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WASHINGTON, Nov 27 (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Thursday blamed Biden-era vetting failures for the admission of an Afghan immigrant suspected of shooting two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., but the alleged gunman was granted asylum this year under President Donald Trump, according to a U.S. government file seen by Reuters.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, entered the U.S. on September 8, 2021, under Operation Allies Welcome. The resettlement program was set up by former Democratic President Joe Biden after the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 that led to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and the country's takeover by the Taliban.

FBI Director Kash Patel and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, both Trump appointees, said during a press conference on Thursday that the Biden administration had failed to conduct adequate background checks or vetting on Lakanwal before allowing him to enter the U.S. in 2021.

Neither official provided any evidence to support their assertion.

Four years after Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas would be the first state to build its own border wall, lawmakers have quietly stopped funding the project, leaving only scattered segments covering a small fraction of the border.

That decision, made in the waning hours of this year’s legislative session, leaves the future of the state wall unclear. Just 8% of the 805 miles the state identified for construction is complete, which has cost taxpayers more than $3 billion to date. The Texas Tribune reported last year that the wall is full of gaps that migrants and smugglers can easily walk around and mostly concentrated on sprawling ranches in rural areas, where illegal border crossings are less likely to occur.

State leaders suggested the federal government could pick up the effort. However, during President Donald Trump’s first term, when wall building was his top priority, his administration completed just 21 miles in Texas — about a third of what the state was able to build over the past four years.

The Tribune reported last year that the state’s wall program would take around 30 years and more than $20 billion to complete.

A 2024 war among Republicans tilted the House to the right. Now more closely aligned with the Senate, Speaker Dustin Burrows has accelerated action on bail, school vouchers and social issues.

With tensions boiling over in the final days of the 2021 Texas legislative session, Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock Republican and a top House lieutenant, went out of his way to throw shade at the Senate and its leader, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, for letting too many House bills languish.

From the back microphone on the House floor, Burrows rhetorically asked then-Speaker Dade Phelan if he was aware that “less than 50% of the House bills that we sent over were passed by the Senate” — much worse than the success rate for Senate bills sent to the lower chamber. It came shortly after Patrick had flayed the House for killing several of his top conservative priorities.

Four years later, Burrows’ first session wielding the speaker’s gavel is winding down with little of the same inter-chamber acrimony. Conservative priorities that had failed in session after session in the House, from private school vouchers to stricter bail laws, have cleared the Legislature with time to spare. So have once-thorny issues, like property tax cuts, school funding and immigration, that in years past had generated bad blood between the chambers and needed overtime sessions to address.

Many of those now-imminent laws were in the sweeping agenda Patrick unveiled near the start of the session in January, marked by several issues that Gov. Greg Abbott also championed as “emergency items.” All but a handful of Patrick’s priorities — from conservative red meat to top bipartisan priorities to the lieutenant governor’s own pet issues — have made it across the finish line or are poised to do so in the closing days of the session, which ends June 2.

The lack of discord reflects the collegial relations Patrick and Burrows have worked to maintain from the start; Burrows’ apparent desire to avoid drawing Patrick’s wrath and the political damage it inflicted upon his predecessors; and the reality that the House, thanks to the turnover wrought by a bruising 2024 primary cycle, is now more conservative and more receptive than ever to Patrick’s hard-charging agenda.

ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) - A top Chinese-made Pakistani fighter plane shot down at least two Indian military aircraft on Wednesday, two U.S. officials told Reuters, marking a major milestone for Beijing's advanced fighter jet.

An Indian Air Force spokesperson said he had no comment when asked about the Reuters report.

"Republicans hold a tiny majority in the House, creating an incentive for Abbott to hold off on calling an election for Turner’s seat, which would likely be filled by a Democrat."

"Three weeks after U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner’s death and just over a month before the state’s next uniform election, Gov. Greg Abbott has not yet called a special election to fill the seat representing parts of Houston, a Democratic stronghold, in Congress.

Turner, who previously served in the Texas House for nearly three decades before becoming mayor of Houston, died March 5, two months into his first term representing Texas’ 18th Congressional District. His funeral was held in Houston on March 15.

Turner was elected to Congress last year after his predecessor and political ally, former U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, died in office after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Abbott has the sole authority to call a special election to fill Turner's seat for the rest of the two-year term. State law does not specify a deadline for the governor to order a special election. If called, the election must happen within two months of the announcement.

But the Republican governor has little incentive to send another Democrat to Congress."

"You might expect that mortgage rates would be falling right now after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a half-point last month.

Instead, mortgage rates jumped higher. The latest data from Freddie Mac showed that the average 30-year mortgage rate had increased to 6.4%, more than a quarter-point higher than it was two weeks ago.

The news is probably an unwelcome surprise to the folks who had been hoping for lower interest rates to finally come off the sidelines and start shopping for a home.

Here’s what’s going on — and what it means for those trying to buy a home now."

"Former President Donald Trump once again appears to be in the driver’s seat in this presidential election.

When looking strictly at the polls, Trump now has the edge in two states and the other five most closely watched states are toss-ups. At the end of August, Vice President Harris had leads large enough in three of the seven states for them to lean in her direction, according to an NPR analysis of polling averages at the time.

Now, Trump has taken over the lead in an average of the polls in the seven swing states for the first time since Harris got in the race."

LOS ANGELES – President Biden on Saturday night said he expects the winner of this year’s presidential election will likely have the chance to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court – a decision he warned would be “one of the scariest parts” if his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, is successful in his bid for a second term.

ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.

Missouri could soon join them.

If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.

ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.

Missouri could soon join them.

If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.

For the first 25 minutes, the Arizona Senate's floor session on March 18th was unremarkable.

Then, state Sen. Eva Burch stood up and announced to her colleagues that she was pregnant, and planned to get an abortion.

Detailing a deeply personal medical history of past miscarriages, Burch told her fellow lawmakers that she made the decision to seek an abortion after discovering that her fetus is not viable.

"I don't think people should have to justify their abortions," Burch, a Democrat, told the chamber.