Texas voting law leads to jump in ballot application rejections
Absentee ballot applications of thousands of Texans have been denied as a result of regulations under the state’s new election law, a jump in rejections that could force many older and disabled voters to either vote in person or not at all in primary elections early next month. With a Friday deadline, election officials in the state’s most populous counties have rejected 10% — or 12,000 — of the absentee ballot applications received as of Thursday, according to voting data obtained by The New York Times. Officials said the rejection rate reflected a significant increase from past years, and most often because a voter failed to satisfy the new identification requirements.
Material recovered from Trump by archives included classified information
The National Archives confirmed Friday that it had found classified information among material that former President Donald Trump had taken to his Florida home when he left office last year and that it had consulted with the Justice Department about the matter. The agency “has identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes,” according to a letter posted on the National Archives and Record Administration’s website. Last month, the archives retrieved 15 boxes that Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago. The boxes included material subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all documents and records pertaining to official business be turned over to the archives.
Unable to agree on Russia sanctions bill, Senate Settles for a statement
For weeks, as President Vladimir Putin of Russia signaled he was moving closer to invading Ukraine, members of Congress in both parties vowed that the Senate would pass a “mother of all sanctions” bill targeting Moscow that would prove the overwhelming, bipartisan American resolve to stand with Kyiv against Russian aggression. But Thursday, with the threat of invasion looming, senators instead passed a nonbinding resolution quickly and without debate before leaving Washington for a weeklong break. The backtracking was born of disagreements between the parties over when and how to impose sanctions on top Russian officials and banks, and resistance by the Biden administration to acting before Putin invaded.
Boy dies in Afghanistan after being trapped in well
A young boy died Friday after being trapped in a well for several days in southern Afghanistan, Taliban officials said, heralding a tragic end to a round-the-clock rescue effort led by officials at the highest levels of the country’s new government. The boy, Haidar Jan, who was thought to be 5, fell into a roughly 85-foot-deep well Tuesday in a village near Qalat, the capital of Zabul province. Anas Haqqani, the brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting interior minister, helped lead the rescue effort, which involved police, public works and the Taliban’s fledgling air force.
By wire sources