Senator probes CBP nominee's alleged interference in migrant death investigation
A leading Senate Democrat said in a letter Wednesday that he is seeking records to determine if President Donald Trump's nominee to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection improperly intervened in the criminal probe into the 2010 death of an undocumented immigrant in federal custody.
In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said nominee Rodney Scott was a top Border Patrol official in the San Diego sector when agents battered Anastasio Hernandez Rojas with batons and shocked him with a taser, leaving him unconscious and bloody. His subsequent death led to investigations that shadowed CBP for years and are likely to undergo fresh scrutiny as Scott's Senate confirmation hearing approaches.
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CBS News
6 minutes ago
- CBS News
Planned PBS, NPR cuts would overwhelmingly hit outlets in states Trump won, report finds
The looming federal funding cuts to public television and radio would overwhelmingly gut outlets in states won by President Trump in 2024, according to a new congressional report. Approximately 60% of the hundreds of radio and television stations that could suffer funding cuts are in Trump-won states, according to a congressional report obtained by CBS News from Senate Democrats. The organizations that would be affected include public media outlets in cities as large as Houston and Miami, as well as smaller stations in tiny communities like Douglas, Wyoming, which has a population of 6,000 and hosts the Wyoming State Fair. The widespread cuts to public radio and television are a component of a Republican congressional plan to eliminate $9 billion in funding for programs approved before President Trump's second term began. The proposed rescissions package, which is scheduled for a House vote Thursday, includes $1.1 billion in cuts for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funding to NPR and PBS. The cuts to public broadcasting are being touted by the Trump administration and Republicans as an effort to slash taxpayer funding for news media outlets they accuse of being "liberal" or politically biased in their content. Advocates for public broadcasting have lambasted the cuts as destructive, needless and harmful to communities that have very limited sources of local broadcast news. They also deny allegations of political bias. The list of hundreds of TV and radio outlets facing funding cuts shows a broad range of impact. Major public television and radio stations in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C., could each lose nearly $1 million in grants in the coming months. An FM community public radio station in Carbondale, Colorado, which touts itself as "Public access radio that connects community members to one another and the world," received $145,000 in federal grant funding last year. At each of the public media outlets, the list shows reductions that are sizable enough to potentially require staffing cuts, programming reductions or news cutbacks that threaten to exacerbate shortages of local news content. CBS News' review of proposed grant cuts shows Alabama, a state with an estimated 215 public media employees, would lose as much as $3 million in funding for its public television outlets in the coming months. In South Dakota, a sparsely populated state that nonetheless receives $3 million in funds for public broadcasting employees, the funding cuts would gut money for at least 20 media outlets, according to the report provided by congressional aides to CBS News. "The path to better public media is achievable only if funding is maintained. Otherwise, a vital lifeline that operates reliable emergency communications, supports early learning, and keeps local communities connected and informed will be cut off with regrettable and lasting consequences," said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. "Federal funding for the public broadcasting system is irreplaceable," Harrison said. "Public media serves all — families and individuals, in rural and urban communities — free of charge and commercial free." Both PBS and NPR have sued the Trump administration over previous executive orders cutting their funding, with lawyers for both alleging that among other issues, the cuts violate the First Amendment. PBS CEO Paula Kerger previously said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" that while PBS only receives 15% of its funding from the federal government, some of its smaller stations receive up to 50% of their funding from federal sources and said the risks to the smaller stations are "existential" if the funding is cut. NPR CEO Katherine Maher has said roughly 1% of the organization's budget comes directly from federal dollars. Some of the many impacted public radio and TV stations have posted messages protesting the proposed cuts in funding. The social media account of a Baltimore public radio station leader said, "This isn't hypothetical—it's real, it's happening, and it places the future of local, trusted public media at serious risk. Let me be clear: this is not a symbolic move. If approved, this action could irreparably damage the local public media." Rural communities, often referred to as "news deserts" because of the lack of local news organizations, would suffer the brunt of the pain. According to a joint statement by Rep. Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican, and Rep. Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat, "Rural broadcasters face significant challenges in raising private funds, making them particularly vulnerable if government funding is cut." Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who is the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement to CBS News, "Trump wants Congress to vote to cut off public radio broadcasts our constituents count on for weather forecasts, emergency alerts, and updates on what's going on in their community—and force layoffs at local TV stations." House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has championed the cuts and sought to rally support ahead of Thursday's vote on the rescissions package. "House Republicans will fulfill our mandate and continue codifying into law a more efficient federal government," Johnson said in a statement. "This is exactly what the American people deserve." In April, the White House released a statement saying taxpayers had funded NPR and PBS "for too long" and said they've "spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'" The White House Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump on Insurrection Act: ‘I would certainly invoke it'
President Trump on Tuesday said he would 'certainly' invoke the Insurrection Act to respond to the demonstrations on the streets of Los Angeles over his immigration policies, if he deemed the move necessary. 'If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We'll see,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. 'But I can tell you, last night was terrible. The night before that was terrible.' When asked what would lead him to decide an insurrection is taking place, Trump said that in certain areas of Los Angeles last night 'you could have called it an insurrection. It was terrible.' The president had previously suggested he's open to invoking the Insurrection Act, which is a power used sparingly in U.S. history that allows for the use of the military to quell a rebellion. He made the decision to send in the National Guard to Los Angeles without a request from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in an unprecedented move to respond to protests of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raids. He told reporters on Sunday, 'depends on whether or not there's an insurrection' when asked about invoking the law. 'We're just going to see what happens. If we think there's a serious insurrection … we're going to have law and order,' he said. When asked what the bar would be for sending in the Marines, Trump said, 'The bar is what I think it is.' By Monday, 700 active-duty Marines were sent to Los Angeles. As of Monday, a total of 4,000 California National Guard troops were sent in. The Pentagon estimates the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to the California city will cost around $134 million, the Defense Department's acting comptroller said Tuesday. The president said on Tuesday he would keep the National Guard in place 'until there is no danger' and he also insisted that some demonstrators in Los Angeles are paid insurrectionists. Trump had flirted with the idea of using the Insurrection Act during the 2020 protests over police brutality following the killing of George Floyd in his first term in office. And, he referenced the possibility of doing so during the campaign in the event of protests against his victory, saying he would do so in Democrat-run states. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Liz Warren Says Crypto Bill Creates a ‘Superhighway' for Trump Corruption
The Senate is set to pass the GENIUS Act early next week, a controversial piece of cryptocurrency legislation that critics say will hand an undue amount of financial power to the tech industry. On its face the bill, which has advanced with bipartisan support, purports to offer a regulatory framework for the expansion of 'stablecoins,' a form of crypto pegged to an existing, recognized asset — in many cases the U.S. dollar. In reality, it could enable corruption, screw over taxpayers, and potentially destabilize the economy. The GENIUS Act would allow banks and private companies to issue stablecoins, essentially their own currencies, with light oversight from regulators. It mandates that issuers of stablecoins hold a reserve of the stable asset backing their cryptocurrency at all times, and that firms abide by certain anti-money laundering laws, as well as U.S. sanctions against foreign entities. It sounds like a step in the right direction, but this piece of legislation is working its way through Congress as sitting President Donald Trump and his family build a cryptocurrency empire that steamrolls anti-corruption laws and ethical norms — one they hope will flourish under the industry-friendly policies and laws created by the administration of the Trump patriarch. One of Trump's priorities has been the normalization of these so-called stablecoins — a type of asset that his family is now hawking. Despite the moniker, stablecoins can be extremely unstable. A 2023 study published by the Bank for International Settlements found that of 60 stablecoins analyzed in their review, all of them had become de-pegged from their underlying asset at least once. The 2022 crypto crash was triggered by the failure of Terraform Lab's Terra/Luna 'algorithmic' stablecoin — the collapse of which saw $45 billion erased in the span of a week. The stablecoin bill comes as the government reorients its approach to crypto. Under the Biden administration, crypto kingpins began to feel the sting of consequences for schemes gone wrong. FTX crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison after carrying out one of the largest financial scams since Enron. Tether, the largest stablecoin in crypto, settled a lawsuit brought against it by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2021. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the global crypto exchange Binance, pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2023. Trump pledged a new, friendlier regulatory environment in Washington — and the crypto industry poured many millions into Super PACs to elect allies throughout Congress. Now, the industry has its moment to push through a public smokescreen of barely-there regulation, while continuing to rake in the cash. No one has been more outspoken on the failings of the GENIUS Act than Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who told Rolling Stone ahead of key votes that the bill would 'create a superhighway for Donald Trump's corruption.' The Trump family's cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial — which is currently being operated by his sons and Zach Witkoff, the son of Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — recently launched its own stablecoin, designated USD1, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar and backed by treasury bonds. The GENIUS Act would allow major tech companies, banks, and other financial institutions to issue their own stablecoins, and many are poised to buy Treasury bonds so they can back the digital currency with real assets, as is required. According to a report issued last week by ARK Invest, the stablecoin market may become one of the largest holders of U.S. debt in the coming years — potentially tying large swaths of U.S. debt to a dubiously regulated and often unstable asset. (For example, if Tether — the largest stablecoins in the market — was a country, it would be the 18th-largest holder of U.S. debt in the world.) The lines grow even murkier when considering Trump's habit of using his position in the White House to enrich himself, as well as to tip market scales. World Liberty Financial already landed a $2 billion transaction deal to help an Abu Dhabi-state backed company purchase a stake in the Binance crypto exchange using the USD1 stablecoin. 'As soon as the players understand that Trump's intervention is a real possibility, then the stablecoin market is no longer about a careful review of whether there are adequate dollars to back up a particular stablecoin, or whether the stable coin issuer has an AAA rating,' Warren says. 'Instead, the whole game becomes one of trying to engage the president to weigh the end and make one set of coins more valuable, and therefore another set of coins less valuable. It's corruption, but it's also a market manipulation that ultimately drains away any development. … It undermines all the markets at that point.' Warren compares the development of the GENIUS Act to efforts to regulate derivatives and the feverish rise of money market mutual funds in the early 2000s, both of which were major factors in the 2008 financial crisis: 'The derivatives industry came to the Congress and said, 'Regulate us,' and they wrote a sample. They wrote the regulation, and Congress — not knowing much about that world — passed it.' The consequence was, in Warren's view, that lay people believed the industry to be effectively regulated, when in reality investors essentially tailored legislation to their own priorities. 'The risk kept building in the system until in 2008 it blew up the entire economy and required a $700 billion bailout from taxpayers,' Warren says. 'So think about why an industry comes to Congress and says, 'Regulate us.' They want the imprimatur, they want the gold seal of the United States government. … They don't actually want the government to oversee the activities of the industry.' Warren is not alone in her concerns, and has found an unexpected ally in Republican Sen. John Hawley of Missouri. Last week, Hawley described the GENIUS Act as a 'huge giveaway to Big Tech' that would effectively allow private tech companies to create their own currencies that compete with the dollar. 'The U.S. dollar is the reserve currency,' Warren says. 'The United States does not gain from creating a competing electronic currency. Getting more people to hold stable coins rather than dollars during their investment transactions, does not serve us interests, but it injects risk into the U.S.' 'Anyone who thinks that when a financial crash hits [the value of stablecoins] will translate one to one into dollars is fooling themselves,' she adds. The ripple effects can be catastrophic when a stablecoin collapses. Existing stablecoins are already buying up billions in Treasury bonds, and in the event of a run on a coin, or any type of collapse within stablecoin, the issuer would sell off their own holdings — in this case Treasury bonds — to pay back their customers. Economists warn that such a scenario could destabilize the underlying treasury securities market that serves as the foundation of the U.S. economy. As Warren and Hawley point out, the risks of economic destabilization increase significantly if legislation like the GENIUS Act passes. PayPal has already launched its own cryptocurrency, and Apple, Facebook, X, and Airbnb have all explored releasing their own stablecoins for customers to conduct on-platform transactions in crypto. If, for example, Elon Musk 'is controlling a significant portion of cash-light money moving through our economy and X gets in trouble, the federal government will face the possibility of bailing out not just the coin, but the underlying business, because they're so deeply intertwined,' Warren explains. 'There's a reason why there has always been a wall between banking and commerce,' Warren says. 'This GENIUS Act, for the first time, destroys that wall.' Nothing is too big to fail. Seemingly secure, lucrative schemes have left the U.S. and global economy in ruins. In a way, the GENIUS Act has already built in a bailout fund for crypto traders should the bubble pop: your deposits. A provision in the bill mandates that financial institutions issuing the coins prioritize reimbursing stablecoin holders over other checking and savings depositors in the event that the bank or financial institution becomes insolvent. Essentially, as Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin wrote last month, 'Congress is about to put the claims of stablecoin investors ahead of ma and pa's bank deposits.' Because most standard bank deposits are insured under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the result is that depositors' checking and savings would be used to pay off lost crypto holdings and everyone else can file for an insurance claim. 'Which means,' Warren warns, 'the U.S. taxpayer is right in the crosshairs.' More from Rolling Stone 'No Fat Soldiers': Ft. Bragg Troops Were Carefully Screened for Trump's Stunt Visit Katy Perry Supports Migrants Amid ICE Raids: 'Deep Injustice' Los Angeles ICE Raids Are Driving Immigrants - And Citizens - Underground Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
