Right-wing media group Project Veritas is suing its founder James O’Keefe, accusing him of bullying employees, racking up massive personal bills on company accounts, and using Project Veritas resources to start a new, rival media shop.
A gender-bending, patriarchy-smashing, hilarious new take on the classic tale, adapted for performance by teen actors for family audiences. Robin Hood is (and has always been) Maid Marian in disguise, and leads a motley group of Merry Men (few of whom are actually men) against the greedy Prince John. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, who will stand for the vulnerable if not Robin? What is the cost of revealing your true self in a time of trouble?
So wait... for three years, he's "Sleepy Joe" and can't talk or function or think... but he also outsmarted your entire party?
— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) May 30, 2023
I see... pic.twitter.com/BHoO0rnCOi
The House Freedom Caucus has turned on Kevin McCarthy.
— Mayo 🌻 (@MayoIsSpicyy) May 30, 2023
I love when they eat their own.
— mike luckovich (@mluckovichajc) May 30, 2023
Russia’s Interior Ministry on Monday issued an arrest warrant for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham following his comments related to the fighting in Ukraine.
In an edited video of his meeting on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that was released by Zelenskyy’s office, Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, noted that “the Russians are dying” and described the U.S. military assistance to the country as “the best money we’ve ever spent.”
While Graham appeared to have made the remarks in different parts of the conversation, the short video by Ukraine’s presidential office put them next to each other, causing outrage in Russia.
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Graham commented on Twitter, saying that “to know that my commitment to Ukraine has drawn the ire of Putin’s regime brings me immense joy.”
“I will continue to stand with and for Ukraine’s freedom until every Russian soldier is expelled from Ukrainian territory,” he tweeted. “I will wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin’s corrupt and immoral government as a Badge of Honor.”
Deputies in Russia’s State Duma have drafted a bill that would completely ban gender affirming surgeries, according to the newspaper Vedomosti. The bill has not yet been submitted for consideration, but journalists from the outlet have seen its text.
The proposed legislation would reportedly prohibit Russians from performing surgical procedures for the purpose of gender transitions as well as from changing their gender markers and names in official documents.
The founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison for orchestrating a weekslong plot that culminated in his followers attacking the U.S. Capitol in a bid to keep President Joe Biden out of the White House after the 2020 election.
Stewart Rhodes is the first person charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack to be sentenced for seditious conspiracy, and his sentence is the longest that has been handed down so far in the hundreds of Capitol riot cases.
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Prosecutors argued that a lengthy sentence is necessary to deter future political violence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy pointed to interviews and speeches Rhodes has given from jail repeating the lie 2020 election was stolen and saying it would be again in 2024. In remarks just days ago, Rhodes called for “regime change,” the prosecutor said.
A Republican-led investigation on Wednesday accused Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of committing multiple crimes in office — including felonies — during an extraordinary public airing of scandal and alleged lawbreaking that plunged one of the GOP’s conservative stars into new political and legal risk.
For more than three hours, investigators presented findings alleging Paxton sought to hide an affair, misused his office to help a donor, skirted protocols “grossly outside” norms and built a culture of fear and retaliation in his office. Investigators told the GOP-led House General Investigating Committee that there was evidence that Paxton repeatedly broke the law over the years, including by misusing official information, abusing his official capacity and retaliation.
About 60,000 pounds of a chemical used as both a fertilizer and an explosive is missing after likely disappearing during a rail trip from Wyoming to California last month, according to federal records.
A rail car carrying ammonium nitrate left a plant operated by explosives manufacturer Dyno Nobel in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12, according to an incident report filed May 10 by a representative of the company with the National Response Center.
Federal prosecutors have evidence Donald Trump was put on notice that he could not retain any classified documents after he was subpoenaed for their return last year, as they examine whether the subsequent failure to fully comply with the subpoena was a deliberate act of obstruction by the former president.
The previously unreported warning conveyed to Trump by his lawyer Evan Corcoran could be significant in the criminal investigation surrounding Trump’s handling of classified materials given it shows he knew about his subpoena obligations.
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In particular, prosecutors have fixated on Trump’s valet Walt Nauta, after he told the justice department that Trump told him to move boxes out of the storage room before and after the subpoena. The activity was captured on subpoenaed surveillance footage, though there were gaps in the tapes.
The warning was one of several key moments that Corcoran preserved in roughly 50 pages of dictated notes described to the Guardian over several weeks by three people with knowledge of their contents, which prosecutors have viewed in recent months as central to the criminal investigation.
Despite a federal anti-corruption rule designed to prevent donors from receiving pension investments, private equity executives have donated millions to political groups supporting DeSantis, all while the governor oversaw the transfer of more than $1 billion of Florida public employees’ retirement dollars into these donors’ high-fee, high-risk “alternative investments.”
A Lever review found that had the state pension fund instead been invested in a simple, low-cost index fund, compared to its present mix of holdings, teachers, police officers, and other state employees would have about $10 billion more in their retirement funds.
Deborah and her husband, Lee, learned in late November that their baby had Potter syndrome, a rare and lethal condition that plunged them into an unsettled legal landscape.
The state’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of gestation has an exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. But as long as their baby’s heart kept beating, the Dorberts say, doctors would not honor their request to terminate the pregnancy. The doctors would not say how they reached their decision, but the new law carries severe penalties, including prison time, for medical practitioners who run afoul of it. The hospital system declined to discuss the case.
Holy shit. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) just said Americans should demand the end to democracy. “The American people should just stand up and say enough is enough, let’s don’t have elections anymore.” (@therecount) pic.twitter.com/qUt6eo4vbM
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) May 16, 2023
A special prosecutor found that the FBI rushed into its investigation of ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and relied too much on raw and unconfirmed intelligence as he concluded a four-year probe that fell far short of the former president’s prediction that the “crime of the century” would be uncovered.
The report Monday from special counsel John Durham represents the long-awaited culmination of an investigation that Trump and allies had claimed would expose massive wrongdoing by law enforcement and intelligence officials. Instead, Durham’s investigation delivered underwhelming results, with prosecutors securing a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee but losing the only two criminal cases they took to trial.
In an apparent escalation of Yevgeny Prigozhin's public feud with Vladimir Putin over his for-hire army, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group offered to sell out the locations of Russian troops to Ukrainian officials in exchange for their mercy on the battlefield, according to leaked intelligence documents.
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In exchange for Ukrainians pulling back from the front lines of battle in Bakhmut, where Wagner mercenaries have faced heavy losses that Prigozhin blames on Putin's lack of support and supplies, Prigozhin would reveal the locations of Russian troops and stand by as Ukraine attacked.
— Skyflyer Channel 8 News (@skyflyer81) May 13, 2023
A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits.
A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that a law banning licensed federal firearms dealers from selling handguns to young adults under 21 violates the Second Amendment and is unconstitutional.
The ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Payne in Richmond, if not overturned, would allow dealers to sell handguns to 18- to 20-year-olds.
In his 71-page ruling, Payne wrote that many of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship are granted at the age of 18, including the right to vote, enlist in the military without parental permission and serve on a federal jury.
The pharmaceutical company behind Martin Shkreli's infamous 4,000 percent price hike—now known as Vyera Pharmaceuticals—filed for bankruptcy this week and plans to sell its assets to pay off millions in debts.
In court documents filed Wednesday, Vyera's chief restructuring officer, Lawrence Perkins, largely blamed Shkreli for dooming the company and its affiliates.
A 13-count indictment was unsealed today in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York charging George Anthony Devolder Santos, better known as “George Santos,” a United States Congressman representing the Third District of New York, with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.
A jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million in a judgment that could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House.
The verdict adds to Trump’s legal woes and offers vindication to Carroll, whose allegations had been mocked and dismissed by Trump for years. She nodded as the verdict was announced in a federal courtroom in New York City just a few hours after deliberations had begun She hugged supporters and smiled through tears.
Jurors also found Trump liable for defaming Carroll after she made her allegations public. Trump chose not to attend the civil trial and was absent when the verdict was read.
A Louisiana man has been charged with aggravated assault and battery after shooting at children who had been playing hide and seek outside his home, striking a 14-year-old girl, officials said.
The girl suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the head early Sunday, and was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office said in a statement posted on social media Monday.
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David Doyle, 58, told detectives that he got his gun when he saw shadows outside his home and shot at people he saw running away, unknowingly hitting the girl, officials said.
U.S. Army investigators have recovered flight recording devices from two helicopters that collided last week in Interior Alaska, killing three soldiers and injuring another.
The AH-64 Apache helicopters collided April 27 about 50 miles east of Healy while returning from training at an aerial gunnery range in the Donnelly Training Area southeast of Fairbanks.
A judge has dismissed former President Donald Trump's lawsuit against The New York Times. Trump sued the paper after it published a 2018 story on Trump family business dealings and Trump's "dubious tax schemes during the 1990s." Trump's lawsuit, filed in 2021, accused the paper and three of its reporters of conspiring with his niece, Mary Trump, to get his tax records through illegal means. He sought $100 million in damages.
"The crux of [Trump's] claim is that a reporter for The Times caused his niece, Mary Trump, to take 20-year-old tax and financial documents held by her lawyer and disclose them in violation of a 2001 settlement agreement," noted Justice Robert R. Reed of Manhattan's Supreme Court.
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"Courts have long recognized that reporters are entitled to engage in legal and ordinary news-gathering activities without fear of tort liability — as these actions are at the very core of protected First Amendment activity," Reed wrote.
The judge ordered Trump to pay the legal fees of the three Times reporters he sued and the paper's legal fees.
In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”
Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.
