Newsom declares state of emergency to ‘fast-track’ wildfire measures after Trump attacks over previous blazes
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Saturday in a bid to fast-track wildfire prevention projects. Newsom announced the move after President Donald Trump blasted the governor’s handling of previous wildfire disasters. The order suspends certain environmental regulations that would have delayed forest management projects and other wildfire prevention measures. “This year has already seen some of the most destructive wildfires in California history, and we’re only in March. Building on unprecedented work cutting red tape and making historic investments – we’re taking action with a state of emergency to fast-track critical wildfire projects even more,” Newsom said in a statement. “These are the forest management projects we need to protect our communities most vulnerable to wildfire, and we’re going to get them done,” he added. NEWSOM CALLS TRUMP’S CLAIMS ‘PURE FICTION’ AFTER HE POINTED FINGER OVER CALIFORNIA FIRE TRAGEDY California’s wider efforts will cost roughly $2.5 billion, funding controlled burns, reducing fuel in burn areas, as well as implementing public tracking of wildfire prevention efforts. TRUMP MEETS WITH CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS, FIRE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS TO SEE LA WILDFIRE DAMAGE FIRST HAND The state of emergency announcement comes weeks after Trump blasted Newsom for “gross incompetence” in handling the recent wildfires. “Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!” Trump charged in a social media post on Jan. 8, repeating a derogatory name he often uses for the governor. Newsom traveled to Washington, D.C., in early February in a bid to secure federal backing for the disaster relief efforts. He said he had a “very productive” meeting at the White House at the time. The governor held two meetings on Capitol Hill before traveling to the White House and petitioning Trump for “unconditional disaster aid,” his office said. “As we approach one month since the devastating wildfires across Southern California, we continue to cut red tape to speed up recovery and clean up efforts as well as ensure rebuilding efforts are swift,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re working across the aisle, as we always have, to ensure survivors have the resources and support they need.” Fox News’ Stepheny Price contributed to this report.
Everything ‘changa’ with Shashi Tharoor and Congress? Rahul Gandhi shares cryptic post amid rift buzz
Amid the speculations of an internal rift within the Congress and Shashi Tharoor, party’s MP and LoP Rahul Gandhi shared a post on social media, asserting that the party leaders in Kerala stand “united”.
‘Some youths harassed my daughter in Maharashtra’, alleges union minister, CM Devendra Fadnavis reacts
Union Minister and BJP leader Raksha Khadse on Sunday, i.e., filed a complaint against a few boys, alleging that they harassed her minor daughter and other girls during the Sant Muktai Yatra in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon, India Today reported.
Day before civic polls, Congress worker’s body found in suitcase in Haryana’s Rohtak
Himani Narwal’s neck was wrapped with a dupatta which the police suspect may have been used to strangle her. Police have sent her body to the PGIMS Rohtak for a post-mortem examination.
BSP chief Mayawati takes BIG decision, removes nephew Akash Anand from all party posts
Explaining the decision, Mayawati recalled Kanshi Ram’s principle that while family members could work in the party, any misuse of their position would not be tolerated
How to watch and what to know about Trump’s Tuesday address to a Joint Session of Congress
President Donald Trump will address a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday, March 4 at 9 p.m. ET. The forum is not officially a State of the Union address, which traditionally comes during the second, third and fourth year of a presidency. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., invited Trump earlier this month to address Congress on Tuesday. “Thanks to your strong leadership and bold action in the first days of your presidency, the United States is already experiencing a resurgence of patriotism, unity, and hope for the future,” Johnson wrote in a letter to Trump first obtained by Fox News Digital. HONORING TRUMP: SPEAKER JOHNSON SAYS FLAGS TO FLY FULL-STAFF AT US CAPITOL DURING PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION “Your administration and the 119th Congress working together have the chance to make these next four years some of the most consequential in our nation’s history,” the speaker wrote. “To that end, it is my distinct honor and great privilege to invite you to address a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, in the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives, to share your America First vision for our legislative future. I eagerly await your response.” Fox News Channel, Fox News Digital and Fox News Go will have live coverage of the event Tuesday evening. Fox News Channel will also preview the speech during its primetime and afternoon programming. Will Cain will have the latest on the “Will Cain Show” at 4 p.m. ET. Following him, join Dana Perino, Greg Gutfeld, Judge Jeanine Pirro and the hosts of “The Five” for more coverage leading up to the event. VA DEM SLAMS DOGE FANS; COMPARES JOB CUTS TO HOLOCAUST: ‘FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE JEWS…’ Chief political anchor Bret Baier continues the coverage at 6 p.m. ET on “Special Report,” followed by “The Ingraham Angle” with Laura Ingraham at 7 p.m. ET; before Jesse Watters offers a curtain-raiser just before the address at 8 p.m. ET on “Jesse Watters Primetime.” While it is officially an address to a joint session, historically, these speeches tend to follow the same customs as the official State of the Union forums. The latter are required by the Constitution under Article II Sec. 3 – which stipulates that a president must provide Congress with information about the state of the Union and offer legislative recommendations. Before the audiovisual and digital ages, the addresses tended to come in print form. Former President Woodrow Wilson delivered the first address in-person since former President John Adams. The title itself, “State of the Union,” was standardized by former President Harry S. Truman in the 1940s. Truman also offered the first televised State of the Union, as radio gave way to TV. Former President Lyndon Baines Johnson began the tradition of a primetime address. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP During such addresses, when all three branches of government are typically present, one member of the president’s cabinet is named “designated survivor” – and stays home from the address in case terrorism or another catastrophe leads to the deaths of all assembled in the chamber. The U.S. Senate keeps records of each designated survivor going back to 1984, when former HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce Jr. was designated the potential leader of the nation if former President Ronald Reagan and everyone else in attendance perished. Notable designated survivors have included then-future New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo during former President Bill Clinton’s 1999 address, former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley – son of the famed Chicago Democratic Party boss – in 1998, and then-Attorney General Eric Holder in 2009. Most recently, former President Joe Biden’s education chief, Miguel Cardona, was 2024’s designated survivor. Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
Debate over whether to ban handgun sales to teens could soon head to the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court may soon weigh in on whether people younger than 21 have the right to buy handguns, a decision that could upend decades-old federal restrictions and reshape the nation’s gun laws. In January, the right-leaning Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, struck down the federal government’s decades-old ban on handgun purchases for 18- to 20-year-olds. That decision came after the 10th Circuit upheld the same prohibition in November. Meanwhile, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is currently considering whether to uphold a Virginia district court judge’s decision ending the age-limit ban. “Whenever there’s decisions that cross each other, you have a much better chance of getting a writ of certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court,” Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, told Fox News Digital. FEDERAL COURT RULES AGE LIMITS ON HANDGUN SALES VIOLATE SECOND AMENDMENT “This issue is definitely making its way to the Supreme Court—and fast,” said Pepperdine’s Jacob Charles, a constitutional law professor with an expertise in Second Amendment issues. “This is a key federal law, and you just can’t have that apply differently across the nation (at least for long).” The federal ban on handgun sales to people under the age of 21 began in 1968 as part of the Gun Control Act passed that year. Fast-forward to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, and a tranche of lawsuits aiming to upend laws restricting gun sales to people over 21 are making their way through the courts. The gun-violence nonprofit news outlet The Trace compiled data showing that between June 2022 and August 2024, there have been more than 1,600 Bruen-based challenges to gun laws. The Bruen decision rejected the strict scrutiny frameworks being used by lower courts to evaluate gun laws and instead established a “historical tradition” that required laws to adhere more directly to the text of the Second Amendment. “The levels of scrutiny – rational basis, intermediate scrutiny, strict scrutiny – don’t matter. What the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling said was, you have to look at the text and the history. That’s what counts,” said Gottlieb. “When the Bill of Rights was put together, there was nothing that prohibited 18-to 20-year-old young adults from being able to own or carry a firearm.” Gottlieb and the Second Amendment Foundation have sued in several states to reverse their bans on hand gun sales to young adults under 21. Several cases challenging age limit bans, including cases filed in Massachusetts and Connecticut this month, are ongoing. KYLE RITTENHOUSE RETURNS TO SPEAK AT UNIVERSITY WHERE ANGRY MOB LED TO CANCELED SPEECH “Our track record, at least, is mostly wins, and part of the logic on that is that there’s nothing in under the Bruen decision at the Supreme Court, which makes them look at the text and history of the Second Amendment.” The Fifth Circuit decision cited the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling in its decision not to uphold the federal ban, as did two other circuit courts over the last year. One case in the Eighth Circuit invalidated a ban in Minnesota. Since then, the Commissioner of Public Safety in Minnesota filed a petition for the Supreme Court to rule on the case. That petition is currently pending.
You can no longer take a walk for free in THIS Delhi park; DDA to charge Rs…
The 36-acre District Park of Dwarka Sector 16D features an open gym, a running track, and swings for children. It caters to the residents of several housing societies in the vicinity.
Noida Authority imposes Rs 5000 fine for plastic sale, use; check what’s banned and what’s allowed
In 2022, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) ordered a nationwide ban on single-use plastic items from July 1, prohibiting their manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale, and use due to their low utility and high littering potential.
Trump did on live TV what other US presidents would just do in private
Psst. Over here. Over here. You want to hear a trade secret? The bulk of journalists who cover the so-called “halls of power” in Washington, Ottawa, Canberra, London, Paris and beyond prefer routine over spontaneity. You see, predictability is easy. It’s comforting because most capital cities are mundane places where boring is not only an agreeable fact on the ground, but also a prevailing state of mind. That is why the overwrought reaction to the lively dressing-down US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance gave Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was so in keeping with the White House press corps’ stubborn fondness for the veneer of practised civility over the impulsive truth. Unlike so many other pundits and columnists who rushed instantly and almost universally onto the familiar cable news networks to express their disbelief and shock over the “embarrassing spectacle” of America’s tactless commander-in-chief “humiliating” his “wartime hero” guest, I was mesmerised by the remarkable scenes unfolding live on my computer screen. Advertisement Rather than watching an orchestrated, forgettable set piece featuring smiling foreign dignitaries and heads of state visiting an ever-so-polite president in the Oval Office, it was refreshing to witness a blatant exhibition of the crudeness, rudeness, and brutishness of power politics that usually occurs far, far away from the cameras and, hence, reporters and the public. They will be loath to admit it, but the sea of scribes who stood like mute mannequins while Trump, Vance, and Zelenskyy traded rhetorical blows for several bruising rounds, expected another tame, pedestrian day at work like so many other tame, pedestrian days at work. They know the predictable role they play during these choreographed pantomimes. Step 1: Go to the Oval Office. Step 2: Record the foreign head of state saying nice and sweet stuff about the US president. Step 3: Record the US president saying nice and sweet stuff about the foreign head of state. Step 4: Report that the US president and the foreign head of state said nice and sweet stuff about each other. Step 5: Later, call sources who say that, in private, the US president and the foreign head of state did not say nice and sweet stuff about each other. Step 6: Report, quoting anonymous sources, that despite having said nice and sweet stuff about each other publicly, privately, truth be told, the US president and his grinning guest cannot stand one another. That was, in effect, the formulaic arc of much of the reporting after French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made their pilgrimages to Washington last week to massage and mollify Trump. Advertisement True to his unorthodox nature – to put it charitably – Trump and his clawing vice president – upended that traditional script, either by design or instinctively, with Zelenskyy. Reporters and pundits came away confused and disoriented. This is not supposed to happen the way it has happened, they moaned – disappointed, apparently, at having to act as journalists rather than stenographers. A lot of the hyperbolic outrage being directed at Trump is the product not so much of what he said to Zelenskyy – since his antipathy towards Ukraine and its president has been plain – but how and where he said it: in the Oval Office before TV cameras. That’s what America’s genteel chattering class considers so rank and appalling – Trump did his berating and bullying openly, when more discreet and “diplomatic” presidents do their berating and bullying behind closed doors. The glaring irony is that American networks and the personalities who populate them leverage broadcasting “live” to draw audiences tempted by the urgency of now and the prospect that, at any moment, real, not manufactured, drama and conflict might erupt. Newsworthy drama and conflict did erupt in the Oval Office on Friday, but instead of embracing it, those same networks and personalities recoiled from it and labelled it as unseemly and unbecoming of the office of the presidency and the United States itself. Here’s a bit of news for the yapping ostriches: Aside from lying with a pathological ease and ordering others to kill without a scintilla of regret or remorse, being rude, crude, and a brute is a job prerequisite of any US president – Democrat or Republican. Advertisement Trump is not the exception. He is the rule. The administration of pretty boy, Harvard-trained President John F Kennedy enlisted the Mafia to try to murder Cuba’s young and charismatic leader, Fidel Castro, and gave its tacit approval to a coup in early November 1963 that saw the overthrow of South Vietnam’s government and the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, was a six-foot, four-inch boor who physically assaulted much smaller public servants who angered him. In 1965, a livid Johnson summoned Canada’s diminutive prime minister, Lester Pearson, to Camp David for a stiff talking to after the Noble Peace Prize winner denounced the US bombing of North Vietnam. Johnson reportedly grabbed Pearson by the shirt collar, twisted it, and lifted the prime minister by the neck, shouting: “You pissed on my rug.” That same year, an enraged Johnson shoved then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve William Martin against a wall for having raised interest rates against the president’s wishes. “Boys are dying in Vietnam, and Bill Martin doesn’t care,” Johnson thundered. That avatar of presidential probity, Richard Nixon, ordered the CIA to block, thwart, undermine, and destabilise Chile’s democratically elected Socialist president, Salvador Allende. And Nixon’s obscene anti-Semitism makes Trump’s fiery remarks to Zelenskyy seem rather temperate, in comparison. He complained on tape that Washington “is full of Jews” and that “most Jews are disloyal”. Whether the wailing pundits and TV personalities are prepared to acknowledge it or not, Trump was right. The sensational Oval Office fireworks made for great television. Advertisement This time we were privy to the astonishing, history-making words and deeds of another “gangster” president in real-time, as it happened. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do