Senators’ half-a-million-dollar surveillance payday exposes flawed privacy laws
When senators discovered they had been subjected to unconstitutional surveillance, they voted themselves half a million dollars each. The rest of us got nothing. Last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) revealed that President Joe Biden’s FBI had spied on eight Republican senators’ phones. Former Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, secretly monitored who contacted the senators, […]
MAGA-juana: Trump poised to reschedule Cannabis, igniting stock surge
WASHINGTON, D.C.—President Donald J Trump is preparing to issue an executive order as early as Monday directing federal agencies to reclassify marijuana from its current Schedule I status to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. The move, first reported by The Washington Post, would mark the […]
Autopen-gate: The erasure of the Biden Presidency
WASHINGTON, D.C.—President Donald J Trump announced on Friday, November 28, that all documents signed by former President Joe Biden using an autopen—estimated by the administration at approximately 92% of Biden-era executive actions and other official instruments—are “hereby terminated and of no further force or effect.” In a statement posted to Truth Social and republished by […]
AG Brown co-leads multi-state suit against HUD’s homelessness funding overhaul
SEATTLE—The Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown is co-leading an 18-state lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) alleging that the agency’s new Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, introduces unlawful policies and conditions that disrupt the Continuum of Care (CoC) grant program—a key federal initiative that […]
Federal Reserve Board approves quarter-point rate cut
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday, September 17, cut its benchmark overnight lending rate by 0.25 percentage points to a range of 4%-4.25%, in an 11-1 vote. The move, driven by growing U.S. labor market concerns, also signals two additional cuts before year-end. “The Committee decided to lower the target range for the federal […]
TikTok’s US operations acquired in landmark deal amid national security concerns
The United States and China have reached a framework agreement allowing TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. under a new 80 percent American-controlled ownership. President Donald J Trump announced the deal during a White House briefing on Tuesday, September 16, extending the divestiture deadline for ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, and paving the way […]
Trump administration seeks to revoke limits on oil drilling in parts of Alaska’s North Slope
[Alaska Beacon]—The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on Thursday that it will revoke three documents intended to form the basis for limits on oil drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Those documents, and the limits themselves, were issued in the last year of President Joe Biden’s administration. Since his election, President Donald Trump has […]
Judge sentences Trump to unconditional discharge, no punishment in hush money conviction
NEW YORK, NY—Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan on January 10 sentenced President-elect Donald J Trump to an “unconditional discharge” in his May 2024 conviction case involving 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with $130,000 in money payments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen who then paid to porn star Stormy Daniels before the […]
Biden pardons son Hunter who was facing up to 25 years in prison
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Outgoing President Joe Biden (D) announced on December 1, an Executive Grant of Clemency, effectively granting a full and unconditional pardon, for his son Robert Hunter Biden for convictions related to federal gun and federal tax evasion charges. On June 11, 2024, Hunter Biden was convicted of three felony gun charges related to the […]
Celebrating three years of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
Today marks the third year since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) was passed—the largest investment in the country’s infrastructure in a generation—which has delivered $9.89 billion in transportation infrastructure projects throughout the state of Washington. Projects in Snohomish County that have benefitted from these dollars include but are not limited to; $25 million to construct […]
