Author: rpnadmin

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, says it has saved $160 billion through its push to root out wasteful or fraudulent government spending. But that effort may also have come at a cost for taxpayers, with a new estimate from a nonpartisan research and advocacy group estimating that DOGE’s actions will cost $135 billion this fiscal year. The analysis seeks to tally the costs associated with putting tens of thousands of federal employees on paid leave, re-hiring mistakenly fired workers and lost productivity, according to the Partnership for Public Service (PSP), a nonpartisan nonprofit that focuses on the federal…

President Trump declared on Sunday that he would bring “Columbus Day back from the ashes” and reinstate its celebration as a holiday.“I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!” the president said in a post on Truth Social, referring to the federal holiday named for Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer who sailed to the Americas on behalf of Spain more than 500 years ago.The holiday has long been criticized by those who condemn the explorer for paving the way for European colonialism, which brought…

Top colleges in the cross hairs of President Trump have sharply increased their spending on lobbying, according to an analysis by The New York Times.Ten universities that have been singled out by the administration for scrutiny spent a combined $2.8 million lobbying the federal government in the first three months of 2025, which is more than those institutions spent in any quarter at least since 2008, according to the analysis. A federal task force that says it is devoted to rooting out antisemitism on campuses targeted those schools in February for investigation.One of the 10, Columbia University, more than tripled…

Washington — Congress returns Monday from a two-week recess with Republicans eyeing an ambitious schedule to move on the centerpiece legislation of President Trump’s first-year agenda.  After both the House and Senate adopted a budget resolution that serves as a blueprint earlier this month, congressional committees are set to begin work this week on the massive plan key to implementing Mr. Trump’s priorities on border security, defense, energy and taxes. The legislation aims to extend the 2017 tax cuts, along with authorizing additional tax cuts, while raising the debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion. And GOP leaders have…

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., left, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., hold a news conference on passing the budget resolution in the U.S. Capitol on April 10, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. hide caption toggle caption Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. Congress returns to D.C. with plans to begin the detailed process of turning President Trump’s domestic policy agenda into a multi-trillion dollar policy bill that is expected to touch everything from tax cuts and Pentagon funding increases to expanded…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that the Trump administration will decide this week whether to continue pursuing a negotiated settlement in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or to turn its attention to other matters.This week will be “very important,” Mr. Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have to make a determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in or if it’s time to sort of focus on some other issues that are equally if not more important in some cases.”“But we want to see it happen,” he added. “There…

Polson, Montana — When someone accused of a crime in this small northwestern Montana town needs mental health care, chances are they’ll be locked in a basement jail cell the size of a walk-in closet.Prisoners, some held in this isolation cell for months, have scratched initials and the phrase “love hurts” into the metal door’s brown paint. Their pacing has worn a path into the cement floor. Many are held in a sort of limbo, not convicted of a crime but not stable enough to be released. They sleep on a narrow cot next to a toilet. The only view is…

And total household debt now exceeds $18 trillion. Ad Policy A restaurant receipt with Doordash printed in Lafayette, California, on March 3, 2021. (Smith Collection / Sipa USA via AP Images) In the US Capitol, an unstoppable force is about to meet an immovable object—respectively, Republicans’ insatiable desire for tax cuts and the nation’s trillion-dollar budget deficit. But as conservative legislators contort themselves to square profligate kickbacks for billionaires with their perpetual insistence on “fiscal responsibility,” Americans are increasingly worried about another kind of debt—their own. The desperate state of the average American’s finances was made clear last month when…

To critics, President Trump’s threat to deploy the military to fight crime and unrest in America’s cities is a nightmare scenario, a pretext for martial law and a potential assault on democracy.But starting next month, dozens of National Guard troops will be on the streets of a deeply Democratic city, Albuquerque, in a deeply Democratic state, New Mexico. And they are being deployed by the state’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat. She said they are needed to help the strained police force confront a crisis of violent crime and fentanyl use.“The situation in Albuquerque has reached an unacceptable crisis…

President Trump made clear Sunday that he would not follow his predecessor’s practice of recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day in October, accusing Democrats of denigrating the explorer’s legacy as he pressed his campaign to restore what he argues are traditional American icons.Democrat Joe Biden was the first president to mark Indigenous Peoples Day, issuing a proclamation in 2021 that celebrated “the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples” and recognize “their inherent sovereignty.”The proclamation noted that America “was conceived on a promise of equality and opportunity for all people” but that promise “we have never fully lived up to. That is especially true when it…