More: Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the White House budget office "intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law."

"I will work with my colleagues to address these illegal actions," she added in a statement.

And Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House Appropriations Committee's ranking Democrat, echoed that view.

"Not only is freezing the money in this proposal illegal, but the administration has also clearly been unlawfully impounding funds all year just to get to this point," DeLauro said in a statement.

Why buy them when Hegseth's DOD is shipping highly classified F-35 components to them for free?

More: Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in July that he found 15,903 noncitizen voters on Nevada's voter rolls. The New York Times on Thursday reported that a follow-up meeting between DHS officials and Nevada election officers revealed that the number was wildly incorrect.

"So what you're saying is the 15,000 number has not been vetted?" Nevada Secretary of State Chief Deputy C. Murphy Hebert asked in the August meeting.

"I probably wouldn't use the sentence, It hasn't been vetted,'" Homeland Security Secretary Kimberley Vogt said. "Because definitely we've done something with it to get down to 15,000. So I wouldn't say that. But it hasn't had a full manual review of each one." She also stated that they were not saying that only 185 people on the voter roll were noncitizens, but that those 185 definitely were. But that was wrong too.

"As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens," Nevada Deputy Attorney General Greg Ott wrote in a letter to DHS this week. "You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise."

More: The 747 slowly wheeled to a stop last night on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews, just outside Washington. Portable stairs were put in position, while a red carpet was unfurled and lined by both American and Chinese soldiers in dress uniforms. After a few minutes, Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared at the aircraft door. He paused and waved. Waiting below, staring up expectantly, was President Trump.

It was a remarkable act of deference. By tradition, American presidents don't make the 12-mile trip to the base to greet a foreign leader. They instead wait at the White House, backed by the grandeur and power of the executive mansion. But not this time.

Xi did not display the same level of hospitality when Trump visited Beijing in May, and the U.S. president's gesture suggested that he will take a conciliatory role during the closely watched summit between the leaders of the world's foremost superpowers. Trump is not expected to push Xi on core issues, including the pace of artificial-intelligence development, Taiwan's defense, and China's support for Iran in its war with the United States.

It was not that long ago when Trump, a self-styled international bully, could credibly claim to "run the country and the world." But he seems far smaller on the global stage now.

Will these stay longer than the first batch he brought?

It's the exact same deal we already had from back in the 1950s. Nothing changed.

Yeah, that was the joke...

Patel's FBI has really screwed the pooch.

More: The data breach could be massively significant and may have all sorts of national security and counterintelligence implications. Criminals from the same ecosystem as ShinyHunters have previously used hacked data like phone records to track, intimidate, and harass the FBI agents investigating them. The highly sensitive data could also be a boon to foreign intelligence agencies who want to better understand how one of the most important law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the U.S. operates. And if the data fell into the hands of more criminals, FBI agents and their spouses could face serious threats to their safety.

The representative provided 404 Media with a sample appearing to contain the personal data of 5,000 FBI employees. That data included an alleged address, phone number, date of birth, and in some cases details on their spouse.

404 Media put some of the sample phone numbers into open source intelligence tool OSINT Industries and found they did correspond to people with the same name as listed in the sample file. 404 Media also searched some of the records through compromised data tool Darkside, made by cybersecurity company District 4. That revealed some of the phone numbers are associated with U.S. Department of Justice personnel.

They still haven't rebuilt our refining capacity to what it was pre-Katrina (and subsequent hurricanes) but now we're going to fix the obscenely wealthy Saudi's stuff for them. We won't survive two more years of this.

More: "You're making Vladimir Putin proud. State run Media," political commentator Brian Krassenstein wrote.

"Why would I let your state media track my data?" another user asked. A third wrote: "I'd rather launch my phone into the sun than install a government propaganda app."

Other critics responded with memes, including one showing Trump's face superimposed on that of a North Korean state television broadcaster.

More: All politics are identity politics. Republicans have long mocked this notion, treating the very concept of "identity politics" as a left-wing fixation. In reality, the GOP's success is entirely due to the cheapest form of identity politics: For decades, but especially now, they have worked to distract voters from the party's ruinous policies with appeals to their identity as white, provincial and, most importantly, Christian. This campaign has been enormously successful. White evangelicals have been the backbone of the GOP for decades not because they love tax cuts for the rich and environmental degradation, but because they have been told, repeatedly, that Democrats are demonic and there is no such thing as a liberal Christian.

This is why there's a growing panic in the Republican ranks over the campaign of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas, and it's not just fear that he could beat Ken Paxton, the state's Republican attorney general. Win or lose, Talarico " a seminary student-turned-politician " embodies an existential threat to the right's long-standing myth that to be Christian must necessarily mean voting Republican.

"As a young evangelical we were taught repeatedly and clearly: It is not possible to be a Christian and a Democrat," Brad Onishi, a research associate at the University of California, Berkeley and co-host of the "Straight White American Jesus" podcast, told me. "But candidates like Talarico are changing that. His theological acumen and keen ability to use the language of the New Testament to disarm bad-faith religious attacks is showing a new way forward."

Right before I got out of the USMC they were transitioning from shined all leather combat boots, which weren't the best but were tried and true, to synthetic material boots that looked like they'd fall apart after about a week in the field. Glad I didn't have to make that switch.

Will the tourists climbing to the top for the viewing deck he was hyping up just a few days ago be kept away from the snipers or will it be a free for all up there? Will there be guided tours of the ammo dump?

Let's hope the next president turns it into a park. It'd be way more useful that way.

One woman is 0.000014084507042253522% of the population of Massachusetts. A rounding error. Meaningless in any argument.

Kim Stanley Robinson is an excellent author. I loved his Mars Trilogy. New York 2140 was a good read as well. Red Moon I think is a glimpse into our near future, fighting with China over space in general but access to the moon in particular.

Guess I need to read this one too.

I agree with 70. Really though if you're drawing social security you shouldn't be in office.

More: In what would be a seismic shift, the Trump administration is quietly moving to strip a core protection of the Endangered Species Act, according to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times.

Under a new interpretation of the law's language outlined in the memo, the accidental killing or injury of an animal would no longer be considered illegal; only actions specifically intending to target an animal would.

The change would be transformative because, in the United States, the killing of endangered animals almost always happens incidentally, in the course of economic activity. Until now, industries and individuals could be held accountable for those foreseeable deaths and, as a result, they have been incentivized to avoid them.

ACAB

The vote is unfortunately meaningless if DOJ won't pursue the charges, and there is no way this DOJ will do that.

More: The House is going home again"this time to avoid a vote on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's impeachment.

House GOP leadership announced Wednesday morning that they will end their current slate of votes early and head home until the midterms, a nearly two-month break.

"Members are further advised that upon completion of today's legislative business, votes are no longer expected in the House tomorrow, September 17th," a message from the office of House Majority Whip Tom Emmer read. "The last votes for the week are expected at approximately 4:45 p.m. this afternoon. This is a change from the previously announced schedule."

The House will now move up votes on cutting Environmental Protection Agency regulations to Wednesday.

People actually fall for this BS?

More: The remarks, made during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, stood at odds with earlier comments indicating that he did not intend to send federal agents to polling places around the country. However, when Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, pressed the issue, Mr. Patel seemed to reverse course.

"I thought you weren't going to be sending people to the polls," Mr. Welch said.

"When did you hear that? Just another lie," Mr. Patel declared, raising his voice.

Mr. Welch revisited the issue. "So you are sending F.B.I. agents to the polls?"

"We have election crisis coordinators manned at all 56 field offices," Mr. Patel replied, appearing to refer to what are known as election crime coordinators. "Election integrity is of paramount importance. This F.B.I. will not shy away from that effort."

Under the law, armed federal officers or military personnel are barred from being deployed "at any place where a general or special election is held." The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a letter to a Democratic senator last month that there were "no plans" for the armed forces to deploy troops to polling stations for the midterm elections.