pelespirit

By the end of the year, with the plan’s co-authors installed in key roles across the federal government, more than half of the items inside the Heritage Foundation’s mammoth wishlist have been implemented.

The group’s 2026 agenda, published earlier this year as a plan for “Restoring America’s Promise,” pledges to “engage in Washington to dismantle the deep state and in the states to restore the family, rebuild American institutions, and restore opportunity for all” as the country heads into its 250th anniversary.

Annie Farmer, who spoke with the Herald this week, questioned why the DOJ was looking at her flights in 2019 — 20 years after she was sexually abused by Epstein and Maxwell. She told the Herald she was confused, but not surprised, since the Epstein files rolled out by the DOJ have often lacked context and are heavily redacted.

The July 2019 flight information also includes itineraries for Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice and ex-girlfriend. Maxwell is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse and, in at least one instance, participating in the abuse herself. Annie Farmer was one of four women who testified against Maxwell at her 2021 trial.

Here at NPR, we like to ring in the new year by looking at new state laws taking effect on Jan. 1.

This year, states are enacting a slew of laws focused on wages, social media rules, restrictions on gender-affirming care, AI regulation and much more.

Here is a sampling of some of those changes, as reported by public media journalists across the country.

Just after midnight, Zohran Kwame Mamdani was sworn in as New York City's first Muslim mayor in a modest ceremony held in a historic subway station under City Hall.

The oath was administered by New York state Attorney General Letitia James, a fellow Democrat and a close Mamdani ally. "Congratulations, Mr. Mayor," she said, to cheers.

A much larger public ceremony will be held later on New Year's Day on the steps of City Hall, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders — one of Mamdani's political mentors — and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez expected to take part.

District judges and appeals courts have issued various rulings about the legality of the deployments. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block a lower court’s decision barring Trump’s use of the National Guard in Chicago.

"The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions," Smith tells lawmakers early in his deposition.

He argues that his investigation, which was launched under President Joe Biden, "developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power".

He adds that his team "also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom".

The Trump administration has said it is freezing child care funds to all states until they provide more verification about the programs in a move fueled by a series of fraud schemes at Minnesota day care centers run by Somali residents.

All 50 states will be impacted by the review, but the Republican administration is focusing most of its ire on the blue state of Minnesota and is calling for an audit of some of its centers.

Minnesota Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement Wednesday that he was “exploring all our legal options to ensure that critical childcare services do not get abruptly slashed based on pretext and grandstanding.”

It is unclear how much more robust the verification process for states will be than it already has been.

Enhanced tax credits that have helped reduce the cost of health insurance for the vast majority of Affordable Care Act enrollees expired overnight, cementing higher health costs for millions of Americans at the start of the new year.

The U.S. Postal Service has adopted a new rule that could create doubt about whether some ballots mailed by voters by Election Day will receive postmarks in time to be counted.

A USPS rule that took effect on Dec. 24 says mail might not receive a postmark on the same day the agency takes possession of it. The postal service says it isn’t changing its existing postmark practices and is merely clarifying its policy, but some election officials have looked to postmarks as a guarantee that mail ballots were cast before polls closed.

The new rule holds implications for 14 states and Washington, D.C., that count ballots arriving after Election Day if they are postmarked on or before that day — commonly called a “ballot grace period.” In these states, ballots placed in the mail by voters before the deadline may not be counted if the postal service applies a postmark after Election Day.

The USPS rule says that “the postmark date does not necessarily indicate the first day that the Postal Service had possession of the mailpiece.”

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a claim by President Donald Trump’s administration that it is legally barred from securing funding for the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, noting that a court order already bars the administration from shutting the agency down.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson came as the CFPB faced the imminent exhaustion of funds. The Trump administration has denied the CFPB additional cash to meet expenses since taking control of the agency in February but ithas been repeatedly blocked in the courts from firing workers en masse.

While initial reports suggested that the fresco would be removed if Giménez’s alterations could not be undone, it remains resolutely in situ—and while its artistic merit remains questionable, the painting has proven an economic boon for Borja. According to the BBC, the town received some 5,000 tourists a year before 2012; in 2013, it welcomed 40,000 visitors, and even today, some 15,000 to 20,000 people go out of their way to get a first-hand look at Giménez’s work. The town has since built an arts center devoted to the painting and its history, and Giménez staged an exhibition of her own paintings in 2013.