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Lawmakers have taken a hard line against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, threatening to lock down a portion of his travel budget until he turns over unedited footage of U.S. military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and copies of the orders behind the operations. 

The provisions, tucked in the final text of the sweeping bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), land amid intensifying bipartisan scrutiny over a Sept. 2 operation off the coast of Venezuela, in which the military carried out a second strike on a suspected drug boat that killed two survivors.

They also come as Democrats sound the alarm on the administration’s overall strategy of sinking suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and as lawmakers express increasihttps://thehill.com/homenews/house/5641394-hegseth-boat-strikes-video-ndaa/ng misgivings about Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who’s been critical of the September operation and sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told The Hill via text message that he supports the provision.

“It’s time to show Hegseth we are an independent branch,” he said.

Bacon has in recent days ramped up his criticism of Hegseth, telling Politico’s Dasha Burns on C-SPAN that “after ‘Signalgate,’ I think I’ve seen enough.”

He added that he thinks it was mainly leadership in the Senate and House Armed Services committees who pushed for the provision.

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Former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins won Miami's mayoral runoff election Tuesday, marking the first time in more than 30 years that the city has elected a Democrat as mayor.

Higgins secured 59% of the vote versus former Miami City Manager Emilio Gonzalez's nearly 41%, according to unofficial results from the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections. The win marks an end to a competitive race that began with a crowded 13-person field.

"Our city chose a new direction," Higgins told the cheering crowd at her election night celebration. "You chose competence over chaos, results over excuses and a city government that finally works for you."

The campaign centered on issues such as immigration, housing, flooding, city growth, and the tone of leadership Miami needs. Higgins and Gonzalez faced off in a CBS News Miami debate moderated by Jim DeFede on Nov. 25, giving voters a chance to compare their visions for the city.

While the race was officially nonpartisan, Higgins had the backing of prominent Democrats, while Republicans, including Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Trump, endorsed Gonzalez.

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Donald Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba announced on social media she is resigning as top federal prosecutor in New Jersey.

Habba’s resignation came after district and appellate court rulings found that she was unlawfully serving in the role, a powerful post charged with enforcing federal criminal and civil law.

The Trump administration had been maneuvering to keep Habba in place even though her interim appointment expired and she had not received Senate confirmation as legally required.

Habba’s statement on Monday said “do not mistake compliance for surrender” and that she would serve as a senior adviser for US attorneys to the Trump administration’s attorney general, Pam Bondi.

“Make no mistake, you can take the girl out of New Jersey, but you cannot take New Jersey out of the girl,” said the statement from Habba, who had been appointed to her US attorney role by Trump nine months earlier.

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President Donald Trump engaged in a mortgage arrangement that closely resembles loans he has called potentially criminal "mortgage fraud" in accusations leveled at several of his targets, according to a ProPublica report.

In late 1993 and early 1994, Trump claimed in mortgages that two properties he owned in Florida were each his primary residence, despite living in New York at the time, according to the report from the investigative journalism nonprofit. It cited contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with Trump's longtime real estate agent.

In a statement to USA TODAY, a White House official said the two mortgages are from the same lender and it is "illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself."

"This is yet another desperate attempt by the Left wing media to disparage President Trump with false allegations and to distract the public from his historic first year in office," the official said. "President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law."

In recent months, members of the Trump administration have leveled mortgage-fraud accusations at several critics or targets of the president.

Trump himself sent a letter to Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, alleging she signed documents within weeks of each other stating that properties in Michigan and Georgia would each be her primary residence the next year. He said it was "inconceivable" that she wasn't aware of the first commitment when she made the second, and "impossible" that she planned to honor both.

However, according to the ProPublica report, Trump pledged that the second property in Florida would be his primary residence just seven weeks after pledging the first would be. Even supposing the pledges in the 1990s documents amounted to a crime, the legal deadline for bringing mortgage fraud charges has expired.

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A federal judge on Saturday temporarily barred prosecutors from using evidence seized from a key figure in the dismissed criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey, as the Department of Justice weighs new charges, court documents showed.

Daniel Richman, a law professor and former attorney for Comey, had filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging prosecutors violated his Fourth Amendment rights by seizing material from his electronic devices during investigations in 2019 and 2020.

In granting a temporary restraining order on Saturday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote that “Richman is likely to succeed on the merits of his claim that the government has violated his Fourth Amendment right ... by retaining a complete copy of all files on his personal computer ... and searching that image without a warrant.”

Kollar-Kotelly, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, ordered the government to “identify, segregate, and secure” the materials from Richman’s devices, prohibit their access without court approval, and comply by 12:00 p.m. ET on Monday, December 8.

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is hitting back at President Donald Trump’s repeated comments targeting the state’s Somali immigrant community.

During a press conference on Dec. 4 announcing Minnesota's new budget forecast, Walz called the president's series of social media posts and public remarks "vile" and "racist lies."

“This creates danger,” Walz reportedly said during the news conference. “We know how these things go, they start with taunts, they turn to violence.”

In recent weeks, Trump has zeroed in on swaths of Somali people in the state, issuing several insults toward Somalia, the Somali-American immigrant population and some of Minnesota's Democratic lawmakers.

Starting on Thanksgiving, Nov. 27, Trump posted about a massive fraud and money laundering investigation in the state, in which a group of people allegedly perpetuated what the state's district attorney's office called the "largest Covid-19 fraud scheme in the country." Many of those accused in the scheme, though not all, are of Somali descent.

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