United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37081449

Talk inside the White House about invoking the act has ebbed and flowed since Trump took office again in January, said the five people, who include the senior administration official, two people familiar with the discussions and two people close to the White House.

But the debate inside the administration has shifted recently, from whether it makes sense to invoke the act to more deeply exploring how and when it might be invoked, both people close to the White House said.

Elon Musk and X have settled with four former top executives at Twitter, including the former CEO, who accused the billionaire of failing to pay $128m in promised severance pay after he acquired the social media company in 2022 and fired them.

The former executives say that Musk falsely accused them of misconduct and forced them out of Twitter after they sued him for attempting to renege on his offer to buy the company. The plaintiffs are Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s former CEO; Ned Segal, Twitter’s former chief financial officer; Vijaya Gadde, its former chief legal officer; and Sean Edgett, its former general counsel. Musk and X have denied wrongdoing and said the executives were fired over their performance.

The deadlock over ending the US government shutdown deepened on Wednesday, with senators once again rejecting competing bills to restart funding as Democrats and Republicans remain dug in on their demands for reopening federal agencies.

The funding lapse has forced offices, national parks and other federal government operations to close or curtail operations, while employees have been furloughed. Signs of strain have mounted in recent days in the parts of the federal government that remained operational, with staffing shortages reported at airports across the US as well as air traffic control centers. Further disruptions may come next week, when US military personnel and other federal workers who remain on the job will not receive paychecks, unless the government reopens.

When the Senate met on Wednesday afternoon, it became clear that sentiment had not shifted in the eight days since the shutdown began. For the sixth time, Democratic and Republican proposals to restart funding both failed to receive enough support to advance, and no senators changed their votes from recent days.

Chicago Pastor Sues Trump Admin After Allegedly Being Shot by ICE Agents

A Chicago pastor injured during demonstrations outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility has joined a sweeping federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday challenging the Trump administration’s response to protests in the city.

Timothy Snyder on Stalinism and Stephen Miller

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Also, check out this video of Stephen Miller claiming Trump has plenary authority.

CNN asked Miller whether the Trump Administration will abide by a district judge’s order blocking the Guard’s deployment in Oregon. “Well, the Administration filed an appeal this morning with the Ninth Circuit,” Miller began. “I would note the Administration won an identical case in the Ninth Circuit just a few months ago with respect to the federalizing of the California National Guard.”

Then, Miller said: “Under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, the President has plenary authority, has—” before making an abrupt stop. Miller blinked several times, with anchor Boris Sanchez calling out his name, though he still did not respond.

...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenary_power

A plenary power or plenary authority is a complete and absolute power to take action on a particular issue, with no limitations.

"Congress has the sole constitutional responsibility to declare war and to authorize the use of force," notes a joint letter to the president. "You have failed to secure such authorization for these strikes."

To the former health leaders, it seems pretty clear: Kennedy is a threat to the nation.

Leaked emails from former Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor show David Frum, Douglas Murray offering to write his speeches and a CNN producer fundraising for Israel’s Iron Dome during Israel’s 2014 war

Blue states and cities can issue these bonds and use them to fund all the research, subsidies, programs and projects that Trump is trying to murder.

The rush to blame video games for all the world’s ills is, of course, nothing new. While some of the more novel examples of this blame-game include current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s claim that video games are the reason the Medicaid is abused (yes, seriously), this nonsense is more commonly trotted out whenever violence is committed, typically for mass shootings. It’s irresponsible and not based on anything remotely resembling scientific data and it should stop.

To win again, Democrats must stop warning voters against the kind of people movies taught us to love.

from Politico
By Dan Brooks
09/07/2025 10:00 AM EDT

That Trump was a boarding school graduate who inherited over $400 million did not seem to affect voters’ calculus, in the same way Danny the caddy doesn’t ask why he should risk his college scholarship to help a millionaire win a bet. In the narrative of the 2016 election, Trump was the slob, even though he was a textbook snob in both background and agenda. From cutting taxes for the wealthy to slashing regulations for corporate America, his policies reinforced the positions of those already in power, i.e. the snobs. But his rhetoric, demeanor and attitude toward the mythic Washington establishment has been pure slob.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6364757

Among an avalanche of public health reversals these past couple months, the administration limited COVID-19 vaccine access to 65-and-over and patients with a short list of preconditions, chopped the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network down from eight to two infections, and dropped CDC testing for unusual infections medical doctors submit from across the country.

It also baselessly announced that Tylenol taken during pregnancy causes autism, moved to fire all members of the Preventative Services Task Force (which requires insurance companies to cover specific treatments), gave AI companies a share of savings they find in cutting patients off Medicare, and continued its war on unions at the heart of the federal response to national emergencies.

In response to the unspooling protections, groups of individual U.S. states have veered off in national schisms long found in U.S. public health. West Coast and New England states are establishing vaccine alliances whose policies supersede the CDC’s now-inadequate COVID-19 recommendations. In the other direction, Florida moved to ban all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.

In op-eds in The New York Times and walkouts at the CDC, public health’s managerial class is punching back against Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts to strip out federal-led public health research and policy.

It’s been a necessary and laudable response. It’s also telling that these very managers met protests against the Biden administration’s own eugenics-proximate response to COVID-19 with silence or dismissal.

Failure in deed matched failure in word. The Biden administration moved Paxlovid to the open market — at an exorbitant mark-up — and instituted an employer-friendly five-day recommendation for COVID-19 quarantine that the CDC subsequently dropped, entirely despite molecular kinetics showing high viral loads 10 days and on in many infected people.

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This aggressive collection practice is widespread even in a state considered to have strong consumer protections.

Archive link https://archive.ph/7nWV1

Despite mounting threats to the US economy — from high tariffs to collapsing immigration, eroding institutions, rising debt and sticky inflation — large companies and investors seem unfazed. They are increasingly confident that artificial intelligence is such a big force, it can counter all the challenges.

Lately, this optimism has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year.

AI companies have accounted for 80 per cent of the gains in US stocks so far in 2025. That is helping to fund and drive US growth, as the AI-driven stock market draws in money from all over the world, and feeds a boom in consumer spending by the rich.

Since the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population own 85 per cent of US stocks, they enjoy the largest wealth effect when they go up. Little wonder then that the latest data shows America’s consumer economy rests largely on spending by the wealthy. The top 10 per cent of earners account for half of consumer spending, the highest share on record since the data begins.

Stephan Marcum, 58, of Stanton, Kentucky, allegedly refused to speak with police about front yard ‘Halloween decorations’ resembling body bags and labeled as local officials