Author: FOX24 US

FOX 24 US A new report shows how President Donald Trump’s administration is harming state economies nationwide as several states that rely on federal government jobs and spending landed on a list of the top 10 worst economies in the nation. And the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce are continuing to acutely impact the Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia region.  Maryland has the second worst economy in America behind Rhode Island, coming in at 49th out of 50, according to an annual CNBC report measuring the best and worst states for business. It’s a big dropoff and the…

FOX 24 US President Donald Trump posted on his favorite social media platform Monday morning, seemingly acknowledging that the entire SAVE America Act — the voter suppression bill he and his MAGA allies have been pushing Congress to pass — will not be in the third budget reconciliation bill Republicans are hoping to pass. “Thank you to our Great Speaker, Mike Johnson, the House Budget Chairman, Jodey Arrington, and the members of the House Budget Committee … for launching an effort to get AS MUCH of THE SAVE AMERICA ACT as possible in a Budget Bill,” Trump posted on Truth…

FOX 24 US This story was originally published by ProPublica. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published. For decades, the U.S. Department of State gave money to groups protecting free speech, human rights and persecuted minorities in poor and authoritarian countries.  To decide what to fund, staffers with deep expertise typically pored over reams of information on abuses under the most repressive regimes and held an open competition to fund groups to work in those countries.  This year, Trump administration officials presented State Department workers with their own list of organizations that should be funded. To the…

FOX 24 US By now, you may have heard that the company behind Truth Social, Trump Media and Technology Group, plans to sell extra-fast access to the most influential posts on the platform to high-paying clients. Trump is the most-followed person on Truth Social, and so the product, called Truth API, appears aimed at monetizing early access to Trump’s market-moving “truths,” selling it to Wall Street banks and trading firms. Outrage at the mind-boggling scheme was instantaneous. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called it “an egregious scheme to profit off the presidency and enrich Wall Street while doing nothing to help…

FOX 24 US Thanks for reading this last month as we soft-launch what we’re now calling “The Brief.” I’m taking a week off to bring my toddler to the beach. I’ll be back July 27. If you’re enjoying this morning dispatch, we’ll have the option for you to sign up for it as a newsletter by early August. See you all soon. Stay cool, and breathe fresh air if you can find any. Primetime Flop Trump’s election speech last night, which Democrats, election administrators, and Republican legislators were dreading (each for somewhat different reasons), was a dud. Trump insinuated, lied…

FOX 24 US Things got really weird during President Donald Trump’s big speech on “election security” Thursday night.  The centerpiece of the event was a document dump that was posted to the White House website, which Trump claimed to summarize during his televised primetime address. The supposed evidence contained in the reams of pdfs included a wild anecdote about the iconic 1990s computer shooter game “Doom” that underscored just how far the president was reaching as he tried to substantiate his theories.   In the address to the nation, which was only carried by some networks, Trump reiterated his thoroughly debunked…

FOX 24 US As a smoke jumper, Sam Forstag fought a relentless game of inches.  The job is a hard one. Firefighters who parachute in when blazes break out deep in the forest need to build a barrier to beat back the flames. They use chainsaws and other tools to cut down to the hard mineral soil, creating a fire line with no fuel to keep feeding the inferno. It’s grueling work that can be set back in an instant by a fresh bolt of lightning. And Forstag learned all too well that, even when the forecast seems set to…

FOX 24 US GOP Senate hopeful Rep. Mike Collins’ flirtations with antisemitism now extend beyond his social media posts, past several of his former staffers and strategists, and reach directly into his immediate family according to a new report from CNN K-File published Thursday morning. But while state and national Democratic elected officials and organizations have vehemently condemned Collins following the report exposing the congressman’s son-in-law as a white supremacist and neo-Nazi influencer, the Georgia Republican Party and its leaders have so far remained silent. Collins’ son-in-law David Alan Scheer II repeatedly made overt white supremacist statements, posted antisemitic ideology…

FOX 24 US This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is so staunchly anti-abortion that his office observes June 24, the anniversary of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, as a holiday.  The Republican’s actions to block abortion stand out. Four years ag0, Paxton sued the Biden administration to make Texas the only state blocking a federal law that protected abortions for people in medical emergencies. Then, in 2023, Paxton asked a court to dismiss a case from…

FOX 24 US Blanche’s Top Prosecutor of Political Violence Marched at Jan. 6 TPM’s Josh Kovensky revealed yesterday that a top federal prosecutor heading up the Trump DOJ’s task force on political violence marched on January 6. At least one image TPM reviewed showed him in an area outside the Capitol that was restricted, but that Trump supporters nonetheless stormed into, a lead prosecutor in the DOJ’s since-disbanded Capitol Siege Section told Josh. The DOJ told us that Lynch “was present but never entered the capitol, left the grounds after a brief period, and did not commit and was never…