United States | News & Politics

The merger would broaden Trump Media’s holdings into the nascent fusion power space while data centers clamor for more electricity amid the ongoing AI boom.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump delivered a politically charged speech Wednesday carried live in prime time on network television, seeking to pin the blame for economic challenges on Democrats while announcing he is sending a $1,776 bonus check to U.S. troops for Christmas.

The remarks came as the nation is preparing to settle down to celebrate the holidays, yet Trump was focused more on divisions within the country than a sense of unity. His speech was a rehash of his recent messaging that has so far been unable to calm public anxiety about the cost of groceries, housing, utilities and other basic goods.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40354318

The Texas Attorney General sued five major television manufacturers, accusing them of illegally collecting their users' data by secretly recording what they watch using Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology.

The lawsuits target Sony, Samsung, LG, and China-based companies Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation. Attorney General Ken Paxton's office also highlighted "serious concerns" about the two Chinese companies being required to follow China's National Security Law, which could give the Chinese government access to U.S. consumers' data.

According to complaints filed this Monday in Texas state courts, the TV makers can allegedly use ACR technology to capture screenshots of television displays every 500 milliseconds, monitor the users' viewing activity in real time, and send this information back to the companies' servers without the users' knowledge or consent.

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Archive: [ https://archive.is/gpRie ]

Federal records show CBP is moving from testing small drones to making them standard surveillance tools, expanding a network that can follow activity in real time and extend well beyond the border.

Despite becoming a progressive favourite in recent years, Taylor Swift’s billionaire feminism has always been a vibes-only endeavour guided by consumerism and the girl boss ethic. Is it now shading into something yet more sinister?

Dec. 17, 2025
By Louise Halverson

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — On December 14, 2025, some 100 letter carriers and their supporters gathered here as the temperature hovered at 4° F to demand “ICE Off Postal Property!” Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents had been using post office parking lots as staging areas for raids in nearby neighborhoods, disrupting postal workers as they tried to carry out their duties.

At a rally at Lake Street Station, Chris Pennock, vice president of National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 9, told the local NBC News affiliate: “At the Powderhorn post office, they arrested somebody right in the middle of when we’re bringing back our mail. Vans with tinted windows and body armor and guns. We shouldn’t have to work in that environment.”

A new article on Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff, in Vanity Fair reveals her candid thoughts over the past year on a range of major issues facing the Trump administration and the personalities involved.

Wiles repeatedly met with the filmmaker and author Chris Whipple from January, and gave her commentary on the events in which she was either a key player or central observer at the White House.

But after its publication, Wiles hit out on X, calling it a "disingenuously framed hit piece," that "significant context was disregarded," and "much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story."

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Dec. 14, 2025

Today, billionaires are still flooding politics with their money and still reaping the benefits, but they won’t stop yapping about it.

Elon Musk bragged about his support for President Trump, to whose campaign and allied groups he donated more than $250 million. He loudly attempted to buy votes in Pennsylvania. Then he leveraged it all into a cruel and chaotic effort to dismantle federal agencies. Marc Andreessen’s tech-heavy venture capital firm publicly pledged $100 million to target lawmakers who attempt to regulate artificial intelligence; Mr. Andreessen then mocked the pope for suggesting some ethical guardrails around the technology. Bill Ackman announced that he and his pals were prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat Zohran Mamdani, and urged Mr. Trump to call in the National Guard if that effort failed and Mr. Mamdani’s mayoralty met his worst expectations.

An FBI investigation into an alleged terror plot in Southern California bears the familiar hallmarks of the bureau’s long-running use of informants and undercover agents to advance plots that might not otherwise have materialized, court documents show.

The limited details available suggest an investigation that leaned heavily on a paid informant and at least one undercover FBI agent, according to an affidavit filed in federal court. The informant and the undercover agent were involved in nearly every stage of the case, including discussions of operational security and transporting members of the group to the site in the Mojave Desert where federal agents ultimately made the arrests.

“The question that immediately popped into my mind was that: There’s a reference to a confidential human source, but there’s no indication of how that source came to be,” said Brad Crowder, an activist and union organizer who was convicted in a case of alleged violent protest plans that involved a confidential informant. “It’s not totally out of the realm of possibilities that this idea was planted or floated by whoever this confidential human source might be.”

Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, is once again facing criticism for rushing to social media to tout his agency’s work on tracking down a person of interest in a shooting prematurely.

After a shooter killed two and injured nine at Brown University on Saturday, Patel, a lawyer and rightwing commentator before his job in the administration, posted on X that his agency had helped detain a “person of interest in a hotel room” in Coventry, Rhode Island, acting off a lead from the Providence police.

But the person of interest was later released from custody hours later, and the shooter is still at large.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43734020

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A Chinese man who left his country after filming at sites of alleged human rights violations against Uyghurs now faces the risk of removal from the United States, according to his lawyer and mother.

Guan Heng, 38, underwent an immigration hearing in New York on Monday after being detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in August, his mother said in an interview.

The case could see him taken out of the United States and potentially landing back in China eventually.

“I’m really, really worried that things will be very bad for him if he is made to return,” Guan’s mother, Luo Yun, told AFP in Chinese.

“If he has a chance to remain in the United States, he’ll at least be safe,” she said. “I’m incredibly anxious and upset.”

On Monday, the session ended with a next hearing date set for January, said Guan’s lawyer Chen Chuangchuang. ...

The gains would largely be made in 10 Southern states with GOP-controlled legislatures, a new report finds.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/43715515

Officials ordered immediate evacuations in three south Seattle suburbs Monday after a levee failed following a week of heavy rains.

The evacuation order from King County in Washington state covered homes and businesses east of the Green River in parts of Kent, Auburn and Tukwila.

The National Weather Service, meanwhile, issued a flash flood warning covering nearly 47,000 people.