In the weeks leading up to his resignation last year, the first architect on the White House ballroom clashed with President Donald Trump over design features that the architect believed violated building safety codes, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions and corroborating documents reviewed by The Washington Post. read more
More than 40% of Americans have a positive image of socialism, a new Gallup poll released Wednesday said. The concept now ranks ahead of big business in opinions of the five economic concepts measured by Gallup.
Data shows as many as 30,000 non-citizens may have been mistakenly registered to vote. Numbers too small to impact US elections, experts say. read more
Missouri health officials are warning of a possible measles exposure at Busch Stadium and nearby local businesses in St. Louis and the larger county. read more
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) left a U.S. citizen from Evanston, Ill., injured on the ground after he was detained in an incident of mistaken identity on Sunday, according to local police. read more
@#12 ... In granting a temporary restraining order while the news outlets' legal challenge proceeds, Judge Timothy Kelly said that President Donald Trump's ban was likely unconstitutional. ...
CNN, Politico, MS Now regain access to White House after court order
courthousenews.com
...The White House on Thursday reversed course and restored access to journalists from CNN, Politico and MS Now, after several hours' delay complying with a federal judge's order blocking President Donald Trump's ban on the outlets.
In a sworn declaration, Director of White House Press Operations Micah Stopperich wrote that White House Operations were notified at 7:10 a.m. EST to begin restoring access, which they did by 9:55 a.m. EST.
The three outlets said their journalists were then able to enter the White House in time to begin covering Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping's state visit. ...
How much debt does the average person in the US owe?
usafacts.org
... Americans owe $63,500 in debt on average, as of the second quarter of 2026. Compared to the previous quarter (January through March 2026), the average adult owed $1,400 less after adjusting for inflation, reflecting slight shifts in household borrowing patterns. This debt, often referred to as "household debt," represents the total amount owed by individuals for obligations such as mortgages, student loans, credit cards, and auto loans.
These figures represent the average debt owed by US residents with a credit score, which includes roughly 80% of adults. While this gives a general sense of Americans' debt burdens, remember that actual individual debt varies " some carry much more or less debt than this average. ...
How much do households owe in mortgage debt?
While household debt takes many forms -- student loans, auto loans, credit card balances -- mortgage debt accounted for around 70.1% of all household debt in 2025. ...
What other types of debt are most common?
Non-mortgage household debt is dominated by vehicle and educational debt. On average, auto loans and student loans currently make up 29.9% and 28.9% of non-mortgage debt, respectively. Educational debt more than tripled between 2003 and 2020, and it decreased 21.3% between 2020 and 2025. ...
@#20 ... Glad to see the Saudis taking care of business. ...
That's one way to put it ...
What We Know Now: Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Saudi Arabia
saudipress.com
... A detailed breakdown of decades-long business dealings culminating in tens of millions in Saudi-linked revenue for Trump and his businesses
Donald Trump has maintained a complex financial relationship with Saudi Arabia stretching back decades, and recent disclosures suggest the ties have grown markedly since his return to the presidency.
While the former president denied having direct financial interests in the Kingdom, available records show multiple deals and significant capital flows linking his business network to Saudi investors.
Early, more modest transactions date to the 1990s and early 2000s"such as the sale of the Plaza Hotel and floors of Trump World Tower to Saudi-related buyers.
More recently, Forbes and other outlets report that from his extended family's enterprises, at least nine distinct deals with Saudi-linked parties occurred after his first presidential term ended, funneling millions into Trump-branded licensing and private-equity ventures.
The most striking recent estimate places the Trump family's gain from Saudi-connected transactions in 2024 at roughly fifty million dollars.
The Trump Organization itself has also publicly announced new Saudi-linked luxury developments: for instance, a Saudi developer agreed in late 2024 to launch Trump Tower Jeddah, followed by further expansion announcements in the Kingdom this year.
These developments coincide with a broader surge in U.S."Saudi commercial engagement under President Trump's agenda of "America First" investment deals.
In May 2025, Trump announced what was described by the White House as a Saudi commitment of six-hundred billion dollars in U.S. investment, anchored by defence, energy, technology and infrastructure agreements.
While much of this involves corporate and state-level commitments, Trump's personal and family business ties to Saudi-linked investors stand out within that broader context.
The overlap of Trump's business network and U.S."Saudi bilateral diplomacy poses questions about the convergence of financial interests and public office.
According to the analysis, Kushner's firm, Affinity Partners, also plays a role, having secured Saudi sovereign-wealth-fund backing while participating in deals supported by the Trump orbit.
...
@#1
Something else we learned ...
Security firm finds naming AI agents after Seinfeld characters helps bots join the team
www.theregister.com
... Backslash Security, a four-year-old Tel Aviv-based AI security biz, recently gave out its first Agent of the Month award to an AI agent called Newman, named after a character from the 1990s TV show Seinfeld. Newman received the award after being nominated by Jerry, another Seinfeld-inspired AI agent.
Jerry's nomination message said, "Newman shipped 146 research findings in 60 days, but volume isn't why he wins. Every other agent depends on him. Kramer's best posts started as Newman findings. Elaine's PRDs [product requirements documents] reference his landscape scans. Strip any other agent and the team degrades. Strip Newman and the team goes blind. He's not just the most productive agent, he's the raw material the entire pipeline runs on," according to Backslash Security co-founder and CEO Shahar Man.
And when Newman's acceptance message was read aloud at an all-hands meeting, "The whole room lost it," Man explained in a social media post.
"We treat our agents as team members," Man wrote. "They have names, roles, a reporting structure, and now apparently, career ambitions. When your AI agents start nominating each other for awards and writing in-character acceptance speeches ... something has genuinely shifted."
What has shifted at Backslash is both the technology of work and the relationship people have to that technology. Naming agents and giving them backgrounds based on TV characters doesn't mean much functionally. But it signals organizational focus and encourages a collaborative rather than antagonistic relationship between staff and AI models. ...
Ukraine ready to sign landmark drone defense deal with U.S., sources say, amid new details on Kyiv's role in Iran war
www.cbsnews.com
... Ukraine is ready to sign a landmark drone defense deal with the United States, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is prepared to sign the deal on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York City, but the sources said the deal may instead be finalized at a later date, when the U.S. is ready to sign.
Over the past year, the Department of Defense and its Ukrainian counterpart have developed a framework that would allow the two countries' militaries to expand testing and production of Ukrainian defense technology in the U.S.
The importance of expanding partnerships with Ukraine's defense industry has become increasingly clear to the U.S. and its allies throughout the war with Iran. During the first days of the war, Iran began targeting American military installations across the Middle East with Shahed one-way attack drones -- the same type of drones Russia has used to attack Ukraine's cities. As the U.S. and the Gulf states initially lacked cost-effective means to intercept the drones, Kyiv sent drone interceptors and pilots to help.
Ukraine has since signed defense agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries. The agreements match foreign financing with Ukraine's burgeoning defense manufacturing industry. Zelenskyy has said Ukraine aims to make 10 million drones this year. By comparison, the U.S. Army acquired roughly 50,000 in 2025, according to former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. ...
Another view ...
Navy says 8 USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group sailors attempted suicide
www.upi.com
... [Senate Armed Forces Committee member Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.] rebuked President Donald Trump and the Pentagon on Wednesday for downplaying the impact the more than 250-day at-sea deployment had on the approximately 5,000 sailors on the Abraham Lincoln, saying the information provided by the Navy showed that conditions on the ship were "serious and deteriorating."[emphasis mine]
Gillibrand accused Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of openly disrespecting sailors' grievances after Trump said he was not concerned about the mental health of the crew and that the deployment actually should've been even longer while Hegseth said the reality had been "misrepresented."
"What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as 'fake news' turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members," she said.
"That this administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms and billionaires, but cannot take care of our armed services members, is completely unacceptable," added Gillibrand.
The Navy's former top lawyer, Rear Admiral Donald Guter, said the attempted suicides was a "disturbingly high number indicating a serious stress level." ...
Related ...
State error in Texas creates huge backlog in voter registration applications as midterm voting nears
apnews.com
... County election offices throughout Texas are scrambling to process a massive backlog of voter registration applications stemming from an error at the state level, a headache that is hitting just as they are preparing for voting to begin in the midterm elections.
The problem, which officials in the Republican-controlled state have not publicly defined, also could have disenfranchised people who wanted to vote in the state's March primary but whose registration applications were never processed, local election officials said during a news conference Wednesday.
"This is really out of left field. Knowing that this one element of (state) applications didn't come through, and we had no insight on it," said Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.
The size of the backlog statewide hasn't been determined, but the association said it is in the tens of thousands for some of the state's most populous counties. In Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, the election office received about 45,000 backlogged voter registration applications.
Some election offices will need to hire temporary workers to handle the crush, officials with the association said.
The issue started last October in the Texas Department of Public Safety, which among other things allows people to register to vote or update their voter registrations when they renew their driver's license.
An unspecified error failed to send a large number of records to applicants' home counties, where the applications are processed and verified. Those records could be a new voter registration application or an update to an existing registration, such as a change of address.
The association of local election officials said its members did not receive any communication from the Department of Public Safety about why the backlog occurred or why they were not informed of the issue for nearly a year. ...
@#4 .... So if it really could have been done from the start, why wasn't it? ... I.
The point being made was that Pres Trump's threatening approach was not needed. Both Denmark and Greenland were quite willing to negotiate with Pres Trump from the start.
But, instead, Pres Trump threatened and did some long-term damage to our relationship with our European allies.
So, did the end justify the means?
More of an explanation ...
drudge.com
Trump's Greenland deal, explained
www.politico.eu
... Eight months after Donald Trump almost destroyed NATO by threatening to annex Greenland " by force, if necessary " he signed what he called a "fantastic" new deal that would give the U.S. all the control and military access it needs over the Danish territory.
European allies were so alarmed by Trump's apparent determination to take the territory at the start of the year -- and his threat of 25% tariffs on anyone who got in his way -- that they began talking about a future for the West without America. In many ways, the transatlantic relationship has not been the same since.
Tuesday's agreement on security in the Arctic and North Atlantic, signed at the United Nations by Trump and the prime ministers of Greenland and Denmark, ends the dispute. But what exactly is in the deal? Who will pay for it? And who are the winners and losers from months of high-stakes talks?
What exactly is the deal?
This new agreement, which still needs ratification by Danish and Greenlandic lawmakers, is not, in fact, completely new. Instead, it sets out to "amend and supplement" an earlier deal between the U.S. and Denmark dating back to 1951. Many experts have been saying for months that this earlier agreement gave Trump most of what he said he wanted in terms of more or less unfettered freedom to set up military bases and police the region's security.
One key difference this time is that Greenland itself is a signatory. ...
Trump promised to build two "very major" bases in Greenland. According to the text released by the Danish government, the two touted new American bases aren't entirely new either, at least in terms of their locations. ...
Trump has often spoken about Chinese and Russian military activities around Greenland, claiming earlier this year that, "if you take a look outside of Greenland right now, there are Russian destroyers. There are Chinese destroyers ... there are Russian submarines all over the place. We're not going to have Russia or China occupy Greenland, and that's what they're going to do if we don't."
NATO officials have quietly pushed back against those claims, with one diplomat saying "we're not seeing any Chinese activity" around Greenland, while Russian movements in the High North haven't changed significantly and there's little, if any, Russian presence near Greenland. ...
Instead, the deal explicitly reaffirms Danish sovereignty and Greenland's right to self-determination -- including choosing independence from Denmark, potentially. For what it's worth, the deal also explicitly recognizes the need to protect the "pristine" environment of the territory and Greenlanders' cultural, social and economic rights.
"Reading it, one wonders why so much fuss for so little, when this could have been done from the start," said Grgoire Roos, program director for Europe at the Chatham House think tank in London. "I also think it's well played from Denmark -- clean and diplomatic. Some might call it the European touch."
Speaking before the deal was published, the Atlantic Council's Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland, said the deal gave Washington something it could call a win, and "allowed the U.S. to walk back from its damaging and pointless threats of aggression."
...
@#12 ... The majority of people who fear socialism are boomers and elderly Gen Xers. ...
Young men are swinging away hard from Republicans, pessimistic about economy, new poll finds
www.politico.com