United States | News & Politics

Brett Wilkins
Nov 19, 2025

A speechwriter for prominent Democrats including former President Barack Obama and presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Kerry faced widespread outrage this week after video emerged of her blaming Holocaust education for young Jews’ empathy for Palestinians in Gaza and revulsion at Israel’s genocidal war there.

Earlier this week, Sarah Hurwitz—who was also a senior speechwriter for former First Lady Michelle Obama and other Democrats—spoke at the opening plenary of this year’s Jewish Federations of North America general assembly in Washington, DC. The event featured speakers including Free Press staff writer Olivia Reingold, who implicitly attempted to absolve Israel from blame for the Gaza famine by noting that 12 of the at least 463 Palestinians who starved to death had preexisting health conditions.

US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he signed a bill ordering the release of all files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The bill requires the justice department to release all information from its Epstein investigation "in a searchable and downloadable format" within 30 days.

Trump previously opposed releasing the files, but he changed course last week after facing pushback from Epstein's victims and members of his own Republican Party.

With his support, the legislation overwhelmingly cleared both chambers of Congress, the House of Representatives and Senate, on Tuesday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/39221092

Jon Queally
Nov 19, 2025

“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned -- and democracy won,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, posted on X after the Texas ruling, mentioning his Republican counterpart in Texas along with the president.

After a federal court panel struck down Republicans’ new map in Texas on Tuesday, the entire exercise holds the potential to net Democrats more winnable seats in the House instead.

“Trump may have let the genie out of the bottle,” said UCLA law professor Rick Hasen, “but he may not get the wish he’d hoped for.”

And when one party moves aggressively to draw lines to help itself win elections — also known as gerrymandering — it runs the risk of pushing its rival party to do the same.

That’s what Trump ended up doing, spurring California voters to replace their map drawn by a nonpartisan commission with one drawn by Democrats to gain five seats. If successful, the move would cancel out the action taken by Texas Republicans. California voters approved that map earlier this month, and if a Republican lawsuit fails to block it, that map giving Democrats more winnable seats will remain in effect even if Texas’ remains stalled.

There’s just money upon money, gift upon gift flowing from all the allies and all the dependents of the United States into Trump’s Washington, making many people very comfortable and some very rich.

This is not how a Republican system of government is supposed to work. As I said, the Constitution contemplated this fate and tried to forbid it. But that provision, like so many others, has just gone out the window. And it’s also illegal for the president to impose tariffs. Tariffs belong to Congress. And it’s also illegal for the president to withhold money that Congress has appropriated. The Supreme Court has ruled that the president cannot refuse to spend money that Congress appropriated. He cannot withhold the funds. He cannot pocket veto them. That’s the law—in the same way that Donald Trump cannot spend money, he cannot say, I’m taking this money from the tariffs and giving it to the farmers or whoever else I like. That’s a power of the purse; that belongs to Congress—or, at least, that’s what the Constitution says. That’s what it used to be. But, as I said, with the gifts, with the tariffs, the emoluments, all of it out the window. It’s a different kind of regime.

The theme this week is the end of the American empire. And what I mean by that is not that the United States is diminishing so very rapidly in power and wealth. But the United States has always been something more than a system based on power and wealth. It’s been an idea in the minds of people. It symbolized something. And that something has been very important and very powerful—it’s part of the power and wealth of the United States, but it’s also bigger than wealth or power.

I read the story in Axios of the government of Switzerland sending a delegation to Washington, D.C., bearing gifts for President Donald Trump: a personalized Rolex desk clock; a solid gold bar, apparently a kilogram in weight, worth $130,000, inscribed with the numbers 45 and 47, so it was the two terms of Donald Trump’s presidency, so personalized to Donald Trump, the gold bar—nice touch if you’re Swiss. And profusions of flattery and good wishes from the government of Switzerland to Donald Trump.

It paid off. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that the American tariff imposed by Donald Trump on Swiss goods would be cut from 39 percent to 15 percent.

What do the Swiss really think after they buy Donald Trump’s favor with a clock and a gold bar? Switzerland is a highly developed country with strict rules and standards of behavior. Swiss government officials do not accept gifts. They don’t take gold bars. I don’t know much about Swiss law, but I’m guessing that that would be frowned on by Swiss rules and by Swiss public opinion; they would not accept that their government accept these kinds of lavish personal presents. But in the United States, it seems to be okay. Does Switzerland respect the United States more after buying Donald Trump’s favor with a gold brick, or does it respect it less?

Government watchdog Public Citizen warns of pharmaceutical industry's efforts to sabotage government drug price negotiations.

A major defence partnership signed by the US and Saudi Arabia is expected to fast-track arms sales to the kingdom, of which the F-35 warplane is just one component, current and former US officials told Middle East Eye on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The conversation has changed from 'we will see' to 'yes, but how and when'," one person familiar with the deal said. The White House announced on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed a new Strategic Defence Agreement (SDA).

The details are being hammered out by officials in the US government. A former senior US official familiar with the ongoing process confirmed to MEE that the agreement will put Saudi Arabia far ahead of other Gulf states and US partners in terms of wait times and negotiations for sophisticated US weapons.

"The Saudis have received Trump's go-ahead to get the best in defence technology," the former official said.

Add this to vaccines make you magnetic, cause AIDS, and measles is not a big deal.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/39202303

Israel strikes southern Gaza. U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff expected to meet Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, in Istanbul. Israeli troops round up 200 Palestinians in the West Bank town of Beit Ummar. Congress votes to declassify the Epstein files. The Trump administration authorizes covert CIA action in Venezuela, intending to boot President Nicolás Maduro and take as much oil as possible. Trump lavishes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with praise, attacks reporters, and gives Saudi Arabia a non-member NATO affiliation. A West African woman deported from the U.S. to Ghana commits suicide in custody. Israel continues attacks on Lebanon, killing 13 in airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Saida, in the deadliest strike since a “ceasefire” last year. Jihadist militants kill 9 in a raid on a town in Nigeria’s northeast. Pakistani forces kill 38 in a series of raids across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s sisters are reportedly detained after a protest. Filipino President denies his senatorial sister’s allegations that he is a cocaine addict.

In California, the Law Enforcement Mutual Aid Fund sets aside $25 million annually to let law enforcement agencies work across jurisdictions to fight natural disasters and other major emergencies. In a briefing obtained by The Intercept, acceptable LEMA use cases are listed as fires, storms, flooding, earthquakes, natural or man-made disasters, and “other extra ordinary events requiring emergency law enforcement mutual aid on a case by case basis.”

As “Gaza solidarity” encampments popped up across college campuses in April and May 2024, Jodi Lopez, staff services manager at California’s Office of Emergency Services, informed the leadership of at least 30 public universities — including Cal Poly Humboldt — that if they were to require mutual aid assistance, LEMA would be available to reimburse their expenses, attaching a flyer that detailed eligible costs.

A Cal OES spokesperson confirmed in a statement to The Intercept that “Local law enforcement who provided that support to Cal Poly Humboldt were reimbursed through the LEMA Fund program.” The statewide office “is committed to protecting Californians and supporting local partners in times of crisis, regardless of political views or affiliation,” the spokesperson wrote.

Official document warns of "National Security Concerns"

One of Maxwell’s lawyers, Leah Saffian, released a statement Friday saying that employees at Camp Bryan “have been terminated for improper, unauthorized access” to an email system that allows prison inmates to “communicate with the outside world,” following a leak of Maxwell’s “privileged client-attorney email correspondence.”

Nearly every Republican in the US House of Representatives voted on a bill to compel the release of documents tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The lone "nay" came from the Republican lawmaker from Louisiana, Clay Higgins, who defied his party saying his vote was a principled "NO".

"What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today," Higgins wrote on X. "It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America."

The resounding vote in favour of the Epstein bill, 427-1, marks a rare moment of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill. Hours later, the US senate too approved the legislation, clearing the way for the final act - President Donald Trump's signature.