T The last day of July 2025 was D-day for Florida's local governments. That was when the state's new Department of Government Efficiency, modeled on Elon Musk's federal DOGE, began descending on city halls and county administrative offices to audit spending as part of Governor Ron DeSantis's drive for "transparency and accountability in government." His administration dispatched two teams of fiscal specialists from Tallahassee"including experts from the Departments of Revenue, Financial Services, and Education"in what he called a "boots-on-the-ground" effort to rein in local government spending. To justify the campaign, DeSantis argued that, with Florida's growing prosperity, local governments were using revenue from rising tax receipts, especially property levies, to go on a "spending spree." The state DOGE's purpose, he said, was to find out what elected officials were doing with all that new money
This Week in Freudenfreude: She's Got a Ticket to Ride (And She Don't Care)
This Week in Schadenfreude: The President's Ratings Aren't What They Once Were
US Congress Useless
A man accused of putting a bounty on the life of Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino was found not guilty Thursday. A verdict was reached just before 4 p.m. The jury of six men and six women got the case about 12:45 p.m. Thursday. Closing arguments took up all of the morning. The government was unable to provide any evidence to corroborate an alleged murder-for-hire plot. According to the statute, a person commits murder for hire if they take a substantial step toward committing the crime. That substantial step must be an act that strongly corroborates that the defendant intended to carry it out.
In November 2020, a freak wave appeared, lifting a lone buoy off the coast of British Columbia 17.6 meters (58 feet) high.
Pope Leo is among world leaders invited to join Donald Trump's "Board of Peace" according to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vaticans top diplomatic official.
Leo, the first U.S. pope and a critic of some of Trump's policies, is evaluating the invitation, he said. Read more
Police have ruled a Florida man's actions self-defense after he shot a felon who allegedly attempted to abduct his wife. According to Fox News affiliate WTVT-TV, citing the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, Nicholas Palomo, a 36-year-old felon who had previously gone to prison for kidnapping and other crimes, attempted to abduct a woman who was walking her dog in Bradenton, Florida, on New Year's Day. The woman managed to run away from Palomo's car and warned her husband, who went outside to confront Palomo.
President Volodymyr Zelensky says trilateral talks on ending the war in Ukraine are to take place with Russia and the US in the United Arab Emirates, after he met President Donald Trump in Davos. "It's all about the land. This is the issue which is not solved yet," Zelensky told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - adding that trilateral talks might provide the two sides with "variants".
France says it has seized an oil tanker in the Mediterranean suspected of being part of Russia's sanction-busting "shadow fleet". French President Emmanuel Macron said the tanker, named the Grinch, was "subject to international sanctions and suspected of flying a false flag". Read more
A Minnesota federal magistrate judge refused to sign a complaint charging independent journalist Don Lemon in connection with a protest inside a church in St. Paul on Sunday, multiple sources familiar with the proceedings told CBS News. "The attorney general is enraged at the magistrate's decision," said a source familiar with the matter. Attorney General Pam Bondi has been in Minnesota for two days, as the Justice Department has sought to surge prosecutorial and law enforcement resources there.
In the run-up to the 2016 Democratic Party convention, FBI Director James Comey gained access to at least eight thumb drives containing large volumes of former Secretary Hillary Clinton's sensitive State Department emails " as well as some from President Obama " that appeared to have been compromised by foreign hackers. Instead of investigating the explosive new batch of evidence revealed in recently declassified documents, Comey rushed ahead to close an investigation into whether Clinton improperly transmitted and received classified material from a private, unsecured server she kept in her basement. Comey also took the extraordinary step of bypassing the attorney general and personally exonerating Clinton of wrongdoing during an unusual press conference on July 5, 2016. Just hours later, Obama invited Clinton " who would be formally nominated as the Democrats' standard bearer three weeks later " aboard Air Force One to help launch her multicity campaign tour
Mr Smith goes to Washington to remind Congress and America of Trump's crimes and that no man should be above the law.
The Justice Department seized two mission crew trainers (MCTs) that were interdicted in transit from the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) to the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). The mission crew trainers (MCTs) are mobile classrooms intended to assist the PLA to train personnel on the use of airborne warning and control systems and antisubmarine warfare (ASW) aircraft.
Seized MCTs
Trump is the ultimate deal maker. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will not impose tariffs that were set to take effect Feb. 1, citing a "framework of a future deal" with NATO involving Greenland and the Arctic region. "Based upon a very productive meeting that I have had with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region," Trump wrote on Truth Social. Trump said the deal, if finalized, "will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations," adding that the agreement led him to halt the planned tariffs.
It's a war of the worlds at CBS News.
Ten people familiar with the workings of CBS News say the Paramount Skydance unit is veering toward dysfunction, with a management team led by Bari Weiss that doesn't value the standards held by veteran journalists - and a staff that views its editor-in-chief and her hand-picked senior staff with great skepticism, owing to her lack of experience managing mainstream media assets.
