3 Americans are back home after a historic prisoner swap. Readjusting to their normal lives could mean challenges ahead
CNN
There were plenty of hugs to go around the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where three Americans formerly detained in Russia shared emotional reunions with their families.
There were plenty of hugs to go around the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where three Americans formerly detained in Russia shared emotional reunions with their families. Late Thursday marked the first time they embraced their loved ones – in many months in two cases and several years in another – since the three were released from Russian detention as part of a historic prisoner exchange. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan and Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva were welcomed back warmly at the military facility by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their relatives. Gershkovich, 32, who was arrested in March 2023 while on a reporting assignment, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage last month by a Russian court, CNN previously reported. Whelan, 54, who spent nearly six years imprisoned in Russia following his December 2018 arrest in Moscow while in Russia for a friend’s wedding, received a 16-year prison sentence in 2020 on espionage charges. The US State Department designated both Whelan and Gershkovich as wrongfully detained. Kurmasheva was handed a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence last month during a closed-door hearing in Russia the same day Gershkovich was sentenced.
As Chad Curry busily ferries his teenage children through the streets of their Chicago neighborhood of West Ridge, he eyes passing vehicles with a skepticism he didn’t have just a few months ago.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?
The Army gynecologist described in a recent lawsuit as a “predator in uniform” is now being held in the Bell County Jail in Texas, “after apparently violating conditions of liberty imposed by his commander,” according to an Army spokesperson.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.