Elon Musk-owned social media X down globally, users in US, India, UK and more report access issues
Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) faced a major global outage, affecting thousands of users in the US, India, the UK, Australia, and Canada.
Days from partial government shutdown deadline, here’s where things stand
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is gearing up for a vote on Tuesday on a bill, which, if approved, will avert a partial government shutdown during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s term. Given the lack of support from Democrats, Johnson is betting Republicans can muscle through largely by themselves on the 99-page piece of legislation that would keep federal agencies funded until Sept. 30. Congress must act to avoid a partial government shutdown by Friday, March 14. Despite dozens of conservative defections on continuing resolutions over the past two years, Trump on Saturday called for Republicans to unite to support the bill. “The House and Senate have put together, under the circumstances, a very good funding Bill (‘CR’)! All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week,” Trump wrote on TRUTHSocial. “Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the Country’s ‘financial house’ in order. Democrats will do anything they can to shut down our Government, and we can’t let that happen.” CONGRESS UNVEILS SPENDING PLAN AFTER TRUMP CALLS ON REPUBLICANS TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN “We have to remain UNITED — NO DISSENT — Fight for another day when the timing is right,” Trump added. “VERY IMPORTANT. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Still, some Republicans have already signaled they would not support the CR. “I’m not voting for the Continuing Resolution budget (cut-copy-paste omnibus) this week,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., posted to X on Sunday. “Why would I vote to continue the waste fraud and abuse DOGE has found? We were told the CR in December would get us to March when we would fight. Here we are in March, punting again! WTFO.” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., meanwhile, said he has never voted for a continuing resolution, but he is on board with Johnson’s effort. He says he has confidence in Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, to make a difference on the nation’s debt. “I don’t like CRs,” Norman said. “But what’s the alternative? Negotiate with Democrats? No.” In a call with reporters on Saturday, House Republican leadership aides outlined how the bill provides for $892.5 billion in discretionary federal defense spending, and $708 billion in non-defense discretionary spending. The aides emphasized that the bill was “closely coordinated” with the White House – while stopping short of saying Trump backed the measure completely, noting he has not reviewed the specific pages yet. It includes an additional $8 billion in defense dollars in an apparent bid to ease national security hawks’ concerns, while non-defense spending that Congress annually appropriates would decrease by about $13 billion. There is also an added $6 billion for healthcare for veterans. REP. RALPH NORMAN BACKS TRUMP’S PLAN TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, PUSHES FOR CONGRESSIONAL TERM LIMITS The White House has requested additional spending in areas that were not present in the last government funding extension, known as “anomalies.” Among the anomalies requested by Trump and being fulfilled by the bill is added funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Aides said the funding is meant to meet “an operations shortfall that goes back to the Biden administration.” “That money, most of that, has already been obligated prior to the start of this administration. So that request reflects an existing hole,” a source said. The bill also ensures that spending caps placed under a prior bipartisan agreement, the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), are followed. The FRA mandated no more than a 1% federal spending increase in FY 2025. Cuts to non-defense discretionary spending would be found by eliminating some “side deals” made during FRA negotiations, House GOP leadership aides said. Lawmakers would also not be given an opportunity to request funding for special pet projects in their districts known as earmarks, another area that Republicans are classifying as savings. The bill does not cover the majority of government spending, including Social Security and Medicare. Funding for those two programs is on autopilot and not regularly reviewed by Congress. Still, Democratic leadership issued a statement Saturday saying they were troubled the bill does not take steps to protect those programs and Medicaid, which Republicans are eying to help pay for extending tax cuts passed in Trump’s first term. “We are voting no,” a trio of House Democratic leaders, including House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said. The top Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Washington Sen. Patty Murray, both issued statements blasting the legislation. Murray said the legislation would “give Donald Trump and Elon Musk more power over federal spending — and more power to pick winners and losers, which threatens families in blue and red states alike.” DeLauro, in an X post, called the CR “a power grab for the White House.” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the focus must be on preventing a shutdown because closures have negative consequences all across government. “They require certain essential government employees, such as Border Patrol agents, members of our military and Coast Guard, TSA screeners, and air traffic controllers, to report to work with no certainty on when they will receive their next paycheck,” Collins said. “We cannot allow that to occur.” Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Trump’s eighth week in office set to continue breakneck level of actions, rallying GOP to avoid shutdown
President Donald Trump is expected to have another busy week back in the Oval Office, including rallying Republican Congressional support to pass a continuing resolution ahead of Friday’s government shutdown deadline. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are in the midst of hammering out a stopgap spending bill that would fund the federal government through Sept. 30 or face a shutdown at the end of the week. “I am working with the GREAT House Republicans on a Continuing Resolution to fund the Government until September to give us some needed time to work on our Agenda,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday. “Conservatives will love this Bill, because it sets us up to cut Taxes and Spending in Reconciliation, all while effectively FREEZING Spending this year,” Trump added. SECRET SERVICE SHOOTS MAN IN OVERNIGHT ‘ARMED CONFRONTATION’ NEAR WHITE HOUSE Negotiators released a 99-page piece of legislation on Saturday that would roughly maintain current government funding levels through the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2026, which begins Oct. 1. House Republicans have said that they are confident the bill will pass on Republican support alone, Fox Digital previously reported. House Republican leadership aides said in a media call on Saturday that the bill was “closely coordinated” with the White House, but noted that Trump has not reviewed this specific bill. CANADIANS FEEL ‘UNDER ECONOMIC ATTACK,’ FRUSTRATION WITH US OVER TRUMP TARIFFS, ANNEXATION TALK: AMBASSADOR House Democrats, meanwhile, are rallying lawmakers to reject the legislation, claiming Republicans are trying to cut Medicare and Medicaid. “Republicans have decided to introduce a partisan continuing resolution that threatens to cut funding for healthcare, nutritional assistance and veterans benefits through the end of the current fiscal year,” House Democrats said in statement last week. “House Democrats would enthusiastically support a bill that protects Social Security, Medicare, veterans health and Medicaid, but Republicans have chosen to put them on the chopping block to pay for billionaire tax cuts.” CONGRESS UNVEILS SPENDING PLAN AFTER TRUMP CALLS ON REPUBLICANS TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN In addition to the looming shutdown, this week will also include tariffs of 25% on imports of steel and aluminum taking effect on March 12, Trump told the media. The president is also set to receive a report on his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July of last year that left him with an injury to the ear, as well as the assassination attempt in Florida in September that was thwarted. “They are giving me a report next week some time, and I do believe I’ll be releasing,” Trump said on Thursday while speaking with Fox News’ Peter Doocy. “I want to release a report. A lot of people have asked that question.” DEMOCRATS PRIVATELY REBUKE PARTY MEMBERS WHO JEERED TRUMP DURING SPEECH TO CONGRESS: REPORT Trump has also previewed that the administration could announce the creation of a “massive new program for building very large, the largest ships in the world” this week. “It’ll have to do with incentives, taxes, they’ll be coming from all over the world, just like they are with cars, with what we’ve done with tariffs,” Trump said from the Oval Office last week of the upcoming announcement. “And we have at least seven new, major car plants that are going to be starting very shortly because of what we’re doing with the tariffs, which will primarily start on April the 2nd.” On Monday, Trump is expected to meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte where a main discussion point will certainly be the ongoing negotiations to reach a cease-fire agreement between Russia and Ukraine. On Wednesday Trump is expected to welcome Taoiseach Micheál Martin, the leader of Ireland. The President recently declared March Irish- American Heritage Month. Trump is entering his eighth week back in the White House with at least 87 executive orders under his belt since Jan. 20, which include 45 he signed in his first 10 days. Trump also enters the new work week after delivering his first address to a joint session of Congress last Tuesday, which broke records for length and was celebrated as “historic” by conservative allies. Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
Gulmarg fashion show row: J-K CM Omar Abdullah orders inquiry as chaos erupts in Assembly
The fashion show was organised in Gulmarg — a popular tourist destination in J&K — on Friday (March 7). Pictures and videos from the event, widely shared on social media, show male and female models walking the ramp in different outfits.
ACKO drive revolutionizes car buying in India
Starting with 80 dealer partners in Bangalore, ACKO Drive has rapidly expanded its footprint across India. The company ventured into Hyderabad in 2022 and Ahmedabad in 2024, now operating across more than 12 major cities.
Is X Down? Elon Musk-owned social media down for thousands of users
Social media platform X suffered outages on Monday afternoon
With crumbling public health infrastructure, rural Texas scrambles to respond to measles
The measles outbreak in rural Texas has exposed how hospital buildings are ill-equipped. Meanwhile, long distances between providers makes testing people and transporting samples difficult.
Thrust into the spotlight by a school shooting, Uvalde’s former mayor finds his footing as a lawmaker
Don McLaughlin isn’t shy about speaking his mind and has disagreed with victims’ families and fellow Republicans. Now he brings his direct style to the Capitol.
How ‘judge shopping’ is shaping the legal fights against President Trump’s agenda in federal court
The onslaught of legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s early actions brought by federal workers and advocacy groups have found their way into mostly friendly courts, overseen, for the most part, by sympathetic judges. These plaintiffs have employed a well-known, pervasive strategy used by both sides of the political aisle, known as forum or “judge shopping”– that is, to have a case tried in a certain district court, and one that falls under the jurisdiction of a U.S. appeals court with a certain political makeup. This strategy serves a distinct legal purpose. While the Supreme Court is the nation’s highest court, most cases don’t make it there. That’s because the Supreme Court hears an average of less than 100 cases annually, according to federal judiciary data. In contrast, the 13 U.S. appeals courts handle an average of more than 50,000 cases per year – meaning that these courts often get to rule on the most pressing legal issues. HERE’S WHY DOZENS OF LAWSUITS SEEKING TO QUASH TRUMP’S EARLY ACTIONS AS PRESIDENT ARE FAILING And while plaintiffs suing the federal government used to have to establish a local, geographic connection to the district where they were filing their lawsuit, Congress broadly moved to lift that requirement more than 30 years ago – allowing the practice to quickly gain prominence. As president, Trump “is exercising Article II power to take care that our federal laws are faithfully executed,” Mike Davis, the founder and president of the Article III Project, or A3P, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “That’s his constitutional duty. And that includes weeding out waste, fraud and abuse. That’s what he’s doing with Elon Musk and with DOGE,” said Davis, a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch. But recent years have seen a wave of new efforts to reform the system and stop the process of “judge shopping,” with detractors pointing to a spate of recent examples where cases were filed specifically in certain districts in an effort to yield more favorable outcomes. It’s a strategy both Republican and Democrat plaintiffs have used with increasing regularity. Most recently, groups of Democratic-led plaintiffs filed three separate court challenges to Trump’s executive order seeking to ban birthright citizenship within the jurisdiction of the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, or the Boston-based appeals court whose bench is composed primarily of Democratic-appointed judges. Other groups seeking to overturn Trump’s early actions have focused on courts within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has a reputation for liberal decisions. Judges on that bench moved unanimously to block the Trump administration’s birthright citizenship order from taking force, leaving in place the decision of a Seattle district court, and potentially kicking the matter to the Supreme Court for consideration. TRUMP STRIPS SECURITY CLEARANCES FROM LAW FIRM TIED TO JACK SMITH CASES Other notable examples include a wave of anti-abortion cases filed in the rural Texas town of Amarillo, where the sole federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, is known for his anti-abortion beliefs and for siding on behalf of pro-life groups. (Texas is also under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where 75% of the 26 judges on the bench are Republican-appointed.) Kacsmaryk’s attempt to ban the abortion pill, mifepristone, in 2023 was upheld but narrowed by the Fifth Circuit Court. It was later dismissed completely by the Supreme Court, which noted that the plaintiffs in the case lacked proper standing. Still, judicial reform advocates have pointed to this case – and many others – as evidence of the lengths individuals will go to in an attempt to reshape the federal policy landscape by way of case law and legal precedent. “Allowing plaintiffs to pick their judge is contrary to the bedrock federal court principle of randomly assigning cases to judges through an electronic version of drawing names from a hat,” Russell Wheeler, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program, wrote in an op-ed. LAWSUIT TRACKER: NEW RESISTANCE BATTLING TRUMP’S SECOND TERM THROUGH ONSLAUGHT OF LAWSUITS TAKING AIM AT EOS Davis, for his part, told Fox News that his organization, A3P, is currently working with the Senate Judiciary Committee to draft legislation to end the flurry of temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions that have come before single judges. “The legislation will require a three-judge panel randomly assigned from around the country; a lottery system” to hear various cases and prevent the uptick in forum shopping, Davis said. Federal judiciary leaders and members of Congress have also introduced efforts within the last year aimed at stopping or curtailing the pervasiveness of judge-shopping. Senate Democrats introduced a bill last spring that would require cases to be randomly assigned within a federal court district, though it has failed to gain traction in the rest of Congress. Last March, the U.S. Judicial Conference, the body that sets policy for the federal courts, issued fresh guidance urging courts to assign certain high-profile cases at random in a bid to stop judge shopping and restore public trust in the court system. “The random case-assignment policy deters judge-shopping and the assignment of cases based on the perceived merits or abilities of a particular judge,” Judge Robert J. Conrad, the U.S. Judicial Conference secretary, said in a statement at the time. Rather, he said, the feature “promotes the impartiality of proceedings and bolsters public confidence in the federal Judiciary.”
Massie says he’s a ‘NO’ on Trump-endorsed government funding measure: ‘Unless I get a lobotomy’
As the deadline to avert a partial government shutdown approaches and President Donald Trump urges Republicans to support passage of a funding measure, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has declared that he will oppose the proposal. “Unless I get a lobotomy Monday that causes me to forget what I’ve witnessed the past 12 years, I’ll be a NO on the CR this week. It amazes me that my colleagues and many of the public fall for the lie that we will fight another day,” Massie declared in a Sunday post on X. President Donald Trump has urged Republicans to pass the measure. CONGRESS UNVEILS SPENDING PLAN AFTER TRUMP CALLS ON REPUBLICANS TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN “The House and Senate have put together, under the circumstances, a very good funding Bill (“CR”)! All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week,” the president said in a Saturday Truth Social post. “Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the Country’s ‘financial house’ in order. Democrats will do anything they can to shut down our Government, and we can’t let that happen. We have to remain UNITED — NO DISSENT — Fight for another day when the timing is right. VERY IMPORTANT. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” House Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., is supporting the funding measure. REP. RALPH NORMAN BACKS TRUMP’S PLAN TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, PUSHES FOR CONGRESSIONAL TERM LIMITS “Congress must keep the government open so that DOGE can continue to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in our government. This continuing resolution is necessary to advance President Trump’s agenda. I fully support it,” Harris declared in a tweet. The Trump administration’s DOGE effort aims to uncover government waste, fraud, and abuse that can be slashed from the federal government. JOHN FETTERMAN TAKES AIM AT HIS OWN PARTY IN TWEET ABOUT ‘#THERESISTANCE’: ‘HOLD OUR BEER’ CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “Why would I vote to continue the waste fraud and abuse DOGE has found? We were told the CR in December would get us to March when we would fight. Here we are in March, punting again! WTFO,” Massie declared in a tweet. A House Appropriations Committee press release about the measure indicates that it “Ensures a costly government shutdown does not befall the American people,” “Enhances defense investments and includes the largest pay raise for junior enlisted troops in over 40 years” and “Increases funding for air traffic control priorities over FY24.” “The bill fully funds the program that provides important nutrition assistance to mothers, infants, and children. It includes a more than $500M increase for WIC, as requested by the Trump Administration, for a total of $7.6B,” the press release indicates.