pelespirit

The Department of Justice is seeking to obtain voting materials from the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County, Georgia — the same county where President Donald Trump was criminally charged in connection with a scheme to overturn the state’s election results.

DOJ’s Civil Rights Division sued the Fulton County clerk of courts Friday, asking for the county to provide “all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files” from the 2020 presidential election.

The lawsuit, which comes after Republicans on Georgia’s election board subpoenaed Fulton County for the same records earlier this year, marks a significant heightening of Trump’s ongoing falsely held belief that voting in Georgia during the 2020 election was illegitimate.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings, who found the government violated the agreement, ordered the release of more than 600 immigrants on bond, which the appeals court paused. Roughly 450 remain in custody, attorneys say.

In the 2-1 opinion, the appeals court said Cummings overstepped his authority on the blanket release of the detainees without assessing each case individually. The consent decree “carefully maps out what the district judge can or cannot order” to balance enforcement and public safety, according to the opinion. But the ruling also said the Trump administration wrongly categorized all immigrant arrestees as subject to mandatory detention.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys said they were disheartened by the ruling but glad the court upheld the extension of the agreement, which among other things requires ICE to show documentation for each arrest it makes. Federal judges elsewhere including in Colorado have also ruled to limit warrantless arrests.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration diverted more than $35 million in taxpayer funds — an amount far greater than previously known — as part of a brazen agenda last year to defeat two ballot amendments he staunchly opposed, a Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.

Much of the state money was intended to assist needy Floridians, including children. Instead, it paid for political consultants, lawyers and thousands of advertisements that helped DeSantis and his supporters win at the ballot box.

The ads purchased with the diverted money blanketed TV, social media and radio stations in the weeks before the election. They defended Florida’s six-week abortion ban and made exaggerated claims about the dangers of marijuana without mentioning that both were the subject of ballot amendments last fall.

Along the way, the governor’s administration bent state spending laws and obscured millions in government spending, records and interviews show.

Indiana Republicans have defied intense pressure from President Donald Trump by rejecting his demands that they pass a voting map meant to favour their party in next year's midterm elections.

In one of the most conservative states in the US, 21 Republicans in the Senate joined all 10 Democrats to torpedo the redistricting plan by a vote of 31-19. The new map passed the House last week.

If it had cleared the legislature, Republicans could have flipped the only two Democratic-held congressional seats in the state.

Trump's call for Republican state leaders to redraw maps and help the party keep its congressional majority in Washington next year has triggered gerrymandering battles nationwide.

Editor's Note: This was on the front page. They took it down pretty quickly, but thankfully I got a screenshot. WTF is "Some say..." There was nothing in the article about threats and/or which party was doing the threats.

The US has imposed fresh sanctions on six more ships said to be carrying Venezuelan oil, a day after seizing a tanker off the country's coast.

Sanctions have also been placed on some of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's relatives and businesses associated with what Washington calls his illegitimate regime.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the seized vessel, called the Skipper, had been involved in "illicit oil shipping" and would be taken to an American port.

Caracas has described it as an act of "international piracy".

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at blocking states from enforcing their own artificial intelligence (AI) regulations.

"We want to have one central source of approval," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday.

It will give the Trump administration tools to push back on the most "onerous" state rules, said White House AI adviser David Sacks. The government will not oppose AI regulations around children's safety, he added.

The move marks a win for technology giants who have called for US-wide AI legislation as it could have a major impact on America's goal of leading the fast-developing industry.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is asking a federal court to stop Trump’s White House ballroom project until it goes through comprehensive design reviews and public comments and wins approval from Congress.

The National Trust argues that Trump, by fast-tracking the project, has committed multiple violations of the Administrative Procedures Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, while also exceeding his constitutional authority by not seeking congressional approval for a project of this scale.

Trump, a Republican, already has bypassed the federal government’s usual building practices and historical reviews when he razed the East Wing of the White House. He recently added another architectural firm for a ballroom that itself would be nearly twice the size of the White House before the East Wing’s demolition.

House Democrats released a selection of photos from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, including some of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and the former Prince Andrew.

The 19 photos released by Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee were a small part of more than 95,000 they received from the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges. The photos released Friday were separate from the case files that the Department of Justice is now compelled to release.

The photos were released without captions or context and included a black-and-white image of Trump alongside six women whose faces were blacked out. The committee did not say why their faces were blacked out.

Link to pics: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/fq3vn18ltfd83re8ggtle/AHYB3CbERvyT38o_vHllVx4?rlkey=tz5pq4zr9i6nofkpi2g7l5vne&e=3&st=z46l8nor&dl=0

The tenants just wanted to talk to their landlord.

Dozens of residents from across the country gathered Monday at the Capital Realty Group offices in Spring Valley, New York, hoping to set up a meeting with the real estate company’s president, Moshe Eichler.

These individuals were part of a first-of-its-kind nationwide tenants union, representing residents of more than 1,500 affordable housing units across nine properties in six states, including Colorado. But the landlord, they say, won’t recognize their union or negotiate.

As the group of 70 began a news conference outside the office, they were met by a strange sight: Dozens of people arrived to counter their protest, video provided by union organizers shows. These men, most of whom appeared to be Hispanic, carried Israeli flags and signs about combating antisemitism. They admitted to an interpreter that they didn’t know why they were there, the translator told The Denver Post.

Senior Democratic lawmakers and at least one Republican have condemned Wednesday’s seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker off the nation’s coast, with one saying Donald Trump is “sleepwalking us into a war with Venezuela”.

There is growing, at least somewhat bipartisan unease in Washington over the administration’s escalating military posture in the region. Trump has accused Venezuela of facilitating drug trafficking, and increased the US military presence in the Caribbean to a level not seen in decades. The administration has also conducted a campaign of bombings of alleged drug boats, killing more than 80 people so far.

Trump confirmed the tanker seizure shortly after it occurred, telling reporters: “We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually.” When asked what would happen to the oil, Trump responded: “We keep the oil, I guess!”

Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert at The Century Foundation (TCF) noted that new unemployment claims are now at their highest level since early September (2025).

“These totals don’t include an additional 12,732 former federal workers who are also now relying on unemployment benefits, as the number of federal workers on UI has stayed at levels not seen since the pandemic, even after the government shutdown has ended,” Stettner said.

“This disappointing news comes on the heels of other troubling labor market data,” he continued, pointing to private-sector payroll figures showing the US economy lost 32,000 jobs in November. “With hiring still so weak, it is no surprise that the percentage of workers feeling confident enough to quit their job dropped to its lowest level since the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020. In fact, our polling shows that 27% of Americans said they took on a ‘second job, side hustle, or gig work’ in the past year to help make ends meet.”

The Gold Card scheme promises US residency in "record time" and will require a $1m fee which is "evidence that the individual will substantially benefit the United States", the programme's website said.

Businesses sponsoring employees are required to pay $2m, along with additional fees. A "platinum" version of the card that offers special tax breaks will also be available soon for $5m, the website said.

Extra fees to the government may be charged depending on each applicant's circumstances, the site said. Individuals are also required to pay a non-refundable $15,000 processing fee before their application is reviewed.