United States | News & Politics

Crossposted from https://kbin.melroy.org/m/nyt/_gift/_articles@sopuli.xyz/t/1373324

Today, on Black Friday, many Gen Z shoppers won’t be scouring luxury stores or big-box aisles for their gifts. Instead, they are turning to thrift stores, consignment shops and resale apps. About 86 percent of Gen Z-ers say they’re more likely to purchase a secondhand holiday gift this year than they would have been, according to a report from eBay.

Rather than be critical or perhaps stay silent, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, welcomed the pardon and engaged in shameful pandering, apparently to maintain Mr. Cuellar’s party loyalty. Most disturbingly, Mr. Jeffries did so by attacking the legitimacy of the criminal case against Mr. Cuellar, publicly dismissing the indictment against him as “very thin.”

Rural departments have long relied on cheap software solutions to keep their operations running. But fire chiefs report sharp price increases as investors have entered the market.

Yes, people, including children, are being disappeared to concentration camps but the real victims are the white suburban moms privileged enough to offload their snot nosed brats to other people now being forced to take care of their spawn themselves. Those are the people we should feel bad for, surely.

Osman said armed ICE agents went to East African restaurants in the neighborhood Tuesday, closed the doors and demanded people's IDs. They found only U.S. citizens and made no arrests, Osman said.

In short, they're harassing people based on what kind of cuisine they have a hankering for

An investigation by ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education reveals how the U.S. government ignored due process to gin up its attack on the University of California.

The 911 operator couldn’t send an ambulance because it was already responding to another call from ICE’s Stewart Detention Center.

Exclusive: Congress members seek answers after Guardian revealed data to be shared for immigration enforcement

Solar power accounts for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid. Utah Republicans’ hard turn against solar mirrors President Donald Trump’s hostile approach to the industry.

December 3, 2025

On a chilly evening in mid-November, about 135 people gathered along a highway in Boone, North Carolina, a small Appalachian college town not known as a hotbed of leftist protest. They held signs reading “Nazis were just following orders too” and “Time to melt the ICE,” and chanted profane rebukes at Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rumored to be in the area. “They came here thinking they wouldn’t be bothered,” one Appalachian State University student told The Appalachian at the impromptu rally. “Boone is a small, southern, white, mountain town. We need to let them know they’ll be bothered anywhere they go.” In a region often stereotyped as silently conservative, this flash of defiance was a startling sign that the battle line

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47161025

Archived

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Within China, this technology helped identify and punish almost 900,000 officials last year alone, nearly five times more than in 2012, according to state numbers. Beijing says it is cracking down on corruption, but critics charge that such technology is used in China and elsewhere to stifle dissent and exact retribution on perceived enemies.

Outside China, the same technology is being used to threaten wayward officials, along with dissidents and alleged criminals, under what authorities call Operations “Fox Hunt” and “Sky Net.” The U.S. has criticized these overseas operations as a “threat” and an “affront to national sovereignty.” More than 14,000 people, including some 3,000 officials, have been brought back to China from more than 120 countries through coercion, arrests and pressure on relatives, according to state information.

“They’re actively pursuing those people who fled China. … as a way to demonstrate power, to show there’s no way you can escape,” said Yaqiu Wang, a fellow at the University of Chicago. “The chilling effect is enormously effective.”

[...]

Li [the Chinese dissident now living in the U.S.] drew ire because as a former official, he knew well and exposed the inner workings of local politics, including naming names. While in the U.S., he also started what he called the Chinese Tyrannical Officials Whistleblower Center.

“China places enormous emphasis on the political discipline of even former officials and (Communist) Party members,” said Jeremy Daum, Senior Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. “So when one becomes a vocal critic of the country’s leadership, it doesn’t go over well.”

At a pro-democracy gathering in California in 2020, Li said, he was tailed and questioned by a stranger who knew his identity. That November, an activist secretly working for Beijing asked Li to a meeting and added him to a dissident group chat monitored by China’s police, a 2025 FBI indictment later revealed. In June, an FBI letter identified Li as the possible victim of a crime involving an unregistered Chinese agent.

[...]

Li’s future in the U.S. is unclear. The Trump administration has paused all asylum applications. If he doesn’t return, he could face trial in absentia; if convicted and deported, he could face life in prison.

“Electronic surveillance is the arteries for China to project power into the world ... each step that every one of your relatives takes is being monitored and analyzed with big data,” Li said. “It’s absolutely terrifying.”

[...]

Beijing tapped phones, seized assets and installed cameras outside the homes of friends and family. Some detained were denied surgery or other medical care, even those recovering from heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses. Li’s aunt was released from a hospital in a vegetative state with bruises on her head and all over her body. Even the Li family grave was dug up.

[...]

Li’s friend, Kong, was sentenced to over a decade in prison for allegedly taking bribes. The party claimed he had watched porn and ignored his work, which they blamed for the spread of COVID in his district. Furious, Li kept speaking out.

[...]

In February 2021, Li learned the Chinese government had asked Interpol to issue a Red Notice declaring to police worldwide that Li was a wanted man. Interpol retracted the Red Notice after Li filed a complaint.

Li began donning masks and hats in public and carrying multiple phones, wary of surveillance. He floated from safe house to safe house with Christians across the United States.

[...]

Li is now cut off from friends and family, denied legal assistance and clueless even to the details of the charges against him. So he is once again resorting to speaking out — this time on YouTube.

Li acknowledges the situation seems hopeless. But he’s pressing on.

“Why am I speaking up?” he said. “Today, it’s me. Tomorrow, it might be you.”

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 312-112 on Wednesday night to pass the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, with 18 Republicans and 94 Democrats voting against it.

The bill, which is now bound for the Senate and which authorizes more than $900 billion, includes “critical pro-Israel provisions,” according to AIPAC.

https://archive.ph/n9ruW

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7003237

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/12825

Visiting the US as a tourist could soon become significantly more onerous under a new plan being mulled by the Trump administration.

According to a Tuesday report in the New York Times, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) this week filed a new proposal that would force visitors to submit up to five years' worth of social media posts for inspection before being allowed to enter the country.

In addition to social media history, CPB says it plans to ask prospective tourists to provide them with email addresses they've used over the last decade, as well as "the names, birth dates, places of residence, and birthplaces of parents, spouses, siblings, and children."

The policy would apply even to citizens of countries that have long been US allies, including the UK, Germany, Australia, and Japan, which have long been exempt from visa requirements.

Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Times that the CBP policy would "exacerbate civil liberties harms."

Cope added that such policies have "not proven effective at finding terrorists and other bad guys" but have instead "chilled the free speech and invaded the privacy of innocent travelers, along with that of their American family, friends and colleagues."

Journalist Bethany Allen, head of China investigations at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, expressed shock that the US would take such drastic measures to scrutinize the social media posts of tourists.

"Wow," she wrote in a post on X, "even China doesn't do this."

In addition to concerns about civil liberties violations, there are also worries about what the new policy would do to the US tourism industry.

The Times noted in its report that several tourism-dependent businesses last month signed a letter opposing an administration proposal to collect a $250 "visa integrity fee," and one travel industry official told the paper that the CBP's new proposal appears to be "a significant escalation in traveler vetting."

The American tourism industry has already taken a blow during President Donald Trump's second term, even without a policy of forcing tourists to share their social media history.

A report released on Wednesday from Democrats on the Senate's Joint Economic Committee (JEC) found that US businesses that have long depended on tourism from Canada to stay afloat have been getting hit hard, as Canadian tourists stay away in protest of Trump's trade war against their country.

Overall, the report found that "the number of passenger vehicles crossing the US-Canada border declined by nearly 20% compared to the same time period in 2024, with some states seeing declines as large as 27%."

Elizabeth Guerin, owner of New Hampshire-based gift shop Fiddleheads, told the JEC that Canadians used to make up to a quarter of her custom base, but now "I can probably count the number of Canadian visitors on one hand."

Christa Bowdish, owner of the Vermont-based Old Stagecoach Inn, told the JEC that she feared a long-term loss in Canadian customers, even if Trump ended his feud with the nation tomorrow.

"This is long-lasting damage to a relationship and emotional damage takes time to heal," she said. "While people aren’t visiting Vermont, they’ll be finding new places to visit, making new memories, building new family traditions, and we will not recapture all of that."

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