Husband of House Speaker Pelosi Gets 5 Days in Jail, 3 Years of Probation in DUI

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The husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pleaded guilty Tuesday to misdemeanor driving under the influence charges related to a May crash in California’s wine country and was sentenced to five days in jail and three years of probation.  Paul Pelosi already served two days in jail and received conduct credit for two other days, Napa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Solga said. Paul Pelosi will work eight hours in the court’s work program in lieu of the remaining day, Solga said during Paul Pelosi’s sentencing, which he did not attend.  State law allows for DUI misdemeanor defendants tomore

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Trump Asks Court to Block FBI From Reviewing Documents Seized From Mar-a-lago

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Lawyers for former U.S. President Donald Trump have asked a federal court to temporarily block the FBI from reviewing documents recovered from his Florida estate until a special master can be appointed to separate material covered by executive privilege.  Federal investigators are probing whether Trump illegally kept records after the end of his presidential term.   The FBI seized 11 sets of classified material from Trump’s estate earlier this month, including some labeled with the nation’s highest level of classification that can only be viewed in designated government facilities. The National Archives also removed boxes from the estate earlier thismore

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Trump Seeks Special Master to Review Mar-a-Lago Documents

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Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Monday asked a federal judge to prevent the FBI from continuing to review documents recovered from his Florida estate earlier this month until a neutral special master can be appointed.  The attorneys asserted in a court filing, their first since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago two weeks ago, that the sets of documents taken from the residence were “presumptively” covered by executive privilege.  “This matter has captured the attention of the American public. Merely ‘adequate’ safeguards are not acceptable when the matter at hand involves not only the constitutional rights of President Trump,more

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DOJ in Quandary as It Mulls Disclosing Trump Search Document

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A federal judge has given the U.S. Justice Department one week to redact an affidavit used to justify the recent search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence before the rest of the document could be made public. The document is being sought by a group of news outlets following the unprecedented search that was carried out as part of an ongoing federal investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago. The court-issued warrant used to search Trump’s residence was unsealed last week, showing that Trump is under investigation for several potential crimes including obstruction ofmore

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Trump Wouldn’t Be First Former World Leader Facing Criminal Charges

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Experts say the unsealing of court documents Thursday sharpens the focus on former President Donald Trump as a possible subject of a criminal investigation into his removal and storage of sensitive documents from the White House. As VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports, the U.S. has now joined other democratic countries in investigating a former leader. Camera: Celia Mendoza …

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Biden Administration Strengthens Hostage Policy

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Hostage negotiations are a delicate test in diplomacy and are handled at the highest levels of the American government. The Biden administration recently clarified its stance on this issue — but does this come in time for the release of several high-profile hostages held overseas? VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington. …

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Trump Critic Liz Cheney Falls in US Primary, But Murkowski Survives

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U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, a fierce Republican critic of Donald Trump who has played a prominent role in the congressional probe of the January 6 assault on the Capitol, lost to a Trump-backed primary challenger in Wyoming on Tuesday.    But Senator Lisa Murkowski, another Republican who has defied the former president, cleared a hurdle in Alaska. She was set to face Trump-endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka in the Nov. 8 congressional election, as the two candidates advanced in that state’s nonpartisan primary.  Cheney’s defeat, by Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman, marks a significant victory for the former president in his campaign to oustmore

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Arizona’s Border Wall Work Delayed After 2 Containers Topple

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An effort by Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to use shipping containers to close a 1,000-foot gap in the U.S.-Mexico border wall near Yuma, Arizona, suffered a setback when two stacked containers toppled over.  Claudia Ramos, a correspondent for the digital platform of Univision Noticias in Arizona, posted on her Twitter feed a photo she took Monday morning of the containers on their side. She said they fell on the U.S. side of the border.  No witnesses have come forward to say what happened Sunday night.  Ramos said contractors in the area told her that they believed the containers maymore

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Judge: Senator Graham Must Testify in Georgia Election Probe

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A federal judge on Monday said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham must testify before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws while trying to overturn his narrow 2020 general election loss in the state. Attorneys for Graham, a Republican, had argued that his position as a U.S. senator provided him immunity from having to appear before the investigative panel and asked the judge to quash his subpoena. But U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May wrote in an order Monday that immunities related to his role as a senator domore

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Congress OKs Democrats’ Climate, Tax, Health Bill, a Biden Triumph

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A divided Congress gave final approval Friday to Democrats’ flagship climate, tax and health care bill, handing President Joe Biden a back-from-the-dead triumph on coveted priorities that the party hopes will bolster its prospects for keeping control of Congress in November’s elections.  The House used a party-line 220-207 vote to pass the legislation, which is but a shadow of the larger, more ambitious plan to supercharge environment and social programs that Biden and his party envisioned early last year. Even so, Democrats happily declared victory on top-tier goals like providing Congress’ largest ever investment in curbing carbon emissions, reining inmore

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Backers, Opponents of Abortion Rights Recalibrate After Surprising Kansas Referendum

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A Republican-leaning state in America’s socially conservative heartland recently shocked both sides of the long-running battle over abortion, calling into question the conventional wisdom about how and where the procedure might be restricted or banned.    Voters in Kansas cast ballots last week on a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have eliminated an existing right to abortion. The amendment was expected to pass handily in a state no Democratic presidential contender has won in nearly 60 years and where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 15 percentage points in the 2020 election.    Voters rejected the ballotmore

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January 6 Attack Dominates Debate in Wyoming Congressional Race

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Some 2,500 kilometers from Washington, D.C., the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol still looms large in the minds of Wyoming voters who will be heading to the polls on August 16 to decide if Republican Liz Cheney should keep her seat in Congress. Wyoming’s only representative in the U.S. House, two-term Congresswoman Cheney has staked her political career on being one of the few Republicans to openly criticize former President Donald Trump. But she has an uphill fight to win her party’s nomination in a state that delivered Trump his most lopsided win of the 2020 election, withmore

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Four Key Races in Wisconsin, Minnesota Midterm Primaries

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Voters in states including Wisconsin and Minnesota picked candidates for the U.S. Congress and other offices in primaries on Tuesday, in another test of former President Donald Trump’s influence in the Republican Party ahead of the November 8 midterms. Vermont and Connecticut also held nomination contests, while Minnesota held a special election for its vacant 1st Congressional District. The following are four key races: Wisconsin Republican governor’s primary In its final stretch, the Republican nomination contest for Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race became another proxy battle between Trump and his estranged former vice president, Mike Pence. Trump endorsed construction company owner Timmore

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Trump Cries Foul After FBI Searches His Home

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Former President Donald Trump claims he is being politically persecuted after the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday, in what appeared to be part of a long-running investigation of whether he has kept official documents instead of sending them to the National Archives when he left office. White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at the political fallout of the search. …

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FBI, Justice Department Routinely Prosecute Misuse of Classified Documents

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Federal officials are saying little so far about Monday’s FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, but Trump and one of his sons have said the move is part of an investigation into Trump’s removal of official documents from the White House. While such a search of a former U.S. president’s residence would appear to be unprecedented, investigations into the removal or unlawful retention of classified information is not. Since 2005, the FBI and the Justice Department have launched at least 11 such investigations, some targeting high-profile former U.S. officials, including a former national security advisermore

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Trump Facing Major Criminal Investigations as He Considers 2024 Presidential Run

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As he strongly hints at another campaign for the White House in 2024, former U.S. President Donald Trump is facing major federal and state criminal investigations into his actions in the immediate aftermath of his failed reelection campaign in 2020.     Monday’s unprecedented FBI raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was the latest indication that investigators remain focused on the country’s 45th president. Reports say the investigators were seeking classified documents he may have taken with him when he left Washington last year.    The search was court-authorized and was likely sanctioned at the highest levels of themore

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Trump Says Mar-a-Lago Home in Florida Raided by FBI

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump said FBI agents have raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.   “My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in lengthy statement Monday evening. “After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”   The circumstances of the search were not immediately clear, according to media reports. The Justice Department, however, has been actively investigating the discovery of classified information in boxes of records that weremore

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Lawyer: Giuliani Won’t Testify Tuesday in Georgia Election Probe

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Rudy Giuliani will not appear as scheduled Tuesday before a special grand jury in Atlanta that’s investigating whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 general election in Georgia, his lawyer said.  A judge last month had ordered Giuliani, a Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, to appear before the special grand jury Tuesday.  But Giuliani’s attorney, Robert Costello, told The Associated Press on Monday that Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand jury, had excused Giuliani for the day.  Nothing in publicly available court documents indicatesmore

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Examining the Debate Over Native American Land Acknowledgments

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A civil rights lawsuit filed by a University of Washington computer science professor has called attention to a largely academic debate over land acknowledgments — formal statements that recognize Indigenous custodianship of geographic areas on which institutions stand or events take place. Evolving out of the work of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, land acknowledgments are becoming increasingly common at U.S. universities and sporting events. Yale University, for example, developed this statement: “Yale University acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, havemore

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US Warns Pacific Isles of ‘Struggle’ Against Coercive Regimes

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A top U.S. diplomat warned Pacific Islands of a new struggle against violent power-hungry regimes Sunday, as she visited the Solomon Islands to mark the 80th anniversary of World War II’s Battle of Guadalcanal. With China’s military carrying out war drills around Taiwan and Russia bombarding Ukraine, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman hit out at a new crop of world leaders reviving “bankrupt” ideas about the use of force. Visiting a battlefield memorial in the Solomon Islands, Sherman said “some around the world” had forgotten the cost of war or were ignoring the lessons of the past. She hitmore

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Senate Rules Referee Weakens Democrats’ Drug Plan in Economic Bill

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The Senate parliamentarian Saturday dealt a blow to Democrats’ plan for curbing drug prices but left the rest of their sprawling economic bill largely intact as party leaders prepared for first votes on a package containing many of President Joe Biden’s top domestic goals.  Elizabeth MacDonough, the chamber’s nonpartisan rules arbiter, said lawmakers must remove language imposing hefty penalties on drugmakers that boost their prices beyond inflation in the private insurance market. Those were the bill’s chief pricing protections for the roughly 180 million people whose health coverage comes from private insurance, either through work or bought on their own. more

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US Senate Preps for Landmark Climate Legislation

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Congressional Democrats appear to be on the cusp of passing legislation that would dedicate $369 billion to combat climate change through a combination of grants, tax cuts, subsidies and other measures aimed at reducing carbon emissions. In addition to its climate-related elements, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) makes it possible for Medicare, the government-sponsored health insurance program for older Americans, to negotiate certain drug prices with the pharmaceuticals industry, a move expected to lower drug costs for all Americans. It also creates a minimum tax on large corporations, raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and will reduce themore

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