United States | News & Politics

US and Ecuadorian forces have launched joint operations to combat drug trafficking, the US Southern Command said on Tuesday, but neither side gave more details.

Southern Command, which encompasses 31 countries through South and Central America and the Caribbean, said in a statement on X that the “decisive action” was aimed at combating illicit drug trafficking.

The Ecuador defense ministry said details of the offensive operations were classified.

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The father of a teenage boy accused of killing two students and two teachers in a mass shooting at a Georgia high school in 2024 was found guilty on Tuesday of second-degree murder and other charges.

After roughly two weeks of testimony, jurors deliberated for just a few hours before convicting 54-year-old Colin Gray on more than two dozen charges, including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, related to the 4 September fatal shooting at Apalachee high school in Georgia.

George Calicut Jr has been in prison for more than 25 years for murder, though there were no witnesses or evidence against him

Sen. Bernie Sanders criticizes Jeff Bezos for opposing a 5% wealth tax on billionaires in an opinion piece by the Washington Post editorial board.

The Bad River Band is fighting to stop Line 5 and protect its watershed. Meanwhile, local sheriffs are already tallying the cost of riot gear.

A congressional investigation estimates broker breaches have cost consumers $20 billion in identity theft. Major brokers now promise to make it easier to opt out of their databases.

In Springfield, Ohio, some Americans have converted their basements and spare bedrooms into shelters for immigrant families who could be targeted in raids.

The Trump administration and its allies in Congress presented a shifting new justification Monday for the U.S. attack on Iran, with House Speaker Mike Johnson suggesting that the White House believed Israel was determined to act on its own, leaving the president with a “very difficult decision.”

Johnson said the attack on Iran was a “defensive operation” because Israel was ready to act against Iran, “with or without American support.” He said President Donald Trump and his team determined that Iran would immediately retaliate against U.S. personnel and assets.

The remarkable shift in the Trump administration’s stated rationale comes as the hostilities deepen and widen across the region. The president himself estimated the war could drag on for weeks. The administration plans to seek supplemental funds from Congress to support the effort.

Troops have logged more than 110 complaints about such comments with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Without any clear message coming from the White House with regard to the purpose of the Iran war, U.S. military commanders have turned to Jesus, apparently telling American troops that the war is “biblically sanctioned.”

The U.S. joined Israel in striking Iran early Saturday morning. By Monday evening, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, or MRFF, was “inundated” with complaints, receiving more than 110 grievances from U.S. military personnel stationed at dozens of sites across the Middle East, reported independent journalist Jonathan Larsen.

One such note included an anecdote from a noncommissioned officer, who reported that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

The NCO’s complaint was lodged on behalf of 15 troops, including 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew, according to Larsen. The officer stated that such remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the [C]onstitution.”

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34840185

Shortly after President Donald Trump took office last January, employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture were reportedly instructed to flag and delete any webpages that mentioned climate change — including resources used by farmers to prepare for extreme weather. In response, a group of environmental and agricultural nonprofits sued the agency over the loss of critical information. In May, just days before a scheduled hearing, the USDA announced it would restore its climate webpages. At that point, “we had essentially won,” said Peter Lehner, managing attorney at Earthjustice, the nonprofit law firm representing the plaintiffs. But the negotiations over a legal settlement continued on.

Last week, the ag department finally settled the lawsuit, agreeing to share the datasets used to power its climate risk viewer and other tools. Even though most of the webpages in question had already been restored, Lehner added, the plaintiffs wanted to ensure access remains public — a priority that prolonged the negotiations.

As part of the settlement, the department of agriculture agreed to keep its climate risk viewer — which contains over 140 layers and includes maps on wildfire risk — online at least until the plaintiffs receive the underlying raw data. That way, Lehner told Grist, if these webpages are taken down at some point in the future, the plaintiffs — such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental nonprofit — would be able to recreate the climate risk maps.

That’s important because the settlement does not guarantee that the USDA will maintain these digital resources indefinitely. “The government should be able to change their website,” Lehner said. “But they have to do it in certain ways. And if it’s important information, they have to give the public notice and they have to do it carefully.” (The Department of Justice, which represented the USDA in the lawsuit, declined to comment on the settlement.)

In the initial complaint, Earthjustice alleged that the USDA’s purge of webpages that mentioned climate change violated multiple federal laws — including the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, which requires federal agencies to give adequate notice before changing the public’s access to informational tools, and the Freedom of Information Act.

Of particular interest to one of the plaintiffs — the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, or NOFA — were webpages related to loans for climate-smart conservation practices. Wes Gillingham, head of the NOFA board, told Grist that the organization directs many growers to these resources to help with the financial cost of implementing more sustainable growing practices.

However, the settlement doesn’t mean that farmers are getting all that they need from the USDA. Gillingham, a farmer himself, added that he is still unsure which loan programs for farmers are available under the second Trump administration. “What loan programs are live and not is a huge question,” he said.

This predicament highlights the financial precarity for many agricultural producers in the U.S., at a time when the federal government has slashed funding programs for farmers. And it illustrates the work that farming groups have left to do to protect their livelihoods. Gillingham noted that he’s currently worried about a future farm bill that could gut funding for conservation practices, like those that can help farmers protect soil health.

Lehner agreed that farmers are struggling under the Trump administration, and that, in a way, gave their lawsuit leverage.

“To be frank, I think the fact that we were representing farmers and others who were saying, ‘Look, this is hurting us. We’re trying to deal with climate change. We’re trying to deal with extreme weather and you’re cutting the legs out from under us,’ that didn’t make them look very good,” he said. “It just made them, in my view, look stupid and mean.”

Editor’s note: Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council are advertisers with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

Operation Epstein Distraction is already a five-alarm shit-show.

here’s a huge mistake the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press are making right now, as they cover Dear Leader’s Splendid Iran Adventure™: they’re treating Donny as if he were a rational actor who knows what he’s doing.

spoiler alert: he’s not. he’s bugfuck nuts, in steep cognitive decline, and there is no plan. he’s making it all up as he goes along.

apparently, Mad King Donny spent all of yesterday afternoon phoning random reporters, and giving each one a different explanation for what the hell is going on. The Economist’s Gregg Carlstrom sums it up nicely.

perfectly normal stuff.

but even Carlstrom fails to recognize what’s obvious: these are the actions of a gibbering loon. Donny’s brain has gone fuckity-bye, and he’s flailing, calling up reporters one by one and telling them what he thinks they want to hear — and he sure as shit probably can’t even remember what he told the last reporter he spoke to five minutes earlier.

**I mean, look at Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants. he’s a deteriorating mess. the lights are on, but nobody’s home. no, strike that — **the lights aren’t even on.

oh yeah, this is exactly the guy who you want in charge of a nuclear arsenal.

all you reporters who savaged Joe Biden because he was icky and old and smelled bad and probably didn’t even know he was already dead, but are staying silent as Donny’s handlers prop him up like a moldering cadaver — you should be fucking ashamed of yourselves.

---

and what is this insanity? apparently, none of the shitwits running Operation Epstein Distraction expected Iran to fight back, and now we’re running out of munitions.

When the U.S. military’s top general laid out the risks to President Trump of launching a major and extended attack on Iran, one of the issues he flagged was America’s stockpile of munitions.

Now that is being put to the test, as the U.S. races to destroy Iran’s missile and drone force before it runs out of interceptors to fend off Tehran’s retaliation, current and former officials and analysts say.

this has the hubristic hand of Piss-Drunk Pete Kegstand all over it. you can well imagine him telling Donny, ‘don’t worry, sir, my warfighters are going to warfight the shit out of this thing. it’ll be over in fifteen minutes.’

ha fucking ha.

this is why you don’t appoint a Fox News dunk-tank clown with masculinity issues to be your Secretary of Whatever The Fuck He’s Calling Himself Today. Piss-Drunk Pete is in way over his head.

. . . but the clear winner of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Callous Piece of Shit Prize goes to Preznit Fuckwit, who issued a taped statement in which he was a slurring mess who could barely read the words off the teleprompter that was right in front of him.

“sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. that’s the way it is. likely be more.”

no emotion, no feeling — Donny’s just distractedly reading words that someone else wrote for him, with all the conviction of a teenager forced to apologize for leaving a flaming bag of dog shit on his neighbor’s porch.

https://archive.ph/kzeOM

Several top state and federal offices are up for grabs amid a period of crisis with few if any precedents in the state’s history.

Insane that ICE decided to lead a congressional candidate with a NYT photographer in his car to the candidate's home.

A rash spotted on President Donald Trump's neck is trending across social media and now his personal doctor is explaining what's behind it.

On Monday, President Trump made an appearance at a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, where the rash, which could be seen on the right side of his neck, was first spotted. The reddish spot on his neck was photographed extending above his collar.

Dr. Sean Barbabella, Trump's physician, told CNN in a statement that the rash is because of a cream he is using as a "preventative skin treatment."