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New Jersey Representative Tom Kean Jr. has finally addressed the public regarding his multiweek absence from Congress.“I want to thank my constituents and colleagues for their patience as I address a personal medical issue,” Kean said in a statement posted on X Monday evening. “My doctors continue to assure me that my recovery will be complete and that I will be back to the job I love very soon. I expect to return to a full schedule and be at 100 percent.“I take my responsibilities seriously and have a strong record of showing up and delivering, which makes this absence all the more difficult,” Kean continued, thanking his congressional team for keeping his office in motion—despite his prolonged absence—and offering gratitude for the “patience” of his colleagues in the lower chamber. Kean hasn’t voted on a single bill since March 5. Yet until yesterday, Kean and his staff never bothered to explain to his constituents why the 57-year-old lawmaker was missing in action.The Garden State Republican only addressed public concern after members of his own party waged a small pressure campaign to make him speak. GOP Representatives Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew—also from New Jersey—were unable to make contact with Kean. Van Drew told Politico last week that it had been “radio silence” from their colleague.New York Republicans were similarly stumped in their efforts to call and text Kean, while other Republicans—such as Representative Don Bacon—were completely unaware of their ally’s absence until they couldn’t find him on the House floor.“I was looking for him,” Bacon said last week. “I didn’t know it was that long.”Their efforts culminated in a call between Kean and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who subsequently explained late last week that Kean had been dealing with an unspecified “personal health matter.” Kean was elected to represent New Jersey’s 7th congressional district in 2022, and is months away from being thrust into a contentious midterm reelection cycle. He is currently unchallenged in the Garden State’s Republican primary, scheduled for June 2, but is likely to face tremendous opposition from Democrats come November. Over the last several months, New Jersey’s 7th congressional district has shifted from a “lean Republican” advantage to a total toss-up, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report.

A federal judge has rejected the Department of Justice’s attempt to dismiss former U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey’s lawsuit challenging her wrongful termination.Comey alleged that she’d been improperly terminated in July “solely or substantially” because her father is former FBI Director James Comey, a target of President Donald Trump’s reckless revenge scheme. When she was terminated from her position at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, the notice simply cited Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which “vest[s]” the “executive Power” in the president.Rather than challenge Comey’s allegations outright, the Department of Justice argued that she could not bring her claim to federal court but instead needed to go through the Merit Systems Protection Board. That board was established by the Civil Service Reform Act, or CSRA, of 1978. In a 27-page order filed Tuesday, District Judge Jesse E. Furman rejected the government’s motion to dismiss the case. “Comey’s case does not fall within the purview of the CSRA’s scheme because she was fired pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, not pursuant to the CSRA itself,” Furman wrote. Furman ordered the government to answer Comey’s claims within two weeks, and scheduled a pretrial conference in exactly one month.

Zohran Mamdani, Hasan Minhaj, and plenty of other big-name figures gathered in Manhattan to celebrate our second birthday and listen to our editor-in-chief explain our journalistic mission.

President Trump is facing opposition to his ballroom from within his own party.Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida doesn’t think taxpayers should foot the hefty bill for the White House addition, telling NBC News that the project should be privately funded.“I don’t know why you would do it” using taxpayer dollars “if it’s all funded,” Scott told NBC. “We have $39 trillion in debt. Maybe we ought to stop spending money.”Senators Josh Hawley and Rand Paul agreed.“I think that the donors should all be public, but I don’t know why, if you’ve got private donors who want to do it ... I prefer that to the taxpayer being on the hook,” Hawley said. “But I think it’s a separate question as to whether we need to authorize it.”“I am always conservative and he already has the money,” Paul told NBC. “And I’m not against putting in reconciliation and doing a nominal amount. I’m not for funding the whole $500 million. I think he’s already raised the money through private means.”The opposition could jeopardize Trump’s plan to push forward his ballroom. On Monday, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham, Katie Britt, and Eric Schmitt announced a bill to provide $400 million for Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the White House grounds.Trump had initially said that the ballroom’s construction would be paid by private donations from corporations and wealthy individuals. Now costs have ballooned and the project includes an underground military installation, bomb shelters, and a hospital. Democrats are overwhelmingly against the project, arguing that it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars and needs congressional authorization.“I have not seen a specific request with respect to the ballroom. But needless to say, we have to drive down the high cost of living. Life has become more expensive,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Monday. “Not a vanity project that resulted from the destruction—that was unauthorized—of the East Wing of the White House.”

Federal agents returned to Minneapolis to raid day cares early on Tuesday morning.“Today the FBI with federal, state and local law enforcement is involved in court-authorized law enforcement activity as part of an ongoing fraud investigation,” said a Justice Department spokesperson. About 20 childcare centers were targeted, but no one was arrested, according to reporting from CBS News. Sources told Fox News that the targets were Somali-linked.At least a dozen agents showed up at the Mini Childcare Center, one of the many day cares that right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley harassed while attempting to prove that Somali Americans were running an elaborate fraud scheme, a flimsy theory meant to target a minority population. It was picked up by the Trump administration nonetheless, with the president escalating his hateful rhetoric about how Somalis don’t belong in the country and slandering Somali American Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar in the process. None of the day cares Shirley harassed have been found fraudulent. Even still, federal agents are back just months after 2,000 of them flooded the streets of Minneapolis in Operation Metro Surge—killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti and abusing and detaining thousands of immigrants. Like Shirley, they left empty-handed after descending upon a day care at 6 a.m. this morning.

Juan Cole for Informed Comment Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg for 90 minutes as part of his attempt to widen the grounds of diplomacy toward ending the war launched by the US and Israel on February 28. Putin noted that he had received a communication from […]

By Kourosh Ziabari This article was originally published by Truthout Already marginalized, Iran’s religious minority communities are overlooked victims of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Iranians of all stripes have been affected by the U.S.-Israeli war on their country, and the civilian cost of the conflict has yet to be fully understood. The United Nations […]

The president is losing his grip over his proposed White House ballroom.The Justice Department filed a bizarre legal motion Monday, taking on a tone—and punctuation—more akin to one of Donald Trump’s sprawling social media rants than a formal court document from the top law enforcement institution in the country.Over the span of seven pages, the supposedly independent agency spewed insults at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which refused Monday to drop its lawsuit to halt construction of the proposed 90,000-square-foot White House addition.In the legal filing, the DOJ calls the nonprofit “FAKE,” frames the organization’s attorney as “the lawyer for Barack Hussein Obama,” and accuses its staff of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”But it also places an odd and unusual emphasis on the ballroom, insisting that its immediate construction is a national security necessity due to the attack Saturday at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.“The fact that an assassin came mere seconds from shooting the President—along with his family, the bulk of his Cabinet, his senior staff, and the Washington press corps—lays bare that D.C. does not have a secure space for large high-profile events, or one able to ‘accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government,’” argued the Justice Department. “What he did on Saturday night could not have taken place in this new and highly secure facility!”The notice continued that “as this weekend painfully confirms, all current and future Presidents need a secure large-event space now.”The agency did not specify how the ballroom would offer better security than the Washington Hilton hotel, which also depends on the Secret Service to run its security operation for the annual press gathering.The Connecticut Avenue hotel has several amenities that make it a favorite for executive branch functions, including a special entrance for the president as well as a dedicated holding room behind the stage that comes with a presidential seal embedded into the floor. The hotel’s event space can also hold more than 2,600 guests—and is  significantly larger than the proposed ballroom.Yet the DOJ filing further claims that, since the attack, the ballroom has received support from a “bipartisan chorus of legislators”—a vast overstatement that almost singularly refers to Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman, who has deferred to the MAGA agenda on several occasions.The filing, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, repeats the White House’s rhetoric that construction of the razed East Wing replacement would be “free of charge to the American Taxpayer.” “Who could ever object to that?” the filing reads.But it would not be free. Trump has repeatedly pledged that the space would be entirely funded by private donors, but as of this week has pushed Congress to sign a $400 million check for the ballroom’s construction. Several Republicans have backed the strategy, led by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Graham has claimed that the cost would be offset to taxpayers by leaning on national park user fees and custom fees.