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Houston has brought on Danyahel “Danny” Norris, a former candidate for a Texas House seat, to serve as its new attorney overseeing council member-led agenda items under Proposition A, Mayor John Whitmire’s office confirmed Monday.

Proposition A was overwhelmingly passed by voters in November 2023 to allow council members to wield more power in Houston’s strong mayor form of government, where Whitmire retains most of the control of the city’s agenda and administrative activities. Under the proposition, any three council members can come together to add an item to a council agenda as long as that item is legal.

Tensions over the historic charter change have spilled over since 2024. Some council members raised concerns about the mayor’s office having too much influence in legal reviews of proposals, as the city attorney’s office reports directly to the mayor.

That is highly misleading. The resolution instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to "submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction to reduce the deficit by not less than" $880 billion over the next decade. That panel has jurisdiction over Medicaid, which Republicans have repeatedly targeted in public and private discussions, with one leaked GOP document floating over $2 trillion in cuts to the program.

Republicans also rejected numerous Democratic amendments that would have prevented Medicaid and SNAP cuts in the upcoming budget reconciliation process as their resolution moved through committees.

The Office of Personnel Management is giving agencies until March 24 to revise their rosters of “career reserved” SES positions within their workforces and align them with the Trump administration’s goal of turning traditionally career federal positions into political roles.

OPM’s guidance tells agencies to convert a number of “career reserved” roles — which can only be filled by career federal employees — and instead designate them as “general” SES positions — which can be filled by either a career or political SES member.

More than 20 staffers at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have resigned, after refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the workers wrote in a joint resignation letter on Tuesday, obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

The staffers who resigned worked for what was once known as the United States Digital Service, an office established during Barack Obama’s administration. All had previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon, but had joined the government out of a sense of duty to public service, they said.

According to the analysis, global billionaire wealth surged by $314 billion total in January, which is "more than the combined wealth of the 2.8 billion people who make up the poorest third of humanity."

"Extreme wealth isn't just growing—it's accelerating at breakneck speed, putting more and more power into the hands of a tiny few," said economist Jayati Ghosh, a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. "Failure to act enables more unchecked greed and deepening disparities, allowing oligarchs to expand their vast fortunes and further extend their power over the rest of the world."

New York's law requiring Internet service providers to offer broadband for $15 or $20 a month has spurred legislative efforts in other states to guarantee affordable service for people with low incomes. So far, legislators in Vermont, Massachusetts, and California have proposed laws inspired by the New York requirement.

Despite industry attempts to block the New York law and other broadband regulations, courts have made it clear that states can impose stricter requirements on Internet service when the Federal Communications Commission isn't regulating Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. That's the situation right now after a federal appeals court blocked a Biden-era FCC order that classified ISPs as common carriers and imposed net neutrality rules.

Even if the FCC had won that case, it likely would have deregulated the industry again under Brendan Carr, the new chair selected by President Trump. Broadband was also deregulated at the federal level during Trump's first term when then-Chairman Ajit Pai led a vote to rescind net neutrality rules and Title II regulation.

Their first wave of actions — initiating the elimination of 41 jobs and the closing of at least 10 local offices, so far — was largely lost in the rush of headlines.

Those first steps might seem restrained compared with the mass firings that DOGE has pursued at other federal agencies. But Social Security recipients rely on in-person service in all 50 states, and the shuttering of offices, reported on DOGE’s website to include locations everywhere from rural West Virginia to Las Vegas, could be hugely consequential.

The closures potentially reduce access to Social Security for some of the most vulnerable people in this country — including not just retirees but also individuals with severe physical and intellectual disabilities, as well as children whose parents have died and who’ve been left in poverty.

The freeze has impacted the funding of most continuing grants at NIH. These grants fund ongoing research, including many studies involving human subjects in clinical trials. Since Congress provides funding annually, these grants must be extended each year, but it is normally a routine administrative process.

Freezing this funding to implement the administration’s DEI policies does not comply with the federal court’s TRO. It also jeopardizes critical research on cancer treatments, heart disease prevention, stroke intervention, and other potentially life-saving topics.

David Moorman, a brain researcher and professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, has not had his annual grant renewed. It is now three weeks late. “At some point, our money will run out and if it doesn’t get renewed, we will have to start firing people in my lab and this research will die,” Moorman told the Boston Globe.

By 2022, it seemed to disappear. Yet its founder and leader, Rinaldo Nazzaro, a former US special forces contractor residing in Russia, used the safety of Russian apps before the November election to recruit and reorganize during a tense political moment. At one point, he even solicited ex-American soldiers with an offer of $1,200 a month to put members through paramilitary training somewhere in the Pacific north-west.

The Base’s regrouping comes at a time when the Trump administration has made it a policy goal to move away from policing far-right extremism and during the appointment of Kash Patel – a Maga acolyte who lauds January 6 attackers and has peddled Qanon conspiracy theories – to helm the FBI. Experts say federal law enforcement ignoring far-right groups such as the Base could expose Americans to increased domestic terror threats.

Private security dragged out a woman who had been interrupting a Kootenai County Republican Central Committee legislative town hall in Idaho Saturday as Sheriff Robert Norris stood by, spurring a disagreement between the sheriff and Coeur d’Alene’s police chief over the First Amendment implications of the incident.

Multiple video recordings of the incident at Coeur d’Alene High School show Teresa Borrenpohl, who ran for Idaho’s House of Representatives in 2024, 2022 and 2020 as a Democrat, seated in the auditorium as boos and cheers erupt around her.

Video link of incident only, no news coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-aPFGNO5Wg

But those financial hardships don’t tell the full story, according to the 2022 study that has never been made public and was released to the Herald/Times after a two-year wait for public records.

The report, the most in-depth dive into the byzantine finances of Florida’s homeowners insurance market, reveals that as the insurance market was ailing and companies were losing money, executives distributed $680 million in dividends to shareholders while diverting billions more to affiliate companies.

Executives with most Florida-based insurers were removing so much money from their companies that they violated state regulations, the study’s author concluded.

The result left some insurers financially weaker — and potentially unable to pay claims — heading into the depths of the state’s insurance crisis.

A podcast distribution deal sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to a political action committee that supports U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz does not violate election laws, the Federal Election Commission decided.

The FEC this week issued a 5-1 decision dismissing complaints from ethics watchdogs who said Cruz “appears to have brazenly violated” campaign finance laws by soliciting donations to the Truth and Courage PAC from iHeartMedia, the massive radio network that has distributed the Texas Republican's “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast since 2022.