A grave week for civil rights, democracy and a presidency
CNN
Democrats appear certain to add another failure to their list of missed deadlines and thwarted legacy goals this week, with a push for voting rights bills expected to crash in the Senate with humiliating implications for Joe Biden's presidency.
The party faces a moment of stark symbolism just a day after the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., which Democrats had set as a deadline to pass new laws to counter Republican curtailments on voting in multiple states. Votes expected to be called by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will enshrine ideological divides in the party and call into question the credibility of an under-pressure President who has led a full-throated campaign for legislation demanded by modern civil rights leaders in the week that he marks his anniversary in office.
Democrats will hold a high-stakes caucus meeting on Tuesday evening, but there is no sign they can convince holdout colleagues to support efforts to change Senate rules to pass the two bills with a simple majority.That means that when Schumer, a New York Democrat, brings up voting rights legislation later this week, it will fail because Democrats are unable to get 60 votes to break Republican filibuster tactics.Schumer could then hold a vote on changing those filibuster rules to pass the two bills with the votes of all 50 Democrats and a tie-breaker vote from Vice President Kamala Harris.That tactic would force Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who oppose removing the Senate filibuster, to go on record opposing a centerpiece of Biden's presidency and may only deepen their estrangement with their colleagues.
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.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.
Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.
Young Americans are “a generation under profound strain” with little confidence in institutions and widespread economic concerns, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey of adults younger than 30 released Thursday.
As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.
The murder trial of Brian Walshe, who is accused of killing and dismembering his wife in 2023 continues. Follow for live updates.
The FBI arrested a person Thursday who investigators believe planted pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the 2021 US Capitol riot.
Lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office are expected to appear in federal court in Albany on Thursday to try to disqualify a US attorney from investigating the state’s civil case against President Donald Trump.
A new poll shows more than 70% of Republicans with Obamacare coverage don’t want their enhanced premium subsidies to expire.