Author: FOX24 US

FOX 24 US Shortly after President Donald Trump on Friday signed a presidential memo directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees, a key House committee meeting descended into conspiracy theories as it debated whether to take action on a Senate bill that would do the same.  Trump’s executive action, on dubious authority, comes as the Senate-passed bill that would fund DHS without Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is stalled. “America’s air travel system has reached its breaking point,” Trump declared in the memo authorizing the payments. “I…

FOX 24 US President Donald Trump’s attempts to intimidate the Federal Reserve into doing whatever he says have so far done much more harm than good for the president.  Trump has, over the past year, sought to use social media threats and grumbles in the press to intimidate the Federal Reserve Board of Governors into lowering interest rates at his command and in spite of the governors’ interpretations of economic data. But by escalating those attacks into two highly dubious and politically unpopular legal battles, the administration appears to be doing more harm than good to Trump’s ultimate goal of…

FOX 24 US After more than 40 days of back-and-forth, Senate Republicans accepted the proposal Democrats have been offering for weeks to fund all parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) except Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The Senate passed the bill around 2:30 a.m. on Friday morning with a voice vote. Only five senators were present on the Senate floor. Following the passage, the Senate recessed for its two-week Easter break. Before Friday, Democrats in both chambers have repeatedly tried to get Republicans on board with a bill that would fund all…

FOX 24 US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Republicans sent Senate Democrats “our last and final offer” for the ongoing Department of Homeland Security funding negotiations. “I think the Dems are now in possession of what I think is our last and final” offer, Thune told reporters on Thursday. “So let’s hope this gets it done.” Republicans’ “final” proposal comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been negotiating for weeks to end the DHS-specific government shutdown, which started on Feb. 14. Senate Democrats have been filibustering the DHS funding bill and demanding reforms and constraints be placed on…

FOX 24 US Harrison Beacher feels a little worried for some of his clients. The DMV-area realtor and Washington D.C. native has worked in real estate for nearly two decades, but saw his worst two months ever in January and February of this year. Housing markets can be volatile from month to month, influenced by everything from changes in interest rates to bad weather. But in the case of Beacher’s recent slow period, the cause and effect was clear: Federal job loss and uncertainty is still upending the nation’s capital one year after the Trump administration took a sledgehammer to…

FOX 24 US As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) has had a front row seat to the process for funding President Donald Trump’s ongoing war in Iran.  “He’s got a lot of problems here,” Morelle said of Trump in a Wednesday conversation with TPM during which he shared his perspective on the administration’s plan to ask Congress to cover hundreds of billions of dollars in costs for the military operations. He described the situation as a chaotic one, with a lack of concrete information, clear goals, mounting Democratic opposition, and a president who “has…

FOX 24 US The momentum to end the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown picked up Monday evening.  Key Republican senators reportedly seemed more optimistic about a possible deal to restore funding to the majority of the agency following a Monday afternoon White House meeting. Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL), Steve Daines (R-MT), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) met with President Donald Trump, Border czar Tom Homan, Stephen Miller and other administration officials to pitch a plan to fund the majority of the DHS — including, critically, the TSA — and later addressing the ICE portion in a party-line…

FOX 24 US Airline travelers across the country were greeted with the sight of armed Department of Homeland Security and ICE agents on Monday. President Trump ordered the officers to be dispatched to at least 13 airports in what he claimed is an effort to ease long security lines caused by the ongoing shutdown of DHS.  What those agents are doing on the ground is less clear. Photos and videos from New York City’s JFK International and LaGuardia Airports, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson and Houston’s Bush Intercontinental — some of the facilities with the worst delays — showed armed, uniformed officers walking…

FOX 24 US BALTIMORE—In a stunning courtroom admission, a Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge Monday that the Trump administration has identified 91 cases where asylum seekers were deported despite a court-ordered class action settlement barring them from being removed before their asylum applications were adjudicated. The dramatic increase in the number of known wrongful deportations in the case from about a dozen to nearly 100 was an astonishing development in a case where the government has insisted that the number of such deportations was relatively small. “Obviously this is extremely troubling,” U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher said…

FOX 24 US The right wing of the Supreme Court happily churned out far-fetched hypotheticals as rationale to end a voting practice so common that 30 states use it — including ruby red Mississippi, which was defending its version during Monday’s oral arguments. Mississippi’s law, and the many like it, allows mailed ballots to be counted if they were sent by Election Day but arrived afterwards.  Voting by mail has become a contentious, political issue in the last several years, primarily fueled by President Donald Trump claiming falsely that it helped his shadowy enemies steal the election from him in…