To kick off this thread (I know, a day late from Friday, but here it is ... :) )
I proffer as the thread link ... 4 Non-Blondes - What's Up
During his address Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), President Donald Trump predicted that the Republican Party will perform "fantastically well" in the 2026 midterm elections, defying the historical trend of the current president's party losing congressional seats.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week as part of billionaire Elon Musk's crusade to slash what he describes as "waste everywhere" in the federal government. Musk, who serves as President Donald Trump's cost-cutting chief, teased the extraordinary request on his social media network on Saturday. "Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week," Musk posted on X, which he owns. "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered his nation's greatest April Fool's Joke six years ago. Ottawa implemented a federal carbon tax on April 1, 2019, as part of a nationwide effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by slapping a price on carbon pollution. Now, data has confirmed the program neither reduced the nation's emissions nor helped the Canadian people. Will the rest of the world learn from Canada and put the kibosh on this climate policy?
A federal scholarship aimed at boosting students from underserved and rural areas attending historically Black colleges and universities has been put on hold. The U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended the 1890 Scholars Program, which provided recipients with full tuition and fees for students studying agriculture, food or natural resource sciences at one of 19 universities, known as the 1890 land grant institutions. It's not clear exactly when the program was suspended, but some members of Congress first issued statements criticizing the suspension of the program on Thursday. A message seeking more detail was left Saturday with the Department of Agriculture. Read more
A police officer was killed and a gunman died in a shootout at a central Pennsylvania hospital Saturday, according to officials. West York Borough police announced that Officer Andrew Duarte died while responding to a 10:43 a.m. call about an active threat at UPMC Hospital in York, PA. No patients were injured during the shooting, and the five-story, 104-bed hospital has been secured, according to a statement by Pennsylvania State Police. It's unclear if there were any other injuries. "At this time, the shooter is deceased and there is no danger to the public. The hospital is secured," police said. Read more
Feb 21, 2025
We are seeing, right now, one specific prophecy come true before our very eyes. And it keeps coming true, over and over again on a daily basis. The prophecy I'm referring to is in Daniel 11:36, and it tells us how "the king will do according to his will."
Bernie Sanders: What we are fighting for is not utopian' or unachievable. Trumpism can and must be defeated.
One person has been killed and several police officers injured in a knife attack in France that President Emmanuel Macron has described as "Islamist terrorism". A man shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest") launched the attack at a packed market in the eastern city of Mulhouse on Saturday afternoon, France's anti-terrorism prosecutor's office said. A 37-year-old Algerian man was arrested, according to the prosecutors' office, which is investigating the stabbings. The suspect had been on a list of people flagged for radicalism, the regional prosecutor said. The victim was a 69-year-old Portuguese man, prosecutors revealed. Mr Macron branded the knifeman "an Islamic extremist", saying: "It is without any doubt an act of Islamist terrorism." The government had "complete determination" to respond to the attack, he said, and also expressed "the solidarity of the nation" with those attacked and their loved ones.
Public health teams are being gutted, imperiling efforts to safeguard organ donation and prevent maternal and infant death. Many workers expressed fear at what would happen to the work they left behind.
Just days after anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the country's top health official, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already pulled back some of its efforts to protect Americans with safe, lifesaving vaccines. The agency has indefinitely postponed a public meeting of its vaccine advisory committee and killed a campaign promoting seasonal flu shots.
Elon Musk has publicly accused Congressman Adam Schiff of being a criminal in a social media post. The accusation followed a heated exchange between Schiff and new FBI director Kash Patel, with both sides criticizing each other's integrity and actions, particularly related to Trump's impeachment. Read more
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers's office introduced a bill on Friday afternoon that would change the way a Wisconsin state law addresses biological women and men. According to the bill known as 2025 Senate Bill 45, which was first reported on by conservative radio host Dan O'Donnell, Section 3106 contains numerous examples of terms such as wife, husband, mother, and father being crossed out and removed in favor of terms like spouse, person, and even inseminated person. The bill pertains to "state finances and appropriations, constituting the executive budget act of the 2025 legislature," and the request for the language changes to be made isn't introduced until pages 1,766 and 1,767. Read more
After the pandemic was declared in March 2020, the Federal Government granted Medicare the flexibility to greatly expand coverage of telehealth services on an emergency basis. The following December, Medicare coverage of mental telehealth services was permanently expanded. Medicare's flexibility for covering other health and medical services via telehealth has since been repeatedly extended, but the last of those extensions is effective only through March 31, 2025.
Many farmers made investments based on Agriculture Department funding that the Trump administration has put on hold. Some are in financial peril. Farmers across the U.S. are struggling to make critical decisions ahead of the spring thaw, as billions of dollars in promised federal payments remain frozen by the Trump administration.
At least three people have died and 79 others are injured after a roof at a shopping mall collapsed in Trujillo, Peru, according to reports. Read more
