United States | News & Politics

In a remote corner of North America, salmon and mining companies are vying for new territory.

The Tulsequah Glacier meanders down a broad valley in northwest British Columbia, 7 miles from the Alaska border. At the foot of the glacier sits a silty, gray lake, a reservoir of glacial runoff. The lake is vast, deeper than Seattle’s Space Needle is tall. But it didn’t exist a few decades ago, before 2 miles of ice had melted.

archived (Wayback Machine)

I’ve obtained the alleged manifesto written by Elias Rodriguez, suspect in the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, DC on Wednesday.

I believe the document to be authentic for several reasons, including the fact that it is signed by Rodriguez and timestamped well before he was named by law enforcement or any media. I am publishing it here not to glorify the violence — which I find abhorrent and condemn — but so the public can better understand the truth of what happened.

Refusing to confront the content of these texts often creates an information vacuum that is quickly filled by hoax documents, conspiracy theories, or selective leaks from authorities that can distort the facts. I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, especially when politics is involved, as the document makes clear is the case here.

Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela A. Smith identified Rodriguez as a 30-year-old man from Chicago who she said shouted “Free, free Palestine!” at the scene. The manifesto echoes this message, citing the war in Gaza as its central grievance and framing the killings as an act of political protest. 

Below is the document in full.

Records show well-timed trades by executive branch employees and congressional aides. Even if they had no insider information, ethics experts say such trading undermines faith in government and the markets.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to shut down the Education Department and ordered the agency to reinstate employees who were fired in mass layoffs. It marks a setback to one of Trump’s campaign promises.

A federal judge in Massachusetts said Wednesday that the Trump administration was “unquestionably in violation of this court’s order” when it tried to deport eight detainees to South Sudan on Tuesday, because the men didn’t get an opportunity to challenge their removal to that country or any other third-country destination.

US District Judge Brian E. Murphy Found that, in violation of his April 18 order in a class action case, the feds hustled the men onto a deportation flight without due process, ignoring his order that anyone being deported to somewhere other than their home country must be informed of their destination and have the chance to say they fear being tortured or killed if sent there, as if the feds care about that, because as DHS spokescreep Tricia McLaughlin repeatedly said in a presser yesterday, the men were all “monsters,” and you don’t allow due process for monsters, do you?

Here’s video of that presser, which you should not watch if fascism makes you hurl. Note that McLaughlin and other DHS officials repeatedly lie about Judge Murphy, accusing him of wanting to return all the monsters because he loves monsters, when in fact Murphy made clear that the US can deport people, but only if it follows the goddamn Constitution.

Let’s be clear: Unlike the people Trump has disappeared to El Salvador under the phony pretext that they’re enemy combatants in our war with gangs, these were all people who were convicted of serious crimes in the US and completed their prison sentences. They might, as the government claims, be a danger to the public if released, but nobody is arguing they be released.

It’s normal for DHS to deport immigrant crimers after they finish their sentences, but in the case of these detainees, their home countries refused to accept them back. In such cases, it’s also legal to deport people who have standing deportation orders to a third country that agrees to take them. That’s all allowed as long as the deportees have due process, which they have had up until this week.

But the Trump administration is in a hurry, so the Constitution be damned, which is why this is happening, not because Murphy has a soft spot for crimers.

Much of Wednesday’s hearing took place under seal, since the government contends that the details of the deportations, including the country that agreed to take the men, are classified. But after hearing testimony from both sides in private, Murphy explained why the deportation flight wasn’t legal.

Instead of receiving adequate notice of their removal, the detainees, who were imprisoned in Texas, were only notified of their pending removal sometime Monday evening after the close of business hours, then driven to the airport at 9:30 local time Tuesday morning and loaded onto a chartered plane, giving them no time to actually contact an attorney or family members.

fascism in progress

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case involving religious rights in American education.

The 4-4 ruling left intact a lower court's decision that blocked the establishment of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The lower court found that the proposed school would violate the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment limits on government involvement in religion.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the Oklahoma case. Barrett is a former professor at Notre Dame Law School, which represents the school's organizers.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/30067678

... the Big Ugly Bill is enacted with the following provision, now hidden in the bill:

“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued….”

Translated: No federal court may enforce a contempt citation.

The CBO has estimated at least 15 million people would lose health care coverage due to the bill’s cuts to Medicaid.

Those in the USA can call their senators about it.

archived (Wayback Machine)

The bill has not yet passed the Senate, so those in the USA can still call their senators about it.

archived (Wayback Machine)

After Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win, an anthropologist set out across the U.S. to understand the nation’s deepening divides. In the new book Something Between Us, he grapples with these rifts and how to repair them.

The 67-page report, “‘The Strategy Is to Break Us’: The US Expulsion of Third-Country Nationals to Costa Rica,” documents the US expulsions, which came after the US government held migrants and asylum seekers in abusive detention conditions – sometimes for weeks on end – while denying them due process and the right to seek asylum. The report also details Costa Rica’s months-long arbitrary detention of third-country nationals expelled from the US, as well as the mixed messages the Costa Rican government has given those third-country nationals.

archived (Wayback Machine)

A new book documents the fight against Atlanta’s Cop City — and provides a blueprint for organizers everywhere.

“The reason I use the word ‘murder’ is because they know that it’s going to cause death,” Barber says.

New analysis by MIT Technology Review reveals AI's rapidly growing energy demands, with data centers expected to triple their share of US electricity consumption from 4.4% to 12% by 2028. According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projections, AI alone could soon consume electricity equivalent to 22% of all US households annually, driven primarily by inference operations that represent 80-90% of AI's computing power.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the project could cost as much as $831 billion over the next 20 years.