Attorney general says president ‘should communicate his concerns with the supreme court’ after Trump said justices ‘really let our country down’ - Sign up for US Breaking News emails Kash Patel , the FBI director, is now testifying before lawmakers on the Senate judiciary committee. A reminder that the last time he appeared before Congress was in May, when he sparred with senators on the appropriations committee and denied – under oath – allegations of excessive drinking and unexplained absences on the job, dismissing them as “baseless” during a fiery congressional hearing. Today’s hearing is also expected to be full of heated exchanges. “Mr Patel is the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the judiciary committee’s top Democrat. “The bureau has been reshaped as a political weapon against President Trump’s political enemies and a shield to protect the president and his MAGA loyalists, not the American people.” Continue reading...
Attorney general says president ‘should communicate his concerns with the supreme court’ after Trump said justices ‘really let our country down’
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Donald Trump today blasted the supreme court’s ruling which blocked his long-sought executive order which curbs mail-in voting. The president called mail-in voting – which he has used on several occasions to cast a ballot – “a laughing stock” across the world. He has routinely claimed, without evidence, that the voting method is prone to fraud. “The Supreme Court has really let our Country down! Certain Justices are petrified of these crazed and depraved Democrats, and are totally unable to show the courage necessary to save our America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The president suggested that the justices he nominated for the bench – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – are not “the people I interviewed to serve” but “merely a shell of their original selves”.
Todd Blanche, the attorney general, defended the president’s earlier criticism of the justices on the bench who ruled to block his order. “He [Trump] is very frustrated,” Blanche said at a White House press conference. “He has every right, and indeed he should communicate his concerns with the supreme court whenever he has them. This isn’t the first time that he’s done it, and it won’t be the last.”
Blanche also dismissed calls to investigate the contributions of a Russian oligarch, who is close to Putin, and who helped pay for Donald Trump Jr’s wedding in May . “The president doesn’t know who this person is. I think other members of the family don’t know who this person is. The president’s son has said that he’s a very close friend,” the attorney general told reporters. “When you say, ‘am I investigating?’ Am I investigating what? And when you say this person is a friend of Putin, I don’t even know if that’s true or not.”
However, Democrats on the House oversight committee have started to investigate possible ties between the Trump administration and Kremlev. Congressman Robert Garcia, the panel’s top Democrat, has asked Susie Wiles – the White House chief of staff, to provide documents, records and communications between the White House and Trump Jr about Kremlev, among other requests. More here
Bernie Sanders , the independent senator from Vermont, said that Congress has “been asleep at the wheel” when it comes to AI regulation. Sanders decried the speed of the technology’s evolution at the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington today. The senator has proposed bicameral legislation with congressman Greg Casar to permanently ban the development of artificial superintelligence, and said that the pledges this week from leading AI company CEOs for the industry to “slow down” are encouraging but ultimately not enough. “When the future of humanity is at stake, we need binding international safety rules, not voluntary standards from the industry,” Sanders added.
A federal judge has ruled that Donald Trump’s name must stay off the facade of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, blocking an effort by the center’s Trump-appointed board to restore his name to the building. The judge also said the board cannot proceed with plans to rename the campus where it sits the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza”. Earlier, the board voted to immediately close the institution citing safety and financial concerns.