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Attorney General Garland vows to fight GOP efforts to curb voting access
CNN
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Justice Department will aggressively fight efforts to restrict voting rights nationwide following a blitz of new voting restrictions in Republican-led states that stem from former President Donald Trump's lies that widespread fraud helped Joe Biden win the presidential election.
In a speech Friday, Garland outlined a number of steps the Justice Department will take to protect every citizen's right to vote, and within the next 30 days said the department will double the number of employees in the Civil Rights Division's "enforcement staff for protecting the right to vote." "There are many things that are open to debate in America. But the right of all eligible citizens to vote is not one of them. The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow," Garland said to a room of prosecutors inside the Justice Department's Great Hall.
The retired Air Force general announced as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Donald Trump after the abrupt Friday night firing of his predecessor is a respected career F-16 pilot who is described by current and former officials who served with him as a professional with a “strong moral center.”
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Over the past 10 days, Vice President JD Vance put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on notice, rattled the confidence of century-old allies in Western Europe during his first foreign trip, decamped to Capitol Hill to help in delicate budget talks and delivered a spirited defense of the Trump administration’s first month to a gathering of conservatives outside the nation’s capital.