LeBron James’ tenure with the Lakers is over after he informed the NBA franchise he’d spent the past eight seasons with that he’ll sign elsewhere in free agency. While both sides have shown each other nothing but respect since James’ decision went public, it is clear that his and the Lakers’ relationship wasn’t perfect. If...
Superfans and sleuths appear to have their hunches confirmed on Friday, as dozens of black cars dropped off elegantly dressed guests outside of Madison Square Garden in New York City. The wedding bash is expected to last into Saturday morning.
FBI Director Kash Patel failed to properly disclose a six-figure stock purchase in a company that’s been contracted by the Justice Department, NOTUS reported Wednesday.Federal financial records first reviewed by NOTUS showed that on November 21, Patel purchased between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in MicroStrategy, a “bitcoin treasury company” that has done millions of dollars in business with the DOJ over the past decade.Patel failed to disclose the purchase within 45 days of the trade, in violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, also known as the STOCK Act.In a letter to the Office of Government Ethics on May 26, Patel said the purchase had been “inadvertently omitted” from his financial disclosure. Two days later, in a letter to the Office of Government Ethics, Deputy Assistant Attorney General William Taylor said the purchase had been omitted due to a miscommunication. “I continue to believe that Director Patel is in compliance with applicable laws and regulations governing conflicts of interest,” he wrote.An FBI official told NOTUS that Patel’s late reporting was “not realized and unintentional.” However, Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, acting vice president of the Project on Government Oversight, told the outlet that Patel’s stock purchase disclosure is “absolutely” late under the letter of the STOCK Act.“That’s violating the law—no other way to put it,” Hedtler-Gaudette said.Patel has yet to face the customary $200 fine for his breach of conduct—and he probably won’t.
As President Donald Trump rages over his party’s inability to pass his much-demanded SAVE America Act, Politico reports that congressional Republicans have a “dirty little secret”: many of them don’t want to pass it at all. According to insiders, the “inconvenient truth” is that “it can’t even pass the House — at least not the version Trump is pushing.”According to Politico, “Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged as much this week, appearing to concede he does not have the votes to move forward with a drastic crackdown on mailed ballots that Trump has repeatedly demanded this year.” Instead, GOP House leaders are reverting to an older version of the bill that focuses on proof of citizenship while otherwise letting states more or less run elections as they please. “We all do” want to give Trump what he wants, said Johnson, but a ban on mail-in ballots “is a very difficult thing to regulate at the federal level, because different states do it differently.” “I’m going to do everything I can with the vote tallies that we have,” he added.Hardline conservatives have pushed for an expanded version of the bill, which in addition to the mailed ballot ban would include Trump’s demand for provisions banning transgender people from playing women’s sports, as well as a prohibition on gender-affirming surgery for minors. But Johnson has continued to press a narrower version he thinks is more likely to pass.As Politico explains, “The lack of widespread GOP support for upending the voting systems in states like Arizona, Florida and Alaska is an open secret on Capitol Hill, where many Republicans credit mailed ballots with helping them win tight races.”“Listen, absentee ballots are not a bad thing historically as long as you put some kind of structure on it,” said Representative Mark Amodei (R-NV). “Just have some commonsensical safeguards for when it has to be postmarked by.” Last week, after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s attempt to limit mail-in ballots via executive order, Amodei said he was happy with the outcome, asserting, “It says mail-in voting in and of itself is not evil. There ought to be some mechanism for you to do that.”Outspoken SAVE Act supporter Representative Julie Fedorchak (R-ND) wants the bill to pass in some form, but worries how a ban on mail-in ballots would affect states with limited polling places, saying, “We’re a rural state. I understand the concerns about mail-in voting… but I think the solution that I’m in favor of is restricting it and creating these commonsense reforms for it.” Johnson seconded her concerns about rural voters, admitting that in some states it can be “very difficult to get to a ballot box, and so they use mail-in ballots very effectively, and I think securely, and that’s something that has to be contended with.”Unsurprisingly, he tailored his criticism of mail-in ballots to target a few states in particular, claiming, “There are other states that do it well, and without a problem. Our concerns are with the handful, five or six blue states, who abuse this, and California is the avatar for this, because it is so ridiculous.”Critics of the president’s attacks on mail-in voting and his demands for other electoral restrictions argue that the SAVE Act will disenfranchise millions of voters. What’s more, as a number of GOP insiders have pointed out, the bill could backfire for Republicans, as conservative voters are less likely to have the appropriate ID and more likely to depend on mail-in ballots.
A federal judge blocked the U.S. Postal Service from implementing President Donald Trump's executive order on mail-in ballots nationwide, citing a 2020 agreement.
