
With help from Manchin and Sinema, a Republican revolution from below is driving national policy
CNN
Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country are approving a wave of new voting restrictions on virtually party-line votes that require only a simple majority to pass. The US Supreme Court has likewise decided the key voting rights rulings that helped trigger this surge of state legislation on a party-line, majority-vote basis over the past decade.
But the announcements last week by Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona that they will not support exempting voting rights legislation from the filibuster means Congress can respond to these moves only with a bipartisan supermajority of 60 votes.
Their decision effectively provides Senate Republicans a veto on whether Congress can undo the restrictions on voting advanced by their fellow Republicans in the states and GOP-appointed justices on the Supreme Court. And that means Democrats have little chance through this decade of preserving a national floor of voting rights.

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.

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.

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.









