Sudan’s army says it’s taken control of Khartoum as RSF retreat
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has arrived in Khartoum and announced that the city “is free”.
NATO chief says four US soldiers dead in Lithuania in training
Lithuania’s military said four US soldiers and a tracked vehicle had gone missing on Tuesday afternoon. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has announced that four missing United States Army soldiers have died in Lithuania during training. Rutte, who told reporters of the deaths of the four on Wednesday, said they were killed in an “incident”, adding that he did not know further details. “This is still early news, so we do not know the details. This is really terrible news and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones,” Rutte said in the Polish capital, Warsaw. Lithuania’s military had said earlier that a search was under way for the four US soldiers and a tracked vehicle which had gone missing on Tuesday afternoon. According to a statement by the US Army, the soldiers had been training near Pabrade in eastern Lithuania near the border with Belarus. “The soldiers, all from 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, were conducting scheduled tactical training at the time of the incident,” the statement read. Adblock test (Why?)
No rest for Gaza’s dead
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Al Jazeera’s investigation unit uncovers unprecedented destruction to cemeteries across Gaza.
Fani Willis ‘thinks she’s above the law,’ says Georgia lawmaker in subpoena fight
A Georgia state subcommittee and its attorney expressed during a hearing Wednesday that having Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrested for flouting subpoenas remains an option, though they fell short of saying they’d take that action yet. The Georgia Senate Special Committee on Investigations had its attorney, Josh Belinfante, provide an update on the months of back-and-forth in the courts and with Willis’ lawyers on a subpoena for documents related to her investigation into President Donald Trump for alleged election interference, as well as a second subpoena for her to testify. Willis has been challenging the subpoenas since Sept. 3, 2024, but the court has ruled the subpoenas are lawful. FANI WILLIS ORDERED TO PAY $54K FOR VIOLATING OPEN RECORDS LAWS IN TRUMP CASE Committee Chair Sen. Bill Coswert instructed Belinfante to reach out to Wade’s counsel again and “suggest either a Thursday or Friday at the beginning of the last week of April or the first two weeks of May.” “And if they will agree to a date, then we’ll issue the subpoena, and I think they will honor their word. If not, we’re going to have a whole other problem,” he said. “And same thing on the documents, just say we’ve hit the end of our road. We need them by April 15th. You’ve already agreed to give them to us, and if they say they won’t, we’re going to have to circle back with you.” Sen. Steve Gooch asked what would typically happen if a district attorney, such as Willis, issued a subpoena for someone to show up in court and if that person neglected to appear. “That person could be held in criminal contempt,” Belinfante said. “Arrested?” Gooch asked. To that, the attorney replied, “Could be.” Members, including Sen. Greg Dolezal, stressed that the committee had already been given the runaround as Willis had challenged their subpoenas and the court backed them, then she challenged them again. “The DA has thumbed her nose at this committee, she has thumbed her nose at Georgia’s open record law, and I just have limited confidence that she’s acting in good faith. So I do believe that we may be at the point that we do need to escalate this to the next step,” he said. GEORGIA APPEALS COURT DISQUALIFIES DA FANI WILLIS AND HER TEAM FROM TRUMP ELECTION INTERFERENCE CASE The hearing comes as the Daily Mail obtained photos of Willis and former special prosecutor in the Trump case Nathan Wade traveling together at Los Angeles’ airport. “What is our legal obligation to show deference to her personal travel schedule?” Dolezal said. “There’s not one,” Belifante said. Dolezal said the courts, in a separate open records case, called her office “openly hostile” and “substantially groundless and vexatious.” “I think that we have here is an individual who thinks she’s above the law, and I don’t think that the people of Georgia want this committee to wait for her to decide that she wants to appear based on her travel schedule with Mr. Wade, her travel schedule otherwise,” he said. Belifante said that in December, as repeated judges recused themselves from the case and it was passed to a different county, the committee assured Willis that they would not send the sergeant at arms or consider her in contempt. But months have passed since then. Belifante said Willis’ attorney told him this month her “travel schedule” meant she wouldn’t be available to testify until late April or May. The attorney testified that some of the documents the committee is seeking Willis has already handed over to the U.S. House of Representatives and Court of Appeals, and her counsel has no further legal avenue to appeal the subpoenas. “That has expired and there is no appealable order at this time because we reached [an] agreement with them. There is nothing to appeal on the prior documents subpoena. It is moot because there is that agreement,” Belifante said. “On the witness, we think they’ve waived the argument long ago, and so that time is gone and even then, it would take both superior courts to decide whether to allow an appeal to proceed, but that time is gone. There’s no final order right now.”
Botched late-term abortion spurs lawsuit in blue-state court: ‘Horrific’
An anonymous woman filed a rare medical negligence lawsuit last week against an Illinois abortionist after a late-term abortion took a “horrific” turn when an emergency hospital visit revealed “half of a deceased pre-born human being” was found left inside her. Chicago injury attorney Richard Craig filed the lawsuit on behalf of Jane Doe from Indiana, naming both the Champaign-based Equity Clinic and its founder, Dr. Keith Reisinger-Kindle, as defendants. Craig told Fox News Digital in an interview Thursday he’s “never been presented” with a case like this. DEFUND ‘BIG ABORTION’ INDUSTRY THAT THRIVED UNDER BIDEN, 150 PRO-LIFE GROUPS URGE CONGRESS The suit alleges that during a 22-week abortion performed in April 2023, Reisinger-Kindle left parts of the fetus inside the woman’s body, leading to severe complications. After the procedure, when the woman reported persistent cramping, Reisinger-Kindle allegedly advised her to take over-the-counter pain relievers and laxatives. She later underwent emergency surgery to remove the body parts. Doe is seeking damages for medical negligence and emotional distress. “This is someone who performed an abortion that at 22 weeks of gestation – which at that point renders a two-day process – and then on the second day, when most of the work is done, at the culmination of his work, he entered a note, saying, these are his words, ‘products of conception were visibly inspected and confirmed to be complete,’” Craig said. “That’s his note. Well, clearly that didn’t happen.” “When she presented to the emergency room two days later, they found what they described to be as a half of a pre-deceased fetus,” Craig said. “And the films that are in the records actually suggests more like two-thirds. So, how could he say that he visibly inspected her?” Doe, a mother of four, also alleged that Reisinger-Kindle refused to provide pertinent information to the attending surgeons without her consent. In a medical report included in the lawsuit filings, an obstetrician/gynecologist asserts that Reisinger-Kindle “deviated from a reasonable standard of care” during the abortion by perforating the plaintiff’s uterus and failing to recognize the injury. DOGE MUST ‘DEFUND’ PLANNED PARENTHOOD, MIKE PENCE’S WATCHDOG GROUP URGES MUSK The report also states that Reisinger-Kindle “failed to adequately examine the fetal parts” after the procedure. According to the lawsuit, there was a hole in the woman’s uterus roughly the size of a large coin. The report notes that if Reisinger-Kindle “performed an adequate exam of the remains, it should have been obvious that fetal parts were left behind.” In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and leaving it up to states to decide on abortion, Illinois has solidified its position as a haven for the procedure, enacting a series of legislative measures to shield both providers and out-of-state women seeking abortion services from lawsuits. FEDS GAVE $700M TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD DURING YEAR OF RECORD ABORTIONS Reisinger-Kindle, who was featured in a Chicago Tribune article, was one of many providers who opened abortion clinics in the Midwest following the high court’s ruling. Craig – who said taking the case won’t make him “any friends in Illinois” – also alleged Reisinger-Kindle didn’t administer any pain-relief medication to the fetus, which would have stopped its heartbeat, prior to its dismemberment. “The current laws would prevent me, for instance, from pursuing a claim against this doctor on behalf of the child for what had to be excruciating pain that the child underwent while he was being dismembered piece by piece, without any pain relief,” Craig said. “And so those laws do, in fact, prevent me, or anybody from taking that position and seeking redress for that on the behalf of the child.” Fox News Digital has reached out to Reisinger-Kindle for comment but did not hear back by time of publication.
Blue state sanctuary laws enabled illegal ‘abolish ICE’ activist to evade capture, says local DA
Colorado District Attorney George Brauchler is speaking out against activist judges and sanctuary policies in his state that he says enabled abolish ICE activist and illegal immigrant Jeanette Vizguerra to evade capture for over a decade, “making a mockery of the rule of law.” Colorado law prohibits local and state law enforcement from working with federal immigration authorities to remove illegals. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Brauchler, who is the district attorney for Colorado’s 23rd District, said the policies being pushed by Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and the Democratic-controlled legislature have made it so that the state has “embraced illegal immigrants over the laws of the country.” He said the policies have stunted local and state law enforcement’s ability to keep dangerous illegal criminals off the streets. BLUE STATE LEADER SOUNDS ALARM ABOUT ‘PERFECT STORM’ OF DEM IMMIGRATION POLICIES DECIMATING PUBLIC SAFETY “Local law enforcement all say the ‘right’ thing publicly, and that is, ‘Hey, we’re not arms of the federal government. We don’t work for ICE. That’s not why we were hired.’ But they also say behind the scenes, ‘Dang, we have lost the ability to rid this community of the criminal element when we create these kinds of barriers with ICE.’” In the case of Vizguerra, who just won a temporary ruling by a federal judge in Colorado guaranteeing ICE cannot deport her while her case is ongoing, Brauchler said that far-left sentiments in the state allowed U.S. immigration laws to be openly flouted. “Let’s be honest man, Colorado has shifted so far to the pro-illegal immigrant side of things, that it’s created a very permissive environment where you can be here for a long time, be illegal, be even contacted by local law enforcement, and remain free out on the streets,” he said. “So, it’s not a shock to me that there’s a person that is like this in the system.” He noted that he is sympathetic to Vizguerra having to leave after establishing a life and family in Colorado, but said, “We are either going to be a nation and a state that is governed by laws that we hold each other accountable for, or we’re going to be guided by emotion and whatever the politics of the day are.” HOMAN BLASTS BLUE STATE AS REPORT SHOWS IT RELEASING ILLEGALS CHARGED WITH ‘HORRIFIC’ CRIMES ON LOW BAILS “That doesn’t seem to me to be the America that was ever intended and not the one I grew up in,” he went on. “We have to admit that the first step for any person who claims to want to be an American cannot be to violate America’s laws. And she fits that bill.” In addition to the Colorado judge’s ruling, Brauchler also questioned a growing string of other rulings by federal judges inhibiting the Trump administration’s immigration actions across the country. CLICK HERE FOR MORE IMMIGRATION COVERAGE He said the decision of “one single district court judge in a handpicked venue by the people that think they’re going to get the outcome that they want, to issue a nationwide ban that freezes the federal government from border to border, coast to coast, seems to me to be abuse of judicial discretion.” He pointed to cases such as D.C. Circuit Court Judge James Boasberg, who recently issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport a group of suspected immigrant gang members. By issuing a temporary restraining order rather than a permanent or temporary injunction, Brauchler said that activist judges guarantee their rulings cannot be appealed, effectively freezing the administration from seeking a review by an appellate court. TRUMP CALLS FOR JUDGE IN DEPORTATION LEGAL BATTLE TO BE IMPEACHED “What judges should do at the federal level is, if they think that something should be enjoined, they should limit that enjoinder to their own jurisdiction and let the rest of this play out across the country,” he said. Turning back to Colorado, Brauchler emphasized that the “bottom line” is “if we don’t like our immigration laws, well by God change them, Congress, and fix them. … But the answer to ‘I disagree with our federal immigration laws’ cannot ever be — for a people that claim to adhere to the rule of law — it cannot ever be, ‘Well, let’s just ignore them or find a way to thwart them by creating barriers between local law enforcement and the feds.’” “Our extreme left-wing progressive legislature, dominated by the Democrat Party out here, has a bill they’re waiting to drop that would prohibit every attorney in the criminal justice system, from the judge to the prosecutor, to the defense attorney, to interns in from law school, in my office — no joke — from sharing any information ever about any individual with ICE.” “That’s where Colorado’s going,” he said. “They’re not making us safer. They’re not making us better. They’re not making us more just. And they’re making a mockery of the rule of law.”
Hegseth says no classified information was shared in Signal group chat: ‘Nobody’s texting war plans’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down Wednesday that no war plans or classified information were shared during a Signal group chat of Trump administration officials about possible strikes on Houthi targets, which was mistakenly shared with a journalist. The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, published a story this week detailing the group chat messages, prompting pushback from the administration and calls from Democrats for Hegseth and other defense officials to resign. “Nobody’s texting war plans,” Hegseth said Wednesday before boarding a plane in Hawaii. “I noticed this morning out came something that doesn’t look like war plans. And as a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans because they know it’s not war plans.” TRUMP OFFICIALS ACCIDENTALLY TEXT ATLANTIC JOURNALIST ABOUT MILITARY STRIKES IN APPARENT SECURITY BREACH “There’s no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information,” he added, saying no sensitive information was divulged in the chat. Hegseth said he was keeping President Donald Trump’s national security team informed in real time. “My job, as I said, on top of that, everybody’s seen it now,” Hegseth said. “[The] team update is to provide updates in real time – general updates in real time. Keep everybody informed. That’s what I did. That’s my job.” Goldberg said he received a request to join the group chat on the encrypted messaging service Signal on March 11 from what appeared to be National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. Goldberg released screenshots of some of the message exchanges he observed. TRUMP NOT PLANNING TO FIRE WALTZ AFTER NATIONAL SECURITY TEXT CHAIN LEAK He reported that officials were discussing “war plans” but didn’t publish some of the highly sensitive information he saw, including precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing, due to potential threats to national security and military operations. Earlier in the day, Hegseth scolded Goldberg in a post on X, who he said has never “seen a war plan.” “So, let’s me get this straight. The Atlantic released the so-called “war plans” and those “plans” include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information,” he wrote. “Those are some really sh—y war plans.” “This only proves one thing: Jeff Goldberg has never seen a war plan or an “attack plan” (as he now calls it). Not even close,” he added. Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion contributed to this report.
Elon Musk tapped to help lead investigation into Signal chat leak: White House
Elon Musk is helping lead the investigation into the Signal chat leak involving top national security leaders and the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, the White House press secretary said Wednesday. “The National Security Council, the White House Counsel’s Office, and also, yes, Elon Musk’s team” will be leading the investigation into the Signal leak, press secretary Karonline Leavitt said during Wednesday’s White House press conference. “Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this, to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat – again, to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again,” she continued. The Trump administration is facing backlash from Democrats and other critics after the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed in an article published Monday that he was added to a Signal group chat with top national security leaders, including national security advisor Mike Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. JUDGE FIGHTING TRUMP OVER EL SALVADOR DEPORTATIONS ASSIGNED TO LAWSUIT OVER SIGNAL CHAT LEAK Signal is an encrypted messaging app that operates similarly to texting or making phone calls, but with additional security measures that help ensure communications are kept private to those included in the correspondence. The Atlantic’s initial report characterized the Trump administration as texting “war plans” to one another. The Trump administration has maintained that no classified material was transmitted in the chat, with President Donald Trump defending Waltz amid the fallout. Trump revealed Tuesday that a member of Waltz’s office invited Goldberg to the chat, but did not provide additional information. TRUMP ADMIN DECLARES THE ATLANTIC’S SIGNAL ARTICLE A ‘HOAX’ AFTER IT DROPS ‘WAR PLANS’ RHETORIC Waltz joined Fox News’ “Ingraham Angle” Tuesday, where he took responsibility for the inadvertent addition of Goldberg to the chat, arguing he believed the account belonged to someone else. “I built the group. My job is to make sure everything’s coordinated,” Waltz said. “Of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else,” Waltz added. “The person I thought was on there was never on there.” Waltz also said during the interview that he had just spoken to Musk about the matter and that the “best technical minds” would look into it. Musk is helping lead the Department of Government Efficiency, which has been poring through federal agencies in search of government overspending, fraud and mismanagement. “If this story proves anything, it proves that Democrats and their propagandists in the mainstream media know how to fabricate, orchestrate and disseminate a misinformation campaign quite well,” Leavitt continued. “And there’s arguably no one in the media who loves manufacturing and pushing hoaxes more than Jeffrey Goldberg.” TRUMP OFFICIALS ACCIDENTALLY TEXT ATLANTIC JOURNALIST ABOUT MILITARY STRIKES IN APPARENT SECURITY BREACH Following Monday’s report in the Atlantic concerning the Signal chat, Goldberg published a Wednesday follow-up story that included messages directly from the chat. The article notably did not characterize the correspondence as “war plans,” instead opting to refer to them as “attack plans” in the headline. The Trump administration responded that the follow-up story proved that there were “no war plans” in the correspondence, taking a victory lap that the story was exposed to be a “hoax.” “The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans,’” Leavitt posted to X Wednesday morning. “This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.” HEGSETH FENDS OFF REPORTER’S QUESTIONS ABOUT SIGNAL CHAT LEAK Waltz posted to X Wednesday, “No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests.” A spokesperson for the Atlantic defended that the outlet did expose a “war plan” in its Wednesday report, pointing Fox News Digital to a screenshot included in the piece of Hegseth’s messages related to F-18s and drone strikes that were accompanied by timestamps for the operation. “If this information – particularly the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen – had fallen into the wrong hands in that crucial two-hour period, American pilots and other American personnel could have been exposed to even greater danger than they ordinarily would face,” the report stated. Leavitt said during the press conference that Signal is an “approved app” for government employees, citing that the “CIA has it loaded onto government phones because it is the most secure and efficient way to communicate.”
Trump administration asks SCOTUS to approve DEI-related education cuts
The Trump administration has filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court seeking approval to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from the Education Department as part of its efforts to crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives within the department. The Justice Department is asking the court to lift a nationwide injunction which is preventing it from terminating the grants under two federal programs. Earlier this month, Boston-based U.S. District Judge Myong Joun ordered the Trump administration to restore the grants – via a temporary restraining order — which are disseminated via the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) and Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) programs. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION SIGNIFICANTLY DISMANTLED IN NEW TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDER Days later the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to pause Joun’s order, leading to today’s filing. Joun was appointed by former President Joe Biden. Eight states, including California, accused the Linda McMahon-led department of illegally terminating the grants that Congress had established as a solution to critical teacher shortages, especially in rural and underserved communities. The grants provide more than $600 million in grants for teacher preparation programs, often in subject areas such as math, science and special education, the states have argued. The Trump administration blasted the injunction in its filing and argued that federal courts were exceeding their jurisdiction. “This case exemplifies a flood of recent suits that raise the question: Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) millions in taxpayer dollars?” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote. “Unless and until this court addresses that question, federal district courts will continue exceeding their jurisdiction by ordering the executive branch to restore lawfully terminated grants across the government, keep paying for programs that the executive branch views as inconsistent with the interests of the United States, and send out the door taxpayer money that may never be clawed back.” TRUMP STILL NEEDS CONGRESS’ HELP WITH PLAN TO ABOLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT The filing argues that the case presents an “ideal candidate” for the Supreme Court to impose restraint on federal courts and the Justice Department argues that its case will likely succeed on the merits. “This court should put a swift end to federal district courts’ unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of executive branch funding and grant-disbursement decisions,” Harris wrote. The appeal will go to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson based on jurisdiction and she will likely ask her colleagues to weigh in. A briefing schedule will be set and an order on temporary enforcement will follow. The Supreme Court is requesting a response by the opposing parties by Friday at 4 p.m. As well as the state of California, the opposing parties are Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin. The Education Department previously said the programs teach “divisive ideologies” such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and the “instruction on white privilege and white supremacy.” The Republican president signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of the Education Department, and his administration has started overhauling much of its work, including cutting dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful. A wave of lawsuits has slowed down the Trump administration’s agenda with the Justice Department filing four other emergency appeals of court rulings, including in relation to birthright citizenship and an appeal to halt an order requiring the rehiring of thousands of federal workers. The justices previously rejected a bid to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid and did not immediately allow Trump’s firing to proceed of the head of a federal watchdog agency. Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Brazil’s Supreme Court announces it will try Bolsonaro for coup attempt
The former president has been accused of five crimes including attempting a coup d’etat. Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered former President Jair Bolsonaro to stand trial on charges of attempting a coup d’etat after failing to win the re-election in 2022. Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain who served as Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2022, is accused of five crimes, including an alleged attempt to violently abolish the democratic rule of law. He has denounced the accusations against him as “grave and unfounded”. On Wednesday, a five-judge panel decided unanimously to put Bolsonaro on trial. If found guilty in the court proceedings, expected later this year, Bolsonaro could face a long prison sentence, further isolating him. He has not named a political heir. In his opening remarks, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, screened dramatic footage of Bolsonaro’s supporters storming government buildings in violent scenes that unfolded just a week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in January 2023. Moraes added that Bolsonaro led “a systematic effort to cast doubt on the electronic voting machines” used in Brazil, part of his efforts to undermine the election he lost. Advertisement Reporting from Buenos Aires, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo recalled the chaotic and violent scenes in January 2023, when Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed the capital Brasilia, refusing to accept the new president’s inauguration. “A week after Lula was sworn in, we saw thousands of supporters of President Bolsonaro storming buildings in Brazil .. there were scenes of chaos in the capital … around 1,500 people were detained,” she said. The Supreme Court began reviewing charges against Bolsonaro and seven of his closest allies on Tuesday in a session that Bolsonaro voluntarily attended, sitting silently in the first row in an echo of his ally, US President Donald Trump’s trial last year. In the run-up to the landmark court hearing, Bolsonaro called a beachfront rally in Rio de Janeiro, hoping to seize on Lula’s waning popularity and pressure Congress to pass an amnesty bill favouring him and his jailed supporters. The demonstration, which some allies suggested could draw more than a million backers, was widely considered a washout after two independent polling firms found that only between 20,000 and 30,000 people showed up. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro has continued to insist that he will run for president again next year, despite a ruling by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court that barred him from running for public office until 2030 for his efforts to discredit the country’s voting system. Bolsonaro’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis while president has also drawn intensive legal scrutiny. Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)