Author: Curated by: NewYorkGazette.com Est. 1725
For seven months, construction to replace the 123-year-old East Wing with what President Trump hopes will be a legacy-defining ballroom has been underway without interruption, in spite of a federal lawsuit.On Friday, a federal appeals court panel will once again consider whether any of it has been legal.At this point, with the project surging forward, the case may serve as a test of whether courts will assert Congress’s powers to rein in Mr. Trump’s ambitions to rebuild federal Washington as much as it is an obstacle to the ballroom itself.At issue before the three-judge panel will be what legal authority,…
With just one week left until a key government surveillance authority was set to expire, a deal to renew it faltered in the Senate early Friday morning after Democrats refused to back it because of concerns over President Trump’s recent appointment of Bill Pulte to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies.A bloc of Republicans who have long harbored concerns about the spy program joined Democrats to block consideration of a bill that would extend for three years a warrantless wiretapping law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The vote was 52 to 47, well short of the…
President Trump said he would hold a rally in Washington with performances from the country musician Lee Greenwood and the tenor Christopher Macchio after most of the announced artists dropped out of concerts planned by Freedom 250 in honor of the country’s 250th birthday.Last week, Young MC, Martina McBride, Morris Day and Bret Michaels were among the musicians who canceled their performances after they were publicly promoted by the White House. They were scheduled to perform on the National Mall between June 25 and July 10 as part of the Great American State Fair.“The artists were never told about any…
As a crowd of well-wishers recently gathered at an Episcopal church in Harlem to pay their respects to a Manhattan power broker whose wife had died, one person’s attendance raised eyebrows among the political cognoscenti.Representative Adriano Espaillat joined the sea of mourners, staying long enough to shake hands with the Manhattan leader, Keith L.T. Wright.His appearance suggested a potential change in the bitter feud between Mr. Espaillat and Mr. Wright — a turf war dating back to 2016, when Mr. Espaillat defeated Mr. Wright to become the first Dominican American elected to Congress, seizing a House seat long controlled by…
Senate Republican anger about President Trump’s $1.8 billion fund for people who claim to be victims of federal overreach was loud and apparent.It held up the Republican agenda in Congress for weeks, and during a marathon voting session on Thursday and early Friday, several Republicans voted to end the fund, though those efforts failed. Still, the furor forced the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, to announce this week that he was abandoning it entirely.Not so for the sweeping protections from I.R.S. audits that Mr. Blanche also ordered up for Mr. Trump and his family. On that front, Republican reaction has…
The Trump administration is preparing to allow off-road vehicles on millions of acres of national forest land, according to a draft order prepared for Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary.The move is a companion to President Trump’s decision on May 29 to repeal two executive orders that for decades had protected other public lands, including most national parks, from ATVs, dirt bikes and other off-road vehicles.The undated Agriculture Department secretarial memorandum, which was reviewed by The New York Times, directs the U.S. Forest Service to identify which closed “roads, trails, areas, airstrips and waterways” in each national forest might be considered…
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday struck down a slate of immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration, writing that the measures had “placed the lives of countless individuals on hold — solely by virtue of their countries of birth.”In a searing 135-page opinion, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. wrote that actions to lock eligible asylum seekers out of the immigration system and deny others temporary work permits had made it functionally impossible for a broad swath of people to remain in the country. He said the measures were improperly fueled by “anti-immigration sentiments” and contrary to immigration…