Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis faces misconduct allegations after a co-defendant in Georgia’s election interference case against Trump claimed that Willis was in a “romantic relationship” with her special prosecutor. The presiding judge set a hearing for February 15th to focus on the allegations. The Justice Department released a scathing 575-page report Thursday about the 2022 elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The report described the “significant failure” in the police’...
Jan 19, 2024•27 min
Israel and Hamas reached an agreement on Wednesday to get medicine delivered to hostages held in Gaza. In exchange, humanitarian aid and medication will be delivered to Palestinian civilians. And overnight on Tuesday into Wednesday, Israeli forces advanced on the area around the Al Nasser hospital complex in Khan Younis, a city in Southern Gaza. Over in Texas, a floating barrier in the Rio Grande will stay for now because an appeals court reversed an order for the state to remove it. Governor Gr...
Jan 18, 2024•20 min
President Biden invited Congressional leaders to the White House Wednesday for their first face-to-face talks in months about critical aid to Ukraine, immigration and border policy, and aid for Israel. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday where he emphasized the need for more aid and called out Putin directly. In the Middle East, fears of an expanding war in the region have multiplied in recent days. The U.S. launched a new air...
Jan 17, 2024•20 min
The Iowa caucuses are officially over. Donald Trump won as expected with just over 50 percent of the vote, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came in second and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley came in third. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy finished in fourth place, and suspended his campaign just minutes after the polls closed and then endorsed Trump. We’re joined by Eugene Scott, senior politics reporter for Axios, to break down the results and turnout in Iowa. And in headlines: Defense Secretary ...
Jan 16, 2024•17 min
The Iowa caucuses are here. Former President Donald Trump is in the lead, according to the most recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll. He has the backing of 48 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley is in second place with 20 percent, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in third place at 16 percent. Meanwhile, it is bitterly, bitterly cold in Iowa with a wind chill warning in place until after the caucus on Tuesday. And it’s not just Iowa – an...
Jan 15, 2024•26 min
The Iowa Caucuses are back! Trump is the clear favorite, but there’s a tense battle for second place that is all going to play out on Monday. We dive into what the caucuses even are, how they work, and what their role is in this year’s presidential election. Then, Crooked’s very own Tommy Vietor joins the show after being on the ground in Iowa himself. He walks us through what it was like sneaking into Republican campaign events, and what voters said. Show Notes: What A Day – YouTube – https://w...
Jan 12, 2024•19 min
Israel is accused of committing genocide in Gaza in a case before the International Court of Justice on Thursday. South Africa filed the claim, and it alleges that Israel violated international law by committing and failing to prevent genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza. Hunter Biden took a surprise trip to the Capitol Building on Wednesday to look Republicans in the eye as they advanced a resolution to hold him in contempt of Congress. And outside the Capitol, Hunter and his legal team ...
Jan 11, 2024•21 min
Donald Trump was back in court on Tuesday for the federal case against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election. This time, however, Trump tried to make the argument that he cannot be charged at all. Plus, Trump on Monday requested that a Maine judge put a pause on deciding whether he should appear on the state’s ballot for now. The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing today about how artificial intelligence could impact journalism. One of the committee’s members – Sen. Amy Klobuchar –...
Jan 10, 2024•21 min
The Chair of Florida’s Republican Party of Florida, Christian Ziegler, was removed from his position on Monday after a closed-door meeting of party members in the state. It’s the latest development in the relatively small but very mighty scandal that also includes Ziegler’s wife, Bridget. Pope Francis called for surrogacy to be banned globally on Monday and described the practice as “despicable.” However, the Pope’s position on surrogacy doesn’t necessarily match up with some of his more progres...
Jan 09, 2024•21 min
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the inspection of 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after a panel blew out of an Alaska Airlines plane mid-flight on Friday. No serious injuries were immediately reported, but this isn’t the first time a Boeing plane raised passenger safety concerns. At least nine Palestinians including a young child were killed in the West Bank on Sunday. And on Saturday, the Israeli military said that the remaining Hamas fighters in northern Gaza were no longer “under an o...
Jan 08, 2024•17 min
ISIS claimed responsibility for the bombings in Iran that killed at least 84 people and injured 284 others on Wednesday. Plus, the United States launched a drone strike in Iraq’s capital of Baghdad on Thursday, killing a senior commander of an Iran-linked militia group and several others. New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Thursday that he filed a lawsuit against 17 charter bus companies used by Texas Governor Greg Abbott to bus people seeking asylum at the border to New York. Adams is ask...
Jan 05, 2024•19 min
An appeals court ruled on Tuesday that doctors in Texas are not required to perform emergency abortion care as a necessary, stabilizing treatment to protect the health of the mother or pregnant person. In the opinion, Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote the federal statute “does not mandate any specific type of medical treatment, let alone abortion.” A pair of bombs exploded in Iran on Wednesday and killed at least 95 people and injured over 200 others. The attack happened near the burial site of Iran’s...
Jan 04, 2024•17 min
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday appealed the decision by Maine’s Secretary of State that bars him from the ballot due to his role in the January 6th insurrection. That comes after the Colorado Supreme Court last month removed Trump from the state’s ballot, which he is also likely to appeal soon. The deputy head of Hamas along with two other leaders of its armed wing were killed on Tuesday in Beirut, Lebanon by an Israeli strike. Meanwhile, the UN reports that half of Gaza’s 2.2 million ...
Jan 03, 2024•21 min
The Biden administration is pressuring Israel to scale back its war by the end of the year. And earlier this week, President Joe Biden warned that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza was whittling away international support. But it seems like the language shift hasn’t yet caused a meaningful development in the area. European Union leaders decided on Thursday to open EU membership negotiations with Ukraine. This has been a longtime goal of Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky and is a boos...
Dec 15, 2023•25 min
The Supreme Court on Wednesday announced that it will hear a case challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the commonly used abortion medication mifepristone. The justices also agreed to review the scope of an obstruction law that has been applied to hundreds of felony prosecutions of insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Last week, the House passed a resolution that equated anti-Zionism with antisemitism. And on Wednesday, the House voted to pass a resolutio...
Dec 14, 2023•21 min
A group of ten current and formerly incarcerated people in Alabama filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday to allege inhumane conditions in the state’s prison system, and called it a “modern day form of slavery.” The lawsuit claims about 575 private companies and more than 100 public agencies have benefitted from incarcerated labor in Alabama in the past five years, and those benefits have amounted to an estimated $450 million annually. The latest Consumer Price Index showed that prices rose 3.1% in ...
Dec 13, 2023•26 min
The UN Climate Change Conference – known as COP28 – hit a major roadblock on Monday. There’s disagreement between countries because a potential deal stops short of a promise to phase out the use of fossil fuels. The Golden Globes nominees were announced on Monday, but this is the first time the award ceremony will be run without the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The Association was dissolved, and a for-profit venture bought control over the awards. This year’s ceremony will be a case stud...
Dec 12, 2023•22 min
The Texas Supreme Court temporarily halted the abortion procedure for Kate Cox, a 31-year-old pregnant woman who was granted the country’s first court-ordered abortion last week since the fall of Roe. The justices said Cox's procedure is on pause while they review her restraining order, which is meant to protect her and her doctors from the state’s anti-abortion measures. Sickle cell disease is a painful condition that occurs more frequently in Black people, and last Friday the FDA approved two ...
Dec 11, 2023•20 min
A Texas judge ruled Thursday that a woman can terminate her pregnancy because of a lethal abnormality in the fetus. It’s the first attempt in the country to use the courts to obtain an abortion since the end of Roe v Wade, and Thursday’s ruling is meant to shield the woman and her doctor from Texas’s strict anti-abortion measures. But state Attorney General Ken Paxton warned that it’s still possible his office might prosecute those involved. Then, over 17,000 people are dead in Gaza as the war i...
Dec 08, 2023•28 min
Senate Republicans blocked meaningful gun control once again Wednesday by stopping a Democratic measure that would have banned assault-style weapons. Unfortunately, the failed Congressional effort came on the same day as a mass shooting on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where three people were killed and a fourth wounded. The Biden Administration approved another $4.8 billion in debt relief for over 80,000 student loan borrowers. So far, the administration canceled $132 billi...
Dec 07, 2023•17 min
GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama finally backed down on Tuesday after single-handedly blocking nearly every single military promotion for almost a year. He released the vast majority of his holds, and shortly afterwards the Senate confirmed the promotions of 440 service members. Georgia’s Republican-controlled state senate passed a redrawn Congressional map that preserves the GOP majority among the state’s delegation to the House of Representatives. The map also splits Democratic Represen...
Dec 06, 2023•22 min
The Biden administration is sounding the alarm to Congress about the need to pass a funding bill to support Ukraine in their war with Russia. White House budget official Shalanda Young sent a letter to party leaders in the House and Senate on Monday warning that “we are out of money — and nearly out of time.” The Supreme Court on Monday heard yet another case with significant implications – this time about the opioid crisis. The question in front of the court will determine whether or not the we...
Dec 05, 2023•20 min
Hundreds of Palestinians were killed since fighting resumed after a weeklong truce between Israel and Hamas ended Friday morning. Israeli officials are also preparing for a ground invasion of the south of Gaza, and they ordered more residents to evacuate the area on Sunday. Meanwhile, it appears too soon to tell if negotiations for another truce will resume. And in headlines: the Supreme Court will hear arguments over the legality of a $6 billion Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan, oil companies at t...
Dec 04, 2023•20 min
The weeklong truce between Israel and Hamas expired early Friday morning local time and combat operations resumed. Prior to that, Hamas released eight more hostages on Thursday for a total of more than 100. Israel that same day released another 30 Palestinians from Israeli prisons for a total of 240. Governors Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom took to the stage on Thursday for a primetime debate on Fox News. Under Sean Hannity’s moderation, the two debated everything from taxes to the economy to abo...
Dec 01, 2023•24 min
The UN’s 28th Conference of the Parties, also called COP28, kicks off today in Dubai. The annual climate change conference is set to take place through December 12th with an estimated 70,000 people in attendance. We’re joined by Naveena Sadasivam, senior staff writer from the climate outlet Grist, for what to watch at this year’s event. And in headlines: Israel and Hamas agreed to extend their truce one more day to Friday, former U.S Secretary of State Henry Kissinger died at 100, and Taylor Swi...
Nov 30, 2023•23 min
Donald Trump threatened to replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, if he wins the 2024 presidential election. Trump took to social media over the weekend to post that he is “seriously looking at alternatives” to it, and on Monday, President Biden said in a statement: “My predecessor once again called for cuts that could rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans…They just don’t give up.” Hunter Biden told lawmakers on Tuesday that he is willing to publicly testify before ...
Nov 29, 2023•20 min
Israel and Hamas both agreed on Monday to extend the current pause in fighting for another two days. Hamas released another 11 hostages as part of the deal, and in exchange Israel released 33 more Palestinians being held in prison. The long-awaited trial of rap artist Young Thug started on Monday in Atlanta. The trial has implications far beyond the music industry because Young Thug and his co-defendants are being prosecuted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and have been charged un...
Nov 28, 2023•22 min
Seventeen more hostages held by Hamas were released on Sunday under a temporary, four-day ceasefire agreement reached last week between Israel and Hamas. In total, 58 hostages were released over the first three days of the deal, and in return, Israel agreed to release 150 Palestinian women and children from prison. Israel and Hamas have also both expressed openness to extending the pause beyond four days. Meanwhile, people on every side of the war took to the streets across the world over the we...
Nov 27, 2023•24 min
A federal appeals court on Monday issued a ruling that jeopardizes the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In a 2-1 decision, the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that private groups or individuals can’t sue under a key provision of the VRA. We’re joined by Jay Willis, Editor-in-Chief of Balls and Strikes, to discuss what comes next. Over in Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Tuesday in a case that could toss Republican-drawn legislative maps. The lawsuit was file...
Nov 21, 2023•17 min
Israel, Hamas and the U.S. are close to an agreement to free some hostages held in Gaza, according to The Washington Post. The tentative deal, which is being brokered by the U.S., would involve a pause in fighting in exchange for the release of at least 50 women and children hostages. Sam Altman, the CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, was ousted from his own company by its board of directors on Friday. In a statement, the company – which is the maker of ChatGPT – said of Altman: “The board no longer ...
Nov 20, 2023•18 min
