Thousands of anti-government protesters violently faced off against riot police outside government buildings in Albania’s capital, Tirana, earlier this week, as people called for the resignation of the government following a massive corruption scandal.

The main Albanian opposition party called for people to take to the streets and demand the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku after she was indicted by a special prosecutor who alleged she had been improperly influenced in her decision to favor one company in a tender for the construction of a 3.7-mile tunnel in southern Albania.

Albania’s Special Court Against Corruption and Organized Crime suspended Balluku from the government in November, but Prime Minister Edi Rama took the issue to the country’s Constitutional Court, which reinstated Balluku in December.

Balluku denied the allegations, calling the accusations against her amounted to ‘mudslinging, insinuations, half-truths and lies.’ Rama has refused to dismiss her.

The corruption allegations touched off widespread outrage, sparking protests in recent months. 

‘The wave of popular protests in Albania reflects a growing societal backlash against what critics describe as the increasingly autocratic rule of Prime Minister Edi Rama,’ Agim Nesho, former Albanian ambassador to the U.S. and the United Nations, told Fox News Digital.

‘Over more than a decade in power, Rama is accused of centralizing authority and personalizing state institutions, while his government has faced persistent allegations of cooperation with organized crime and the misuse of public funds and public assets for the benefit of politically connected clients,’ Nesho claimed.

The shady circumstances surrounding Rama’s most important ally and the lack of accountability reinforces the sentiment that is pervasive in Albanian society that their government is rife with corruption. With both the incumbent government and opposition figures accused of corruption, public confidence in institutions and the justice system has steadily been eroded.

Albania has a long legacy of government corruption and ranks 91st out of 182 countries in Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index.

The protests on Tuesday turned violent when supporters of Berisha’s opposition Democratic Party threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at government offices in Tirana. Security forces responded with water cannons and tear gas.

Berisha claims the protests have been peaceful, and people are only voicing their opposition to Rama’s increasing autocratic rule and his attacks of the justice system.

At least 16 protesters were treated for injuries and 13 protesters were arrested, according to The Associated Press. 

Observers of the region believe Berisha, who was prime minister from 2005 to 2013 and faced his own corruption charges, is angling to topple the socialist prime minister and main political rival, Rama, and return to power.

The turmoil in Albania comes as the country has long sought European Union membership, which began in 2014 when it became an official candidate for accession. While the 2025 annual European Commission report stated that Albania made significant strides in judicial reforms and combating organized crime, the latest allegations against Rami’s government will complicate its path to EU membership.

The United States helped implement Albania’s judicial reform process, including the creation of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Structure (SPAK). The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) invested millions to foster democratic progress in Albania and assisted in combating Albania’s struggles with corruption and strengthening its weak institutions.

Nesho warned the U.S. and European Union need to get serious with policy in the Western Balkans and help move Albania closer to European integration.

‘If Washington and Brussels continue to look the other way — failing to enforce the rule of law, restore real checks and balances, and cut the regime’s ties to organized crime and drug trafficking — Albania risks drifting into the orbit of Eastern-style autocracy,’ Nesho said.

A Senate Republican is demanding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigate whether illegal Chinese ingredients are making their way into weight loss drugs in the United States.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., called on FDA Commissioner Martin Makary to probe how far unregulated and illegal Chinese active pharmaceutical ingredients have penetrated the U.S. supply chain — and whether they have ended up in popular weight loss drugs.

‘China’s access to America’s pharmaceutical supply chain presents national security risks as well as significant health risks to American patients,’ Cotton wrote in a letter to Makary first obtained by Fox News Digital.

Cotton’s concern follows recent reports from the FDA and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that between September 2023 and January 2025, authorities intercepted 195 illegal shipments of active pharmaceutical ingredients.

He noted that the ingredients were ‘likely used in compounded weight loss medications’ that entered the U.S. market. Of those shipments, roughly 60 originated from China and Hong Kong.

‘It is estimated that as of January 2026, up to 1.5 million American patients could be using unregulated compounded weight loss medications that may contain potentially dangerous ingredients from Chinese manufacturers,’ Cotton wrote.

The ingredients are typically used in compounded versions of GLP-1 weight loss drugs that are marketed as alternatives to FDA-approved medications such as Ozempic and Wegovy.

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it would refer telehealth company Hims & Hers to the Justice Department for ‘potential violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act’ over its planned sale of a compounded, non-FDA-approved weight loss drug.

Makary similarly said the FDA would ‘take decisive steps to restrict GLP-1 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) intended for use in non-FDA-approved compounded drugs that are being mass-marketed by companies — including Hims & Hers and other compounding pharmacies — as alternatives to FDA-approved drugs.’

The company announced last week that it would remove its weight loss pill, billed as a cheaper alternative to Wegovy, from the market following mounting pressure from federal agencies.

Cotton acknowledged that move and called for similar investigations going forward.

‘I encourage further investigations into other entities that expose American patients to dangerous, unregulated Chinese APIs,’ Cotton wrote.

Since President Trump resumed office, leftists have run to the courts in a desperate attempt to stop — or, at the very least, stall — his agenda. To defeat this lawfare, President Trump needs the Senate’s help to put constitutionalists on the bench. Democrat senators’ obstruction is unsurprising; not even one has voted for one of President Trump’s appellate court nominees. Many Republican senators, however, are lagging in streamlining nominations. The most serious breakdown is in filling district court vacancies in deep-red states, especially Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. With the midterms rapidly approaching, this glacial pace must accelerate in short order.

District courts are the engines of the federal judiciary, and vacancies there create immediate and tangible harm. These courts handle the bulk of federal litigation, from immigration to criminal prosecutions to constitutional challenges. Yet confirming district judges often proves harder than confirming Supreme Court justices. The problem lies in the blue-slip process. Home-state senators have a de facto veto on district court nominees, U.S. attorney nominees and U.S. marshal nominees.

For over a century, U.S. senators have had the power to hand-select the U.S. attorneys who could prosecute them, U.S. district judges who could oversee their trials, and U.S. marshals who could escort them to prison. Senators will never give up this veto power. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a lame-duck Republican who sits on the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, made it crystal clear that he will oppose any nominee who lacks support from both home-state senators. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley can do nothing about blue-slip obstruction when even one committee Republican can team up with Democrats to block any nominee.

There are roughly 15 district court vacancies in states with at least one Democrat senator. Because the blue slip is not going anywhere, it is unlikely that President Trump can fill many of these vacancies. Democrats are more obstructionist than ever. They caused the longest government shutdown in our history just a few months ago.

The far more troubling problem is the sheer number of vacancies in states represented by two Republican senators. Staggeringly, there are nearly two dozen district court vacancies in red states (i.e., states with two Republican senators). The most dire vacancy crises lie in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. There are seven vacancies throughout Texas’ several judicial districts, for example. Texas deals with a massive amount of immigration litigation because it is a border state. There is no excuse for a deep-red state like Texas, which President Trump won by 14%, to have seven vacancies.

Texas sadly is not alone when it comes to an unacceptably slow pace in filling vacancies. Other deep-red states combined have over a dozen: one each in South Carolina, Louisiana, Alaska and Alabama; two each in Ohio, Oklahoma and Florida; and three in Kansas. President Trump won each of these states by double digits and most by over 20%. These states deserve judges who are strong constitutionalists in line with President Trump’s vision of the law.

If Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reassumes the position of majority leader next year, he will grind the Trump judicial-confirmations train to a screeching halt. Grassley is a workhorse, so it is certain that he will expeditiously streamline President Trump’s nominees through the process this year. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has demonstrated remarkable efficiency in getting nominees swiftly confirmed. No judicial nominees remain on the Senate Executive Calendar. Only four remain in the Judiciary Committee, and they just had their confirmation hearing last week, meaning they will be on the floor and ready for a vote by the end of the month. Leader Thune and Grassley cannot process nominations if there are no nominees.

Republican home-state senators need to focus on this crucial task and understand the urgency of the moment. Since the Senate sits only 3.5 days a week in most weeks, floor time is limited. Should a Supreme Court vacancy arise, Judiciary Committee time and resources must be invested overwhelmingly in confirming President Trump’s nominee. Delay is a recipe for disastrous defeat, and it must end instantly.

Republican senators must get moving in filling judicial vacancies.

A new report from Alliance for Consumers (AFC) argues that progressive, often climate-change-related, activism and aligned trial lawyers are increasingly using lawsuits not to win big dollars but big changes.

Since the waning years of the Obama administration, AFC said that courtrooms have become the ‘battleground’ for the political left’s campaign to ‘reshape American society’ through ‘strategic litigation.’ 

AFC analyzed employment discrimination cases, environmental suits and corporate governance litigation and found that the outcomes, or sought-after outcomes, demonstrated a pattern of courtroom strategy meant to deliver policy changes that the left has been unable to achieve through state or federal legislation — particularly regarding DEI and climate.

‘If you really want to understand a substantial portion of why corporate America went really woke, there’s a story that can be told,’ O.H. Skinner, AFC’s executive director, told Fox News Digital.

Skinner said that corporate America believed President Barack Obama would be followed by ‘President Hillary Clinton’ — demonstrating continuity in many of these policy fields — leading to people leaving civil service jobs to join corporate HR and legal departments and bring their policy goals with them.

He alleged that officials in Washington signaled companies could face scrutiny if they did not align with emerging DEI priorities.

‘That’s describing a world where through government lawsuits, but also through private lawsuits, a lot of pressure was being brought on corporate America,’ said Skinner, whose previous work included time with the Arizona attorney general’s office under Mark Brnovich, who led the state’s largest consumer-protection lawsuit against Google over location tracking.

Skinner compared the strategy to ‘plaintiff-shopping’ in class-action litigation, where a firm may be paid millions in settlement while it ‘negotiates a coupon for you’ for the applicant-plaintiffs.

One of the firms cited in the study — which Skinner noted as alleged proof of its political persuasions — had filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on behalf of Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., citing the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 after Jan. 6.

AFC’s report cited a 2019 shareholder-derivative suit brought by Cohen-Milstein against Alphabet — Google’s parent — on behalf of New York union pensioners, alleging it breached fiduciary duties and covered up a data breach and sexual harassment allegations.

The statement from Cohen-Milstein on the suit alleged Alphabet ‘fostered’ a misogynistic ‘‘brogrammer’ culture,’ and later celebrated the settlement ‘fundamentally altering Alphabet’s workforce policies,’ including a $310 million ‘financial commitment to DEI initiatives’ and its position toward ‘workplace equity.’

AFC found the lawsuit ‘functioned as a tool for advocacy groups to push a comprehensive expansion of the DEI agenda at one of the biggest companies with a massive budgetary commitment, all through litigation rather than legislative action or shareholder demand.’

Cohen-Milstein did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Skinner’s team also cited a case in which the Obama Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) allegedly did an end run around legislators and established new DEI practices at another major company through aggressive litigation.

Bass Pro/Outdoor World agreed to pay $10.5 million and provide ‘other significant relief’ to settle a hiring discrimination suit brought by Obama’s EEOC, according to the agency.

The administration claimed Bass Pro Shops discriminated against minority applicants, but instead of a strictly cash settlement, it reached agreements to mandate EEO training, affirmative diversity outreach and the appointment of a DEI director, according to AFC’s research.

In an ongoing climate-related suit — in which Honolulu is suing Sunoco via the Sher-Edling firm — the Hawaiian capital reportedly alleged public nuisance claims and sought to hold oil companies responsible for climate damages.

AFC’s report found the suit seeks not only monetary damages for ‘climate-related infrastructure costs,’ but also disgorgement of profits, climate-mitigation actions and other corporate reforms.

‘These cases attempt to use courts to impose climate policy, effectively putting judges in charge of energy and climate regulation rather than elected legislatures and administrative agencies with technical expertise,’ the report said. Fox News Digital reached out to Sher-Edling.

In another case, red-state government employees were granted access to transgender health care after a staff accountant surnamed Rich and other plaintiffs sued over a health plan that denied coverage of transgender care.

A $365,000 settlement was lodged and split among the defendants and an LGBTQ-rights group, while Georgia agreed to make sweeping policy changes to cover transgender care — something that would have typically gone through the legislature and likely failed with a Republican majority in charge.

The main litigant in that case was the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF) — which has now merged into Advocates for Trans Equality (ATE).

‘Strategic litigation by advocacy organizations successfully bypassed Georgia’s legislative process to impose highly contested healthcare policy through judicial decree, demonstrating how activist organizations achieve policy goals through courts rather than democratic processes,’ AFC found in its reporting analysis.

ATE did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Impact litigation has long been used by advocacy groups across the political spectrum to advance policy goals through the courts. Right-leaning groups have also been successful in forging settlement agreements that secure policy-related outcomes rather than strictly cash settlements.

In CRPA v. LASD, a district court ruled that members of a Second Amendment advocacy group may apply for non-resident concealed-carry permits in California.

The 2025 case saw a judge rule in favor of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, requiring Sacramento to accept permit applications from any out-of-state resident who is a member of a number of Second Amendment organizations.

Skinner told Fox News Digital that the tide, at least at the EEOC, has changed, citing recent remarks by new Trump-appointed Chairwoman Andrea Lucas, saying that her tack instead will be to probe corporate diversity programs and enforce against DEI.

‘That’s the crucial part about each of [the report’s] cases, it’s not, oh, some company allegedly discriminated against women or minorities — they might have, right. The problem with those cases and something that I think you would want to highlight is it’s not that somebody allegedly was mistreated and got money. It’s that the lawsuit was used to unlock all sorts of other bells and whistles that were not directly about anybody who was hurt, if they were hurt.’

In Lucas’ comments to Reuters in December, she said she would ‘shift [EEOC] to a conservative view of civil rights.’

AFC’s report concluded by summarizing that ‘lawsuits are increasingly used not to resolve disputes or compensate victims, but to impose policy changes that advocates have been unable to achieve through democratic processes.’

‘This transformation represents a fundamental challenge to democratic governance. When lawyers and activists can impose sweeping policy changes without having to go to the ballot box, or even after having been denied at the ballot box, the everyday consumers stop having a direct say in the products and choices that are before them on a daily basis.’