Homeland Security secretary set to testify as immigration takes center stage in midterms
CNN
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faces off Wednesday with Congress in a series of high-profile hearings that will put the secretary and the administration's immigration policies in the spotlight ahead of the midterm election.
Mayorkas will meet Wednesday with both the House Homeland Security Committee and a subcommittee on House Appropriations. On Thursday, he will sit before the House Judiciary Committee. The hearings are part of Mayorkas' routine efforts to request funding for his agency and for Congress to provide oversight.
Yet the hearings come as the administration is facing increasing criticism from Republicans and some Democrats about its approach to ending a Trump-era pandemic restriction, known as Title 42, on the US-Mexico border. That authority allows border officials to immediately send migrants back to their home country citing a public health emergency. The Biden administration announced in April it was ending the practice on May 23.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.
On one side of the Capitol, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace vowed to “stand in the way” of Democratic Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first out transgender woman elected to Congress, using women’s bathrooms in the US Capitol.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general during Trump’s first term, as his pick to be US ambassador to NATO.
Police in Peru have arrested a man caught trying to leave the country with 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants strapped to his body.
Ensuring the US doesn’t default on its obligations. Extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts before they expire. Quarterbacking President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the economy.
President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental entity helmed by billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, is expected to make a push for an end to remote work across federal agencies as a way to help reduce the federal workforce through attrition.
“I want to say to my babies that your mama loves you so much…” Susan Smith, then 23 years old, tearfully said to the scrum of news cameras.
The Biden administration has approved sending anti-personnel mines to Ukraine for the first time in another major policy shift, according to two US officials. The decision comes just days after the US gave Ukraine permission to fire long-range US missiles at targets in Russia, a shift that only occurred after months of lobbying from Kyiv.