Speaker of the House Mike Johnson canceled votes on major bills and sent lawmakers home early Tuesday for a long recess after a group of Republicans refused to move forward on business over the SAVE America Act and other matters.
The Russian leader said a task force was working to alleviate the issue, which has grown into a serious crisis as the Kremlin grapples with simmering discontent on a range of issues. read more
US envoys Kushner and Witkoff arrive in Doha. Qatari official says no high-level US-Iran meetings scheduled. Iran has tried to exert control over Strait of Hormuz. Strikes and counter-strikes in recent days by Iran and US.
A trio of progressive Democrats sharply criticized billionaires on their way to victory in House primaries in New York City. The clean sweep for candidates endorsed by far-left New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday drew attention to economic populism as affordability remains a top issue for voters ahead of the midterm elections.
The 6-3 decision ruled police need a warrant to get people's location data, even if it's shared with companies like Google and Apple. read more
Meanwhile ...
Wall St set for strongest quarter in years as risk appetite holds despite US-Iran war
www.reuters.com
Another view ...
Supreme Court Mail-In Election Ballot Decision Impact on 1.3M Active Military, Veterans
www.military.com
... The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling on Monday to uphold a grace period for mail-in election ballots has drawn strong rebukes from conservatives, while military organizations and other groups praised the ideologically lopsided judicial body for preserving voting options -- notably for displaced active-duty military personnel. ...
Impact on Active-Duty Military, Veterans
The ruling brought a mixed bag of positive and negative responses based on ideological grounds.
Vet Voice Foundation is one of those groups in favor of the decision. The nonpartisan, national organization intervened in the case to, as it described, defend the rights of military families, veterans and overseas voters whose ballots are often delayed through no fault of their own.
"Today's decision is a victory for every American who follows the rules, mails their ballot on time, and deserves to have their vote counted," Janessa Goldbeck, U.S. Marine Corps veteran and CEO of Vet Voice Foundation, said in a statement. "For service members stationed around the world, military spouses, veterans and other Americans who rely on voting by mail, this ruling recognizes a simple principle: voters should not lose their voice because of circumstances beyond their control. Our democracy is strongest when every eligible voter has a fair opportunity to participate."
They pointed to the statistics, notably how in the 2024 general election almost one-third of U.S. voters cast ballots by mail in the 2024 general election, including millions of military families, veterans, seniors and rural voters. The previously existing grace period still led to more than 100,000 ballots being rejected nationwide for arriving after state deadlines. ...
Another view ...
3-year-old shot dead in Gaza as U.N. report accuses Israel of targeting children
www.nbcnews.com
... The report alleged Israel has a "deliberate strategy" of targeting children in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, resulting in genocide, which Israel rejects....
Another view ...
Supreme Court ruling guts government's use of geofence warrants
arstechnica.com
... SCOTUS falls short of deeming geofence warrants unconstitutional, though.
The Fourth Amendment protects a user's "location history," the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The same logic already applied to a cellphone's tracking, and the high court found "no good reason exists to reach a different result for Location History" collected by third parties like Google.
Split 6-3, the majority agreed that the government needs a warrant and must show reasonable cause to turn a phone's location-tracking services into a government surveillance tool.
The decision came in a case where cops used so-called geofence warrants to track down an armed bank robber from a list of all phones logged in the area. Applying a three-part process, cops worked with Google to narrow down the list of suspects and eventually arrested Okello Chatrie, who had opted in to share his location with Google every few minutes. Chatrie was sentenced to 12 years in prison but challenged the geofence warrant as an unconstitutional search.
The US tried and failed to argue that no search was conducted under the Fourth Amendment, partly because they only searched a little bit of Chatrie's location data, which the government considered too small to warrant privacy protections. ...
Tangentially related ...
New evidence casts doubt on RFK Jr testimony before Senate
www.theguardian.com
... Kennedy repeatedly said 2019 Samoa trip had nothing to do with vaccines'. An email from his then colleague says they were on a vaccine-related mission'
New evidence has emerged that Robert F Kennedy Jr was on a vaccine-related "mission" when he visited Samoa ahead of a deadly measles outbreak in 2019, raising further questions about whether the US health secretary lied to the US Senate when he said the trip had "nothing to do with vaccines".
Records obtained by the Guardian show Kennedy's colleague told Samoan officials in an email that he and Kennedy were coming as part of a mission to study the island nation's medical records in the aftermath of a "discontinuity in vaccinations".
"We all look forward to the opportunity to be of service to the people of Samoa with our mission," Dr Michael Graven wrote.
Kennedy was at the time serving as chair and chief legal counsel of Children's Health Defense, a non-profit group known for its anti-vaccine activism. Graven was the group's chief information officer. Spokespeople for Kennedy at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not respond to messages seeking comment. ...
At his Senate confirmation hearing last year, he said: "You cannot find a single Samoan who will say I didn't get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy." Instead, he said he went to attend a Samoan independence celebration and to introduce a "state-of-the art" medical informatics system.
Samoan officials later said Kennedy's visit bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists. A measles outbreak, which tore through the Pacific island nation a few months after Kennedy's visit, sickened thousands and killed 83 people, mostly children under age five. ...
Related ...
Voters of both parties want tighter AI regulation, poll finds
www.nbcnews.com
... An overwhelming majority of likely voters want powerful AI systems to undergo mandatory formal safety reviews before they are released to the public, according to a new survey about Americans' views on AI, going further than the existing Trump administration policy of opt-in reviews for new advanced models.
The poll, conducted by Washington, D.C.-based AI Policy Institute (AIPI), a non-partisan research organization, found that Republicans were more enthusiastic about government-led safety testing for AI models than Democrats, though more than half of voters supported such a measure regardless of their political affiliation.
The survey results are the latest sign of Americans' bipartisan desire for stronger AI regulations in the face of advancing AI capabilities, representing a shift from earlier findings that Republicans were more skeptical than Democrats of government intervention on AI issues. ...
Related ...
DOD Officially Drops 180 Faiths From Military's Recognized Religion List (June 4, 2026)
www.military.com
...
Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents:
Military.com has learned that the Department of Defense, for the first time in almost 10 years, has dramatically reduced its number of recognized religious faiths and belief systems by approximately 180.
He added that members will not be limited to the list of "religious affiliation codes" when selecting information for their dog tags. The revised list, according to documents obtained by Military.com, includes Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Islam (Muslims), Judaism, Sikh, and a wide range of Christian-based groups like Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists.
Here is the full list:
Agnostic (AN)
Baha'i faith (BH)
Buddhism (BU)
Christian - Assemblies of God (AG)
Christian - Baptist (BA)
Christian - Brethren (BR)
Christian - Catholic (CA)
Christian - Church of Christ (CC)
Christian - Church of God (CG)
Christian - Church of the Nazarene (CN)
Christian - Episcopal/Anglican (EA)
Christian - Evangelical (EV)
Christian - Jehovah's Witnesses (JW)
Christian - Lutheran (LU)
Christian - Methodist (ME)
Christian - Non Denominational (ND)
Christian - Orthodox (OX)
Christian - Other (CO)
Christian - Pentecostal (PE)
Christian - Presbyterian (PR)
Christian - Quaker (QU)
Christian - Reformed (RE)
Christian - Scientist (SC)
Christian - Seventh Day Adventist (SA)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)
Hindu (HI)
Islam (Muslim) (IS)
Judaism (Jewish) (JU)
No Religion (NR)
Other Religions (OR)
Sikh (SI)
This restructuring of faith codes, which help identify service members as well as the military in planning for appropriated religious coverage to include them, has now excluded minority faith/worldview groups including Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Rosicrucianism, Shaman, Spiritualists, Troth, Unitarian Universalists and various Wiccans. ...
Related ...
Trump's Great American State Fair attendees say they haven't noticed politics overshadowing the celebration
www.nbcnews.com
... But over a dozen attendees Saturday " on both sides of the political aisle " told NBC News that they didn't feel the atmosphere at the fair had any kind of political tint even as Trump has tried to redesign Washington in his image and as musical acts dropped out of the event.
"It's kind of neat, because here it's just been all about America, and I haven't seen the political things," Pamela L., 59, who was visiting the capital from Virginia Beach, Virginia, for her husband's annual birthday trip, told NBC News. "People are just being people [and] enjoying, you know, they're being kind, opening the doors, holding them for each other, and it's just kind of neat to see."
Pamela, who declined to share her last name, added that her family jumped at the chance to attend the fair "because we don't get to go to all the states. It's kind of neat to see them represented." ...
@#14
I did when your current trolling alias posted the same thing on a different thread.
Message #18 in this thread:
drudge.com
Another view...
US and Iran agree to halt attacks, hold talks in Doha this week: Report
english.alarabiya.net
... The United States and Iran agreed to stop strikes against each other, a senior US official said, according to a report by Axios on Sunday.
The two sides anticipate meeting on Tuesday in Doha, Qatar's capital, Axios said, to work out their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, a key corridor for oil shipments from the region.
An American official told Al Arabiya that technical talks between the United States and Iran were proceeding according to the specified schedule, adding that the talks have not been canceled and would be held in the coming days. ...
Brent crude, January 2, 2026: $60.75
Brent crude, June 30, 2026: $73.75
Looks like there's still more room to drop before it gets back to early January levels ...