Interior department, which has defunded conservation organizations, claims fee hike is for conservation
The interior department announced today new “America-first” entrance fees for national parks, commemorative annual passes featuring Donald Trump and “resident-only patriotic fee-free days for 2026” including Trump’s birthday.
Starting next year, entrance fees for international visitors will more than triple.
Continue reading...District judge in California says detainees who were already living in the US are legally entitled to a bond hearing
A federal judge has ruled that Donald Trump’s administration cannot impose mandatory detention on thousands of migrants held by US immigration authorities without first giving them an opportunity to seek release on bond.
US district judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California, certified a nationwide class of individuals who were already living in the United States when they were detained and are legally entitled to a hearing to determine whether they can be released on bond while their deportation cases proceed.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Officials frame strikes as self-defense against violence, without naming aggressor, while Trump claims they’re to stop US overdose deaths
The Trump administration is framing its boat strikes against drug cartels in the Caribbean in part as a collective self-defense effort on behalf of US allies in the region, according to three people directly familiar with the administration’s internal legal argument.
The legal analysis rests on a premise – for which there is no immediate public evidence – that the cartels are waging armed violence against the security forces of allies like Mexico, and that the violence is financed by cocaine shipments.
Continue reading...Senator hits back at Trump administration after Pentagon launches investigation for possible breaches of military law
US senator Mark Kelly said it was “non-controversial” for him and other Democrats to implore military personnel to disobey “illegal orders” from the Trump administration – hitting back at accusations of “serious allegations of misconduct” leveled against him by the Pentagon.
“I said something that was pretty simple and non-controversial – and that was that members of the military should follow the law,” the Arizona Democrat senator, a former US Navy officer and astronaut who flew on four separate space shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011, told MS Now on Monday night.
Continue reading...Lawsuit filed in West Virginia maintained that Justice and his wife received notice of the funds due since 2009 but didn’t pay
Jim Justice, the Republican US senator, and his wife have agreed to pay more than $5m that the couple owes in back taxes shortly after they were sued over the 16-year-old debt by the federal government.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in their home state of West Virginia, maintained that the Justices had received notice from the US treasury department of the funds due since 2009 but had “neglected or refused to make full payment of those assessments”.
Continue reading...President signed executive order for Rubio and Bessent to submit report on chapters in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan
Donald Trump on Monday began the process of designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists, a move would bring sanctions against one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements.
Trump signed an executive order directing secretary of state Marco Rubio and treasury secretary Scott Bessent to submit a report on whether to designate any Muslim Brotherhood chapters, such as those in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, according to a White House fact sheet. It orders the secretaries to move forward with any designations within 45 days of the report.
Continue reading...DoJ argues that congressional action last week to release the Epstein files permits unsealing of court records
The justice department has renewed its request to unseal grand jury materials from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation that led to the disgraced financier’s federal indictment on sex-trafficking charges in 2019.
The submission, signed by US attorney Jay Clayton for the southern district in New York, says that Congress made clear in approving the release of investigative materials last week that the court records should be released.
Continue reading...Army secretary Daniel Driscoll presented a Russian wishlist, highlighting differences with the administration
The US army secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration’s newest proposal to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine – but his ties to JD Vance have put a close ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president on the frontlines of Donald Trump’s latest push to end the war.
Before his trip to Kyiv last week, Driscoll was not known for his role as a negotiator or statesman, and his early efforts at selling the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.
Continue reading...Mark Kelly, a veteran and Democrat targeted by Trump over military comments, says he is ‘not going to be intimidated’
Senator Mark Kelly on Sunday urged congressional Republicans to publicly reject Trump’s threats against him and five other Democratic lawmakers who stated that military personnel are not obligated to follow illegal commands.
“We’ve heard very little, basically crickets, from Republicans in the United States Congress about what the president has said about hanging members of Congress,” Kelly, of Arizona, said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Continue reading...New York mayor-elect reaffirms past criticisms of president after agreeing to work with him on cost-of-living concerns
Zohran Mamdani has reiterated his view that Donald Trump is a “fascist” and a “despot” just days after the pair had a surprisingly cordial meeting at the White House.
Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the New York City mayor-elect was asked if he still considered Trump a threat to democracy. “Everything that I’ve said in the past I continue to believe,” Mamdani replied. “I think it is important in our politics that we don’t shy away from where we have disagreements.”
Continue reading...Users posing as rightwing Americans are operating internationally, per the platform’s transparency feature
Many of the most influential personalities in the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement on X are based outside of the US, including Russia, Nigeria and India, a new transparency feature on the social media site has revealed.
The new tool, called “about this account,” became available on Friday to users of the Elon Musk-owned platform. It allows anyone to see where an account is located, when it joined the platform, how often its username has been changed, and how the X app was downloaded.
Continue reading...Some Republicans offered congresswoman plaudits, but AOC was scathing in her dismissal of her frequent sparring partner
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s surprise resignation from Congress late on Friday, saying she refused to be a “battered wife” following her public fallout with Donald Trump, has been slammed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman and Greene’s frequent sparring partner.
“She’s carefully timing her departure just 1-2 days after her pension kicks in,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement on her Instagram account, and criticized her voting record on healthcare.
Continue reading...Temporary hold on lower court ruling will remain in place while supreme court considers whether to allow new map
The US supreme court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found Texas’s 2026 congressional redistricting plan pushed by Donald Trump likely discriminated on the basis of race.
The order, signed by Justice Samuel Alito, will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map, which is favorable to Republicans, to be used in the midterm elections.
Continue reading...Georgia representative had said she had received death threats and was called a ‘traitor’ by Trump over Epstein vote
Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on Friday evening she will be resigning from office effective 25 January.
The Republican congresswoman who was denounced by Donald Trump over her support for the release of the Epstein files, explained her decision in a 10-minute social media video posted on X.
Continue reading...The president hosted the mayor-elect at the White House – and seemed enamoured of his fellow New Yorker
The highly anticipated Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani – the mayor-elect of New York City, the US president’s beloved home town – was hardly the combustible tête-à-tête many had predicted. For the moment at least, the two New Yorkers appeared friendly, smiling and cautiously optimistic about the work they might accomplish together.
Neither revived their hot campaign trail rhetoric, in which they cast each other as diametrically opposed political adversaries. Trump had labeled Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and urged voters to back his opponent, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. In turn, Mamdani had assailed Trump as a “despot” and pledged to be the president’s “worst nightmare”. Here are five things that stood out from their surprising display of political bonhomie.
Continue reading...Mountbatten-Windsor ‘continues to hide’, US lawmakers say, after deadline they set to receive response passes
Two Democratic lawmakers involved in the US congressional investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein on Friday condemned Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s “silence” in response to their request that he sit for a deposition.
Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the House oversight committee, and Suhas Subramanyam, a member of the panel, were among the Democrats who earlier this month sent the former British prince a letter seeking his cooperation in their inquiry into Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
Continue reading...President has chosen white men for key posts at expense of women and people of colour, Brookings Institution finds
Donald Trump has assembled the least diverse US government of the 21st century, filling the corridors of power with white men at the expense of women and people of colour, research shows.
Nine in 10 individuals confirmed by the Senate in the first 300 days of the second Trump administration were white, according to the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington.
Continue reading...‘Morale is completely lost,’ say workers as Trump administration strips some programs and transfers others
Donald Trump’s bid to gut the US Department of Education “makes no sense”, according to workers inside the federal agency, who accuse the administration of trying to make their lives “as difficult and traumatic as possible”.
Three employees inside the department spoke to the Guardian, with one warning that morale has been “completely lost”, 10 months after Trump returned to the White House. All requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
Continue reading...Great and good pay tribute in Washington but honouring of former vice-president was an exercise in omission
You suspected that Maga had not conquered the Washington national cathedral when Bill Kristol was spotted at a men’s urinal conversing with Chris Wallace. You knew it for sure when James Carville, Anthony Fauci and Rachel Maddow were seen sitting close to one another in the nave.
The funeral of the 46th US vice-president, Dick Cheney, who died earlier this month aged 84, was a throwback to a less raucous and rancorous time. Ex-presidents and vice-presidents, Democratic and Republican, made small talk, but Donald Trump, who spent Thursday crying treason and calling for Democrats to be put to death, and his deputy JD Vance were not invited.
Continue reading...Release of documents comes amid conjecture Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuelan president
The White House under Gerald Ford tried to block a landmark Senate report that disclosed the CIA’s role in assassination attempts against foreign leaders and ultimately led to a radical overhaul in how the agency was held to account, documents released to mark the 50th anniversary of the report’s publication reveal.
The documents, dating from 1975, were posted on Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research group, as it sought to highlight the report’s significance amid conjecture that Donald Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, amid a massive US military build-up against the country.
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