‘These aren’t normal times’: Frustrated Democrats demand their leaders do more to meet the moment
CNN
On a Friday afternoon in downtown Philadelphia, dozens gather on the corner of South 2nd and Chestnut streets. A mix of retirees and fired federal workers, they are teeming with fury, but not just toward President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the early actions of the administration.
On a Friday afternoon in downtown Philadelphia, dozens gather on the corner of South 2nd and Chestnut streets. A mix of retirees and fired federal workers, they are teeming with fury, but not just toward President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the early actions of the administration. They are also acutely angry at a fellow Democrat: Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. These people represent the roughly 73% of Democratic voters in a recent CNN/SSRS poll who say the party’s caucus in Congress is doing too little to oppose Trump. In their view, Fetterman and other Washington Democrats are enabling illegal firings across the federal workforce and the erosion of the rule of law. “I understand the importance of bipartisanship in normal times. But these aren’t normal times,” said Robert Lipartito, a 69-year-old retired music librarian from Pennsport. Lipartito argues the party needs to be more dogmatic and is not sympathetic to the needle that purple-state Democrats believe they must thread. “It’s not just a matter of trying to find consensus when someone is literally dismantling our institutions right before our eyes and turning on our allies. I mean, there’s no middle ground for that,” he said. The group of protesters, organized by a local offshoot of Indivisible, a progressive movement created in 2016 after Trump first took the White House, marched from Fetterman’s Philadelphia field office to Independence National Historic Park chanting “Stand up for us” as people passing by honked and cheered.
Former election clerk Tina Peters’ prison sentence has long been a rallying cry for President Donald Trump and other 2020 election deniers. Now, her lawyers are heading back to court to appeal her conviction as Colorado’s Democratic governor has signaled a new openness to letting her out of prison early.
The Trump administration’s sweeping legal effort to obtain Americans’ sensitive data from states’ voter rolls is now almost entirely reliant upon a Jim Crow-era civil rights law passed to protect Black voters from disenfranchisement – a notable shift in how the administration is pressing its demands.
Venezuelan officials, including acting President Delcy Rodriguez, returned to X late Tuesday in an apparent reversal of Nicolas Maduro’s 2024 decision to block the site in the country.
The woman killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last week served on the board of her son’s school, which linked to documents encouraging parents to monitor ICE and directing them to training.
During a marathon Supreme Court session Tuesday over whether states may ban transgender women from participating in women and girls’ sports, some justices were already focused on what may lie around the corner
President Donald Trump appeared to flip someone off as he toured a Michigan Ford plant in an incident caught on video Tuesday, and the White House defended the action as an “appropriate” response to someone screaming at the commander-in-chief.
White House officials are heaping blame on DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro over her office’s criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, faulting her for blindsiding them with an inquiry that has forced the administration into a dayslong damage control campaign, four people familiar with the matter told CNN.
The interim Venezuelan government has freed at least four Americans who were imprisoned in Venezuela, a source familiar with the matter told CNN on Tuesday.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is now providing free internet access via its Starlink satellite service to users in Iran as the country’s regime continues its bloody crackdown on anti-government protests, according to a tech expert in touch with Iranian Starlink users.
The aircraft used in the US military’s first strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a strike which has drawn intense scrutiny and resulted in numerous Congressional briefings, was painted as a civilian aircraft and was part of a closely guarded classified program, sources familiar with the program told CNN. Its use “immediately drew scrutiny and real concerns” from lawmakers, one of the sources familiar said, and legislators began asking questions about the aircraft during briefings in September.
DOJ pleads with lawyers to get through ‘grind’ of Epstein files as criticism of redactions continues
“It is a grind,” the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division said in an email. “While we certainly encourage aggressive overachievers, we need reviewers to hit the 1,000-page mark each day.”
A new classified legal opinion produced by the Justice Department argues that President Donald Trump was not limited by domestic law when approving the US operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro because of his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief and that he is not constrained by international law when it comes to carrying out law enforcement operations overseas, according to sources who have read the memo.
President Donald Trump is working to tighten his grip on his party this week as he faces an unusual threat from Congress: an embarrassing rebuke of his military actions overseas.