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In Hawaii, Oregon and Wisconsin, officials worked quickly after a judge ordered full benefit payments Thursday to instruct their EBT providers to process the full payments.

“We moved with haste once we verified everything,” Joseph Campos II, deputy director of Hawaii’s Department of Human Services, told The Associated Press.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, said state employees “worked through the night” to issue full November benefits “to make sure every Oregon family relying on SNAP could buy groceries” over the weekend.

Officials in California, Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington also confirmed that some SNAP recipients were issued their full November payments on Friday.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, said more than 250,00 households that missed their regular monthly SNAP payment during the first week of November received their full amount on Friday. The remaining beneficiaries would receive their November funds on their regularly scheduled dates later this month — if distribution does not remain blocked by legal challenges.

More in the article.

After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.

His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.

But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.

Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.

Sean Dunn faced single misdemeanor offense after federal grand jurors refused to indict him on the felony charge sought by prosecutors.

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick voiced his concerns at a hearing about how prosecutors were handling evidence against the former FBI director.

A federal judge blasted Justice Department prosecutors on Wednesday several times for what he described as an “indict first, investigate later” attitude in the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey.

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick voiced his concerns at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria about how prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia were handling evidence against Comey, who was indicted in September on one count of making a false statement and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding stemming from his testimony on Sept. 30, 2020, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

UPS and FedEx said they are grounding their fleets of McDonnell Douglas MD-11 planes “out of an abundance of caution” following a deadly crash at the UPS global aviation hub in Kentucky.

The crash Tuesday at UPS Worldport in Louisville killed 14 people, including the three pilots on the MD-11 that was headed for Honolulu.

MD-11 aircrafts make up about 9% of of the UPS airline fleet and 4% of the FedEx fleet, the companies said.

“We made this decision proactively at the recommendation of the aircraft manufacturer,” a UPS statement said late Friday. “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our employees and the communities we serve.”

FedEx said in an email that it will be grounding the aircrafts while it conducts “a thorough safety review based on the recommendation of the manufacturer.”

Boeing, which merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press asking the reasoning behind the recommendation.

More in the article.

Key figures accused of harassment, bullying and attacks as US employees work without pay to keep services running

As the US federal shutdown enters its second month, government workers are accusing the Trump administration of being “out of control” and bullying people who are “simply trying to do their best”.

The shutdown surpassed 35 days this week, beating the previous record set under Donald Trump’s first presidential term. About 700,000 federal employees are furloughed without pay, and about 700,000 additional federal workers have been working without pay through the shutdown.

Affected workers say the shutdown has been a continuation of attacks they have experienced under the Trump administration, from mass firings – many of which have been overturned or blocked in federal courts – to drastic budget cuts, pushes to take early retirements or resignation buyouts, and threats of withholding back pay for workers furloughed during the shutdown.

Immigrants say they were treated ‘worse than animals’ inside a facility that’s become a focal point for protests

A federal judge has ordered Homeland Security officials to improve conditions inside a Chicago-area immigrant detention facility where detainees say they are treated “worse than animals” and packed into unsanitary holding cells “like a pile of fish.”

Wednesday’s temporary restraining order from District Judge Robert W. Gettleman follows several hours of courtroom testimony from five people who have been crammed inside the Broadview Processing Center, a focal point for protests against Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

“It has really become a prison,” Gettleman said during a hearing Tuesday.

Meta internally projected late last year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running advertising for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show.

A cache of previously unreported documents reviewed by Reuters also shows that the social-media giant for at least three years failed to identify and stop an avalanche of ads that exposed Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp’s billions of users to fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned medical products.

On average, one December 2024 document notes, the company shows its platforms’ users an estimated 15 billion “higher risk” scam advertisements – those that show clear signs of being fraudulent – every day. Meta earns about $7 billion in annualized revenue from this category of scam ads each year, another late 2024 document states.

‘Devastated’ family demands answers after two-year-old driven by armed agents from LA Home Depot parking lot

Masked, heavily armed federal immigration agents arrested a US citizen in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Home Depot store, then entered his car and drove away with his toddler, who is also a US citizen, in the backseat.

The child’s grandmother said the incident had left the whole family shaken. “I am devastated by what has happened to my son and demand an explanation,” she said at a press conference on Wednesday.

The 32-year-old father was picked up during a major enforcement operation at the Home Depot in LA’s Cypress Park neighborhood on Tuesday morning. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), five undocumented immigrants were also arrested.

“Where does that leave citizens? It may be a penny, but that adds up,” said Moss, 29. She paid $8.23 for her orange chicken and cream cheese ragoons with a debit card.

For sure, it does... but this person already had 1 solution already in her wallet! Also, at most you'll pay $0.02 extra for something. This equates to an extra $7.30 if you purchase this thing every day for a year! This also ignores that some things will be as much as $0.03 cheaper.

America last phased out a coin roughly 170 years ago, when it got rid of the half-cent. “We don’t have a lot of experience with this,” said Steve Kenneally, the association’s senior vice president of payments.

... But Canada does. They did this in 2013. I was actually there when they did it, and it appeared to go pretty smoothly. Almost like they had a plan rather than having to quickly react to the whims of a broken clock one of the times it was actually right.

There's also a lot about companies training cashiers on "how to round," which reminds me of the George Carlin quote about the average person's intelligence. Also, plenty about commercial groups "begging" the federal government to help them with the transition and being met with silence. This is probably the most important part of the article.

The US is finally doing something it should have done decades ago, and it's choosing to do it in the most chaotic way possible. Rather than looking at what other countries have done and forming a plan, they're acting like the edict itself, along with no longer minting pennies or accepting deposited ones, is all the government should have to do. Is this the "small government" utopia conservatives dream about!? One that tells states and businesses, "We've done the minimum. You figure out the rest amongst yourselves." Seems like it's going great so far!

Overall, the article should've been more about how terribly this is being enacted, and less about people not being able to do basic math. Especially disappointing since the original source is WSJ (and I know who owns it - it's still a mostly business-oriented publication).

Edit: spelling

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/101420

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