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During testimony behind closed doors, former special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers he believed he could prove President Donald Trump engaged in a "criminal scheme" in order to overturn the 2020 election. NBC News' Ryan Reilly reports on Smith's investigation and what members of Congress had to say. Summary Former special counsel Jack Smith testified in a closed-door House Judiciary Committee hearing on December 17, 2025, after being subpoenaed by Republicans. He defended his investigation into President Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, stating that his team found proof beyond a reasonable doubt of Trump's involvement in a criminal...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the National Guard deployment in the nation’s capital can continue for now, staying a lower-court ruling that had ordered an end to the troops’ presence. The three-judge panel for U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Donald Trump may prevail in his argument that the president “possesses a unique power” to mobilize the Guard in Washington, which is a federal district. The ruling stops the implementation of U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb’s Nov. 20 opinion and order, and reaffirms that residents and visitors...

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is driving a major overhaul to pivot the US military away from Europe and the Middle East and refocus operations on the Western Hemisphere, sources indicate to the Washington Post. Top Pentagon leadership are finalizing a plan that would dramatically downgrade America's military presence in traditional theaters while consolidating power closer to home – marking a fundamental shift in US strategic priorities. The proposal would reduce US Central Command, US Africa Command and US European Command to subordinate status under a new umbrella organization called US International Command – stripping these Middle Eastern and European-focused...

The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies have heightened stress among the country’s approximately 14 million immigrants who are living in the U.S. without legal authorization. The sharp rise in dramatic arrests and deportations of immigrants over the past year has received widespread media attention. A less publicized issue is that many young, undocumented immigrants are also finding it harder to apply to and stay in college. As someone who researches teacher training and was a high school teacher in South Carolina, I have researched how restrictive education policies make it harder for immigrant students, particularly undocumented students, to receive a...

Donald Trump has doubled down on his attacks on Rob Reiner after the Hollywood star and his wife were apparently murdered. The President appeared to blame Reiner and Michele's killings on the liberal director's 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' in a Monday post on Truth Social. Hollywood celebrities and Republicans pushed back on his statement, with some calling it 'disgusting and vile.' But the President seemed undeterred in his criticism of the late director. When pressed by a reporter in the Oval Office about his previous statement, he said: 'Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all. He was a deranged...

The United States would suffer a devasting defeat and lose its biggest aircraft carrier if it tried to stop China invading Taiwan, according to a top secret Pentagon report. War games showed the U.S. would be overwhelmed by China's arsenal of around 600 hypersonic weapons, along with missiles and nuclear submarines. The grim assessment, revealed by the New York Times, confirmed the conclusions of previous war games, but it also highlighted wider concerns about the future direction of the U.S. military and its continued reliance on outdated methods. *** Ships like the $13 billion USS Gerald R. Ford - the...

On Tuesday afternoon's Chris Jansing Reports, MS NOW promoted a liberal activist who stalks immigration agents so she can warn illegal aliens of their presence and keep them from being arrested. She also made the left's latest reference to Nazi Germany by invoking Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Jansing set up the piece by touting the "grandmother" who is trying to undermine federal agents: In New Orleans heightened fear as federal agents enforce President Trump's immigration crackdown. But one local grandmother is rolling up her sleeves and pushing back: 71-year-old Reverend Jane Mauldin says her faith drives her to keep her...

... On Oct. 18, Caceres had been headed to Texas to photograph a wedding when he was detained while going through security at John Wayne Airport. Caceres and his wife of a year and a half, who is a U.S. citizen, had been wary of travel as mass deportations increased nationwide under the Trump administration. Still, he had clients counting on him. And he believed he would be safe: Caceres said he had fled to the United States as a teenager seeking asylum and had continued following immigration requirements over the years, including completing biometrics and updating his address the...

Twelve former FBI agents fired after kneeling during a 2020 racial justice protest in Washington sued Monday to get their jobs back, saying their action had been intended to de-escalate a volatile situation and was not meant as a political gesture. The agents say in their lawsuit that they were fired in September by Director Kash Patel because they were perceived as not being politically affiliated with President Donald Trump. But they say their decision to take a knee on June 4, 2020, days after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, has been misinterpreted as...

A new White House policy document formalizes President Trump’s long-held contempt for Europe’s leaders. It made clear that the continent now stands at a strategic crossroads.The Trump administration has not exactly kept its low regard for Europe secret. President Trump has long portrayed European allies as freeloaders that fail to pay enough for their own security and argued that the European Union was “formed to screw the United States.”Now, that hostility is official White House policy.The Trump administration issued a national security strategy paper this week that called for European nations to take “primary responsibility” for their own defense, indicating...

Donald Trump on Tuesday called Somali immigrants “garbage” and said they should be sent back home in a rant that came as the administration is reportedly increasing immigration enforcement against undocumented Somalis in Minnesota. In a xenophobic rant during a cabinet meeting, Trump went off on Somalis and Ilhan Omar, the congressional representative who is from Somalia and is a US citizen. He said Somalia “stinks” and is “no good for a reason”. “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” he said. He called Omar “garbage” and said “we’re going to go...

A harrowing US podcast documents a community’s struggle against immigration raids – and warns us about herd mentalityEarlier this year, the Trump administration reversed the convention that nobody would be snatched by immigration and customs enforcement, or ICE, by a school, church or hospital. Since then, teachers have reported classrooms a third empty, as parents are too scared to send their kids in – volunteers walk them there and back.In the Rogers Park area of Chicago, a group of citizens are organising to resist such immigration raids. Sometimes, it’s simple non-violent tactics, such as slowing officers down by walking in...

President Donald Trump obliterated a so-called “reporter” who dared to question why he holds Joe Biden responsible for allowing the Afghan terrorist, who ambushed two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., into the United States, which left a member of the West Virginia National Guard dead and another in critical condition. The exchange happened during a press gaggle that quickly turned into a masterclass in how to handle the corrupt press. The reporter had the audacity to ask: “Why do you blame the Biden administration?” As if it’s not crystal clear that Crooked Joe’s bungled withdrawal flooded our country with...

The number has skyrocketed in recent weeks and includes at least 20 judges appointed by Trump himself.The Trump administration’s bid to systematically lock up nearly all immigrants facing deportation proceedings has led to a fierce — and mounting — rejection by courts across the country.That effort, which began with an abrupt policy change by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on July 8, has led to a tidal wave of emergency lawsuits after ICE’s targets were arrested at workplaces, courthouses or check-ins with immigration officers. Many have lived in the U.S. for years, and sometimes decades, without incident and have been pursuing...

The shooting of two National Guard members the day before in Washington hung over President Trump’s Thanksgiving events at Mar-a-Lago, where he held a call with members of the military to thank them for their service on the holiday. At the beginning of the call, he revealed that one of the Guard members, Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, had died. “It’s just happened,” Mr. Trump said. “She was savagely attacked. She’s dead. Not with us.” The other victim, he said, was “fighting for his life.” Later, a White House official said that the president had spoken with the family of the...

It has been dubbed “Witi-Leaks” – an explosive insight into Donald Trump’s peace negotiations that could blow the lid off the plan to end the war in Ukraine.Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s peace envoy, was caught red-handed coaching the Russian side on how to appeal to his boss’s better nature, according to the transcripts of several phone calls that were leaked on Tuesday evening. Mr Witkoff, a former New York real estate developer turned high-level diplomat, faced criticism for his lack of experience at the coalface of international affairs. In discussions with The Telegraph, European sources have called him names, such...

American troops have stormed a Mexican beach setting off a diplomatic firestorm amid soaring tensions after Donald Trump threatened to bomb the country. US 'contractors' arrived by boat on Monday to 'Playa Bagdad', driving signs into the sand near where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Alarmed witnesses quickly alerted officials and heavily-armed Mexican security personnel rushed to the scene on trucks mounted with machine guns in a terrifying standoff.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department engaged in a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” in the process of securing an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, a federal judge ruled Monday in directing prosecutors to produce to defense lawyers all grand jury materials from the case. Those problems, wrote Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick, include “fundamental misstatements of the law” by a prosecutor to the grand jury that indicted Comey in September, the use of potentially privileged communications during the investigation and unexplained irregularities in the transcript of the grand jury proceedings. “The Court recognizes that the relief sought...

As corporation awaits possible action by president’s lawyers, US news organisations offer different lessons about whether to fight or fold At best, the video editing is sloppy. At worst the cuts are a deliberate attempt to harm Donald Trump’s chances of winning the 2024 election.A legal complaint in a US court followed, in tandem with a demand for a massive payout to make matters right.This scenario will be painfully familiar to the BBC but it actually played out months ago at CBS, its sister network in the US. The broadcaster eventually agreed to pay $16m (£12.1m) to make its Trump...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — The world’s climate leaders are conceding that Earth’s warming will shoot past a hard limit they set a decade ago in hopes of keeping the planet out of a danger zone. But they’re not conceding defeat. United Nations officials, scientists, and analysts are pinning their hopes on eventually forcing global temperatures back below the red line they set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which sought to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. Busting that limit and then coming back down is called “overshoot.” In the way climate science uses the term,...