CNN – US Politics

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter The Supreme Court will let stand the conviction of a Louisiana inmate who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for his role in an attempted prison escape involving five other inmates. The justices declined on Monday to take up the appeal filed by the inmate,

By Natasha Bertrand, CNN The Chinese spy balloon that transited the US earlier this year was able to capture imagery and collect some signals intelligence from US military sites, a source familiar with the matter tells CNN. The balloon was able to transmit information back to Beijing in real time, the source said, and the

By Jennifer Agiesta, CNN Polling Director Sixty percent of Americans approve of the indictment of former President Donald Trump, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS following the news that a New York grand jury voted to charge him in connection with hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. About

By Jack Forrest, CNN Donald Trump, the first former president in history to face criminal charges, arrived in New York Monday for an expected arraignment on Tuesday after being indicted last week by a Manhattan grand jury. The expected voluntary surrender of a former president and 2024 White House candidate will be a unique affair

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Senior Supreme Court Analyst Some Supreme Court justices thought Donald Trump was setting them up. Two days after the official swearing-in of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in October 2018, the president arranged a televised ceremony at the White House and invited all the justices. Justices had declined to attend similar White House

By Kristen Holmes Former President Donald Trump spent the weekend before his history-making arraignment playing golf, posting on social media, meeting with advisers, and calling and texting allies to tout the political positives of his recent indictment. He disclosed fundraising numbers and internal poll numbers in these conversations, and vowed to fight the charges, according

By Paul LeBlanc, CNN The Justice Department has obtained new evidence suggesting potential obstruction by former President Donald Trump in the agency’s probe of his handling of classified documents, The Washington Post reported Sunday. Investigators have information that indicates Trump personally reviewed some of the documents in his Mar-a-Lago home after receiving a subpoena from

By Shawna Mizelle, CNN Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman opened up about his struggle with depression during a candid interview with CBS News that was taped during his stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. “I had stopped leaving my bed. I had stopped eating. I was dropping weight. I had stopped engaging … most

By Shawna Mizelle and Aileen Graef, CNN Sen. Joe Manchin declined to say Sunday whether he would run on a centrist presidential ticket but the moderate West Virginia Democrat said Americans were sick of the political division in the country. “We cannot basically have a divided country, and we cannot withstand that,” he said on

By Shawna Mizelle and Andrew Millman, CNN Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw on Sunday lamented the “difficult” nature of predicting American school shootings given their often “random and unexpected” nature. “They’re very difficult to build a pattern behind. It’s not like criminal activity, which you can target and prevent through law enforcement. This is harder,” the

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN Reporter, Crime and Justice Donald Trump’s legal team will look to challenge “every potential issue” in his indictment once the charges are unsealed, an attorney for the former president said Sunday. “We’re not doing anything at the arraignment because that would be showmanship and nothing more because we haven’t even seen

By Eric Bradner, CNN Brandon Johnson sought to echo Martin Luther King Jr. last week at the biggest rally of the Chicago mayor’s race so far, telling a crowd of thousands that the election was an opportunity to “take the progressive movement around the world.” Johnson, the progressive Cook County commissioner, faces moderate former Chicago

By Sydney Kashiwagi, CNN When Donald Trump enters a New York courtroom on Tuesday, he’ll face a seasoned judge who is no stranger to the former president’s orbit. Acting New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has sentenced Trump’s close confident Allen Weisselberg to prison, presided over the Trump Organization tax fraud trial and overseen

By Fredreka Schouten, CNN After a string of recent ballot-box victories for abortion rights groups, opponents of the procedure are redoubling their efforts — including, in some places, pushing to make it harder to use citizen-approved ballot measures to guarantee abortion access. An anti-abortion coalition in Ohio, for instance, recently unleashed a $5 million ad

By Tami Luhby, CNN Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage in coming months, but residents in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire and South Dakota will be the first to bear the brunt of the terminations. States have been barred by Congress from winnowing their Medicaid rolls since the Covid-19 pandemic

By Jeremy Herb, Kara Scannell and John Miller, CNN The New York grand jury hearing the case against Donald Trump was set to break for several weeks. The former president’s lawyers believed on Wednesday afternoon they had at least a small reprieve from a possible indictment. Trump praised the perceived delay. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin

By Andy Rose, CNN A federal judge in Tennessee on Friday temporarily blocked the state from enforcing a ban on public drag show performances, hours before the new law was set to take effect. US District Court Judge Thomas L. Parker issued an order delaying enforcement of the measure for at least 14 days as

By Steve Contorno and Kit Maher, CNN Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday morning that allows people to carry a concealed weapon in public without a government-issued permit, a top priority for the Republican governor. The legislation also ends an existing state requirement to undergo training before carrying a concealed weapon outside the

By Maegan Vazquez, CNN President Joe Biden is using International Transgender Day of Visibility on Friday to sharply criticize acts of violence and discrimination against Americans who identify as trans and nonbinary, zeroing in on the growing number of Republican-led bills targeting trans youth. In a presidential proclamation on Thursday and a subsequent statement on

By Tami Luhby, CNN Americans’ Social Security checks will get a lot smaller in 2034 if lawmakers don’t act to address the pending shortfall, according to an annual report released Friday by the Social Security trustees. That’s because the combined Social Security trust funds — which help support payouts for the elderly, survivors and disabled

By CNN The Manhattan district attorney’s office slammed House Republicans for their efforts to intervene in its investigation in former President Donald Trump, accusing them of collaborating with Trump to” vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges.” Read the letter from the DA’s general counsel Leslie B. Dubeck penned on

By Devan Cole and Sydney Kashiwagi, CNN The swirl of unprecedented political, legal and historical implications ignited by the indictment of Donald Trump reached a fever pitch Tuesday with the former president arrested and pleading not guilty in Manhattan. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in

By Daniel Dale, CNN In the wake of a Manhattan grand jury’s historic decision to indict Donald Trump, the former president and some other prominent Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have invoked liberal billionaire George Soros in their attacks on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump claimed

By Jack Forrest, CNN Trevor Reed, an American citizen and former Marine freed last year after two years of imprisonment in Russia, said he’d like to see the Biden administration take “definite action” in freeing an American and Wall Street Journal reporter recently detained by the Kremlin. “I want to see some definite action,” Reed

By Arlette Saenz, CNN First lady Dr. Jill Biden will make a two-day, four-state blitz next week as part of the administration’s “Investing in America” tour, offering a preview of how she could be deployed in a possible reelection bid. The first lady will travel to Colorado and Michigan, a key battleground state, on Monday

By Manu Raju, Melanie Zanona and Annie Grayer, CNN House Democrats are delivering a blunt message to the White House: Stop blindsiding us. In two embarrassing episodes in just the past month alone, House Democrats were aghast as they watched the White House send mixed messages to Congress on key issues — and ended up

By Phil Mattingly, Chief White House correspondent As lawmakers, presidential candidates and advocacy groups flooded in-boxes and social media platforms with statements responding to the Manhattan grand jury’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, there was one notable — and intentional — omission. There was no statement from President Joe Biden. The man who defeated

By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN Federal prosecutors described to a Washington, DC, jury on Thursday how a former Fugees rapper allegedly got caught up in three schemes to illegally influence two presidential administrations on behalf of a foreign businessman. The trial against Pras Michel, the Grammy-winning artist, began in earnest on Thursday with opening statements. Prosecutor

By Eric Bradner, CNN The Arizona Democratic Party said Thursday it is suing to keep the business-friendly centrist group “No Labels” from being recognized as a political party with the ability to place candidates on the state’s ballot. The lawsuit is an effort to keep a third-party candidate from playing a spoiler role in 2024,

By Holmes Lybrand, CNN A Virginia man convicted of providing support to ISIS in 2015 was sentenced Thursday to serve an additional year in prison for breaking his release conditions after meeting multiple times with John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban” and sharing ISIS propaganda online in encrypted chats. In 2015, Ali Shukri Amin

By Haley Britzky, CNN Six US service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries as a result of attacks from Iran-backed groups in Syria last week. Four US troops at the coalition base near al Hasakah that was attacked on March 23 by a suspected Iranian drone, and two service members at Mission Support

By Sydney Kashiwagi, CNN The press secretary for Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has resigned after sending out a tweet that suggested violence against “transphobes” hours after the Nashville school shooting, the Democratic governor’s office confirmed Thursday. On Monday morning, a shooter identified by police as Audrey Hale, 28, opened fire at The Covenant School, killing

By Clare Foran and Kristin Wilson, CNN The House voted on Thursday to pass a sweeping energy policy bill put forward by Republicans that the GOP majority has highlighted as a key priority — even though it is expected to be dead on arrival in the Senate. Republicans have touted the bill as a plan

By Tami Luhby and Tierney Sneed, CNN A federal judge in Texas said Thursday that some Affordable Care Act mandates cannot be enforced nationwide, including those that require insurers to cover a wide array of preventive care services at no cost to the patient, including some cancer, heart and STD screenings, and tobacco programs. In

By Alta Spells, CNN It is now legal to purchase a pistol without a permit in North Carolina after the state’s Republican-led legislature overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The state House voted to override Cooper’s veto of Senate Bill 41 by 71-46 on Wednesday, a day after the state Senate voted 30-19

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Senior Supreme Court Analyst When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in 2015, Chief Justice John Roberts revealed extraordinary anger as he read aloud what for him was an unprecedented dissent from the bench. “Just who do we think we are?” he asked. Roberts emphasized the ancient

By Jennifer Hansler and Jack Forrest, CNN Paul Rusesabagina, who inspired the Hollywood film “Hotel Rwanda” and was freed from prison in Kigali last week, returned to the United States on Wednesday, arriving at the US Army’s Brooke Army Medical Center at Joint Base San Antonio, according to a State Department official. “The U.S. government

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday took a break from the middle of a contentious Supreme Court term to console a law student disillusioned with the American justice system. “Wrong things can be changed, ” Sotomayor told the student, Lauren Burgess, adding: “So don’t give up, OK?” Sotomayor

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter After pressure from members of Congress, the federal judiciary revised its financial disclosure rules to require that federal judges — including Supreme Court justices — to be more specific when disclosing non-business travel. Under the Ethics in Government Act, judges are required to report information related to

By Lauren del Valle, Jeremy Herb and Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN The Manhattan grand jury hearing the hush money case involving former President Donald Trump is currently scheduled to break after April 5 and restart later in the month, according to a source familiar with the matter. If the grand jury does not hear the case

By Rashard Rose, CNN Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said a stabbing attack for one of his staffers over the weekend in Washington, DC “was life threatening, but he will recover.” The staffer told police that on March 25, just after 5 p.m. ET, he was attacked after he and his friend left a

By Ella Nilsen, CNN A few weeks after allowing the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska to go forward, the Biden administration is auctioning off more than 73 million acres of waters in the Gulf of Mexico to offshore oil and gas drilling. It could be the first Gulf of Mexico lease sale under

By Steve Contorno, CNN As Fox News faces legal peril over its coverage of Donald Trump‘s 2020 election lies, one of its most featured Republicans, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is trying to gut the free speech protections that may ultimately save the network from financial ruin. DeSantis and his GOP allies in the state legislature