Category: News / Information

Some more news items I want to share. These are only small quotes there is much more to each story if you follow the links

Trump’s Attack on ActBlue’s “Dark Money” Was Backed by Elon Musk’s Dark Money

Trump’s Attack on ActBlue’s “Dark Money” Was Backed by Elon Musk’s Dark Money

The billionaire helped fund an effort to gin up fraud claims against the Democratic donation platform.

Trump’s claim that he can order the Justice Department to investigate a fundraising platform used by his political foes based on vague allegations is part of his ongoing effort to use the government’s powers to target political enemies. It’s not a particularly realistic accusation—the fact sheet claims it’s targeting “straw donor” schemes, in which one person donates on behalf of another. Given the fairly strict limitations on campaign contributions, any straw donor scheme that wants to inject any noticeable amount of money into an electoral system that had $15.5 billion run through it is a great deal of tedious, high-risk work for a scammer.

On the other hand, in the post-Citizens United era, there are plenty of ways to inject unaccounted-for money—even, theoretically, foreign money—into the election. Super-PACs can accept unlimited donations from fairly easy-to-obscure sources, for instance, which makes the idea of anyone using a small-dollar conduit like ActBlue (or the GOP equivalent WinRed) fairly silly.

And notably, the funding for some of Trump’s “data” on an alleged ActBlue “fraud” seems to have come from just such a source: a super-PAC bankrolled by Elon Musk.

Last year, an opaque group called the Fair Election Fund began promising to pay “whistleblowers” who cited election fraud “with payment from our $5 million fund.” That never panned out, but the same organization found more success with a claim that 60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July Federal Election Commission report did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.

As Mother Jones reported last year, the Fair Election Fund appears to have generated this finding by blasting out ominous-sounding texts and emails telling ActBlue donors that their donations had been “flagged,” then tallying people who responded—accurately or not—by checking a box saying they did not recall making the contribution.

More at the link above

Israel carrying out ‘live-streamed genocide’ in Gaza, Amnesty says

Amnesty accuses US President Donald Trump of committing a ‘multiplicity of assaults’ on human rights.

Israel is perpetrating a “live-streamed genocide” in Gaza, committing illegal acts with the “specific intent” of wiping out Palestinians, Amnesty International has said.

Israeli forces in Gaza have violated the United Nations Genocide Convention with acts that include “causing serious bodily or mental harm to civilians” and “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction”, the human rights organisation said in its annual report released on Monday.

Israeli air strikes have also frequently hit civilians who were following evacuation orders, while its forces continued to “arbitrarily detain and, in some cases, forcibly disappear Palestinians”, the rights group said.

DOGE has made a big impact on Washington. But government spending is up.

Elon Musk and his shadowy “tech support” team have ripped through Washington, reshaping the government and culling the federal workforce with astonishing speed and scope.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/29/doge-impact-washington-spending-100days-00316587

Nearly a quarter of a million workers have or are expected to leave their federal jobs. That includes more than 112,000 federal workers who have opted into the deferred resignation program, according to a POLITICO analysis of previous reporting and conversations with administration officials. It also includes some 121,000 workers across agencies who have been fired, according to a CNN analysis.

DOGE has hollowed out or shut down 11 federal agencies and says it has terminated more than 8,500 contracts and 10,000 grants. It has wiped out foreign aid and volunteerism in the U.S., slashed education spending and made sweeping changes to the way the government makes procurements, hires contractors and shares data.

DOGE, after promising $2 trillion in savings, now says it has saved the government $160 billion. But even these reported savings, so far, have not led to any meaningful decline in total government spending this year, according to the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, which tracks weekly Treasury data.

In fact, the government has actually been spending more compared to this time last year, the model found.

Total spending rose by 6.3 percent, or $156 billion since Trump took office, compared to the first four months of 2024, said Kent Smetters, a Wharton professor who directs the model. Even when accounting for inflation, the federal government has still added $81.2 billion more spending to its books compared to the same period last year, he added.

Just No.

What Fresh Hell Is This?

May Day, Original Memorial Day, Emancipation Day, “Mission Accomplished” Day, and Much More, all 5/1 in Peace & Justice History

My annual May Day musical offering. Enjoy!

May 1, 1865
Memorial Day was started by former slaves in Charleston, South Carolina to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp.
They dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom.
They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated.
 
More of the story 
May 1, 1886

May Day was called Emancipation Day in 1886 when 340,000 went on strike (though it was Saturday it was a regular day of work) in Chicago for the 8-hour workday.

May 1, 1890
May Day labor demonstrations spread to thirteen other countries; 30,000 marched in Chicago as the newly prominent American Federation of Labor threw its weight behind the 8-hour day campaign. 
More May Day info 
May 1, 1933

Dorothy Day
The Catholic Worker newspaper was founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Dorothy Day said, “God meant things to be much easier than we have made them,” and Peter Maurin wanted to build a society “where it is easier for people to be good.”

Peter Maurin

Read more about the Catholic Worker 
May 1, 1948

Senator Glen Hearst Taylor
Senator Glen Hearst Taylor (D-Idaho) was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, for trying to enter a meeting through a door marked for “Negroes” rather than using the “whites only” door, and convicted of disorderly conduct.
Taylor was the Progressive Party candidate for Vice President, running mate of Henry Wallace. He was in Birmingham to address the Southern Negro Youth Congress.
May 1, 1965
Second Factory for Peace opened in Onllwyn, Dulais Valley, in south Wales, employing disabled miners. Tom McAlpine, active in the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, and a supporter of cooperatives and industrial democracy, established Rowen Engineering in both Wales and Glasgow, Scotland.
May 1, 1966
500,000 Vietnamese marched for an end to the war dividing their country.
May 1, 1967
Soviet youths openly defied police and danced the twist in Moscow’s Red Square during May Day celebrations. In the early ‘60s the Twist had been banned in Buffalo, New York, and Tampa, Florida. The religious right claimed the Twist was actually a pagan fertility dance.

Are you old enough to remember Chubby Checker?
May 1, 1971
Five days of anti-war May Day protests began in Washington, D.C., resulting in over 14,000 arrests—the largest mass civil disobedience in U.S. history.
May 1, 1986
 
One million South Africans demonstrated their opposition to apartheid in a strike organized by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
COSATU: a brief history
May 1, 2003
President George W. Bush landed in a jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast and, in a speech to the nation, declared major combat in Iraq over. The banner his staff posted on the ship read, “Mission Accomplished.”

Since that presidential declaration more than 4500 American and allied troops and nearly 9000 members of Iraqi security and police forces (Jan. 2005 through July 2011) have lost their lives. In addition, tens of thousands (more than 32,000 Americans) injured in the hostilities.
The number of Iraqi civilian deaths is open to dispute, but minimally stands at well over 100,000.
Details of Iraq military casualties
 Civilian casualties 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may1

Two From Werd.io: About An EV, And More

 The $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen

[Tim Stevens at The Verge]

It’s rare these days that I see a new product and think, this is really cool, but seriously, this is really cool:

“Meet the Slate Truck, a sub-$20,000 (after federal incentives) electric vehicle that enters production next year. It only seats two yet has a bed big enough to hold a sheet of plywood. It only does 150 miles on a charge, only comes in gray, and the only way to listen to music while driving is if you bring along your phone and a Bluetooth speaker. It is the bare minimum of what a modern car can be, and yet it’s taken three years of development to get to this point.”

So far, so bland, but it’s designed to be customized. So while it doesn’t itself come with a screen, or, you know, paint, you can add one yourself, wrap it in whatever color you want, and pick from a bunch of aftermarket devices to soup it up. It’s the IBM PC approach to electric vehicles instead of the highly-curated Apple approach. I’m into it, with one caveat: I want to hear more about how safe it is.

It sounds like that might be okay:

“Slate’s head of engineering, Eric Keipper, says they’re targeting a 5-Star Safety Rating from the federal government’s New Car Assessment Program. Slate is also aiming for a Top Safety Pick from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.”

I want more of this. EVs are often twice the price or more, keeping them out of reach of regular people. I’ve driven one for several years, and they’re genuinely better cars: more performant, easier to maintain, with a smaller environmental footprint. Bringing the price down while increasing the number of options feels like an exciting way to shake up the market, and exactly the kind of thing I’d want to buy into.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating – so let’s see what happens when it hits the road next year.

#Technology

[Link]

=====================

 Trump ‘Alarmists’ Were Right. We Should Say So.

[Toby Buckle at LiberalCurrents]

This resonates for me too.

About the Tea Party, the direction the Republican Party took during the Obama administration, and then of Trump first riding down the escalator to announce his candidacy:

“If you saw in any of this a threat to liberal democracy writ large, much less one that could actually succeed, you were looked at with the kind of caution usually reserved for the guy screaming about aliens on the subway.”

And yet, of course, it got a lot worse.

The proposal here is simple:

“I propose we promote a simple rule for these uncertain times: Those who saw the danger coming should be listened to, those who dismissed us should be dismissed. Which is to say that those of us who were right should actively highlight that fact as part of our argument for our perspective. People just starting to pay attention now will not have the bandwidth to parse a dozen frameworks, or work backwards through a decade of bitter tit-for-tat arguments. What they might ask—what would be very sensible and reasonable of them to ask—is who saw this coming?”

Because you could see it coming, and it was even easy to see, if you shook yourself out of a complacent view that America’s institutions were impermeable, that its ideals were real and enduring, and that there was no way to overcome the norms, checks, and balances that had been in place for generations.

What this piece doesn’t quite mention but is also worth talking about: there are communities for whom those norms, checks, and balances have never worked, and they were sounding the alarm more clearly than anyone else. They could see it. Of course they could see it. So it’s not just about listening to leftists and activists and people who have been considered to be on the political fringe, but also people of color, queer communities, and the historically oppressed. They know this all rather well.

#Democracy

[Link]

On The Phone-

Crank Yankers by Clay Jones

Cranking Trump’s Yank Read on Substack

Shedeur Sanders, who played quarterback for the University of Colorado, and his father, Deion Sanders, who is the head coach, was predicted by draft experts to be selected in the first round. Many saw him going to the Saints, who had the ninth pick, and who need not just a quarterback to build the franchise around, but also immediately. The concern for Saints fans, which I’m one of, was that he wouldn’t still be around at number nine.

On Thursday night, the Saints were on the board just as I was in line to get on my plane in Chicago. I was able to see who the Saints selected before my plane took off, and it was Kelvin Banks, an offensive tackle from the University of Texas. It will be his job in the near future to protect the Saints quarterback, who will NOT be Shedeur Sanders.

Then Sanders started falling and was even available to the Saints when their next pick came up, number 40 in the second round. And they did select a quarterback in the second…who was NOT Shedeur Sanders. They selected Tyler Shough from Louisville. The Saints selected four more players before Shedeur was taken in the fifth round by the Cleveland Browns.

During Shedeur’s free fall to the fifth round before the Browns ended his suffering, he got a phone call. He received a call during the second round from someone claiming to be Mickey Loomis, the general manager of the Saints, who said he was about to draft him.

It was a prank call.

Shedeur later said he knew it was a prank because no one is supposed to have his number, but he didn’t know. You see in the video that he’s clearly distressed from it while having a draft party with his friends and family. So, how did the prankster get the number? (snip-MORE)

‘We’re citizens!’: Oklahoma City family traumatized after ICE raids home, but they weren’t suspects

https://kfor.com/news/local/were-citizens-oklahoma-city-family-traumatized-after-ice-raids-home-but-they-werent-suspects/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJ_QL1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFHRjV0Y2EwTnI4R2pqMVI2AR4zcnV54IV6xDFtZ-JOWbTSuWUuEbqjxQ6L9UtKOYQqJcYHbnAMbUUbj-GG_A_aem_BSYWD8eZJzFS9TH_rbpK5g

ICE is a thug unit run by a major thug.   This family was badly mistreated, in some ways brutalized.   I read earlier where the mother said the 20 ICE agents who broke into their home with no warring then wanted the women, one adult and the others teenagers to remove their clothing in front of them to get dressed before being forced outside in the rain.   The report said the mother refused saying even her husband had not seen the children nude and she did not want them to do that in front of these men.  They were ordered in their “underwear” outside in the rain where they were kept for hours.   Is this the government / police any way people should be treated by law enforcement in the US.  They so disrespected this family sure in the fact they were correct with no room for any doubt.  They had no empathy, no common sense.  In the time I was an axillary sheriff’s deputy we were trained never to act like that.  We were taught to respect the rights of people but be aware they might be lying and the danger of the situation.   Respect the rights of the people.  All people on US soil, in the country regardless of status have due process rights.   The right wing haters want to tell you that if you are here illegally you have no rights but SCOTUS has repeatedly said every person here does.  Hugs  

As for Marissa’s phones, electronics, and cash, they have no idea which agency has those belongings or how to get those items back.  

by: 

Posted: 

Updated: 

Update: 4.30.25

At this time, there is not a fundraising campaign set up for the family. KFOR will share any details if that happens.

Original:

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A woman says her family’s fresh start in Oklahoma turned into a nightmare after federal immigration agents raided their home, taking their phones, laptops, and life savings – even though they were not the suspects the agents were looking for.

The agents had a search warrant for the home, but the suspects listed on the warrant do not live in the house.

The woman who actually lives in the house had just moved to Oklahoma City from Maryland with her family about two weeks earlier.

The woman, who News 4 will refer to as “Marisa”, and her three daughters came to Oklahoma looking for a slower, more affordable pace of life.

They rented a house in a seemingly safe northwest Oklahoma City neighborhood.

Her husband stayed back in Maryland a couple of extra weeks, planning to join them this weekend.

“I was like, ‘okay, Oklahoma’s my home now,’” Marisa said.

But any comfort they had disappeared Thursday morning when about 20 men, armed with guns, busted through the door.

“I don’t know who they were,” she said. “It was dark. All the lights were off.”

Marisa said the men identified themselves as federal agents with the U.S. Marshals, ICE, and the FBI.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service denied having agents present during the raid, telling News 4 they were “aware of the operation before it happened,” but did not assist in any capacity.

“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”

She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.

“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”

Marisa said the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.

She recognized them as names listed on mail still arriving at the house—likely former residents.

“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”

She said the agents didn’t care.

“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” she said. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”

Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”

“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”

Before they left, Marisa said one of the agents made a comment.

“One of them said, ‘I know it was a little rough this morning,’” she said. “It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was a little rough? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow.”

Now, Marisa said they have, quite literally, nothing.

“I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months,” she said.

Marisa said she is left with nothing but questions.

“What if I would have been armed,” she said. “You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces. Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women? A little bit of mercy. Care a little bit about your fellow human, about your fellow citizen, fellow resident. We bleed too. We work. We bleed just like anybody else bleeds. We’re scared. You could see our faces that we were terrified. What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? What makes you so much more worthier of protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety? Of being given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?”

Marisa told News 4 the agents wouldn’t even leave her a business card.

She said she has no idea who to contact to get her things back.

Marissa told KFOR the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the FBI were involved in this raid.

However, a representative for the U.S. Marshal’s Service says their team was not involved.

News 4 reached out to the FBI. Last week, a spokesperson said they were assisting on this case and directed inquiries to Homeland Security.

A spokesperson for Homeland Security told News 4 they are looking into it and will get back to us, but we have not heard from them.

As for Marissa’s phones, electronics, and cash, they have no idea which agency has those belongings or how to get those items back.

 

“Open Windows” and Clay Jones

Slapshot by Clay Jones

That ship’s gonna sink Read on Substack

If they weren’t so pathetic, you might could possibly be sad for some MAGAts. Take Juanita Broaddrick as an example, whose entire national profile is built upon debunked claims she was raped by Bill Clinton in the 1970s and who is now a full-fledged lying MAGAt.

After Canada’s Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre distanced himself from Donald Trump, Broaddrick claimed he would lose the election because Canada loved Trump so much, which didn’t make any sense.

If Canadians loved Trump so much, then why did they just elect Liberal Mark Carney to become their new Prime Minister? That’s like denying Trump’s current favorability numbers. They suck.

There’s also the fact that Trump lost this election for the Conservatives. The Conservatives were ahead by double digits when Trump entered office last January, then he started barking at Canada, waged a tariff war, and repeatedly insulted them by claiming they should be America’s 51st state.

If Donald Trump had kept his mouth shut and had waited at least 100 days for his stupid tariff war, Poilievre would be Prime Minister today.

Yesterday, thanks to Donald Trump, Canadian Liberals won. Trump is now internationally toxic. Everything Trump touches…dies. Super Bowl champion running back Sequon Barkley played golf with Trump a few days ago, and now I expect his knees to give out during the preseason. Trump is poison. I would tell you to ask Elon, but he hasn’t figured it out yet.

Pierre didn’t just lose his race for Prime Minister, he also lost his seat in parliament. (snip-MORE)

A four-year old cancer patient deported by Ann Telnaes

The boy and his sister, both U.S. citizens, were deported to Honduras with their undocumented mother Read on Substack

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/4/28/us_citizen_children_expelled_from_country

LGBTQ+ news

Poland finally repealed the country’s last “LGBT-free” zone

The zones backfired, drawing widespread condemnation and economic consequences for the east European country.

Ten years after the far-right Law and Justice Party was elected to power in Poland, and two years after their defeat in national elections, a last vestige of the party’s state-sanctioned anti-LGBTQ+ policies has finally been eliminated.

On Thursday, a council in the southeastern Polish town of Łańcut officially abolished the country’s last remaining ‘LGBT-free’ resolution.

UK

Gay, lesbian and bi people at greater risk of self-harm and suicide, new figures show

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/04/10/suicide-ideation-gay-lesbian-bisexual/

Gay, lesbian and bisexual people are twice as likely as their straight peers to attempt suicide or have thoughts of taking their own life, new figures have revealed.

Requests to remove books from library shelves are on the rise in the UK, as the influence of pressure groups behind book bans in the US crosses the Atlantic, according to those working in the sector.

Most of the UK challenges appear to come from individuals or small groups, unlike in the US, where 72% of demands to censor books last year were brought forward by organised groups, according to the American Library Association earlier this week.

However, evidence suggests that the work of US action groups is reaching UK libraries too. Alison Hicks, an associate professor in library and information studies at UCL, interviewed 10 UK-based school librarians who had experienced book challenges. One “spoke of finding propaganda from one of these groups left on her desk”, while another “was directly targeted by one of these groups”. Respondents “also spoke of being trolled by US pressure groups on social media, for example when responding to free book giveaways”.

The types of books targeted may also differ. “Almost all the UK attacks reported in my study centred on LGBTQ+ materials, while US attacks appear to target material related to race, ethnicity and social justice as well as LGBTQ+ issues,” said Hicks.

This supports the findings of an Index on Censorship survey last year, in which 28 of 53 librarians polled reported that they had been asked to remove books from library shelves, many of which were LGBTQ+ titles. In more than half of those cases, books were taken off shelves.

Tennessee county sued for banning books without even reading them

They’re accused of just using an anti-LGBTQ+ organization’s book ban list to deny students access to tomes like Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.”

The plaintiffs in this case are three families, who wish to remain anonymous, of two freshmen and a senior who will attend a Rutherford County school next year. Joining in on the lawsuit is PEN America, a nonprofit freedom of expression advocacy group for writers. Thirty-two writers in the organization have seen 53 of their books included in the ban.

Trump DOJ Ordered ICE to Invade Homes Without Search Warrant

The Justice Department quietly authorized immigration agents to seize power in arresting people under the Alien Enemies Act—no warrant required.

https://newrepublic.com/post/194440/donald-trump-restores-foreign-students-visas-legal-losses

The Justice Department quietly invoked the Alien Enemies act last month to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents the power to conduct warrantless searches of people’s homes as long as they suspect them to be an “alien enemy.” USA Today obtained the memo that contained this order on Friday.

In the memo, the Justice Department defined an “alien enemy” as anyone who is 14 years of age or older, not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, a citizen of Venezuela, and “a member of the hostile enemy Tren de Aragua,” per the Alien Enemy Validation Guide, a document that has already been slammed by immigration experts.

The broad definition has already resulted in the apprehension and deportation of more than 200 men to El Salvador who just happened to have tattoos, like gay makeup artist Andry José Hernández Romero.

This type of order will likely lead to more indiscriminate arrests and wanton racial profiling. The memo, which is from March 14, is another massive departure from the U.S. immigration norms.

White House Confirms Trump Is Exploring Ways To ‘Deport’ U.S. Citizens

The administration could try removing American citizens if it identifies a pathway it can claim to be legal.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is exploring legal pathways to “deport” U.S. citizens to El Salvador, where the administration has already arranged to house deported immigrants in a prison known for its human rights abuses. (Watch the video, above.)

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that he “love[s]” the idea of removing U.S. citizens, adding that it would be an “honor” to send them to El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele — an eager partner in Trump’s schemes.

“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump wrote. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

Shocking report reveals HIV deaths will explode due to Trump’s foreign aid cuts

Nearly 500,000 children could die from AIDS by 2030 without PEPFAR funding.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/04/shocking-report-reveals-hiv-deaths-will-explode-due-to-trumps-foreign-aid-cuts/

Nearly half a million children could die from AIDS-related causes by 2030 without restoration of PEPFAR programs cut by the Trump administration, a new study published in the Lancet reveals.

The new health policy analysis estimates that one million children could become infected with HIV and nearly half a million could die from AIDS by 2030. Additionally, 2.8 million children could experience orphanhood in sub-Saharan Africa (because their parents died from preventable HIV-related illnesses) if the PEPFAR funding isn’t restored.

A study released by UNAIDS in March showed an uptick in new HIV infections has already started as local HIV prevention programs funded by PEPFAR have been thrown into chaos.

Men who have sex with men, girls, and young women between the ages of 15 and 24 not pregnant or breastfeeding, and sex workers and people who inject drugs “can not” be offered PrEP during the pause or “until further notice,” Trump administration officials wrote.

 

For Now-

3 Federal Judges Stop Trump’s Relentless Attack on Racial Justice in Public Schools, for Now

You won’t believe this stuff, but they are doing it

Mob of Orthodox Jewish men chases woman after protest at Brooklyn synagogue

Woman, who requested anonymity, says ‘a group of 100 men’ followed her, shouting threats and kicking her

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/28/mob-orthodox-jewish-men-chases-woman?CMP=share_btn_url

“They were shouting at me, threatening to rape me, chanting ‘death to Arabs’. I thought the police would protect me from the mob, but they did nothing to intervene,” she said.

At one point, she and the police officer were nearly cornered against a building, the video shows. “I felt sheer terror,” the woman recalled. “I realized at that point that I couldn’t lead this mob of men to my home. I had nowhere to go. I didn’t know what to do. I was just terrified.”

After several blocks, the officer hustled the woman into a police vehicle, prompting one man to yell, “Get her!” The crowd erupted in cheers as she was driven away.

Elon Musk’s Doge conflicts of interest worth $2.37bn, Senate report says

Committee calls figure a ‘conservative estimate’ and warns Musk may seek to use his influence to avoid legal liability

“While the $2.37 billion figure represents a credible, conservative estimate, it drastically understates the true benefit Mr Musk may gain from legal risk avoidance alone as a result of his position in government,” the report states.

UPDATED: Super Hornet Assigned to USS Harry S. Truman Lost at Sea

UPDATED: Super Hornet Assigned to USS Harry S. Truman Lost at Sea

The single-seat Super Hornet assigned to the “Knighthawks” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 136, “was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard,” reads the statement.
“Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard. An investigation is underway.”

DOGE employees gain accounts on classified networks holding nuclear secrets

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/28/nx-s1-5378684/doge-energy-department-nuclear-secrets-access

Two members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency were given accounts on classified networks that hold highly guarded details about America’s nuclear weapons, two sources tell NPR.

Luke Farritor, a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern, and Adam Ramada, a Miami-based venture capitalist, have had accounts on the computer systems for at least two weeks, according to the sources who also have access to the networks. Prior to their work at DOGE, neither Farritor nor Ramada appear to have had experience with either nuclear weapons or handling classified information.

Karoline Leavitt Boasts Trump Wouldn’t Hesitate to Arrest SCOTUS Justices

https://www.thedailybeast.com/wh-press-sec-suggests-doj-could-arrest-supreme-court-justices/

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested the Trump administration would consider arresting high-ranking judges—including Supreme Court justices—at a press briefing Monday.

“As you guys look at other judges, would you ever arrest somebody higher up on the judicial food chain, like a federal judge or even a Supreme Court justice?” Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked.

Leavitt said no judge is safe from the administration’s crackdown on the judiciary.

Trump: ‘I run the country and the world’

Trump: ‘I run the country and the world’

“The first time, I had two things to do — run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,” Trump said in the interview published Monday. “And the second time, I run the country and the world.”

Johnson says it’s ‘game time’ as House committees draft first piece of Trump agenda

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/28/politics/house-gop-johnson-trump-agenda/index.html

The $150 billion in defense programs includes $25 billion for Trump’s “Golden Dome” for missile defense, $34 billion in ship building and more than $20 billion in munitions purchases. The House Armed Services Committee plans to begin voting on Tuesday on this aspect of the bill.

On border security, the House Homeland Security Committee proposes $46.5 billion for new border barriers, $5 billion for new Customs and Border Protection facilities and $4 billion for new Customs officials and border personnel.

The committee proposes several billion dollars more in new technology to tighten security measures at the border and also includes $1 billion for security and planning for the 2028 Olympics, as well as $625 million for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Rev. William Barber arrested in Capitol Rotunda after praying against Republican-led budget

Reached for comment, a Capitol police spokesperson said Barber and two others were charged with “crowding, obstructing and incommoding,” explaining demonstrations in congressional buildings are “not allowed in any form, to include but not limited to sitting, kneeling, group praying, singing, chanting, etc.”

Some quickly argued that Barber’s arrest appeared incongruous with President Donald Trump’s efforts to eliminate “anti-Christian bias” in federal agencies.

“Arresting Rev. Barber and others at the Capitol after announcing a task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias in government is an absolute travesty,” Anthea Butler, a professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a text message. “Seems like this administration only wants Christians who are supporters of Trump to have access to pray in the Capitol and express their faith.”