’s “far-right justices” executing a long sought-after plan.

“Fundamentally, Trump and the justices are partners in fascism,” Perez wrote in an analysis published in Zeteo Tuesday. “With teamwork, a handful of elite, unelected far-right operatives and a narcissistic game-show host can take apart American liberal democracy piece by piece, and replace it with authoritarian rule.”

A veteran journalist and former New York Times public editor called out CBS News' gesture toward public accountability as a "blatant sham."

The network's Donald Trump-aligned new owners tapped Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former chief executive of the right-leaning Hudson Institute, to review complaints about its coverage as ombudsman, but media expert Margaret Sullivan wrote on her "American Crisis" Substack that he had failed to be independent or transparent as promised.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly disavowed the existence of any formal agreement reached during his August summit with President Donald Trump in Alaska, undercutting months of Kremlin messaging that had treated the meeting as a diplomatic turning point in the war in Ukraine.

Senior Russian officials had insisted for months that a path to ending the war — largely on Moscow's terms — had effectively been settled in Anchorage, with only Ukrainian resistance standing in the way, but that narrative has unraveled in recent days, and Putin himself finally undercut Trump's diplomatic claims, reported the Washington Post.

The hardline MAGA wing of the House Republican caucus has once again forced House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) into a difficult spot, one that has relegated his role to “something like a triage nurse,” Punchbowl News reported, despite being arguably the most powerful lawmaker in Washington and third in line to the presidency.

Johnson ultimately caved Monday to a demand from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) to attach the SAVE Act – President Donald Trump’s controversial voter ID bill – to the annual defense spending bill. While the SAVE Act has no path forward in the Senate according to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Luna had threatened to stall House proceedings unless her demand was met.

A bipartisan briefing on the Iran ceasefire deal turned tense when President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly berated a Democratic congresswoman and cut off her microphone after she pressed him on the details of the agreement.

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) said she asked Witkoff direct questions about who authored the 14-point memorandum of understanding with Iran and why its terms appeared to favor Tehran from the start, and she also asked how much of his time as envoy was actually devoted to U.S. diplomatic work versus his own business interests, reported The Daily Beast.

Former Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC), who portrayed himself as a champion of fiscal discipline during his tenure in Congress, has put his campaign creditors on notice that they will not get another penny from him.

According to NOTUS, the former lawmaker who lost his re-election bid in 2018, has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission indicating it will pay zero dollars on approximately $726,000 in outstanding debts.

Christopher Rufo, a hugely influential conservative activist who’s advised President Donald Trump’s team directly, was forced to acknowledge the president’s “corruption” problem in an interview with The New York Times published Tuesday, and ultimately conceded that it didn’t look good.

“I guess one thing I think about, when I think about Donald Trump and virtue, is corruption,” said Ezra Klein, an influential liberal columnist for the Times.

The Trump administration's effort to broker peace in the Middle East is being shaped — and at times complicated — by competing approaches from Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

A top Trump adviser described the two men as representing different instincts within the president's own thinking on the region, with Rubio leaning more pro-Israel and Vance more skeptical of Israeli positions, and one U.S. official told Axios the secretary of state has purposefully taken a back seat in the negotiations.

A pair of legal experts were astounded on Monday while discussing a trap the Trump Department of Justice may have laid for itself in a recent case.

One of the arguments Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made when the DOJ created the $1.776 billion settlement between the Trump administration and the IRS was that Trump had been irreparably harmed by a government contractor or employee, which is why they sought such a large payout. However, that argument could get the Trump DOJ into trouble in other cases where privacy matters are concerned, according to Lisa Graves, co-host of the "Court Accountability Action" podcast and Christopher Swartz, the senior ethics counsel for the Democracy Defenders Fund.

A political analyst called out a striking contradiction that President Donald Trump's chief spokesperson made during an interview on Fox News.

David Pakman, host of "The David Pakman Show" on YouTube, said in a recent video that Karoline Leavitt "immediately imploded" during her appearance on Fox News's "Fox & Friends" on Monday. He noted that Leavitt had a hard time explaining how the ceasefire brokered between the U.S. and Iran is going, and offered a contradiction that left him taken aback.