By Marshall Cohen, Fredreka Schouten, CNN

(CNN) — Former election clerk Tina Peters’ prison sentence has long been a rallying cry for President Donald Trump and other 2020 election deniers. Now, her lawyers are heading back to court to appeal her conviction as Colorado’s Democratic governor has signaled a new openness to letting her out of prison early.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis recently said he’s considering clemency for the 70-year-old Peters – who was convicted in a 2020 election-related data breach scheme – because she is “elderly” and got a “harsh” punishment. While Trump’s symbolic federal pardon of Peters last month has no effect on her state charges, Polis’ recent comments are the strongest indication that he might commute the remainder of her 9-year sentence.

“We’re looking at this across a number of people – people in their 70s and 80s in our system, how much of a threat to society are they?” Polis, who is in his final year in office, told CBS Colorado last week. “We balance that in a way that makes sure that they can spend their last few years at home.”

Colorado officials have faced an intense pressure campaign from the White House over Trump’s demands that they release Peters from prison, with Trump taking several actions against the state in his first year back in office. Both Democratic and Republican election clerks in Colorado have raised concerns about Polis’ comments, arguing that releasing Peters would undermine confidence in elections.

“Ms. Peters’ sentence was not harsh by any reasonable standard,” said Matt Crane, a former GOP clerk who now runs the Colorado County Clerks Association. “Granting clemency to an unrepentant convicted criminal who deliberately sought to undermine our democratic system would be deeply concerning and risks further eroding public trust in the institutions Americans rely on for free and fair elections.”

Peters was convicted in 2024. She’s serving her sentence at a women’s prison in Pueblo and is the only Trump ally currently behind bars for 2020-related crimes. She denies wrongdoing, and a hearing in her appeal is slated for Wednesday afternoon in Denver.

“The Governor takes the responsibility of clemency very seriously, and his team reviews all applications submitted,” Polis spokesperson Shelby Wieman told CNN in an email Tuesday evening. “He will review this inmate’s application just like he would any other.”

Peters is listed as having a parole hearing expected in September 2028, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections website. But with Colorado’s parole eligibility rules, and if Peters earns time off for good behavior, she could become eligible to move into a halfway house or a similar arrangement this November, according to Alondra Gonzalez, communications director for the corrections department.

One of Peters’ lawyers, Patrick McSweeney, told CNN on Tuesday that Peters was overjoyed by Trump’s symbolic federal pardon, which he believes will help overturn her guilty verdicts even though the president can’t erase state charges. He also said he wasn’t involved in Trump’s other moves against Colorado.

“They could be helpful, or they could antagonize Colorado officials, I just don’t want to weigh in on that,” McSweeney said. “We’re content that she has the better legal arguments, and she will prevail in the Colorado Court of Appeals.”

He said Polis’ public comments seemed positive for Peters, but time will tell.

“I don’t tend to get caught up with statements from governors and politicians until they happen, especially when you’re in litiga

Por Diego Mendoza, CNN

Funcionarios de Venezuela, incluida la presidenta encargada, Delcy Rodríguez, regresaron a X este martes por la noche en una aparente reversión de la decisión de Nicolás Maduro en 2024 de bloquear la plataforma en el país.

“Reanudaremos el contacto por este canal”, publicó Rodríguez en su cuenta oficial. “Venezuela sigue de pie, con fuerza y ​​conciencia histórica”.

En su perfil actualizado, Rodríguez se describe como “Presidenta encargada de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela” y agrega: “Junto al presidente Nicolás Maduro en el camino de Bolívar y Chávez”.

Maduro, el presidente derrocado que fue recientemente capturado por Estados Unidos, prohibió X en Venezuela en agosto de 2024 tras un enfrentamiento en línea con el propietario de X, Elon Musk. Maduro inicialmente indicó que la prohibición era temporal, pero los venezolanos no han podido acceder libremente al sitio desde entonces.

El ministro del Interior, Diosdado Cabello, una de las figuras más poderosas del Gobierno, también pareció regresar a X el martes, con una publicación que decía: “Pasando a darles un gran abrazo a los hermanos y hermanas de Venezuela y el mundo que han estado al tanto de la situación en nuestro país”.

Jorge Rodríguez, hermano de la presidenta encargada y presidente de la Asamblea Nacional, también publicó en X: “Sigamos por el camino de la prosperidad, el diálogo y el respeto. ¡Venceremos!”.

CNN se comunicó con la Comisión Nacional de Telecomunicaciones de Venezuela (Conatel) para obtener comentarios sobre el aparente fin del bloqueo a X.

La cuenta oficial de Maduro también apareció activa este martes, publicando una imagen de él y su esposa Cilia Flores, quien también fue capturada en el operativo estadounidense, con un texto en español que decía “Han pasado 11 días desde su secuestro” y “#LosQueremosDeVuelta”.

No quedó claro de inmediato quién controla la cuenta verificada de Maduro. CNN se ha puesto en contacto con el Ministerio de Comunicación e Información para informarse sobre el manejo del usuario.

La cuenta verificada de Maduro todavía se representa como “Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela 2025 – 2031 – Soldado de Bolívar – Hijo de Chávez”.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

The post Funcionarios venezolanos regresan a X en aparente fin a prohibición de la plataforma durante la era de Maduro appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Danya Gainor, CNN

(CNN) — Over the last several months, Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Paul have seen a dramatic escalation in federal immigration enforcement along their chilly streets, with agents arresting thousands – including some US citizens – in neighborhoods, shopping centers, schools and at protests.

The surge is the result of the Trump administration’s commitment to cracking down on immigration, concentrated in Democratic-led cities, and follows weeks of growing tensions between the federal government and local Midwestern officials who have long implored for an end to the operations.

Illinois and Minnesota, joined by their city counterparts, are now separately pursuing legal action against the administration, filing lawsuits Monday in federal courts over immigration enforcement they call unlawful and unconstitutional.

A status conference for Minnesota’s complaint is set for Wednesday morning before US District Judge Katherine M. Menendez. A hearing has not yet been scheduled in Illinois.

But the road ahead for both suits appears dim, with their likelihood for success small, one expert says.

Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor and CNN senior legal analyst, has closely followed the turmoil in Chicago and the Twin Cities. Here, he breaks down the lawsuits, their merits and what’s next in the courtrooms.

Some of the answers have been edited for length and clarity.

CNN: What are Illinois and Minnesota asking for from judges in their lawsuits?

Honig: Fundamentally, both of these states are asking federal judges to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement from enforcing immigration law in their states and cities. There are variations between them, but that’s the core ask. As a backup, both states ask the courts for some sort of ruling or declaration that some of the tactics ICE is using are unconstitutional.

CNN: What are the key differences between the lawsuits?

Honig: The main difference is that Illinois asks to block all ICE activity in the state, whereas Minnesota phrases its ask as seeking to stop this “surge” of officers. But pointing to the surge is legally irrelevant, because whether you’re talking about a group of ICE agents who are already there, or who were added after some point, the fundamental ask is still the same. You’re still asking a judge to block ICE from doing its job as it sees fit in your state.

CNN: What is the legal precedent for an ask like that?

Honig: None. There is no example, nor does either state cite an example in their papers, of a judge prohibiting a federal law enforcement agent from enforcing federal law in a given state. The reaction that we’ve heard from various Minnesota officials, including Attorney General Keith Ellison, when confronted with this lack of precedent and lack of case law, is essentially, “Well, this is really bad, though. Well, this is an invasion.”

By Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration’s sweeping legal effort to obtain Americans’ sensitive data from states’ voter rolls is now almost entirely reliant upon a Jim Crow-era civil rights law passed to protect Black voters from disenfranchisement – a notable shift in how the administration is pressing its demands.

The Justice Department says it wants to use the registration records to “help” states “clean” their rolls by comparing it to other data sets held by the government, according to public comments from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to head the department’s civil rights division.

Voter advocates and election experts warn of the potential for sloppy purges that risk disenfranchising eligible voters instead. They have also raised concerns that the data will be shared with other agencies to be used for other purposes.

The Justice Department has been working with the Department of Homeland Security on plans to review state voter registration files for evidence of non-citizens on the rolls, according to a source familiar with Trump administration discussions.

States have provided the Justice Department with some of the information it has sought. Most state election officials, though, including some Republicans, have resisted turning over particularly sensitive fields of data – such as voters’ birth dates, social security numbers and driver’s license numbers – citing privacy protections.

The Trump administration is now suing 23 mostly Democratic-led states, as well the District of Columbia, for voter information in their registration files that those states’ have refused to produce.

As the pushback to the requests mounted, the department reworked its legal arguments for why it’s entitled to obtain the records. The pivot to the Civil Rights Act is just one example of several notable changes in the DOJ’s approach. The law was not mentioned when the Justice Department first began insisting that elections officials turn over their registration files.

Nearly all of the career experts in the Department’s voting section left or were pushed out in the early months of the second Trump administration. The quest for voter data has been carried out while the DOJ voting section has only a barebones staff and led mostly by attorneys hired in Trump’s second term. Some of those attorneys previously worked for right-wing groups that sued state and local election officials over their refusal to share certain voter roll data.

“You start seeing things that make it very clear, in the evolution of their arguments, that they had not thought this out in the way that any other Department of Justice would,” David Becker, a former DOJ attorney who now heads the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said.

The federal laws addressing voter registration that the department relied upon when it initially requested states’ voter files are no longer the focus of the litigation. The more recent lawsuits zero in on instead a records inspection provision of the 1960 Civil Rights Act, passed by Congress as election officials in the South were refusing to register Black Americans.

The law requires election officials to retain records related to voter applications and registration, and says that such records must be made available for inspection if the attorney general demands in writing to see them.

Dhillon touted in a recent podcast interview with Scott Atlas the CRA’s broadly-worded language.

“The Attorney General doesn’t have to show her homework as to what she is going to do with it, and I am her designee. So I get to ask for that information and they have to give it,” she said.

Por Elise Hammond y Hanna Park, CNN

Se espera que este miércoles se realice una audiencia sobre la demanda presentada por el estado de Minnesota y las Ciudades Gemelas, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, impugnando la operación de control de inmigración de la administración Trump, que la querella califica como “una invasión federal”.

La audiencia sigue a la renuncia de al menos media docena de fiscales federales en Minnesota en medio de la presión de la administración Trump sobre cómo llevar a cabo una investigación sobre el tiroteo mortal de una mujer por parte de un agente de ICE la semana pasada, indicó una fuente.

La muerte de Renee Good, ciudadana estadounidense y madre de tres hijos, desencadenó días de protestas en Minneapolis mientras la administración Trump ordenó el despliegue de alrededor de 1.000 agentes adicionales de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza en la región.

Aquí están los aspectos clave que debes saber:

• Demanda: la audiencia judicial de este miércoles trata sobre la demanda de Minnesota contra el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS), que busca una orden judicial para detener las operaciones de control migratorio. La demanda alega que la Operación Metro Surge no es una acción legítima de las fuerzas del orden y que las Ciudades Gemelas están siendo atacadas debido a las políticas de santuario que limitan la cooperación con el Gobierno federal durante las labores de control inmigratorio. En respuesta a la demanda, la subsecretaria del DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, afirmó que la Constitución estaba del lado de la administración y que el aumento de agentes federales era necesario porque los políticos de Illinois y Minnesota no estaban protegiendo a sus ciudadanos.
• Fiscales renuncian: los fiscales de carrera de alto rango que renunciaron, según se informa, se opusieron a la presión de la Casa Blanca para desviar la investigación sobre el tiroteo de Good del uso de la fuerza por parte del agente y enfocarla en Good, su viuda y otras personas vinculadas a las protestas inmigratorias. Entre los que dimitieron se encuentra Joseph Thompson, quien frecuentemente manejaba investigaciones con implicaciones políticas, incluyendo una sobre fraude a los servicios sociales. Lea más sobre quiénes eran algunos de los otros fiscales aquí.
• No hay investigación de derechos civiles: el subsecretario de Justicia adjunto Todd Blanche declaró que el Departamento no cree que existan pruebas que respalden una investigación penal de derechos civiles sobre las acciones del agente de ICE que disparó a Good. La fiscal del condado de Hennepin, Read more