Analysis: On the eve of the 2022 midterms, Republicans had everything a party out of power could ask for. Democratic President Joe Biden's approval was deep underwater. Inflation was at a 40-year high. The disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal was fresh in voters' minds. Pollsters and pundits predicted a red wave.
The Trump administration is moving to force every federal employee in the country to sign a nondisclosure agreement " a sweeping crackdown on leaks that critics say could silence government workers for good. But for Donald Trump, silencing people with NDAs is nothing new. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management posted a draft notice Tuesday that would bar federal workers from sharing a wide array of "non-public, confidential, or proprietary information" or "any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material" not already available to the public. The rule goes well beyond typical classified and unclassified designations.
Former Waco attorney Adam Hoffman, who became the poster child for injustice and lax prosecution in the Texas U.S. Senate campaign, was released from the McLennan County Jail Monday morning after serving 29 days of his 60-day sentence. Hoffman, 49, who initially faced up to life in prison without parole, pleaded guilty April 16 to reduced charges of indecent assault and displaying harmful materials to a minor, both Class A misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in jail, in a plea bargain offered by the Texas Attorney General's Office. When asked about how the story of his plea agreement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office after his first trial ended in a mistrial has become national news and the forefront of U.S. Sen. John Cornyn's campaign against Paxton, Hoffman said again he just wants to go home.
This story touches base on the tension between dreams, sacrifice, and leadership within the Black community, focusing on the NAACP's call for Black student-athletes to boycott major southern PWIs and what that demand means for younger generations...
A panel of federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama's effort to use a new voting map for the November midterm elections, saying that the districts discriminated against Black people and could not be used so shortly before a vote. The state is likely to appeal the decision directly to the Supreme Court, which last month ruled that a Louisiana congressional map drawn to create two majority-Black House districts was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Judges and grand juries have increasingly lost faith in the Justice Department as the president uses it to reward his friends and go after his opponents.
No one yet knows the details of the Iran deal that President Trump has been teasing on social media for the past day or so. The president himself has admonished his followers not to "listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about." But as this war stumbles to a close, it is clear that the president, too, is lost: He didn't know what he was doing when he began it, and now he doesn't know how to get out of it. Read more
There are new claims that the US has the remains of four separate species of alien life reported by Dr. Hal Puthoff, a CIA-funded researcher and former Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program advisor. Read more
With Memorial Day soon upon us, here is an article of interest with potential historic significance. The Catholic Church has begun investigating claims of miracles tied to Medal of Honor Awardee Rev. Emil J. Kapaun, a US Army Chaplain who died in an enemy POW camp during the Korean War. This is part of the Vatican's formal process for determining sainthood, including medically unexpected recoveries that many Catholics attribute to his intercession.
Medal of Honor Awardee and Potential Saint
The Trump administration has prohibited researchers at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases from communicating with the WHO. The restriction was placed during the hantavirus outbreak and the unfolding Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Moreover, the CDC has quietly removed information from their webpage offering explicit safer-sex and harm reduction guidance for mpox (monkeypox) despite a court ruling.
CDC mpox reduction page removedDr. Demetre Daskalakis, a former top CDC leader: "This is in effect high public health treason."
A phone company launched by Donald Trump's family business is investigating a potential security flaw on its website that appears to have exposed the personal details of an estimated 27,000 people who sought to buy a gold-coloured smartphone. Trump Mobile said in a statement that it was investigating the issue " "with the assistance of independent cybersecurity professionals" " in which the full names, addresses and phone numbers of people who filled out preorder forms appeared to be exposed.
A MAGA super fan who helped boost Donald Trump's runs for office now says he needs to be booted from the White House before he tips the country into total ruin.
"At this point Trump is no longer just a global novelty. He's no longer simply an embarrassment," Breck Worsham, a right-wing activist and influencer who styles herself as an independent journalist, posted on X late Sunday night.
"He's a threat to the country he was elected to represent," she went on.
"He is, at best, a narcissist and at worst a sociopath. Either way, he's out of control and poses a direct threat to this country."
Russia has threatened to launch a fresh wave of "systematic strikes" against Kyiv, days after carrying out one of its largest attacks on the Ukrainian capital since the start of the war.
Russia has launched several waves of deadly missile and drone attacks on Kyiv since a brief ceasefire, that coincided with Moscow's annual Victory Day parade, expired earlier in May.
Shortly after that, Russian strikes on Kyiv killed 24 people, including three children, in a block of flats.
- it might be a fundamental feature of reality itself, more like gravity than like a thought " and one of the most credentialed neuroscientists alive is now arguing that mainstream science has been wrong about it for a century Read more
President Donald Trump demanded that much of the Arab world join the Abraham Accords " a peace agreement between Israel and several Muslim-majority nations brokered by the United States " immediately in a lengthy Monday morning Truth Social post. "Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are proceeding nicely! It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all " Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before " And nobody wants that!"
In an October episode of his podcast, Rogan interviewed two octogenarian fringe climate contrarians, Richard Lindzen and William Happer, who together have been spreading climate misinformation since at least 2012. For over two hours, the trio discussed climate myths and conspiracy theories, many of them identical to the misinformation Lindzen and Happer were peddling well over a decade ago. As Yale Climate Connections reported earlier this year, about one in five U.S. adults and 37% of adults under 30 say they regularly get news from social media influencers -- which means they're likely consuming a lot of myths about climate change. Read more
