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Chuck Schumer says Senate Democrats won't provide votes to pass GOP funding bill as shutdown draws near — After meeting with his conference, the Senate minority leader said “Republicans do not have the votes” to advance the House-approved measure, which requires 60 to pass.
Discussion:
Fox News, The Hill, Washington Post, Politico, UPI, Townhall, The Guardian, Axios, God's Spies, Associated Press, Raw Story, Bloomberg, HotAir, New Republic, Punchbowl News, Blaze Media, Off Message, NPR, CNN, Voice of America, Orange County Register, Washington Times, Bangor Daily News, The Daily Signal, Washington Examiner, Ace of Spades HQ and The Post Millennial
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Tim Walz to launch national tour of town halls in Republican House districts — Tim Walz is headed back out on the road - this time, for a tour of House districts represented by Republicans who have stopped holding in-person town halls amid the raucous receptions some of their colleagues have gotten across the country.
Discussion:
Daily Mail and Twitchy

Senate Democrats embrace hardball on government shutdown — Senate Democrats left a private meeting Wednesday saying there aren't enough votes to advance the short-term funding bill that passed the House on Tuesday. — Why it matters: This raises the chances of a government shutdown this weekend.
Discussion:
Politico, NBC News, The Hill, The Message Box, E&E News, Daily Mail, Washington Post, Deseret News, Forbes, New York Times, Associated Press, MM Press and Talking Points Memo

Senate Dems form plan to avoid a shutdown — Senate Democrats want a vote on an alternative stopgap funding bill as they look for leverage against Republicans with two days to go until a government shutdown. The lawmakers emerged from a closed-door lunch on Wednesday and said that they …
Mike Lillis / The Hill:
Democrats are heading to GOP districts for town halls: 'We're filling a void'
HuffPost:
Senate Democrats Balk At GOP Funding Bill As Government Shutdown Nears
Senate Democrats Balk At GOP Funding Bill As Government Shutdown Nears
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The Hill, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Washington Times, The Daily Caller, E&E News, Washington Post, American Greatness, PoliticusUSA, Scripps News, Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Bloomberg, CBS News, IJR, Townhall, Politico, WisPolitics, Reuters, Daily Kos, New York Daily News, The Daily Signal, GovExec.com, Talking Points Memo, USA Today and Deadline

Trump's FBI Moves to Criminally Charge Major Climate Groups — The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration. — Citibank revealed in a court filing Wednesday that it was told …
Discussion:
New York Times, Ars Technica, TechCrunch and New York Post

Robert Morris, Texas megachurch pastor and former Trump adviser, indicted for child sex crimes — Morris is a former spiritual adviser to President Donald Trump, and Gateway — one of the nation's largest megachurches — has been particularly active in Dallas-area GOP politics.
Discussion:
Oklahoma Attorney General and Raw Story
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At Columbia, Tension Over Gaza Protests Hits Breaking Point Under Trump — There were protests, arrests, the departure of the school's president. Then, a new administration arrived in Washington. — Days after immigration officers arrested a prominent pro-Palestinian campus activist …
Discussion:
The Washington Free Beacon, Metro.co.uk, Chicago Tribune, Robert Reich, New York Daily News, The Hill, Associated Press and Axios
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The arrest that's prompting a campus free speech reckoning
Discussion:
New York Times, New York Post and The Hill

U.S. citizen child recovering from brain cancer deported to Mexico with undocumented parents — The Texas family was on their way to an emergency medical checkup, they said, when they were detained at an immigration checkpoint. — A family that was deported to Mexico hopes they can find …

EPA administrator announces huge rollback of environmental regulations — Lee Zeldin said he will reconsider a list of core EPA policies, including emissions standards for vehicles and the finding that serves as the basis for addressing climate change. — Promising to drive …
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ICE Returns All Migrants From Guantánamo to Stateside Facilities — A court filing described strip searches and the use of restraint chairs on some of the 290 migrants the Trump administration has cycled through the base. — The Trump administration has abruptly cleared out a second group …
Discussion:
Voice of America, Washington Post, RTÉ, Reuters and Informed Comment

Judge orders DOGE and Elon Musk to turn over documents, answer written questions — The demands for information are designed to clarify the “parameters of DOGE's and Musk's authority.” — A federal judge has ordered that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency turn …
Discussion:
American Doom and Business Insider

Elon Musk Looks Desperate — How to lose $148 billion in less than two months — For years, Donald Trump's critics have accused him of behaving like a crooked used-car salesman. Yesterday afternoon, he did it for real on the White House South Lawn. — Squinting in the sun with Elon Musk …
Discussion:
New York Daily News, Daily Mail, Los Angeles Times, Raw Story, Global News, Vanity Fair, Deseret News, The Hill and Fox Business
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Christiaan Hetzner / Fortune:
Vandalize Tesla property and the White House will prosecute you as a domestic terrorist, Trump pledges
Vandalize Tesla property and the White House will prosecute you as a domestic terrorist, Trump pledges
Discussion:
Twitchy, HuffPost, Daily Mail, RedState, TheTruthAboutCars, Business Insider, The Present Age, Reason, El País, Breitbart, The Post Millennial, USA Today, The Daily Wire, Townhall, Crooks and Liars, Mashable, Grabien, The Guardian, NPR, CNN, Politico, Washington Times, NBC News, TechCrunch, The Hill, Reuters, Raw Story, The Gateway Pundit, UPI, The Independent, PoliticusUSA, Associated Press, Axios, Patterico's Pontifications, The Verge and Scripps News

Judge says Trump penalties on law firm send ‘chills down my spine’ — The Trump administration was ordered to halt, at least temporarily, parts of its executive order punishing the law firm Perkins Coie. — A D.C. federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration …
Discussion:
CNN, Raw Story, Reuters, The Hill, Law Dork, Blaze Media, Politico, Forbes, USA Today, Bangor Daily News, NPR, Fox News and Talking Points Memo
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Michael S. Schmidt / New York Times:
Trump's Revenge on Law Firms Seen as Undermining Justice System
Trump's Revenge on Law Firms Seen as Undermining Justice System
Discussion:
Law and Chaos, New York Post, CBS News, Axios, Washington Examiner, Raw Story, Reuters, Associated Press, Above the Law, ABC News and Wall Street Journal

Who's in Elon's ear — and DMs — Musk's most trusted advisers remain a tight-knit group of executives who have followed him from his companies but lack political experience. — Unlike traditional Washington power players, Elon Musk doesn't have a deep bench of policy wonks …

In reversal, NPR permits anchor to attend Pride event — The Scoop — National Public Radio dissuaded one of its most visible gay employees from attending a corporate LGBTQ Pride event, as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans put pressure on the public broadcaster.
Discussion:
Raw Story, more at Mediagazer »

Social Security scraps far-reaching cuts to phone services after Post report — The agency will move ahead with a much narrower change eliminating direct deposit changes by phone amid DOGE fraud concerns. — just now — The Social Security Administration late Wednesday abandoned plans …
Discussion:
MSNBC, Raw Story, The Independent, PolitiFact, Forbes, New Republic and The Hill

Trump's Big Bet: Americans Will Tolerate Economic Downturn to Restore Manufacturing — The president offers many reasons for imposing tariffs, including revenue, leverage over competitors and job creation. But history suggests a more complex history. — President Trump's simultaneous trade wars …
Discussion:
Washington Post, 19FortyFive, Washington Examiner and Yahoo Finance
Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:
Biggest Federal Employee Unions Says Shutdown is Preferable to Elon/Trump CR … Federal workers obviously don't like government shutdowns. Most of them are furloughed. Others are forced to continue working without pay. But in a letter addressed to members of the Senate, which I obtained …

Testimony Reveals Doors Would Not Open on Cybertruck That Caught Fire in Piedmont, Killing Three — The Highway Patrol's investigation into a November Cybertruck crash in Piedmont where three college kids died is finding two very Tesla problems: the vehicle immediately caught fire, and its doors would not open.
Discussion:
New York Post, Breakfast At Ralf's and Mercury News

Putin orders swift expulsion of Ukrainian forces before peace talks — The Russian leader promised to treat captured forces as “terrorists.” — Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his troops to defeat Ukrainian forces occupying its Kursk border region as soon as possible …
Discussion:
RTÉ, WTOP News, Reuters, The Moscow Times, Bloomberg, UPI, Al Jazeera, New York Times, The Kyiv Independent, Washington Examiner, The War Zone, El País and Israpundit

Venezuelan couple arrested and charged with illegal entry — two years after crossing into the U.S. — The timing of the arrests and charges is unusual and reflects the Trump administration's increasingly aggressive tactics on immigration. — The couple had been granted protected status …

S.F. Tesla showroom has been operating without proper permits for nearly a decade — The San Francisco Tesla showroom on Van Ness Avenue has been operating without a proper permit for nearly a decade after city building inspectors failed to sign off on a $2.3 million renovation back in 2016.
Discussion:
SFist

In Memoriam: Mark Klein, AT&T Whistleblower Who Revealed NSA Mass Spying — EFF is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Mark Klein, a bona fide hero who risked civil liability and criminal prosecution to help expose a massive spying program that violated the rights of millions of Americans.

CEOs Don't Plan to Openly Question Trump. Ask Again If the Market Crashes 20%. — Behind closed doors, business leaders air plenty of concerns about the administration and its policies — WASHINGTON—How business leaders talk about the Trump administration in private has been markedly different …

Document prepared for Kremlin outlines hard-line negotiating stance — The document, written in February by a Moscow-based think tank close to Russia's Federal Security Service or FSB, lays out Russia's maximalist demands — Russia should work to weaken the U.S. negotiating position …
Discussion:
Semafor, The Kyiv Independent, HotAir, The Independent, CNN, Daily Mail, New York Times, Breitbart and Atlantic Council

Federal student loan site down Wednesday, a day after layoffs gutted Education Department — An hours-long outage Wednesday on StudentAid.gov, the federal website for student loans and financial aid, underscored the risks in rapidly gutting the Department of Education, as President Donald Trump aims to dismantle the agency.
Discussion:
Chicago Sun Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Examiner, USA Today, WisPolitics, WTOP News and Democrats

Antisemitic and racist shock jock is back on the radio, 11 years after being fired for tirade — A conservative radio host who was fired a decade ago for calling a Black woman an “animal” and has since shared a host of racist and antisemitic content on social media has a new show on New York's WABC …

Yale Suspends Scholar After A.I.-Powered News Site Accuses Her of Terrorist Link — The deputy director of a liberal project at Yale Law School was put on leave over allegations that she is linked to Samidoun, a group the U.S. government has said funds terrorists.

Trump Officials Are ‘Pretending’ a Judge Didn't Bar His Anti-Diversity Orders — A judge blocked the administration from forcing organizations to accept anti-diversity contract terms. Trump officials haven't let them know … Trump's Justice Department decided the fairly broad injunction only covered certain agencies.
Discussion:
New York Times

Trump says Ireland cheats the US as its leader joins him to celebrate St. Patrick's Day — President Donald Trump welcomed Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin on Wednesday for the annual St. Patrick's Day celebration at the White House, where he added Ireland to the list of countries …
Discussion:
Migrant Insider, IJR, RTÉ, Twitchy, New York Times, HuffPost, LateNighter, Daily Mail, Washington Examiner, The Washington Free Beacon, Washington Post, Breitbart, Metro.co.uk, One America News Network, Politico, America Magazine, The Daily Wire, CBS News, New Jersey Online, The Hill, Scripps News, Washington Times, The Daily Caller, New York Post, Plain Dealer, World News, Reuters, Associated Press, The Independent, The Gateway Pundit, Fox Business, Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal