THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

Veronica was born in California into a family with roots in Mexico. She flies the American flag outside her home on national holidays, and proudly belts out “The Star-Spangled Banner” with her hand over her heart at sporting events. Sitting in the bleachers at her son’s baseball game last month, Veronica started chatting with another mom in Spanish. Then she stopped and looked around, wondering if other parents might suspect that the women were undocumented and report them to immigration authorities. Is this going to get me in trouble? she recalled thinking.Veronica’s concern has only deepened. Two weeks ago, after watching immigration agents arrest and kill U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, she talked with her 14-year-old son about how he should behave if law enforcement asked whether he was in the country legally. If it happened when they were together, she told him, agents would be more likely to focus on… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

The email that federal law enforcement sent this week to the nation’s top election administrators would have been routine just a few years ago. “Your election partners,” the Tuesday missive from FBI Election Executive Kellie Hardiman read, “would like to invite you to a call where we can discuss preparations for the cycle.”  But multiple secretaries of state who received the document told us they viewed it as a threat, given recent events. The FBI had just seized 2020 election materials in Georgia, and President Trump had announced his desire to “nationalize” elections, a state responsibility under the U.S. Constitution. The Department of Justice has sued more than 20 states to obtain their election rolls, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is conducting an investigation of U.S. voting technology. The upshot is that a yearslong partnership between state and federal authorities—in which the feds have provided assistance on… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

A few hours after Tom Homan announced a drawdown of federal forces in Minneapolis this week, the rest of President Trump’s fractious immigration team gathered at the border wall in Arizona for a speech by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Gusty desert winds coated everyone in dust and blew Noem’s hair wildly around her ball cap.The event was tightly choreographed to project unity. Noem praised Homan, the White House “border czar” and her rival for control of the immigration crackdown. She sat beside the Homan ally Rodney Scott, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, whom she and her team have spent the past several months trying to sideline. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement who has also seen his authority diminish under Noem, was there too, crediting her and the president. The one notably absent figure was Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander Noem sent… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket CastsIn the first blush of their relationship, The Washington Post and Jeff Bezos seemed like an excellent match. Here was a paper with a strong pedigree that had fallen on somewhat hard times, and a suitor with funds who seemed eager to return it to steady glory. In 2013 Bezos purchased the paper for $250 million from the Graham family and promised a “golden era” to come. I had left the Post by then but was happy for my former colleagues. When Donald Trump took office a few years later, it was a relief to know that a journalistic institution with a record of holding White House misdeeds to account was still close by.Yesterday, in a dismal morning Zoom call, the Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, announced that they were laying off one-third of its already diminished staff.… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

At the close of 2025, just a few months after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, thousands of his followers came together in Phoenix for AmericaFest, the annual convention of Turning Point USA. A casual observer might have expected this gathering to serve as an opportunity for conservatives to regroup, celebrate Kirk’s legacy, and recommit to his fight against the left. Instead, one by one, MAGA’s leading lights took the stage and began shivving one another in public.“Today, the conservative movement is in serious danger,” warned Ben Shapiro, a co-founder of The Daily Wire. He lambasted right-wing “charlatans” who “traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.” And he named names. Shapiro slammed Tucker Carlson, perhaps the most popular conservative commentator in America, for mainstreaming pro-Nazi sentiment, and dubbed the former Trump strategist Steve Bannon “a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein,” the convicted sex criminal (fact-check: mostly true). “These people are frauds, and they are… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.