News In Brief

Sarah Willson, Editor-in-Chief

New Casino To Be Built In CT:

The building of a new tribal casino will soon be underway in East Windsor after a long battle for federal approval.

The satellite casino, according to the Hartford Courant, will be jointly built by the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes on non-reservation land.

Though originally delayed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior, official approval for the project was released this Monday.

The tribes described the project as being “shovel ready” and is said to open 18 to 24 months after construction begins.

The casino, the Hartford Courant said, is expected to generate at least 5,000 jobs.

Mueller Report Concludes No Collusion: 

The Justice Department reported over the weekend that there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia based on the findings from Special Counsel Robert Muller.

Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the evidence was “not sufficient” for a prosecution of Trump on obstruction of justice.

Barr, however, said in the four-page report that this “does not exonerate [Trump].”

According to a Justice Department official, the report has not called for any new indictments. Despite this, the Mueller inquiry has previously prompted a number of individuals related to Trump, including his former campaign chairman and former lawyer, to receive jail time.

The report, which was nearly two years in the making, was submitted to Attorney General William Barr late last week. The uproar began after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, saying he had done so because “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.”

From there, Rosenstein appointed Mueller to lead an investigation into “suspected Russian meddling” in the 2016 presidential election.

It is unclear as of now whether or not the entire report will be made public, though a number of Democrats, including 2020 presidential candidates like Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders, have called for the full release of the report.

ISIS Officially Defeated, US Claims:

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have announced the fall of the Islamic State’s five-year “caliphate,” according to BBC News.

Once holding 34,000 square miles of controlled land, the Islamic state was defeated with all but a few hundred square meters near the Syrian and Iraqi border, BBC said.

Despite what the U.S. is calling a victory, Trump said the American people need to “remain vigilant until [ISIS] is finally defeated.”

Currently, the Islamic State still remains active in countries spanning from Nigeria to the Philippines.