Politics

The officers asked for the justices to stay a ruling from the Washington Supreme Court that said their identities could be revealed. The officers had sued the Seattle Police Department four years ago in King County Superior Court, identifying themselves as “John Does 1-4,” challenging the release of their names and details of an internal investigation into their attendance at the violent “Stop the Steal” political protest rally in Washington, D.C.

On Wednesday, U.S. Justice Samuel Alito authored a statement denying their request for an emergency action to keep them anonymous, writing the officers “have not adequately explained why at this point they still face an imminent danger of irreparable harm.”

That denial, Alito noted, was not necessarily an endorsement of the state Supreme Court’s decision or its interpretation of the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed members of the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security Administration data.

The conservative-majority court, with its three liberal justices objecting, granted an emergency application filed by the Trump administration asking the justices to lift an injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland.

The unsigned order said that members of the DOGE team assigned to the Social Security Administration should have "access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work."

The lawsuit challenging DOGE’s actions was filed by progressive group Democracy Forward on behalf of two unions — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the American Federation of Teachers — as well as the Alliance for Retired Americans.

The country's main mental health agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, commonly known as SAMHSA, is in the process of being dissolved. It has lost more than a third of its staff of about 900 this year as part of recent reductions in the federal workforce. President Trump's budget bill cuts $1 billion from the agency's operating budget, and its mission is being folded into a new entity shaped by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In March, Kennedy and the Department of Health and Human Services announced that SAMHSA, and other divisions, would be combined into a new entity called the Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA.

"Why would we, when we are finally seeing some success, bury that success, put it in an AHA program?" Dean asked. "We have to now rehire people and figure out what their roles will be within AHA?"

Kennedy didn't answer her question, but said he would ensure people with addiction have access to overdose prevention and other medications.

The Trump administration could have sent eight migrants with deportation orders and the immigration agents who were escorting them to a facility in the U.S. after a federal judge recently barred officials from deporting them to war-torn South Sudan, where they could face persecution or torture.

Instead the administration sent them to U.S. Naval Base Camp Lemonnier in the East African country of Djibouti, where a court filing on Thursday said they face illness, the threat of rocket fire from nearby Yemen, temperatures that soar past 100°F daily, and rancid smoke from nearby burn pits where human waste and trash are incinerated.

The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.

The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.

Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.

The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.

The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.

DHS officials requested 20,000 National Guard troops three weeks ago, but this memo details what duties those troops will be asked to perform. The memo, dated May 9, from Andrew Whitaker, the executive secretary at DHS, says the department will need up to 3,500 Guard personnel for its requirement to "Attempt to Locate — Fugitives." Another 2,500 Guard soldiers would be needed for detention support.

The memo says up to 10,000 troops would be needed for transportation support, including "intra-and inter state transport of detainees/unaccompanied alien children." And another 1,000 troops would be used for such duties as document translation and interview assistance.

The Supreme Court has outlined a three-step test for discrimination claims. At the first step – the one at issue in Ames’s case – a plaintiff must produce enough evidence to support an inference that the employer intended to discriminate. This is generally, Jackson wrote, not a high bar: “A plaintiff may satisfy it simply by presenting evidence ‘that she applied for an available position for which she was qualified, but was rejected under circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination.’” But the court of appeals in this case, Jackson continued, incorrectly added an additional requirement, directing Ames to “establish ‘background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.’”

The 6th Circuit’s rule, Jackson wrote, is inconsistent with the text of the federal employment discrimination law, which bars discrimination against everyone – without distinguishing between members of a minority group and members of a majority group. “By establishing the same protections for every ‘individual’—without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group—Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.”

The Supreme Court’s cases, Jackson added, also make clear that the test for showing discrimination in a case like Ames’s “does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group.” “The ‘background circumstances’ rule flouts that basic principle,” she concluded.

Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ordered the Trump administration to provide the migrants with habeas corpus relief and gave officials a week to propose, in writing, how they will ensure the imprisoned men will be permitted to fight their expulsion and detention in court.

The plaintiffs "never had any opportunity to challenge the government's say-so," said Boasberg, noting that since the Venezuelan men were sent to El Salvador—with President Donald Trump and other officials claiming they were members of the gang Tren de Aragua— "significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in [prison] have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous accusations."

In a chilling sign of how far law enforcement surveillance has encroached on personal liberties, 404 Media recently revealed that a sheriff’s office in Texas searched data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to track down a woman suspected of self-managing an abortion. The officer searched 6,809 different camera networks maintained by surveillance tech company Flock Safety, including states where abortion access is protected by law, such as Washington and Illinois. The search record listed the reason plainly: “had an abortion, search for female.”

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that in 2015 and 2016, not long before his death, Epstein invested a substantial sum into a company that Thiel had co-founded. Valar Ventures, a venture capital firm that (like many of Thiel’s other companies) is named after a creature from J.R.R. Tolkein’s mythos, received $40 million from Epstein, according to the report.

The sum that Epstein invested is now reportedly worth close to $170 million, based on a confidential financial analysis from Epstein’s estate and a statement from a Valar spokesman viewed by the New York Times. Epstein’s estate is benefiting from the investment, the Times report states.

Note: Why is this in Politics? Because Thiel is some of the money behind most of the insane Republican policies.

The resignation, first reported by The Associated Press and confirmed by CBS News, comes just a week after health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unilaterally revoked and altered some of the CDC's recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines, restricting access to children and pregnant people. The resignation also comes three weeks before CDC's experts and advisors are scheduled to meet to publicly evaluate data and discuss the recommendations for this season—a long-established process that was disrupted by Kennedy's announcement.

The departing CDC official, Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a pediatric infectious disease expert, was a co-leader of a working group on COVID-19 vaccines who advised experts on the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). She informed her ACIP colleagues of her resignation in an email on Tuesday.

"My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role," Panagiotakopoulos wrote.

On Monday, the FDA publicly announced the agency-wide rollout of a large language model (LLM) called Elsa, which is intended to help FDA employees—"from scientific reviewers to investigators." The FDA said the generative AI is already being used to "accelerate clinical protocol reviews, shorten the time needed for scientific evaluations, and identify high-priority inspection targets."

However, according to a report from NBC News, Elsa could have used some more time in development. FDA staff tested Elsa on Monday with questions about FDA-approved products or other public information, only to find that it provided summaries that were either completely or partially wrong.

According to Stat, Elsa is based on Anthropic's Claude LLM and is being developed by consulting firm Deloitte. Since 2020, Deloitte has been paid $13.8 million to develop the original database of FDA documents that Elsa's training data is derived from. In April, the firm was awarded a $14.7 million contract to scale the tech across the agency. The FDA said that Elsa was built within a high-security GovCloud environment and offers a "secure platform for FDA employees to access internal documents while ensuring all information remains within the agency."

The US Supreme Court has blocked a lawsuit brought by Mexico that sought to hold American gunmakers accountable for playing a role in country's struggle with drug cartels.

The court voted 9-0 to reject the suit, in the process upholding a 2005 law that shields gun manufacturers from liability if weapons they produce are misused.

Mexico's government had argued that the "flood" of illegal guns across the border is a result of "deliberate" practices by US firms that they say appealed to cartel members with their products.

The decision overturns a lower court's ruling that allowed the suit, brought against manufacturer Smith & Wesson and wholesaler Interstate Arms, to proceed.

Mexico's original lawsuit was filed in 2021 against eight gun manufacturers, but the cases against six of them were dismissed by a district court.

Senior US immigration officials over the weekend instructed rank-and-file officers to “turn the creative knob up to 11” when it comes to enforcement, including by interviewing and potentially arresting people they called “collaterals”, according to internal agency emails viewed by the Guardian.

Officers were also urged to increase apprehensions and think up tactics to “push the envelope” one email said, with staff encouraged to come up with new ways of increasing arrests and suggesting them to superiors.

“If it involves handcuffs on wrists, it’s probably worth pursuing,” another message said. yellow tape surrounds a crime scene Family of suspect in Colorado fire attack taken into custody of US immigration Read more

The instructions not only mark a further harshening of attitude and language by the Trump administration in its efforts to fulfill election promises of “mass deportation” but also indicate another escalation in efforts, by being on the lookout for undocumented people whom officials may happen to encounter – here termed “collaterals” – while serving arrest warrants for others.

ICE operation calls for 5,000 federal agents and 21,000 National Guard troops to make deportation arrests

According to the filing, he admitted his intention was not to threaten Trump but prevent Mr Morales-Reyes from testifying at his trial, which is scheduled for July.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted a picture of Mr Morales-Reyes's face and the letter on social media, writing: "This illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump is behind bars."

When White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Noem's post and whether it would be corrected or removed, she referred questions to Homeland Security.

Noem's post about Mr Morales-Reyes remains on X.

Although Mr Morales-Reyes is no longer accused of making the threats, a DHS statement said Mr Morales-Reyes would remain in custody.

Those affected were all considered probationary employees, typically more recent hires although many had years of experience in their fields. The Commerce Department fired nearly 800 of them in late February and early March as part of the Trump administration's efforts to rapidly downsize the federal workforce. At the time, some employees were told their health benefits would end after a 31-day grace period.

But states sued over their sudden terminations, and in mid-March, a federal judge in Maryland found that their firings were likely illegal and ordered them reinstated. The Commerce Department brought them back and put them on paid administrative leave. Some were assured by their supervisors that their benefits would be restored. Others received new insurance cards in the mail.

Then just weeks later, an appeals court voided the lower court order. The very next day, April 10, the Commerce Department informed employees they were being fired once again, retroactive to their original termination dates.

Now, Lynch has asked Lutnick to explain why the Commerce Department did not honor its commitment to continue employees' health coverage for a 31-day period after their termination, challenging the department's decision to base insurance coverage on the employees' original termination dates after the appeals court allowed the firings to go forward. Cases challenging the firings continue to make their way through the courts.

In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.

Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.

The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)

The state had argued that the group didn’t engage in “distinctively religious activities” and didn’t assert “a religious objection to contributing to unemployment insurance.”

It’s refreshing in a way that we no longer have to spend much time thinking about the Senate parliamentarian, the shadowy figure whose rulings supposedly decide what the chamber can and cannot do. Republicans put that to bed last week by overruling the parliamentarian over whether a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution could nullify the Environmental Protection Agency’s waiver allowing California to set its own air pollution standards on vehicles.

California was given authority in a carve-out to the Clean Air Act in 1970 to set higher emissions standards than the national rules, with the EPA subsequently granting waivers more than 100 times. The state was prepared to use its latest waiver to effectively ban gas-powered auto sales by 2035. But the Senate voted 51-to-44 last week to cancel that waiver, as well as two other waivers to tighten emission rules on diesel trucks and allow zero-emission trucks on the road. The House had already voted for the resolution, so it can now be signed by President Trump.

Reference to the event:

Senate Republicans pushed forward with a simple-majority vote late Wednesday to undo an electric vehicle mandate set by California, which Democrats and the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said should be subject to the 60-vote filibuster rule.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-republicans-trigger-clash-filibuster-eyeing-vote-nix-electric-v-rcna208061

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a policy statement saying that guidance regarding emergency abortion care introduced in July 2022 by the Biden administration—just after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people in the U.S. don't have the constitutional right to abortion care—was being rescinded.

Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, emphasized that the CMS action "doesn't change hospitals' legal obligations, but it does add to the fear, confusion, and dangerous delays patients and providers have faced since the fall of Roe v. Wade."

"Stripping away federal guidance affirming what the law requires will put lives at risk," said Goss Graves. "At the same time, this administration claims it is considering ways to support 'population growth,' but it is actively dismantling the systems that protect pregnant people's health and lives. The hypocrisy is staggering. No matter what political games the administration wants to play, we will continue to stand with the patients, doctors, and hospitals fighting every day to do what is right."

“According to two sources who spoke with the attendees,” NBC News reported, Miller at one point was “threatening to fire the leaders of the field offices who post the bottom 10% of arrest figures monthly.” (NBC News has reached out to Miller for comment.)

In the same meeting, which was first reported by Axios, Miller set a new quota for ICE’s 25 field offices: 3,000 arrests per day. He confirmed that mandate in a Fox News appearance Wednesday, calling the figure a “minimum” and promising that Trump would “keep pushing to get that number up higher and higher each and every single day.” That new target is already double the quota from January, when each field office was charged with making 75 arrests per day, or roughly 1,200 to 1,500 in total.

Miller’s rant also indicated that ICE’s already expansive efforts weren’t enough to meet the Trump administration’s unofficial goal of 1 million deportees in its first year. NBC News reported that he “told attendees to look more broadly than immigrants who have committed crimes and to arrest noncriminal migrants anywhere they encounter them as well.” It’s exactly the kind of widened net that I predicted in January when the administration first began stripping migrants of their parole or temporary protected status, an ongoing effort that has left more than a million foreign-born people facing potential removal.

[Baraka] filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, that argues that his arrest was motivated by political malice, not justice. The lawsuit also names Ricky Patel, a supervising agent with Homeland Security Investigations who led the arrest of Mr. Baraka on May 9 outside a 1,000-bed detention center near Newark Liberty International Airport that has become a flashpoint in President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“I think what is happening in America is they are building a techno-authoritarian surveillance state.” Carole Cadwalladr, the award-winning journalist behind the Substack newsletter “How to Survive the Broligarchy,” talks to Jon Stewart about how the U.S. government ignored the huge wake-up call that was the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook data breach scandal – a story Cadwalladr broke and which resulted in no legislative protections for citizens’ private data. She warns about the unregulated dangers that data-mining and AI pose to individual privacy and freedom, and what people and institutions can do to push back on big tech’s authoritarian agenda

US President Donald Trump has signed an order doubling tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from 25% to 50%.

The move hikes import taxes on the metals, which are used in everything from cars to canned food, for the second time since March.

Trump has said the measures, which came into effect on Wednesday, are intended to secure the future of the American steel industry.

However, critics say the protections could wreak havoc on steel producers outside the US, spark retaliation from trade partners, and come at a punishing cost for American users of the metals.