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Texas GOP lawmakers poised to finalize Trump-backed map after Dem redistricting walkout ends

Texas GOP lawmakers poised to finalize Trump-backed map after Dem redistricting walkout ends

The Texas legislature is poised to take up a new congressional redistricting bill put forward by Republicans on Wednesday, following weeks of pushback from Democrats. It is unclear how quickly Republicans will be able to vote on the redistricting plan, as it must go through floor debate before coming to a vote. It is a victory for Republicans, nevertheless, as Democrats who fled the state in an effort to block the plan are now back in the Capitol. If passed, the new congressional map would likely flip five seats currently held by Democrats over to Republicans, a reality that has unleashed cries of gerrymandering across the country. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has vowed to “fight fire with fire,” saying New York Democrats will pursue their own redistricting plan. BETO O’ROURKE ASKED POINT BLANK WHY HE’S HELPING DEMS FLEE TEXAS RATHER THAN HELPING TEXAS California Gov. Gavin Newsom has followed suit, with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) proposing a California congressional map that would flip five Republican seats over to Democrats. COLBERT CONFRONTS JB PRITZKER WITH MAP SHOWING ILLINOIS GERRYMANDERING Meanwhile, more Republican states, including Ohio, Florida, Indiana and Missouri, are moving forward with or considering their own redistricting efforts, as are Democratic states such as Maryland and Illinois. Nowhere has a redistricting battle been more dramatic than in Texas, however, where roughly 50 Democratic state lawmakers absconded from a special legislative session to block the vote in early August. TRUMP, REPUBLICANS RACE TO REDRAW TEXAS CONGRESSIONAL MAP AS DEMOCRATS THREATEN LEGAL WAR Democrats fled to Illinois and New York, but they faced a $500 fine for each day they refused to return home. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and other state officials hit the Democratic legislators with lawsuits seeking criminal charges or to have them removed from office entirely. The walkout ended when Democrats returned on Monday, saying they had accomplished their goals of blocking a vote during the first special legislative session and persuading Democrats in other states to take retaliatory steps. Reuters contributed to this report.

Congressman whose DC apartment complex was robbed blasts Democrats for criticizing Trump crime crackdown

Congressman whose DC apartment complex was robbed blasts Democrats for criticizing Trump crime crackdown

Congressman Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, blasted Democrats and the members of the media who have been critical of President Donald Trump sending the National Guard to the streets of Washington, D.C., in an effort to curb the rampant crime plaguing the city.  Hunt also revealed that his own D.C. apartment complex in the Navy Yard area was broken into last year, leaving a front desk attendant robbed of her belongings just several floors away from the congressman’s own unit.  “Downstairs in my apartment complex, there was a woman who was robbed,” Hunt told Fox News Digital. “She had her computer stolen, her phone stolen, and her iPad stolen right behind the desk, and we were all blocks away from the Capitol.” “I was a three-minute drive away from the Capitol when this happened,” Hunt added. “Across the street from our complex was where Henry Cuellar was robbed at gunpoint. I don’t understand what these [critics] are talking about. It’s not safe.” MS-13 GANG MEMBER ARRESTED IN DC AS BONDI TOUTS ADMIN’S ‘EXTRAORDINARY’ CRIME CRACKDOWN Trump’s military intervention to combat crime in D.C. has been widely criticized by Democrats, with House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., introducing a resolution last week to prevent the president from keeping service members in the district. Because Washington, D.C., is not a state, Trump was able to invoke Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, allowing him to declare a public emergency and deploy federal resources into the area.  “Just like I took care of the Border, where you had ZERO Illegals coming across last month, from millions the year before, I will take care of our cherished Capital, and we will make it, truly, GREAT AGAIN,” Trump stated in an Aug. 11 White House fact sheet on the emergency declaration. “Before the tents, squalor, filth, and Crime, it was the most beautiful Capital in the World. It will soon be that again.” DC POLICE ACCUSED OF CHANGING CRIME STATS JUST WEEKS BEFORE TRUMP FEDERALIZED CITY Hunt also noted the actions of several Democrat governors who used their respective state’s National Guard to combat various issues.  “Tim Walz used the National Guard to implement COVID restrictions on people, not to take care of the murder capital of the United States,” Hunt told Fox. “Gavin Newsom is willing to clean up downtown LA in California for the president of China to come visit, but you won’t clean it up just for everyday citizens when all this crime is happening?” The White House has also touted the success of the military presence in the nation’s capital, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters during a Tuesday press briefing that 465 arrests have been made since the start of the operation, including an MS-13 gang member illegally in the U.S. with convictions for drug possession and driving while intoxicated (DWI). PHOTOS: FEDS TAKE OVER DC AS TRUMP CRACKS DOWN ON CAPITAL CRIME “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and the outstanding work of both federal and local law enforcement, dangerous gang members like the one picked up last night will not be allowed on the streets of our nation’s capital,” Leavitt told the press. As for the residents of D.C., James Laverty, a staffer on Capitol Hill, told Fox News that the military presence has made a “noticeable difference” in the nation’s capital.  “In certain areas, like Navy Yard and U Street, it feels much safer than it did just a week ago,” Laverty told Fox. “This past weekend, there was a noticeable difference in the vibe late at night, and I think it goes without saying that the impact of the National Guard on the streets is the clear reason for the newly found safe sentiment in DC.”

JD Vance ‘directly’ convinced UK to drop Apple backdoor data demand, protecting Americans’ rights: US official

JD Vance ‘directly’ convinced UK to drop Apple backdoor data demand, protecting Americans’ rights: US official

Vice President JD Vance – who eviscerated European leaders earlier this year for allegedly retreating on free speech, essentially threatening fundamental democratic values – recently played a commanding role in convincing the United Kingdom to drop its demands that Apple provide the British government a “backdoor” to personal user data, Fox News Digital has learned.  A U.S. official told Fox News Digital that Vance “was in charge and was personally involved in negotiating a deal, including having direct conversations with the British government.”  Working with U.K. partners, the vice president “negotiated a mutually beneficial understanding” that the British government “will withdraw the current backdoor order to Apple,” the U.S. official said, adding that the “agreement between our two governments maintains each country’s sovereignty while ensuring close cooperation on data sharing.”  BIPARTISAN LETTER WARNS GABBARD NEW UK ORDER FOR BACKDOOR APPLE DATA COULD JEOPARDIZE AMERICANS The U.S. official further told Fox News Digital that the vice president “took a strong interest in this issue because of his background in technology, his concern for privacy, and his [sincere] commitment to maintain a strong U.S.-U.K. relationship.”  Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard said in an X post on Monday that she, alongside President Donald Trump and Vance, had been working “closely with our partners in the U.K.” over the past several months “to ensure Americans’ private data remains private and our Constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected.”  “As a result, the UK has agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a ‘back door’ that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties,” Gabbard wrote.  Fox News Digital reached out to Apple and the British Home Office for comment but did not immediately hear back.  In February, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., penned a letter to the then-newly confirmed DNI, informing Gabbard of recent press reports that the U.K.’s home secretary “served Apple with a secret order” at the start of the year, “directing the company to weaken the security of its iCloud backup service to facilitate government spying.” The directive reportedly required Apple to weaken the encryption of its iCloud backup service, giving the British government “blanket capability” to access customers’ encrypted files. Reports further stated that the order was issued under the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Act 2016, commonly known as the “Snoopers’ Charter,” which does not require a judge’s approval, according to the letter previously obtained by Fox News Digital.  Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Biggs, who chairs a House Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, informed Gabbard that Apple “is reportedly gagged from acknowledging that it received such an order, and the company faces criminal penalties that prevent it from even confirming to the U.S. Congress the accuracy of these press reports.” The letter focused on the threat of China, Russia and other adversaries spying on Americans.  At the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance, meanwhile, said that the threat he worried about the most when it comes to Europe was not China, Russia or “any other external actor,” but rather “the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.” Vance specifically cited the case of Adam Smith-Connor, a British Army veteran and physiotherapist, who was prosecuted under the U.K.’s “buffer zone” or “safe access zone” laws around abortion clinics. British police confronted him for silently praying outside the clinic.  The vice president also called out Europe more broadly for stifling opposition speech.  DNC RIPS JD VANCE FOR FISHING WITH BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY IN LATEST BIZARRE ATTACK; REPUBLICANS HIT BACK “To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election,” Vance said at the time.  More recently, Vance made a diplomatic visit to the U.K. earlier this month, meeting with the British foreign secretary for talks centered on the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars. Last week, the State Department, meanwhile, released its 2024 annual country report on “human rights practices.” In the report on the United Kingdom, the Trump administration cited “credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression,” including “enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression; and crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by antisemitism.”  The State Department asserted that the British government “sometimes took credible steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses, but prosecution and punishment for such abuses was inconsistent.”  The report said British authorities, including the U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom), are legally authorized to monitor all forms of communication for speech they deemed “illegal.” The U.K. Online Safety Act of 2023, which came into force in 2024, “defined the category of ‘online harm’ and expressly expanded Ofcom’s authority to include American media and technology firms with a substantial number of British users, regardless of whether they had a corporate presence in the UK,” according to the State Department. Under the law, the report said, companies were required to engage in proactive “illegal content risk assessment” to mitigate the risk of users encountering speech deemed illegal by Ofcom.  “Experts warned that one effect of the bill could be government regulation to reduce or eliminate effective encryption (and therefore user privacy) on platforms,” the report said.  The U.K. has been increasingly cracking down on British citizens for opposition commentary, especially online posts and memes opposing mass migration. In August 2024, as riots broke out in the U.K. after a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event left three girls dead and others wounded, London’s Metropolitan Police chief warned that officials could also extradite and jail U.S. citizens for

Trump says Smithsonian museums only cover ‘how bad Slavery was’ in US

Trump says Smithsonian museums only cover ‘how bad Slavery was’ in US

The US President says a review of the national museums will be similar to those he has ordered for universities. United States President Donald Trump has said the nation’s Smithsonian museums only discuss “horrible” topics, including “how bad Slavery was”, as his administration continues a review into the institution’s exhibits for their “Americanism”. In a post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, Trump said the Smithsonian is “OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is”, including “how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been”. Elaborating on a review of several of the Smithsonian’s 21 museums and galleries ordered by the White House last week, Trump said he has instructed his lawyers “to go through the Museums” and “start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made”. “This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE,” Trump added. The Organisation of American Historians (OAH) has expressed “deep concern and dismay” at the White House’s “unprecedented” request to review the Smithsonian’s exhibits, adding that “no president has the legitimate authority to impose such a review”. The Smithsonian receives most of its budget from Congress but is independent of the government in decision-making. The OAH also said that “it is particularly distressing to see this effort of historical censorship and sanitising tied to the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding”. The Trump administration said it ordered the review of museums in advance of next year’s milestone, which will mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Advertisement It was not until decades later, on December 18, 1865, that the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution officially abolished chattel slavery nationwide, although exceptions continued. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, opened in 2016 [File:Will Oliver/EPA] The National Museum of African American History and Culture, which was opened in 2016 with a ceremony led by then-President Barack Obama, is one of the museums the White House has included in its review. According to the museum’s website, visitors learn about the “richness and diversity of the African American experience” with exhibits ranging from a plantation cabin from South Carolina to Chuck Berry’s red Cadillac convertible. The freedom of expression organisation PEN America has also expressed alarm at the Trump administration’s “sweeping review” of Smithsonian exhibits. “The administration’s efforts to rewrite history are a betrayal of our democratic traditions and a deeply concerning effort to strip truth from the institutions that tell our national story,” Hadar Harris, the managing director of PEN America’s Washington, DC, office, said in a statement. Trump has made threats to cut federal funding for top US educational institutions, citing pro-Palestinian protests against US ally Israel’s war on Gaza, transgender policies, climate initiatives and diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. Last month, the government settled probes into Columbia University, which agreed to pay $221m, and Brown University, which said it would pay $50m to the government. Both institutions also accepted certain government demands, including how some topics are taught. Harvard University has sued the Trump administration to halt the freezing of $2.3bn of its federal funding. Adblock test (Why?)

Australia hits back at Netanyahu amid escalating diplomatic row over Gaza

Australia hits back at Netanyahu amid escalating diplomatic row over Gaza

Australia’s Home Affairs minister says ‘strength is not measured by how many people you can blow up’. Australia has hit back at Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu after he branded the country’s prime minister “weak”, with an Australian minister accusing the Israeli leader of conflating strength with killing people. In an interview with Australia’s national broadcaster on Wednesday, Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke said that strength was not measured “by how many people you can blow up or how many children you can leave hungry”. Burke’s comments come after Netanyahu on Tuesday launched a blistering attack on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on social media, claiming he would be remembered by history as a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews”. Speaking on the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast programme, Burke characterised Netanyahu’s broadside as part of Israel’s “lashing out” at countries that have moved to recognise a Palestinian state. “Strength is much better measured by exactly what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has done, which is when there’s a decision that we know Israel won’t like, he goes straight to Benjamin Netanyahu,” Burke said. “He has the conversation, he says exactly what we’re intending to do, and has the chance for the objections to be made person to person. And then having heard them, makes public announcement and then does what needs to be done.” Relations between Australia and Israel, traditionally close allies, have progressively soured in recent months amid tensions over the war in Gaza, but ties have become especially acrimonious since Canberra’s announcement last week that it would recognise a Palestinian state. Advertisement On Monday, Australia announced that it had cancelled a visa for Simcha Rothman, a lawmaker with Israel’s far-right Mafdal-Religious Zionism party and a member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, amid concerns that a planned speaking tour in the country aimed to “spread division”. Hours after that decision, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar said he had revoked the visas of Australian diplomats to the Palestinian Authority. Israel has come under growing international pressure, including from many of its traditional allies, over the level of human suffering being inflicted by its war in Gaza. More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since it launched its military offensive following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israeli communities, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Adblock test (Why?)

Mali’s Choguel Maiga charged with embezzlement, remanded in custody

Mali’s Choguel Maiga charged with embezzlement, remanded in custody

Mali’s former prime minister, Choguel Maiga, has been charged with embezzlement and remanded in custody as the West African country’s military leaders intensify a crackdown over allegations of a coup plot. The charges against Maiga were revealed on Tuesday following a hearing before Mali’s Supreme Court. Maiga, who took office after a second coup in Mali in 2021, was sacked in November 2024 after he publicly denounced the military for a lack of clarity over when it would hand over power to a civilian government. Maiga’s lawyer, Cheick Oumar Konare, told the AFP news agency that no date has yet been set for the former leader’s trial. “We believe in justice, we are calm while awaiting the trial,” Konare said, explaining that Maiga would remain in prison for the trial. A statement from the public prosecutor said the charges against Maiga involve “money laundering equal to many billions of CFA francs”, or several million US dollars. The former prime minister was arrested one week ago, according to the AFP, days after Mali’s military leaders carried out dozens of arrests to quash an alleged plot within the army’s ranks to topple the government in turn. Nine of Maiga’s colleagues from his time as prime minister also appeared before the court on Tuesday, with two being charged, some acquitted and others still awaiting their hearing, the AFP reported, citing a judicial source. Earlier this month, another former prime minister, Moussa Mara, was imprisoned after tweeting his support for jailed critics of the military. Advertisement Mali has been gripped by a security crisis since 2012, driven by violence from armed groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the ISIL (ISIS) group, as well as local criminal gangs. The fighting has resulted in thousands of deaths, while up to 350,000 people are currently displaced, according to Human Rights Watch. The crisis set off mass protests in 2020, paving the way for the military to topple the country’s elected government in a coup. The military briefly ceded power to a transitional government but took over in a second coup in 2021. The colonel who led the two power grabs, Assimi Goita, was also sworn in as transitional president that year. Under his government, the military has reneged on pledges to hand back power to civilians by the end of March 2024, and has tightened its grip on power by dissolving all political parties, and jailing dissidents and leading civil society figures. In July, the military-appointed legislative body also passed legislation that granted Goita a five-year presidential mandate, renewable “as many times as necessary” and without elections. Maiga was one of the leaders of the protests that helped topple Mali’s civilian government in 2020, and previously said he believed the military would safeguard the country’s democracy. “We must refound the Malian state, so that no political power can ever again create the conditions for a return to an unconstitutional order!” he told Al Jazeera in an interview in 2023. Since his dismissal, however, Maiga has become one of the military’s fiercest critics, accusing it of weaponising the courts to silence dissent. Experts, meanwhile, have described Maiga’s arrest and imprisonment on Tuesday as a sign of the military government’s fragility. “If the most prominent opposition leaders are arrested and imprisoned, including Choguel, who once gave the junta credibility, then I believe today the junta credibility is greatly weakened,” said Alioune Tine, the former United Nations rapporteur on Mali to the Security Council. “Just 50km [31 miles] from Bamako, you’re still in danger. Al-Qaeda’s affiliate JNIM controls most of the territory. The only way forward now is for President Goita to change course: free political prisoners, release activists and journalists, and open a national dialogue that leads to real democratic elections,” he said. Mali’s military leaders have replaced Maiga with General Abdoulaye Maiga, who had previously served as government spokesman in the West African country. The military’s power grab in Mali helped set off a wave of coups in the Sahel region, south of the Sahara desert, including in the neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, which are fighting the same groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL. Advertisement The three countries have withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States amid pressure from the bloc to return to civilian government. They have now banded together to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and created a 5,000-strong force for joint military operations to try to drive out armed groups. Adblock test (Why?)