“Stand” will be published Nov. 11, St. Martin’s Press announced Wednesday. In April, the New Jersey Democrat made headlines by delivering the country’s longest continuous Senate floor speech — just over 25 hours. The 56-year-old Booker spoke in opposition to numerous Trump administration policies, whether the desire to make Canada part of the United States or cuts to Social Security offices.
“This book is about the virtues vital to our success as a nation and lessons we can draw from generations of Americans who fought for them,” Booker said in a statement.
Booker’s speech broke a record set by Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a segregationist and southern Democrat who opposed the advance of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which eventually passed.
Booker was assisted by fellow Democrats who gave him a break from speaking by asking him questions on the Senate floor.
President Donald Trump’s media company said Tuesday that institutional investors will buy $2.5 billion in the company’s stock with the proceeds going to build up a bitcoin reserve.
About 50 institutional investors will put up $1.5 billion in the private placement for common shares in the company and another $1 billion for convertible senior notes, according to Trump Media and Technology Group, the operator of Truth Social and other companies.
Trump Media said it intends to use the proceeds for the creation of a “bitcoin treasury.”
“This investment will help defend our Company against harassment and discrimination by financial institutions, which plague many Americans and U.S. firms,” said Trump Media CEO and Chairman Devin Nunes in prepared remarks.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., based in Sarasota, Fla., tumbled 9%
Other companies have adopted similar strategies through cryptocurrency. Cloud and mobile software developer MicroStrategy Inc. has built up a treasury reserve containing billions worth of bitcoin through stock sales and debt financing.
Trump, who referred to cryptocurrencies in his first term as “not money,” citing volatility and a value “based on thin air,” has shifted his views on the technology.
During an event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida during his presidential campaign in May 2024, Trump received assurances that crypto industry backers would spend lavishly to get him reelected.
Last week, Trump rewarded 220 of the top investors in one of his other cryptocurrency projects — the $Trump meme coin —with a swanky dinner luxury golf club in Northern Virginia, spurring accusations that the president was mixing his duties in the White House with personal profit.
WASHINGTON — National Public Radio and three local stations filed a lawsuit Tuesday against President Donald Trump, arguing that an executive order aimed at cutting federal funding for the organization is illegal.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington by NPR, Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio and KUTE, Inc. argues that Trump’s executive order to slash public subsidies to PBS and NPR violates the First Amendment.
Trump issued the executive order earlier this month that instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and requires that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. Trump issued the order after alleging there is “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting.
“The Order’s objectives could not be clearer: the Order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the President dislikes and chill the free exercise of First Amendment rights by NPR and individual public radio stations across the country,” the lawsuit alleges.
“The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, and it interferes with NPR’s and the Local Member Stations’ freedom of expressive association and editorial discretion,” it said.
President Trump said Monday he is pardoning Scott Jenkins, a former Virginia sheriff who was convicted of making several businessmen sworn law enforcement officers in exchange for cash bribes.
Former Culpeper County Sheriff Jenkins, 53, was found guilty on fraud and bribery charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison in March. But on Monday, Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social that Jenkins and his family “have been dragged through HELL by a Corrupt and Weaponized Biden DOJ.”
“This Sheriff is a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice, and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail. He is a wonderful person, who was persecuted by the Radical Left “monsters,” and “left for dead,” Mr. Trump said in the post. “He will NOT be going to jail tomorrow, but instead will have a wonderful and productive life.”
Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins on Jan. 16, 2020.
EVA HAMBACH/AFP via Getty Images
CBS News has reached out to Jenkins’ attorneys for comment.
Jenkins was indicted in 2023 on 16 counts. In December, a jury found Jenkins guilty of one count of conspiracy, four counts of honest services fraud and seven counts of bribery. Jenkins appealed his conviction in April.
Federal prosecutors sayJenkins took $75,000 worth of bribes. He allegedly accepted cash and campaign contributions from eight people — including two undercover FBI agents — and in return, gave them badges and made them auxiliary deputy sheriffs, despite not having any training or vetting. He also allegedly pushed officials to restore one bribe-payer’s right to possess a gun as a convicted felon.
Jenkins took the stand in his own defense and said there was no connection between the payments he received and the badges he handed out, according to news reports. Testifying against Jenkins were the undercover FBI agents who were sworn in as deputies in 2022 and immediately thereafter gave Jenkins envelopes with $5,000 and $10,000 cash, respectively.
Trump said Jenkins tried to offer evidence in his defense, but U.S. District Judge Robert Ballou, a Biden appointee, “refused to allow it, shut him down, and then went on a tirade.”
Acting United States Attorney Zachary T. Lee said at the time that Jenkins violated his oath of office “and this case proves that when those officials use their authority for unjust personal enrichment, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable.”
On Mr. Trump’s first day in office, he granted pardons and commutations to more than 1,000 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Mr. Trump has also granted clemency to several other public officials. He pardoned Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat, and Michelle Fiore, a Las Vegas politician and loyal Trump backer convicted of paying for plastic surgery and other personal expenses with money intended to build a statue for a slain police officer.
Trump pauses tariffs on European Union goods after negotiations – CBS News
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Negotiators from the U.S. and the European Union met on Monday, saying they are committed to a deal. This comes after the EU president said she and President Trump had a “good call” before Mr. Trump announced a delay on the 50% tariffs on European Union goods. Willie James Inman reports.
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This week on “Face the Nation,” two of the veterans in Congress, Reps. Pat Ryan and Mike Waltz, join to discuss veteran suicide ahead of Memorial Day. Plus, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg discusses the latest on Memorial Day travel and the current issue of turbulence.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday indicated there was progress with Iran on its nuclear program and hinted that an announcement could come in the “next two days.”
He was notably more upbeat than the Omani mediator of the talks between the United States and Iran, who said Friday that the two nations made “some but not conclusive” progress in the fifth round of negotiations in Rome.
“We’ve had some very, very good talks with Iran,” Trump told reporters in northern New Jersey after leaving his golf club, where he spent most of the weekend. “And I don’t know if I’ll be telling you anything good or bad over the next two days, but I have a feeling I might be telling you something good.”
He emphasized that “we’ve had some real progress, serious progress” in talks that took place on Saturday and Sunday.
“Let’s see what happens, but I think we could have some good news on the Iran front,” Trump said.
Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Michael Anton, the State Department’s policy planning director, represented the U.S. at the talks at the Omani Embassy in Rome.
The two countries are discussing how to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting some economic sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on the Islamic Republic.
When the planes hit the twin towers on September 11, 2001, Tyler Vargas-Andrews was just three years old.
He couldn’t have known it then, but the events of that day and the subsequent decades-long war which followed would shape his life in profound and lasting ways — far more than the average American or even most veterans.
Vargas-Andrews, 27, was a 23-year-old U.S. Marine sergeant when he became one of the last U.S. casualties of the nearly 20 year war in Afghanistan. And on Thursday, he was honored by Massachusetts Fallen Heroes with their 2025 Daniel H. Petithory Award, named for the first soldier from the Bay State to die during the war.
The first and the last
Sgt. 1st Class Petithory was killed by friendly fire in early December of 2001, and was among the very first casualties of Operation Enduring Freedom. The bomb that took Petithory and two other U.S. service members also injured the future President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.
At the time, Vargas Andrews was a toddler and too young to know his country was at war.
Even though he didn’t come from a military family, Vargas-Andrews said that he knew he wanted to serve his country from a young age. He went to Vanden High School, a Fairfield, California, a district also attended by the children of service members stationed at nearby Travis Air Force Base, until the 10th grade.
It was there, he told the Herald, that he saw what service meant, with “one if not both” of his friends’ parents deployed repeatedly as the Global War on Terror entered a second decade.
With the conflict building through his entire childhood, the desire to serve eventually became impossible to ignore.
“I chose a path where I could do the most good for others — I felt called to serve — and I’m grateful to say I did it,” he said.
He enlisted in the Marine Corps in August of 2017 and eventually was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, known as “the Professionals.” He was a rifleman, like all Marines, but also a sniper.
According to Congressional records describing his service, he was a “professionally instructed gunmen and radio operator for his sniper team.” According to Vargas-Andrews, he spent his enlistment doing what all Marines try to do in “chasing the legacy of those who came before us.”
It was “almost four years to the day” after his enlistment, he told the Herald, when he was assigned the task of helping to evacuate U.S. personnel, assets, and allies from Afghanistan at Hamid Karzai International Airport, named for the now-former President injured nearly 20 years earlier on the day Petithory died.
Records show he and his team “aided in the evacuation and processing of over 200 United States Nationals at Abbey Gate in Kabul, Afghanistan and were the primary Ground Reconnaissance and Observation asset throughout Evacuation Operations at Abbey Gate.”
As the evacuation was underway on August 26, 2021, a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the Abbey Gate. Vargas-Andrews was among the dozens of U.S. troops caught in the blast, which claimed the lives of 13 service members and at least 169 Afghan civilians.
Vargas-Andrews was severely injured. He lost his right arm and left leg, and needed 49 surgeries. He spent months in recovery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
He wasn’t done there, though.
Vargas-Andrews has spent the time since he was medically retired from military service attempting to help his fellow veterans learn to live with their own wounds, and heal where they can. He’s testified before Congress, become a fitness advocate, and has run in marathons across the country.
Coming full circle
Choosing Vargas-Andrews to receive the Daniel H. Petithory Award this year, according to Dan Magoon, the executive director at Massachusetts Fallen Heroes, was a “no-brainer.”
“Tyler is an amazing, resilient warrior,” Magoon told the Herald. Vargas-Andrews, Magoon said, has dedicated his life post-service to his “brother and sister veterans and gold-star families.”
“And he’s used his experience and the tragedy that he lived through to share that message of resiliency. He has a motto: ‘you are never a victim.’ The way he carries himself and does more for others makes him — not only an exceptional Marine — but an unbelievable human being,” he said.
Vargas-Andrews, in speaking with the Herald ahead of Thursday’s award presentation, was remarkably positive considering his tragic circumstances. It’s not always easy, he explained when asked how he manages to keep his spirits up, but continuing to serve helps a great deal.
“I owe it to my friends who died to try to be happy and live a good life,” he said. “The Marine Corps has shaped me into the man that I am today and it’s given me the people I love most in my life.”
Former US Marine Corps Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews speaks at the Mass. Fallen Heroes Memorial Rededication on Saturday. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald)Former Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, is greeted by 99-year-old Mildred Cox, a WWII stenographer, during the The 12TH Wounded Vet Run, in 2023. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald, File)
President Trump said Sunday that the U.S. will delay implementation of a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union from June 1 until July 9 to buy time for negotiations with the bloc.
That agreement came after a call Sunday with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, who had told Mr. Trump that she “wants to get down to serious negotiations,” according to the president’s retelling.
“I told anybody that, they have to do that,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday in Morristown, New Jersey, as he prepared to return to Washington. Von der Leyen, Mr. Trump said, vowed to “rapidly get together and see if we can work something out.”
In a social media post Friday, Mr. Trump had threatened to impose the 50% tariff on EU goods, complaining that the 27-member bloc had been “very difficult to deal with” on trade and that negotiations were “going nowhere.” Those tariffs would have kicked in starting June 1.
The announcement, along with threatened tariffs on Apple products, sent the stock market tumbling Friday.
“Just when markets believed the worst of the tariff battle had been overcome, President Trump threatened a 50% tariff against the EU this week, starting on 1 June, and a possible 25% tariff on iPhones produced abroad. This could all be a negotiating tactic, but the uncertainty caused by this back-and-forth is not good for global growth or markets,” Klaus Baader, an analyst with SG Securities, told investors in a report.
But the call with von der Leyen appeared to smooth over tensions, at least for now.
“I agreed to the extension — July 9, 2025 — It was my privilege to do so,” Mr. Trump said on Truth Social shortly after he spoke with reporters on Sunday evening.
For her part, von der Leyen said the EU and the U.S. “share the world’s most consequential and close trade relationship.”
“Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively,” she said. “To reach a good deal, we would need the time until July 9.”
This week on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen joins, days after returning from El Salvador, where he visited with wrongly deported Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Plus, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin joins.
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