1+ hour, 1+ min ago (114+ words) A Democratic lawmaker gave President Donald Trump a verbal tongue-lashing Tuesday over his xenophobic rant against Somali immigrants living in Minnesota. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told CNN anchor Jake Tapper that the president's rant during the Cabinet meeting and press conference on Tuesday against the Somali immigrant community, including Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), was absurd. Kaine said immigrants have only helped the United States, and blasted Trump's claims as unfounded. "Jake, you know Virginia pretty well. We were one out of 100 foreign-born when I was born in 1958," Kaine said. ALSO READ: GOP judge eyeing challenge to scandal-hit Texas Dem set" to dodge legal pitfall: experts...

1+ hour, 39+ min ago (284+ words) A former White House official from President Donald Trump's first term blasted the president's trade agenda on Tuesday during an interview on CNN. Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, discussed Trump's trade agenda on Tuesday's broadcast of "The Arena" with host Kasie Hunt. He commended Trump for bringing energy prices down, but argued that doing so revealed that the president's agenda has been a complete "failure." "The fact that he has lowered energy prices is significant, as he has by 25%, in some way, just exacerbates how bad the trade agenda is, because if you actually lower energy prices by that much, and you still have inflation at 3%, it shows this trade agenda is a failure, and it's not working," Short said. A signature element of Trump's trade agenda is increasing tariffs on foreign goods. Trump…...

2+ hour ago (571+ words) But the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) was among those wondering whether the Dells' investment of $6.25 billion'a fraction of their $148 billion fortune'would ultimately benefit wealthy investors far more. The Dells, who are behind Dell Technologies, announced the investment plan months after President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law. The tax and spending law includes a provision that would start an investment account for every US citizen child born between January 2025 and December 2028, with a $1,000 investment from the US government. As Jezebel reported, the couple's contribution would go to an additional 25 million children, up to age 10, who were born prior to the 2025 cut-off date for the initial Trump Accounts. "Around 80% of children born between 2016-2024 would theoretically qualify, although there are cutoffs based on household income: Applying families would have to live in ZIP codes where the median…...

3+ hour, 8+ min ago (161+ words) President Donald Trump wants to keep former special counsel Jack Smith's final report classified, according to a new court filing Tuesday. In the filing from his personal lawyer, the president told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon " a judge he appointed and his first direct request of her " to continue an extension on an 11-month order to block the Justice Department from sharing the report, Politico reported. Smith submitted it just before Trump's second inauguration and reportedly tells the story of the criminal case against the president after he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, including in a bathroom. "The filing is infused with the typical disdain Trump has expressed for his former prosecutors, labeling Smith a 'so-called special counsel' and saying the case was 'marred by numerous deficiencies and repeated abuses of office,'" the outlet reported. ALSO READ: GOP judge…...

4+ hour, 9+ min ago (186+ words) CNN's Daniel Dale provided one of his signature fact checks to President Donald Trump's blizzard of "lies" during his latest cabinet meeting. The president insisted "affordability" was a meaningless word made up by Democrats to make him look bad and offered an unbidden "soliloquy" about cognitive tests he recently took, and the 79-year-old Trump then made a series of boasts about the economy that Dale told "Inside Politics" were mathematically impossible. "If there was a reduction of more than 100 percent, Americans would get paid to acquire their medications, which is not happening," Dale added. "He could tout some actual reductions in the prices of a smattering of drugs, but they're not more than 100 percent, and that's certainly not widespread." Trump campaigned on bringing down consumer prices on Day One, but that hasn't been the case " despite his claims to the…...

4+ hour, 23+ min ago (181+ words) Political observers and analysts bashed a strange prediction SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk made during a reunion of the Department of Government Efficiency in Texas on Tuesday. Musk appeared via video at the DOGE meet-up, where he predicted the country was in the midst of a "great 12-year span" of the second Trump administration, followed by two consecutive terms for a future JD Vance administration, according to a report by Politico. The event occurred on Nov. 22 in Balstrop, Texas, near the locations of Musk's SpaceX and Boring Company's sites, the report added. President Donald Trump has openly suggested that he considered running for a third term, going so far as to sell "Trump 2028" merchandise to his supporters. Presidents are prohibited from serving more than two terms under the 22nd Amendment, but some Trump allies have said they plan to challenge…...

4+ hour, 35+ min ago (572+ words) Unfortunately, it didn't end in normal fashion. As NC Newsline's Brandon Kingdollar reported, while Fernando was walking back to work after buying a drink at a nearby store, he saw a group of masked men wearing dark glasses emerge suddenly from a group of unmarked SUVs that had pulled up to the job site. Within a few moments, they had cornered Fernando behind a fenced-off HVAC area in which he had been trying to evade their attention. "Where are you from?" one of the masked men demanded of Fernando as they handcuffed him and tossed him into one of the SUVs alongside another sobbing young worker. Eventually, the masked men dumped Fernando " who was born in Raleigh and was carrying and displaying his North Carolina Real ID " in a parking lot a half mile or so from where they had…...

4+ hour, 38+ min ago (761+ words) Republicans are obeying President Donald Trump not simply out of loyalty, but out of fears that his supporters will resort to violence against them, election law strategist and Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace on "Deadline: White House" on Tuesday.This comes as Indiana state lawmakers advance an extreme mid-decade gerrymander that deletes every Democratic district in the state at Trump's direction, despite a large number of GOP state senators vowing to vote against it " and facing terroristic threats."Let me just press you on the broader political moment," said Wallace. "So Trump is at 36 percent and falling. The elections one month ago were a clear repudiation, rejection of Donald Trump and Republicans who have acquiesced to everything he wants him to do, even though all those things are very unpopular politically ... How successful could even…...

4+ hour, 50+ min ago (239+ words) JD Vance appeared to be swiped by his boss on Tuesday, leading one analyst to remark that President Donald Trump "let slip" his disdain for the vice president. During a Cabinet meeting, Trump appeared to struggle with alertness and coherence while disparaging Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D). "I think the man's a grossly incompetent man," a drowsy Trump said, referring to Walz. Trump then appeared to take a swipe at both Walz and Vance. "I thought that from the day I watched JD destroy him in a debate. I was saying, "Who was more incompetent? That man or my man?' I had a man, and he had a man'they were both incompetent," said Trump. Trump's confused rant left Edith Olmstead of The New Republic taken aback. "Based solely on the structure of Trump's statement, the president appeared to assert that 'that…...

5+ hour, 5+ min ago (295+ words) President Donald Trump repeated his claim on Tuesday that any documents bearing a signature from an autopen used during the Biden administration are "null and void" in a social media post that also included a vague new threat against his political foes. Trump first made the claim before Thanksgiving that "radical left lunatics" took Biden's autopen away from him and illegally signed pardons and other legal documents. His new post on Tuesday also appeared to reference a group of people he could target for retribution. "Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts, signed by Order of the now infamous and unauthorized 'AUTOPEN,' within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect," Trump wrote on Truth Social. Trump has pressured administration officials to investigate other foes, such as former…...