Stephen Dinan

Ahead of impeachment hearing, Mayorkas says he’s been upholding the law

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday that he's done what he can on his own to solve the border crisis and now it's up to Congress to offer more support by approving President Biden's request for $14 billion in new money.

January 8, 2024

FBI urges Supreme Court to protect No Fly list secrecy

The FBI begged the Supreme Court on Monday to keep the operations of the No Fly list shrouded in secrecy, saying the government needs to be able to make decisions about whom to ban without having to divulge its decision-making.

January 8, 2024

Feds shut down bizarre immigration fraud that involved staged armed robberies

Federal authorities say they have busted a fiendish and ingenious fraud ring that was staging armed robberies at convenience stores so that the supposed victims, who were illegal immigrants, could then file applications with Homeland Security to stay in the country on victim visas.

January 7, 2024

Supreme Court sides with Idaho in challenge to state’s strict abortion law

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday blocked a lower court ruling that had upended Idaho's strict abortion law in a case that's shaping up as a test of whether the federal government can force emergency rooms to provide abortions in emergencies despite state restrictions.

January 5, 2024

Supreme Court will hear Trump’s appeal after Colorado kicked him off the ballot

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear former President Donald Trump's appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court's decision kicking him off the state's primary ballot over his actions surrounding the 2020 election.

January 5, 2024

Riot act: Feds go hard on Jan. 6 defendants but dismissed most Portland riot cases

More than a dozen defendants from the Portland riots in 2020 got diversion agreements and 70 had their cases dismissed without a conviction. Compare that to the Jan. 6, 2021, defendants, where Justice Department records show more than 1,230 people have been arrested. Of those, about 440 were felony cases of assaulting or impeding a law enforcement officer -- much the same conduct as in Portland.

January 5, 2024

Muslim American’s challenge to No Fly list reaches Supreme Court

A lawyer for the Council on American-Islamic Relations on Monday will argue before the Supreme Court for the first time, asking the justices to help a Muslim man stay off the government's no-fly list that blocks people from boarding airplanes.

January 4, 2024

Bill Clinton identified in Jeffrey Epstein court documents

Former President Bill Clinton was listed among more than 150 names made public in court documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

January 3, 2024

Biden’s DOJ sues Texas over law that criminalizes illegal immigration

The Justice Department asked a federal judge on Wednesday to block Texas's new strict immigration law that makes being in the country illegally a state crime.

January 3, 2024

Republicans at border insist on security; Speaker Johnson raps Biden team for ‘unmitigated disaster’

House Speaker Mike Johnson led dozens of Republicans to the border in Texas on Wednesday, saying they got a first-hand look at the devastation of unprecedented illegal immigration and calling the situation "heartbreaking and infuriating."

January 3, 2024

Cartels make $32 million a week off migrants in one stretch of Texas border

The smuggling cartels are making $32 million a week for bringing illegal immigrants into just one 245-mile stretch of the border, according to congressional Republicans who are on a tour of the southern boundary Wednesday.

January 3, 2024

House chairman leading impeachment calls Mayorkas ‘greatest domestic threat’

The House on Wednesday announced its first hearing on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, officially kicking off the quest to oust the man who's overseen the most chaotic border in modern history.

January 3, 2024

Mayorkas claims baffle border chiefs; Question of ‘operational control’ looms as lawmakers get look

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has spent the last two years telling Congress first that the border was under control, then reversing and saying it wasn't actually under control -- and has never been. His Border Patrol chiefs suggested he got it wrong.

January 3, 2024

DHS to reopen border crossings, says illegal migration dropping

Homeland Security says it's seen a major drop in illegal immigration at the southern border in recent days and the administration will reopen several legal crossings that had been shuttered in order to shift personnel needed to handle last month's record-breaking surge.

January 2, 2024

Fishermen go to Supreme Court saying they may lose family business over federal regulation

A lawsuit brought by herring fishermen against the Commerce Department has the potential to upend much of how the federal government works.

January 2, 2024

DHS asks Supreme Court to approve cutting Texas’ razor wire border fence

The Biden administration rushed to the Supreme Court on Tuesday to ask permission to slash through the razor-wire fence that Texas has erected along miles of the border with Mexico, saying it's interfering with how the feds want to run the border.

January 2, 2024

Man arrested with machete at Capitol is illegal immigrant freed by Biden

The man arrested last week for carrying a machete at the U.S. Capitol is an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who was caught and released in 2022 under the Biden administration's lenient border policies.

January 2, 2024

If you build it, will they vote? Cities with noncitizen voting struggle to boost turnout

Jurisdictions across the country are testing the waters for allowing noncitizens, including in many cases illegal immigrants, to cast ballots in local elections. But for the most part, they're finding scant interest among those they're trying to entice into the polling booth.

January 1, 2024

Maryland county argues for power to create school board seat limited to illegal immigrant vote

Howard County, Maryland, says it would be allowed, under the 14th Amendment, to create a school board seat that only immigrants without documentation could vote for.

January 1, 2024

Running on empty: Why the feds love paying to test animals exercising on treadmills

Galileo had his telescope, Louis Pasteur had a compound microscope and American scientists today have ... the treadmill?

December 31, 2023