Democrats in Congress gained the power Tuesday night to more forcefully investigate President Trump and rein in his agenda, setting up confrontations that are likely to define the final two years of his presidency.
As party leaders on Wednesday celebrated retaking the House and Senate, they vowed to put Trump and his administration on the defensive with subpoenas and hearings, a role that voters made clear they want them to play. But they also said the top priority would be the issue that swept them to power: making life more affordable.
"We are going to work hard to drive costs down with the president or without him, period," Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is poised to become Senate majority leader, said at a news conference.
Schumer's fellow New Yorker and the House Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, echoed those priorities on CNN: "We ran on affordability, we won decisively on affordability, and now we have a responsibility to govern on affordability."
With power split between the legislative and executive branches, to what degree Washington avoids gridlock will depend on how Trump wields his veto pen and how the Democrats negotiate with him — and how they follow through on pledges to investigate what they called a corrupt administration.

#democrats #president #administration #leader

When President Donald Trump’s name was ordered removed from the Kennedy Center this spring, it seemed that an opening to move on from his reign over the performing arts center might have emerged.
“I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management,” the president wrote in a late-May Truth Social post, seemingly relinquishing the control he’d seized a year prior.
Speculation even bubbled up among some of the more than a dozen “ex-officio,” board members — who don’t get a vote but are not allied with Trump — over whether the former board chairman, billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, could be brought back to help restore the center’s fundraising and programming, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. (CNN has asked Rubenstein for comment.)
But after Trump said he would remain chairman, “it kind of all squelched pretty quickly,” one of the sources said. The hope that his crusade to rename a monument dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy had ended turned out to be wishful thinking.
Instead, nine months from a cold December day when cranes first placed Trump’s name on the marble façade, the institution has been brought to the brink by the president still very much engaged in a fight: lights have been turned off inside, infrastructure is crumbling and protests swirl while legal battles mount.

#center

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed sparked controversy on social media Monday night after comparing Sharia law to Christian canon law during an interview with Fox News anchor Jesse Watters.
"Getting rid of Sharia law is White supremacy?" Watters said to El-Sayed, bringing up past comments from the Michigan candidate opposing a ban on Sharia law and comparing those efforts to White supremacy. "Can you explain that one?"
Sayed responded by comparing Sharia, Islamic law based on religious texts, to Catholic Church law and governance.
"Nobody is trying to push Sharia law on anyone else, just like I hope **** ody is trying to push canon law on anybody else, because we live in an America where you should have the freedom of your religion," El-Sayed said.
Trump Inauguration Pastor Says Dearborn Christians 'Afraid' To Speak Out In Muslim-majority City

#sharia

Something metallic turned up under a garden in a quiet Tallinn suburb in 1969, and the Soviets spent the next twenty years trying to get it out, bringing in excavators and scientists and military, borrowing the house from its owners and living in it, digging on and off until perestroika ended the whole effort and they walked away. Astrophysicist Dr. Beatriz Villarroel and Ocean X co-founder Dennis Åsberg went to that address to find out what is still down there. ****** ody came to the door, but the neighbor who had watched all of it from his window talked to them for an hour.
This is their full conversation with Ross Coulthart, recorded for "Secret Soviet UFOs" and running well past what the special had room for. Villarroel walks through the peer-reviewed work that brought her to Estonia, highly reflective objects photographed in orbit years before anyone on Earth had launched a satellite, and why she thinks the same search belongs in the ground. Åsberg ties Merivälja to the Baltic Sea anomaly his team found on sonar roughly 300 kilometers away and argues that both could predate the last ice age. Between them, they count five European cases and will not give up the coordinates of one of them. What ****** ody can answer yet is what sits under that garden, and the only thing that would settle it is ground-penetrating radar in the yard of a man who has already told them no.
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NewsNation.

#nobody #sberg #tallinn

By Bianca Flowers and Kat Stafford
CHICAGO, Aug 17 (Reuters) - The NAACP announced on Monday it had joined the legal team representing the family of Nolan Wells, an 18-year-old Black teen whose body was found on a ‌Mississippi barrier island last month after a Fourth of July trip with three white friends.
The U.S. civil rights organization ‌said its Office of General Counsel will work with the family's lawyers, including prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, to seek a comprehensive investigation and greater transparency from authorities into Wells' death.
"We're taking up this fight to search for truth and transparency surrounding the death of Nolan Wells," Kristen Clarke, general counsel of the NAACP, said in a statement.
The NAACP's involvement underscores how Wells' death has evolved from a local investigation into a case drawing national scrutiny. Although authorities have not announced final findings or alleged foul play, questions raised by family members, civil ‌rights leaders and others about race, transparency ⁠and accountability have fueled calls for greater scrutiny.

#wells #death #nolan #counsel

By Lefteris Papadimas, Yves Herman and Emma Pinedo
ATHENS/MADRID, July 31 (Reuters) - Greece battled wildfires on Friday on multiple fronts, from the outskirts of Athens to the central part of the country and on the island of Crete, while France and Spain won some respite after bringing major blazes under control.
Europe has been ravaged by wildfires ‌this summer after successive record-breaking heatwaves, leaving vast stretches of drought-parched vegetation primed to burn, and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
Residents of two communities ‌west of Athens were advised to evacuate as a precaution as smoke billowed from densely wooded hills surrounding the Greek capital, with authorities scrambling a formation of water-bombing aircraft to extinguish the blaze.
In Boeotia, north-west of Athens, hundreds of residents and visitors were evacuated from a small coastal community aboard coast guard boats and fishing vessels as thick orange smoke blanketed the area.

#residents

A small plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Huntington State Beach in Orange County, California. The pilot says the engine failed shortly after takeoff and had to make a quick decision about where to land. The beach wasn't too crowded, and no one was injured.

#make #orange #county

Over 3,500 are dead and at least 30,000 missing after twin earthquakes hit Venezuela. In La Guaira, grieving families face broken logistics—paying $2,000 for cranes and fighting fuel shortages—to recover loved ones from the rubble as official rescue teams pull out.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration will not seek new bids to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Sunday as he faced new questions about the troubled project and the taxpayer money involved.
Like President Donald Trump, Burgum said he was 100% sure that vandals caused the damage to the century-old Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Trump has charged that a 350-foot gash was cut into the pool's liner in the midst of recent renovations, while Burgum described it as multiple cuts adding up to that figure. He also said the pool would have to be at least partially drained in the coming week to finish the repairs.
The repairs will not be opened up to new contractors, he said.
"We'll use the same company, because they did a fantastic job," Burgum told CNN's "State of the Union." "Thankfully, the vandalism was small. It was bad. I mean, it could cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair, so then it could fall into a felony ... just like damaging any other government property could. But the job that was done to fix the Reflecting Pool was done extremely well."
Trump this spring pledged to beautify the Reflecting Pool before the nation's 250th birthday celebrations on July Fourth. Water was drained and the Republican president directed that the bottom be painted a color he called "American flag blue." But after the site was restored, the water was plagued by an algae bloom for more than a week, and pieces of the new coating have appeared to be peeling off the bottom.

There's growing alarm among European leaders over the flood of Chinese exports threatening their home-grown industries, and their response could resemble something from President Donald Trump's trade war.
Frustration is boiling over as China's goods trade surplus with the European Union hit 360.6 billion euros ($414 billion) in 2025, up 15% from 2024. And in the first four months of this year, the gap has expanded by 10%.
In fact, French President Emmanuel Macron even suggested a course of action that's straight out of Trump's own playbook.
"We must take protective measures, safeguard measures," he said last month, calling for "the European equivalent of Section 301."
Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the U.S. to impose tariffs in response to unfair or discriminatory trade practices. After the Supreme Court struck down the global duties Trump levied last year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, he plans to use Section 301 as the linchpin of his crackdown on trade deficits.

ANKARA, June 16 (Reuters) - Turkey's foreign minister said on Tuesday he told his Russian counterpart about the need to ‌avoid steps in the Black Sea that threatened regional ‌security and Turkey's interests, adding he also repeated Turkey's offer to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow.
In recent months, Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of drone attacks on tankers near Turkey's northern coast, including one on a Turkish-owned vessel. Ankara has protested to both Kyiv ‌and Moscow over the ⁠attacks.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan ⁠said the priority for Turkey - which hosted previous rounds of direct talks between Ukraine and Russia - was for the sides to resume negotiations and end the war as soon as possible.
"I conveyed our readiness ‌to host the next rounds of talks once again... If the sides agree, we are ready to also discuss how the negotiations can continue in a more result-oriented way," he said.
"I conveyed to my counterpart our expectation to avoid any incidents that can ‌harm our country's interests in the Black Sea," Fidan added, saying he and Lavrov discussed possible ways to ensure navigational safety in the region.