United States | News & Politics

Republicans' tax cuts shaved billions off Amazon's tax bill, new government filings show. The company says it ran a $1.2 billion tax bill last year, down from $9 billion the previous year, and even as its profits jumped by 45% to nearly $90 billion.

Trump said ‘of course’ he condemns the racist parts of the video, but would not apologize for sharing it

Move by Pete Hegseth marks latest escalation by Trump administration against the Ivy League school

Former U.S. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino was reportedly asked to leave a Las Vegas bar out of safety concerns for the venue’s customers.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/60004555

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/42799900

The Trump administration has now conducted two deportation flights of Palestinians from the US to Israel, using private jets that can cost up to $26,000 per flight hour, The Guardian, in collaboration with +972 Magazine, reported this week.

The independent news outlet MintPress was the first to report the initial deportation flight, which carried eight Palestinians and departed from Arizona to land in Tel Aviv on 21 January.

Both flights were operated by Dezer Development, which is a real estate company founded by dual Israeli-American citizen Michael Dezer. Today, his son Gil Dezer runs their real estate empire in Florida, the report revealed.

cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/acab/p/652010/he-didnt-do-anything-but-walking-while-black-black-man-arrested-on-felony-charge-for-wearing

Zohran's plan for city-run grocery stores has drawn intense pushback from critics.

But government-run stores already exist in the U.S. One chain with 250 locations charges at least 25% less than other brands.

It's run by the U.S. military.

In a stunning development, the Department of Homeland Security expedited its asylum hearing for five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his family to Friday morning, meaning it's possible they could be deported as soon as today.

Ramos and his father had just returned home to their Minneapolis suburb last week after being held in a Texas detention facility. They were locked in there for 12 days, with Ramos' health deteriorating, despite DHS providing no evidence of Ramos’ father being in the country illegally or having a criminal record.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who helped bring Ramos back home from ICE detention last week, said the preschooler “was traumatized” at the facility and now faces being shipped out of the country.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25710

The State Department announced on Friday that it was planning to send Israel more than $6.5 billion of weapons aid that included Apache attack helicopters and combat land vehicles, bypassing a congressional review process.

The packages of four weapons systems had been under review for months by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The State Department is supposed to wait for approval from the top two members on each of those committees before announcing the aid. But in this case, the department under Secretary of State Marco Rubio circumvented that norm.

It was the third time that the Trump administration has bypassed this part of the congressional process, called informal review, to send weapons to Israel.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/35165751

Cable news people call them “prison camps” or “Trump prison camps,” but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is:

“[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”

But what do you call a place where people who’ve committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is “concentration camp”:

“[A] place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”

For example, over the weekend, Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner read the riot attack at the possibility that ICE will bring Minneapolis to Philadelphia. He was not ... nuanced. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Last week, during a news conference about proposed restrictions on immigration enforcement in Philadelphia, the district attorney said he would “hunt down” and prosecute U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who commit crimes in the city. “There will be accountability now. There will be accountability in the future. There will be accountability after [Trump] is out of office,” Krasner said. “If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities.”

This got up the nose of Governor Josh Shapiro, who has aspirations to improve his living arrangements with an eye on a run-down piece of property in Washington. Shapiro and Krasner don’t dance, and Shapiro seems to be exercised further by Krasner’s recent broadsides.

Shapiro, who is Jewish and is a rumored presidential contender, was interviewed a dozen times last week on national media while promoting his new memoir and condemned ICE’s tactics during all of them. During an interview Thursday on Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier, Shapiro was asked about Krasner’s comparison of ICE agents to Nazis and called the comments “unacceptable. ... It is abhorrent and it is wrong, period, hard stop, end of sentence,” Shapiro said.

Bullshit. Period. Hard stop. End of sentence. Krasner wasn’t calling anyone a Nazi. He was saying that any federal agents who commit street crimes in his jurisdiction can expect to hear footsteps for the rest of their lives. Which I think should be the case of people up and down this administration. I think the overriding mission of a Democratic administration and a Democratic Congress should not be vengeance but justice for offenses against the law and the republic.

In wake of Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to ‘take over’ voting, senator Ruben Gallego urges citizens to take a stand and give the ‘ultimate response’

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

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24615476

They had come to say a prayer for the father, the son and the holy ghost.

The father was Donald Trump, who, despite sending federal militias to roam Minneapolis, threatening to invade Greenland and telling lies by the dozen, remains the lord and saviour of the religious right.

The son was his protege, Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who, despite documented human rights violations and mass detentions that swept up 3,000 children, was praised by a congressman for leadership that displays “character” and “conscience”.

And the holy ghost was the Republican party’s moral spine, now reduced to a phantom thread. “The power of Trump compels you!” as The Exorcist nearly said.

They had gathered on Thursday in the cavernous ballroom of the Washington Hilton hotel for the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event where past speakers have included Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Bono, Tony Blair and Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative.

Trump, of course, can be relied upon to make it feel less a church sermon than a knockabout campaign rally. “Good God!” and “Jesus Christ!” are more likely to be exclamations from horrified onlookers than earnest pronouncements from the truly faithful.