Court checks Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker as Trump administration scores another immigration win

The ruling permanently prevents Illinois from enforcing the laws, although McGlynn delayed the order from taking effect for 14 days to allow the state to ask an appeals court to intervene.

Federal appeals court rejects Trump bid to enforce mail ballot order ahead of midterm elections

A federal appeals court blocked Trump's executive order on mail-in voting rules in 23 states, potentially sending the fight to the Supreme Court.

Trump DESTROYS the Press and Democrats at the WHCD. And Boy, the Media Couldn't Handle It!

Trump Delivers a Funny Joke About Nicki Minaj at the WHCD - She Drops a Humorous Reply

Mamdani’s one-word border answer said it all

"Have you ever been to the U.S.-Mexico border?” “No.”One word. That may have been the most revealing moment of New York City Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent interview with the New York Times.Sanctuary policies are easy to defend from a podium at New York City Hall. They are much harder to defend before communities that have already paid the price.Mamdani defended his city’s sanctuary policies, which he reinforced after taking office by signing an executive order reaffirming them.The problem is not so much that Mamdani has never visited the border. It is that he seems unwilling to understand why communities that lived through the border crisis reached a very different conclusion.That lesson is visible far beyond the Rio Grande.Consider Goliad County in South Texas. The rural county has about 7,000 residents and sits roughly 160 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, Sheriff Roy Boyd described how the crisis transformed the community he serves.Boyd’s office averaged 77 arrests a year during the five years before 2021. From 2021 through 2024, that average jumped to 413. Deputies discovered 16 cartel stash houses, and pursuits involving suspected human smugglers became routine.Residents began hearing voices and movement on remote properties after dark. Many no longer felt safe alone in their own homes.Those facts expose what Mamdani’s answer overlooks. The border crisis did not remain at the border. Cartel activity and illegal immigration reached inland communities that lacked the personnel and equipment to confront them. Former Border Patrol agent and Texas Public Policy Foundation senior fellow Ammon Blair calls cartels “hybrid threats.”As Blair puts it, “Cartels don’t just smuggle. They destabilize.” Boyd has described them as “contractors and subcontractors” in a network moving migrants and drugs from the border into Texas’ largest cities.That reality changed Texas’ response. In 2021, as illegal crossings surged under President Joe Biden, Goliad became one of the first inland counties to declare a local disaster. Boyd suggested giving local law-enforcement agencies flexible grants for overtime, new officers, patrol vehicles, and other equipment.Those grants became part of Operation Lone Star.According to Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, Operation Lone Star has produced more than 535,700 apprehensions and referrals, 57,400 criminal arrests, and 47,500 felony charges. Texas law enforcement has also intercepted more than 779 million lethal doses of fentanyl.RELATED: The revolution will not be televised — it will be livestreamed in 4K Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty ImagesBoyd later launched the Operation Lone Star Task Force, which allows local agencies to share deputies, intelligence, and resources across jurisdictional lines while targeting human smuggling, cartel activity, and organized crime.New York has felt the downstream effects too. Former Mayor Eric Adams warned that the migrant crisis would “destroy New York City.” Mamdani nevertheless continues to defend sanctuary policies that impede cooperation with federal immigration authorities.Goliad’s experience carries a national lesson. Criminal organizations do not recognize state boundaries. The same networks that move people across the border traffic drugs, weapons, and money into communities nationwide. They exploit ports of entry, the northern border, and weaknesses far from either frontier.The farther those networks spread, the more Americans discover that border security is not someone else’s problem.Mamdani may be proud of New York City’s sanctuary stance.His one-word answer showed more than where he has never been. It revealed what he refuses to see.Sanctuary policies are easy to defend from a podium at city hall. They are much harder to defend before communities that have already paid the price.

Trump’s unprecedented $37B failure exposed as secret meeting details leak: report

President Donald Trump's escalating military campaign against Iran is achieving the “opposite” of its intended effect, according to a senior U.S. official cited in a New York Times report Saturday.“The official said the strikes have the opposite effect of what is intended, keeping Iran cohesive and allowing Iranian leaders to focus attention on an external threat,” the Times’ report reads.The assessment came after insiders leaked details to the Times about a Friday meeting between Trump and his top advisers and Cabinet members, where officials weighed whether or not to escalate the war further. According to the Times, few, if any, in Trump's inner circle believed intensifying the bombing campaign was wise.A separate senior official who was briefed on the discussion expressed doubts that resuming major combat operations would push Iran back to the table at all.The “private deliberations” focused on what officials warned was the Pentagon’s “shrinking inventory of Patriot interceptors and other air defenses,” the Times reported.“Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has cautioned privately that resuming major combat operations against Iran was doable but that it would dangerously deplete interceptors available to the military’s Central Command, which is responsible for operations in the Middle East, the officials said,” the Times’ report reads.Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a congressional committee that Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran had cost taxpayers $37.5 billion so far.The internal skepticism adds to a growing list of signs that the administration's approach to Iran isn't producing the results Trump has publicly promised, even as the financial and human costs of the conflict continue to climb.

Appeals court denies Trump’s bid to allow $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas

Three-judge panel of Democratic appointees let stand lower court’s ruling that fee constitutes an unlawful tax A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a ⁠bid by Donald ​Trump’s administration to halt a judge’s order preventing it from imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for ⁠highly skilled foreign workers.The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals declined to put on hold a lower court judge’s ⁠8 June ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general, ​striking down the fee on the ‌basis that it ‌constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorized. Continue reading...

Appeals court rejects Trump bid to curb mail-in voting in 23 states

Judge rejects administration’s request to lift injunction secured by several Democratic-led states on 25 JuneA federal appeals court on Saturday declined to allow Donald Trump’s administration to implement in 23 states his executive order that aims to tighten rules for mail-in voting before the November elections that ⁠will decide control of Congress.The Boston-based ⁠first US circuit court ​of appeals rejected the administration’s request to lift an injunction several Democratic-led states secured on 25 June from a lower-court judge who concluded that key parts of the Republican president’s order were unconstitutional. In asking the court to ⁠pause the US district judge Indira Talwani’s ruling while it pursues an appeal, the Department of Justice argued that because government agencies had yet to finalize actions and policies to implement Trump’s directive, any lawsuit challenging his order was premature. Continue reading...