House approves key budget blueprint to unlock Trump’s agenda
CNN
House Republicans have taken a critical step to advance President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and border priorities through Congress, a major win for party leadership after quelling a conservative rebellion over the plan’s price tag.
House Republicans have taken a critical step to advance President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and border priorities through Congress, a major win for party leadership after quelling a conservative rebellion over the plan’s price tag. The Thursday morning vote on the Senate’s budget blue print – a key initial step in the long budget process – will ultimately allow Republicans to muscle the president’s first big legislative measure over a Democratic filibuster. It capped a dramatic week for Speaker Mike Johnson, who was forced to call off plans for a vote on the contentious measure just hours earlier after nearly 20 Republicans demanded a guarantee of steep spending cuts. GOP leaders ultimately convinced them to back the plan for how, punting bigger – and more difficult – fights on spending for the coming weeks. It marked a win for Johnson, who has repeatedly relied on Trump to pass contentious bills that his conservatives hate. The speaker met with the last group of holdouts ahead of the vote Thursday morning, as he sought to avoid an embarrassing defeat from his conference. And Trump applied pressure, promoting his “big, beautiful, bill” on Truth Social and making calls to lawmakers. Rep. Ralph Norman told CNN that a conversation with Trump helped to flip his vote. “This has evolved over the last 24 hours. You’ve got the speaker, you’ve got the president, you’ve for Thune,” the South Carolina Republican said.
The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to two sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.
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.