United States | News & Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Air Force said Thursday it would deny all transgender service members who have served between 15 and 18 years the option to retire early and would instead separate them without retirement benefits. One Air Force sergeant said he was “betrayed and devastated” by the move.

The move means that transgender service members will now be faced with the choice of either taking a lump-sum separation payment offered to junior troops or be removed from the service.

An Air Force spokesperson told The Associated Press that “although service members with 15 to 18 years of honorable service were permitted to apply for an exception to policy, none of the exceptions to policy were approved.” About a dozen service members had been “prematurely notified” that they would be able to retire before that decision was reversed, according to the spokesperson who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal Air Force policy.

A memo issued Monday announcing the new policy, which was reviewed by the AP, said that the choice to deny retirement benefits was made “after careful consideration of the individual applications.”

All transgender members of the Air Force are being separated from the service under the Trump administration’s policies.

President Donald Trump flew to Scotland, where he spent the weekend at his Turnberry resort playing golf. While the White House press corps and those credentialed to wander the grounds were rummaging through the resort, a Reuters photographer discovered some of the items up for sale in the new resort gift shop would normally be subject to hefty tariffs if sold in the United States.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, Angela, are longtime owners of a $1.5 million house in a gated community outside Dallas. In 2015, they snapped up a second home in Austin. Then another.

The problem: Mortgages signed by the Paxtons contained inaccurate statements declaring that each of those three houses was their primary residence, enabling the now-estranged couple to improperly lock in low interest rates, according to an Associated Press review of public records. The lower rates will save the Paxtons tens of thousands of dollars in payments over the life of the loan, legal experts say.

The records also revealed that the Paxtons collected an impermissible homestead tax break on two of those homes, and they have routinely flouted lending agreements on some of their other properties.

The British socialite reportedly initiated the meetings she had with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche this week

A Bronx office of the US House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was vandalized early on Monday, according to New York City police, who say they are investigating.

The vandalism occurred after Ocasio-Cortez on Friday voted against a defense spending bill amendment authored by the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia that would have eliminated funding for the system protecting Israel from missiles.

Her vote on Greene’s amendment prompted the Democratic Socialists of America to issue a statement accusing Ocasio-Cortez of backing Israel’s “eliminationist campaign against the Palestinian people”.

The GOP-led House Rules Committee has shut down activity in the House this week to avoid having to take a vote on the Epstein files. It may not resume activity until September.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33239981

First, approximately 1,000 personnel in the Information Management Division (IMD) and the FBI New York Field Office were assigned to this task, confirming the whistleblower account made to Senator Durbin’s office. I can also confirm that a log exists tracking the mentions of Donald Trump in the files, and that there were approximately 100,000 files containing roughly 300,000 pages. Individual analysts were told to flag mentions of Trump by document and page number by logging them in an Excel spreadsheet, then they’d hand in their spreadsheet at the end of their (sometimes 24 or even 48-hour) shift. But it’s important to note that the agents were not told to flag Trump until later in a process that began mid-March.

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But there is a log of instances Donald Trump is mentioned in the files, there are video and PDF trainings instructing analysts to flag Trump, there were multiple instances of Trump appearing in the files, Patel and Bondi wanted victim information and PII, and sloppiness means that more people than previously known had access to the Epstein and Maxwell files. And while there was no indication of a ready-made, A to Z client list beyond the little black book that’s already public, “to say there’s nothing or to say it’s a hoax? Bullshit.”

https://archive.ph/ekOj3

Is this the location where he allegedly beat his mistress? Allegedly you betcha!

Is there anything more Trump-era Republican than fake-rich living beyond one’s means? And cheating on your wife, allegedly beating your mistress and lying about your finances and qualifications? Meet Florida Rep. Cory Mills, who is one messy pile of curb furniture! He’s getting evicted from the soon-to-be-divorced-dad pad he was sharing with his sidepiece because he owes his landlord more than $85,000 in unpaid rent, on a penthouse that’s nearly $21,000 a month! 

(If you live outside DC or New York or another large city, please understand that $21K per month is very expensive anywhere.)

How befitting for an arms-maker with shady finances. (You know, in case you were curious how he got approved for $21K per month on his $174,000 congressional salary.) If you’re wondering what the soon-to-be-available place looks like, TPM’s Josh Marshall found a link to a similar, slightly smaller penthouse in the complex. Oligarch chic!

The eviction scoop and receipts were picked up by former Daily Beast reporter Roger Sollenberger and dropped on X, and Mills quickly X’d back the sorriest of excuses for not playing his bills:

Sure, guy, the multibillion-dollar management company Bozzuto left its website unable to collect rent from tenants for months on end and refused to accept payment in any other way. You know landlords, how they’re always so lackadaisical about collecting their money! (Especially when the rent is $21K.)

Always projection! Sollenberger added for good measure: 

FWIW, this isn't a surprise — Cory Mills has had foreclosure and lien troubles for more than a decade. What is a surprise is how a guy with his financial history is affording a penthouse in one of the most expensive rental properties in Washington, DC. (And a rented beach house.)

Sounds like he is NOT, that IS very mysterious, and ZING.

Sollenberger threw on the pile: 

New Cory Mills campaign filing shows $35,000 in legal payments from April through June, with another $41,000 in unpaid legal service fees, including $10,000 in "disputed" charges.

GET IT TOGETHER, CORY.

Mills also has even more swirling drama of the homewrecking and financial kind. 

His 17-years-younger girlfriend, Sarah Raviani, called 911 in February, claiming Mills had assaulted her, and that he was her partner of more than a year. Police saw fresh bruises on her, and heard Mills telling her on the phone to lie to them about the cause of her injuries. But then-acting US Attorney for DC Ed Martin wouldn’t sign his arrest warrant, Raviani retracted her statement, and the problem went away for him. Now Mills is getting evicted for nonpayment on that same place where it happened. Karmic!

Raviani is also co-founder of the group Iranians for Trump, where she “spearheaded efforts to mobilize Iranian-American voters.” Wonder if any in that group have some regrets now? Maybe one or two?

Oh, and Mills has a wife. She is an Iraqi refugee, and they have two sons. Holy near-east conflict!

Mills and wife were married by an Islamic cleric in Virginia in 2014, one Mohammad Al-Hanooti, who the Daily Mail insists is a Hamas supporter who had connections to some of the guys who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and who said in 1998 that “Allah will rain his curse on the Americans and the British.” (Maybe Mills is that curse?) Mills excused using such a controversial imam to marry them because, he said, they were in a big hurry for his soon-to-be wife to get a new green card so she could travel, and he was the only one they could find. Mkay!

And of course one of Mills’s favorite things to holler has been that Nancy Pelosi, Anthony Fauci and Joe Biden are like Al-Qaeda. Weird coming from this particular guy, but OK!

After the police report came out, Mills claimed he and the wife were in the process of divorce. I’ll bet! 

Don’t you just love how these are the people lecturing everybody else on FAMILY VALUES? Hope this eviction maybe helps Raviani move on with her life.

AND there’s more shadiness around Mills, because of course. Two ethics investigations: When he got elected in 2022 he owned a grenade and tear-gas-manufacturing concern, and the board of the Office of Congressional Conduct had some questions about what countries his clients were in, which Mills refused to answer. Also somehow a $1.8 million loan from Mills appeared in his campaign coffers, and nobody knows where he got that money. The Board concluded that “there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Mills may have omitted or misrepresented required information in his financial disclosure statements,” and investigations allegedly continue.

A real peach, this one. He also likes to brag that his company’s tear gas was used on Black Lives Matter protesters, and their riot bullets on protesters in Hong Kong. He announced his arrival in the House in 2022 by gifting everyone an artisanal grenade.

[T]he guidance urges officers to consider a range of nonviolent behavior and common protest gear—like masks, flashlights, and cameras—as potential precursors to violence, telling officers to prepare “from the point of view of an adversary.”

Protesters on bicycles, skateboards, or even “on foot” are framed as potential “scouts” conducting reconnaissance or searching for “items to be used as weapons.” Livestreaming is listed alongside “doxxing” as a “tactic” for “threatening” police. Online posters are cast as ideological recruiters—or as participants in “surveillance sharing.”

One list of “violent tactics” shared by the Los Angeles–based Joint Regional Intelligence Center—part of a post-9/11 fusion network—includes both protesters’ attempts to avoid identification and efforts to identify police. The memo also alleges that face recognition, normally a tool of law enforcement, was used against officers.

Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, says the government has no business treating constitutionally protected activities—like observing or documenting police—as threats.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

“Exercising those rights shouldn't be justification for adverse action or suspicion by the government,” Eidelman says. Labeling something as harmless as skateboarding at a protest as a violent threat is “disturbing and dangerous,” she adds, and could “easily lead to excessive force against people who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights.”

“The DHS report repeatedly conflates basic protest, organizing, and journalism with terroristic violence, thereby justifying ever more authoritarian measures by law enforcement,” says Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People. “It should be sobering, if unsurprising, that the Trump regime’s response to mass criticism of its police state tactics is to escalate those tactics.”

In a reversal of decades of legal precedent, the Internal Revenue Service said in court filings on July 7 that churches and other religious 501 c(3) organizations can endorse political candidates in certain circumstances.

The new position, which was made in a joint filing intended to end a lawsuit brought by a group of high-profile Christian organizations last year, carves out a narrow exception to the Johnson Amendment, which has banned political activity by churches since 1954.

The rule was introduced by former President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1954 when he was serving as the U.S. Senate Majority Leader. It banned all tax-exempt organizations like churches and charities from “directly or indirectly” participating in politics, specifically in endorsement or opposition of candidates.

The citizen app for anonymously reporting ICE agents and raids went viral after criticism from the U.S. attorney general.

The last round of ranked-choice ballots showed the left-wing candidate winning 56 percent of the votes, to Cuomo’s 44.

Transcript of the video:

If you think that Medicaid cuts will not directly impact you, you are wrong.

Medicaid is the invisible backbone that keeps our entire healthcare industry functioning, working, [and] funded.

Without Medicaid, therapy clinics close, special education staff members are let go, [and] premiums skyrocket. Crowding in hospitals is out of control because patients who were receiving Medicaid services at home end up in hospitals. Wait-lists become unmanageable. And people die.

Basically, the entire healthcare system will go belly-up and we will all feel it.

So, if the fact that 50,000 Americans – many of which will be children – will die [every year] doesn't motivate you to call your Senators, maybe the fact that you will directly feel the impact will?

I don't know; I've tried to film this a thousand times and I cry every time so this is my last take.

Description written by the creator for the video:

You might think this doesn’t affect you because your kid isn’t disabled or your family isn’t on Medicaid but that’s just not how this works.

Medicaid is the invisible backbone of the entire care system. It pays for the speech therapist at your kid’s school. It keeps your neighbor’s medically fragile kid out of the ICU. It funds the home nurses, the therapy clinics, the medical supply companies, and the hospitals. Medicaid keeps systems running for everyone.

Disability isn’t a niche issue. If you live long enough, you’ll either become disabled or love someone who is. This isn’t only a “poor or disabled” issue. It’s everyone’s issue.

Zohran Mamdani's victory over Cuomo in NYC's mayoral primary has sparked a progressive movement demanding change in the Democratic Party. Will this seismic shift lead to more insurgent candidates challenging establishment lawmakers? The time for change is now. #ProgressiveRevolt #Mamdani