Author: Wolf Blitzer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk pushed debunked theories about Social Security on Monday while describing federal benefit programs as rife with fraud, suggesting they will be a primary target in his crusade to reduce government spending.The billionaire entrepreneur, who is advising President Donald Trump, suggested that $500 billion to $700 billion in waste needed to be cut.“Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Musk told the Fox Business Network. “That’s the big one to eliminate.”The comments on the popular program and other benefits provided to Americans could rattle politicians on both sides of the aisle as Musk works to downsize…
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York fired more than 2,000 prison guards Monday for failing to return to work after a weekslong wildcat strike that crippled the state’s correctional system, but said enough officers had come back on the job to declare the illegal work stoppage over.“After 22 days of an illegal strike, the governor and I are happy to report it is now ended,” Commissioner Daniel Martuscello said during a virtual press briefing.The state and the guards’ union struck a new deal to end the strike this weekend, but it was contingent on at least 85% of staff returning…
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is known best for enforcing the right to disability services across America’s schools. But under President Donald Trump, it’s taking a frontline role in his political battles.Trump appointees have halted thousands of pending cases while they open new investigations aligned with the president’s campaign promises. Career staffers have been sidelined and pressured to quit, and those who remain are being ordered to refocus priorities on antisemitism, transgender issues and anti-DEI complaints.A memo Friday from the civil rights office’s chief announced antisemitism cases are now the top priority, taking aim at…
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The district attorney of Los Angeles County said Monday that he does not support the resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez because the brothers have repeatedly lied about why they killed their parents at their Beverly Hills home in 1989.Resentencing, which could make the brothers immediately eligible for parole, is just one of the pathways they are pursuing to walk free after their 1996 convictions for murder. District Attorney Nathan Hochman’s predecessor, who lost reelection, had backed resentencing, and advocates for the siblings had waited anxiously to see whether the new DA would do the same.…
WASHINGTON (AP) — A nonprofit that was awarded nearly $7 billion by the Biden administration to finance clean energy and climate-friendly projects has sued President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, accusing it of improperly freezing a legally awarded grant.Climate United Fund, a coalition of three nonprofit groups, demanded access to a Citibank account it received through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program created in 2022 by the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act and more commonly known as the green bank. The freeze threatens its ability to issue loans and even pay employees, he group said.“The combined actions of Citibank and…
NEW YORK (AP) — A prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead protests at Columbia University is facing deportation following his arrest by federal immigration agents over the weekend.Mahmoud Khalil, who graduated from the university in December, was arrested Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the arrest, saying it was a result of President Donald Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism. Khalil has not been formally charged with a crime. Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is on the Columbia University campus in New York at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on April 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey,…
LITITZ, Pa. (AP) — Three of the five family members injured in a single-engine plane crash in Pennsylvania after the pilot reported an open door on the aircraft were sent to a burn center for treatment, officials said Monday.TV station WGAL in Lancaster identified the pilot as Matt White and the four passengers injured in Sunday’s crash as his family members, citing the aviation company, Venture Jets, where White is an executive board member. The plane was White’s personal plane, WGAL reported.No one was killed in the fiery crash and no one was injured on the ground, the Federal Aviation…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the Trump administration had finished its six-week purge of programs of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development and he would move the 18% of aid and development programs that survived under the State Department.Rubio made the announcement in a post on X, in one of his relatively few public comments on what has been a historic shift away from U.S. foreign aid and development, executed by Trump political appointees at State and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams.Rubio in the post thanked DOGE and “our hardworking staff who…
WASHINGTON (AP) — A young economist who had uprooted her life for civil service. A fierce housing advocate terminated just before buying her first home. A semifinalist whose dreams were dashed before they materialized.For decades, the Presidential Management Fellows program was seen as a building block for the civil service with the expectation that the few who earned the position would one day become leaders in the federal workforce. Now the road ahead is uncertain. Hundreds of the fellows have been terminated or placed on administrative leave amid a nationwide slashing of the federal workforce.One of President Donald Trump’s executive…
WARREN, Mich. (AP) — Bernie Sanders is standing alone on the back of a pickup truck shouting into a bullhorn.He’s facing several hundred ecstatic voters huddled outside a suburban Detroit high school — the group that did not fit inside the high school’s gym or two overflow rooms. The crowd screams in delight when he tells them that a combined total of 9,000 people had shown up for the rally.“What all of this tells me, is not just in Michigan or in Vermont, the people of this country will not allow us to move toward oligarchy. They will not allow…