United States | News & Politics

Todd Blanche’s actions violated the federal conflicts of interest law and his ethics agreement, experts said.

Jim Beam is pausing production at a Kentucky distillery for at least a year starting in 2026. The decision comes as the whiskey industry faces tariffs and declining demand.

‘Another example of blatant jury nullification in a blue city,’ the White House deputy chief of staff says

Imagine having all the power but none of the brains. That’s the current administration, the one that behaves like a blind, enraged bull set loose in its own china shop. “We can always get more china,” says the administration, shortly before realizing it really can’t, thanks to tariff efforts that ensure China won’t be buying from the US any time soon, much less selling replacement china at the expected price point.

The Trump Administration recently unveiled proposed Endangered Species Act (the Act) rules that severely undermine the Act and make it easier for corporations such as oil, gas, and mining companies to push through environmentally destructive projects. Ultimately, these regulatory changes will have disastrous effects, pushing imperiled wildlife towards extinction.

[Advocacy Action included in Article]

https://archive.ph/O837f

CBS News pulled a “60 Minutes” report on El Salvador’s CECOT prison just hours before its scheduled Sunday broadcast, saying it would air at a future time.

“The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated,” the program posted on social media. “Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast,” the program posted on X and other social media platforms three hours before it was slated to air.

A CBS News spokesperson said in an email that the segment “needed additional reporting.”

The New York Times, quoting from a copy of a note written by Sharyn Alfonsi, a correspondent who reported the segment, said CBS pulled the segment for “political” reasons.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44094403

Nepal is just one of at least 150 countries to which Chinese companies are supplying surveillance technology, from cameras in Vietnam to censorship firewalls in Pakistan to citywide monitoring systems in Kenya. This technology is now a key part of China’s push for global influence, as it provides cash-strapped governments with cost-effective, if invasive, forms of policing — turning algorithms and data into a force multiplier for control.

The irony at the heart of this digital authoritarianism is that the surveillance tools China exports are based on technology developed in its greatest rival, the United States, despite warnings that Chinese firms would buy, copy or outright steal American designs, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.

For decades, Silicon Valley firms often yielded to Beijing’s demands: Give us your technology and we will give you access to our market. Although tensions fester between Washington and Beijing, the links between American tech and Chinese surveillance continue today.

For example, Amazon Web Services offers cloud services to Chinese tech giants like Hikvision and Dahua, assisting them in their overseas push. Both are on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List for national security and human-rights concerns, which means transactions with them are not illegal but subject to strict restrictions.

...

Archived link

Archived

[...]

The government has even expanded its influence to elections abroad, including races in New York City, to try to quash criticism of the Chinese state in places where people are more free to speak out than they are in China.

China is not alone in seeking to silence critics abroad.

Russia does it. Iran does it. Saudi Arabia does, too, according to Roman Rozhavsky, the assistant director of the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division in Washington.

But China, he said, is the most prolific, devoting substantial resources to the effort in the United States. Suppressing dissent is a priority for China’s president, Mr. Rozhavsky said.

“We are seeing more of these cases and we’re seeing the Chinese government be more aggressive in going after people on U.S. soil,” Mr. Rozhavsky said.

The cases involving the artists share a common thread: They were targeted for criticizing President Xi, the Chinese Communist Party, or the workings of the Chinese government.

[...]

Mr. Rozhavsky said that critics of China have had relatives living in the country threatened by the Chinese government, or that China has hired a person in the United States to intimidate or physically hurt them.

“Their job is to silence people and, unfortunately, it works,” Mr. Rozhavsky said. “It creates this Orwellian climate of fear where people are afraid to speak their mind even though they’re on U.S. soil and they’re just exercising their right to freedom of speech.”

[...]

Maya Wang, an associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said [recent] cases underscore how far the Chinese government will go. “The use of transnational repression demonstrates a symptom of the underlying structure of the Chinese government’s influence operations around the world,” Ms. Wang said. “It has marginalized voices critical of Beijing and elevated those who are friendly to it.”

[...]

A New Jersey police chief is facing domestic violence charges in Massachusetts after prosecutors accused him of assaulting a woman at a hotel earlier this year.

Carmen Veneziano, who leads Totowa, New Jersey’s police department, was indicted Thursday on one count of kidnapping and three counts of domestic assault and battery, officials in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, said.

In a brief statement Sunday, prosecutors alleged Veneziano confined and assaulted a woman overnight on Sept. 14, in a hotel room in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.

More in the article.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis accused President Donald Trump of playing “political games” Sunday after the Trump administration denied disaster declaration requests following wildfires and flooding in the state earlier this year.

Polis’ office said he received late Saturday two denial letters from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The letters follow requests for major disaster declarations following wildfires and mudslides in August and what Polis had described as “historic flooding” across southwest Colorado in October.

Polis and Colorado’s U.S. senators, fellow Democrats Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, decried the denials. Polis said the state would appeal.

“Coloradans impacted by the Elk and Lee fires and the flooding in Southwestern Colorado deserve better than the political games President Trump is playing,” he said in a statement.

More in the article.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the Justice Department’s decision to release just a fraction of the Jeffrey Epstein files by the congressionally mandated deadline as necessary to protect survivors of sexual abuse by the disgraced financier.

Blanche pledged that the Trump administration eventually would meet its obligation required by law. But he stressed that the department was obligated to act with caution as it goes about making public thousands of documents that can include sensitive information.

Friday’s partial release of the Epstein files has led to a new crush of criticism from Democrats who have accused the Republican administration of trying to hide information.

Blanche called that pushback disingenuous as President Donald Trump’s administration continues to struggle with calls for greater transparency, including from members of his political base, about the government’s investigations into Epstein, who once counted Trump as well as several political leaders and business titans among his peers.

“The reason why we are still reviewing documents and still continuing our process is simply that to protect victims,” Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “So the same individuals that are out there complaining about the lack of documents that were produced on Friday are the same individuals who apparently don’t want us to protect victims.”

Blanche’s comments were the most extensive by the administration since the file dump, which included photographs, interview transcripts, call logs, court records and other documents. But some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein were nowhere to be found, such as FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions. Those records could help explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling-out, tried for months to keep the records sealed. Though Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, he has argued there is nothing to see in the files and that the public should focus on other issues.

Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest. Democrat see a cover-up, not an effort to protect victims

But Democratic lawmakers on Sunday hammered Trump and the Justice Department for a partial release.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., argued that the Justice Department is obstructing the implementation of the law mandating the release of the documents not because it wants to protect the Epstein victims.

“It’s all about covering up things that, for whatever reason, Donald Trump doesn’t want to go public, either about himself, other members of his family, friends, Jeffrey Epstein, or just the social, business, cultural network that he was involved in for at least a decade, if not longer,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Blanche also defended the department’s decision to remove several files related to the case from its public webpage, including a photograph showing Trump, less than a day after they were posted.

The missing files, which were available Friday but no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showed a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.

More in the article.

Paywall Bypass Link https://archive.is/HaYMm