WASHINGTON — Newly uncovered emails are raising fresh questions about the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, suggesting the Biden White House was involved long before the Justice Department (DOJ) officially stepped in.

The emails, obtained by America First Legal (AFL), show that officials at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) were growing frustrated with Trump’s handling of presidential records as early as mid-2021—months before the agency’s official referral to the DOJ in February 2022.

 

According to AFL, these emails also confirm that a “special access request” from the Biden White House played a role in the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago in August 2022. The Biden administration has maintained that the investigation only began after NARA discovered classified documents in Trump’s possession. But these new emails suggest government officials had their sights on Trump’s records much earlier.

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In the summer of 2021, then-Archivist of the United States David Ferriero wrote that he was “out of patience” with Trump’s team. Around the same time, NARA General Counsel Gary Stern started drafting a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking for help in retrieving presidential records—despite admitting that the Presidential Records Act doesn’t specifically authorize such action.

 

By September 2021, NARA had already looped in the Biden White House Counsel’s Office and the DOJ. They even had a letter to Garland ready to go, but ultimately decided to hold off, hoping to work things out with Trump’s team. Instead, a deputy White House counsel under Biden came up with a different plan—a “special access request” to obtain Trump’s records from NARA, a move that AFL argues set the stage for the FBI’s involvement.

This latest revelation is sure to fuel Trump’s claims that the case against him is politically motivated. The Biden administration has yet to respond to the findings.

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WASHINGTON D.C> - Elon Musk said Monday that his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) team discovered that FEMA spent nearly $60 million to house illegal immigrants in “luxury” New York City hotels last week.

In response, acting FEMA Director Cameron Hamilton said the payments had been suspended, and the employees who authorized them would be disciplined.

“The [DOGE] team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants,” Musk posted on X early Monday morning. “Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.”

“That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds,” Musk added.

On January 24, he issued an executive order creating a council to assess the agency and its programs. Click here to read more.

 

LANSING, Mich - Michigan’s official policy as laid out in the MI Healthy Climate plan calls for the people, businesses and government operations to produce net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. A new report, however, projects that the plan could lead to more expensive but less reliable electricity service.

The plan aims to “avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis” by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released through generating power. Residential uses account for 28% of Michigan’s total energy consumption, followed by the transportation (26%), industrial (25%), and commercial sectors (21%).

“The real and costly impacts of the climate crisis are irrefutable and that was especially obvious on the ground in Michigan during 2021,” the state’s climate plan said. “Severe, climate-induced weather events over the summer caused more than one million Michiganders to lose power, some for a week or more.”

But net-zero policies, which state documents refer to as “carbon neutrality,” could cause blackouts and threaten energy reliability in the Great Lakes region, a new report from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy said. The report analyzed the electricity plans of seven Great Lakes states, including Michigan. Click here to read more.

 

ALTADENA, Calif. — When firefighters told Officer Adrian Woolford of a woman trapped as the Eaton fire spread rapidly, he ran towards her home.

Two of his fellow Pasadena Police Department officers, Chrystian Banuelos and Jonathan Bombardier , saw Woolford and quickly followed him in the smoke-choked darkness.

“I know that, if he was running, he was running in the direction of someone that needed help,” Banuelos said. “None of us had any questions about what our task was. Our task was to save lives. That was our purpose, and that was the only thing we were thinking about the entire day.”

Inside the house, they found two women who hadn’t escaped. Banuelos carried one of the women from the home, while Woolford gathered her wheelchair and other necessities.

Then Bombardier noticed the other woman hadn’t left with them. He went back inside to get her out.

Body-worn camera footage and photos released Thursday, Feb. 6 by the Pasadena Police Department showed the efforts of Woolford, Banuelos, Bombardier and other officers to evacuate residents as clouds of embers blew overhead and flames leaped to homes and businesses. Click here to read more.

 

LOS ANGELES, CALIF - “Follow the science” is a common chorus among progressives. But often they, not those they moralize against, are the real science deniers.

Take progressive prosecutors. Many, like George Gascon in Los Angeles, tout their soft-on-crime policies as “data driven” or “scientifically backed.”

Yet this is a complete hoax. These prosecutors cite studies that are misleading, non-replicable, non-peer-reviewed, or entirely disproven.

But the most damning proof that they are science deniers, not science followers, is the simple fact that crime, especially violent crime, has risen dramatically in their jurisdictions.

Of course, none of this has stopped them—and their media cheerleaders—from repeating the “data and science” incantation ad nauseum.

The problem isn’t the use of data or science to support prosecutorial policies. District attorneys have collected data for decades. That’s unsurprising given that the raison d’être of every elected prosecutor is public safety—a goal that data collection significantly furthers. Click here to read more.

 

LANSING, Mich - Michigan State Representative Laurie Pohutsky is facing controversy and even death threats after revealing that she underwent permanent sterilization due to fears about the political climate under President Donald Trump.

In an interview with FOX 2, Pohutsky explained that her decision was deeply personal and years in the making. However, she said Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 heightened her concerns over access to contraceptive care and insurance coverage.

“I don’t know what this woman is doing other than just encouraging young women to render themselves infertile,” she said. “I think that this administration is going to be supportive of not just women’s health but everyone’s health. Everyone is going to benefit and will have health and longevity, not just for ourselves, but also for our children.”

“That made me worry about things like insurance coverage, whether or not all hospital systems would even continue providing that level of care depending on what came out of Washington,” she said.

Pohutsky pointed to previous efforts during Trump’s first term to roll back insurance coverage for contraceptives as a factor in her choice. Click here to read more.

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WASHINGTON D.C. - President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered all federal departments and agencies to provide lists of employees who are underperforming, as it seeks to shrink the workforce and awaits a court ruling related to its deferred resignation offers.

A memo sent by the Office of Personnel Management on Thursday directs the agencies to submit names of every employee who has received less than a “fully successful” performance rating in the past three years and to note whether the workers have been on performance plans.

The memo, which was viewed by The Associated Press, also emphasized that the agencies report any obstacles to making sure they have “the ability to swiftly terminate poor performing employees who cannot or will not improve.”

The memo seeks the employee’s name, job title, pay plan and other details, as well as whether that employee is “under or successfully completed a performance improvement plan within the last 12 months.”

The office also is asking if an agency has proposed or issued a decision in such cases, and whether any action is being appealed or challenged, as well as any outcome.

The data is due by March 7. Click here to read more.

 

The House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump on December 18, 2019, after a White House whistleblower went public with evidence that Trump abused his powers by withholding military aid to Ukraine in order to dig up dirt on his rival, Joe Biden. In the complaint, the whistleblower claimed to have heard from White House staff that Trump had, on a phone call, directed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. The whistleblower who triggered the impeachment was a CIA analyst who was first brought into the White House by the Obama administration.

Reporting by Drop Site News last year revealed that the CIA analyst relied on reporting by a supposedly independent investigative news organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which appears to have effectively operated as an arm of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which President Trump has just shut down. Click here to read more.

 

CHICAGO, IL - The Chicago Teachers Union rejected recommendations from a neutral factfinder. The union will be free to strike after the report is public for 30 days and the union gives 10 days’ notice of striking.

The Chicago Teachers Union may soon be going on strike against the mayor it bankrolled into office.

The union announced it rejected recommendations from a neutral third-party “fact finder” in its latest phase of negotiations with Chicago Public Schools. That moves the teachers union one step closer to going on strike against CPS and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who gained control of City Hall after CTU funneled $2.3 million into his campaign coffers.

The union thought having Johnson in office would facilitate negotiations this time around. “This year’s CTU contract negotiations will be different than any other,” CTU wrote in an April 2024 bulletin. Click here to read more.

 

LANSING, Mich - Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall is cutting off taxpayer funds for municipalities that provide sanctuary to illegal immigrants.

The Richland Township Republican on Thursday introduced House Resolution 19 to block state appropriations for local governments that shield illegal immigrants from federal immigration enforcement.

“I would like to see us use funding as a way to punish these sanctuary jurisdictions,” Hall told reporters Thursday. “Let me say it differently: I think it should be an incentive – increased funding beyond what’s constitutionally required is an incentive for things like working to have safer communities through complying with ICE and working and partnering with ICE.” Click here to read more.

 

SAULT ST. MARIE, Mich- U.S. Customs and Border Protection this week arrested a member of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in Sault Ste. Marie as he tried to cross into the U.S. from Canada.

“Violent criminal organizations and transnational gangs like Tren de Aragua are a plague upon our communities that rely on fear and violence to reign terror on hardworking and law-abiding residents,” Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Travis Pickard said in a statement cited by MLive.

“By coming together as a law enforcement community to successfully locate and arrest these fugitives across state lines, we have sent a resounding message that we are united in our efforts to dismantle these violent criminal networks and put an end to the lawlessness they spread.” Click here to read more. Click here to read more.