It's Friday, February 21st, and this is Brian with the Morning News. Give us five minutes and we'll give you the headlines you need to know. To be in the note, Republican senators pushed a $340 billion budget framework to passage early Friday, chugging through an all-night session and Democratic opposition. In a step toward unleashing money, the Trump administration says it needs for mass deportations and border security that top their agenda.
The hours-long debate rambled along in a dreaded but crucial part of the budget process, as senators considered one amendment after another, largely from Democrats trying to halt it. But Republicans used their majority power to muscle the package to approval on a largely party-line vote. 52 to 48, with all Democrats and one GOP senator opposing it. In other news, the Senate voted Thursday to confirm Kash Patel as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
a victory in President Trump's effort to strike back at an agency he has long considered his nemesis. The final vote was 51 to 49, with every Senate Democrat voting against Patel. Patel's confirmation marks a tectonic shift at the Bureau as he plans to adjust its focus from terrorism and counterintelligence work back toward its historical mission of fighting violent crime. and open criticism of the agency he will lead set him apart from most every other director in the Bureau's history.
Around the world, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a body that Hamas militants released during the handover of remains of Israeli hostages is that of a woman from Gaza instead of that of Shiri Biba. the mother of two young boys whose bodies were returned on Thursday. In a statement released Friday, Netanyahu criticized the handover of the wrong remains as a cruel and malicious violation of the ceasefire agreement, which has halted fighting in the Gaza Strip.
and said Hamas would pay the full price for the action. Hamas displayed coffins that it said held the bodies of four Israeli hostages before a crowd of militants while handing them over to Israel on Thursday, in a spectacle that included taunts and anti-Israel slogans. Amid the crowds were some Palestinians recently released by Israel in the ceasefire deal who were supposed to be exiled from Gaza, according to the terms of the agreement.
In exchange for the bodies, Israel will release a group of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas has agreed to free another six living hostages on Saturday as the first phase of the ceasefire nears its end. The remains of Shiri Bebas's two young sons, Ariel and Kefir Bebas, were positively identified. identified, the Israeli Defense Forces said, but added the fourth body was not that of their mother nor of any other hostage.
Back in the US, the Federal Trade Commission initiated an inquiry into technology companies' use of censorship. The inquiry aims to understand how technology companies decide what content to block users from seeing. The procedures companies use to decide what to block can be unpredictable, the FTC said, and potentially harm consumers and hurt competition.
The FTC issued a request for information from consumers who would like to publicly comment about technology platforms limiting their ability to share ideas or affiliations. previously said he wants to put more pressure on big tech, particularly with regard to suppressing free speech. Censorship by technology platforms is not just un-American, it is potentially illegal, the FTC said.
And Senator Mitch McConnell said he would not seek another term after a decades-long career marked by brass-knuckled tactics in crafting a conservative Supreme Court as well as repeated tangles with President Trump. McConnell, who turns 83 Thursday, made the announcement from the floor of the Senate, where he has served since 1985 and is now in his seventh term. McConnell, considered the most consequential party leader in generations,
stepped aside from that role at the end of the last Congress after 18 years. Representing our Commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime, McConnell said. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last. His term ends in January 2027.
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