Why post a 2.5-month-old article? Especially since the Platner campaign's implosion has changed everything about the Maine senate race in the time since it was published.

More: According to the joint task force, all National Guard members who come to D.C. have been deputized as special police by the U.S. Marshals Service and issued a firearm, which is rare for a domestic National Guard deployment. Guard troops are not authorized to make arrests, although they can detain someone until arresting officers arrive.

The troops in D.C. are largely performing what are called "presence patrols," walking in small groups around popular areas of the city to act as a deterrent for crime and allow law enforcement to focus on other areas.

But two different studies " including one out this week by the progressive Center for American Progress " have both found that the National Guard presence in D.C. has had little to no effect on violent crime and that the recent drop in crime would have likely happened regardless of the troops.

"These trends have been going on since before the deployment, since before Trump's second inauguration even. It should tell people that actually this is not part of the solution," says Chandler Hall, associate director on the public safety team at CAP and lead researcher of the study.

---

As the length of the deployment, as well as the size, increases, so does the cost to taxpayers. With the current summer surge, the cost per day is hovering around $3 million, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Using that number, the Project on Government Oversight, an independent nonpartisan watchdog, estimates the deployment with this new 2029 extension will cost somewhere between $2.5 billion and $3.4 billion in total, depending on how many troops remain in the city.

Don't worry there will be more before RFK Jr is done at HHS.

More: The killings came days after Trump, 80, issued a covert order for an arrest surge that swept up more than 10,000 people in five days, as the Daily Beast reported on July 2, with field bosses told the White House expected 2,000 detentions every day, according to the New York Times.

One senior official has now told PunchUp"the Beast's new sister investigations Substack outlet launched this year"that those quotas are behind the bloodshed.

"They are being forced to have quotas again. They are being pushed for numbers and quotas," the official said. "There is a demand for 2,000 arrests a day. Leaders are being fired for bad numbers."

The insider described a workforce stretched past its limits. "They are canceling leave. Stretching the field thin. Pushing them to the extremes. It's a very bad, toxic environment. Morale is horrible."

Agents were denied Independence Day off. "Eighty percent of the office has to be in the field. Made them work on July 4th," they said, adding, "It's not sustainable. And it's not safe. It's bad."

These barbarians would be rightly called terrorists in any other country.

In a sane country this would be grounds for impeachment.

From the article: "The White House said Trump was referring to his May physical."

He didn't "just finish" anything. He just remembered it.

World class bullshido in that youtube video above.

So much for buying American

And this, 'weaponized vehicle' shtick is getting old fast.

Cops of all stripes have been doing it for years. The only difference now is ICE has been so blatant that the normal shell game these pigs and prosecutors use to get away with it isn't working every time like it normally does.

What WalMart doesn't understand is that no matter the actual facts now that the Anti-President has claimed credit his followers immediately believe it unquestioningly.

News Flash!!! Conservatives are awful all around the world. Film at 11.

More: In recent weeks, Mr. DeSantis has been at the center of a topsy-turvy drama over the future of property taxes in Florida as he has tried to reduce the burden of soaring tax bills for homeowners. But a proposed constitutional amendment that emerged from those efforts has been met with considerable pushback, most notably from some of his fellow Republicans, including local officials faced with billions in lost revenue that would force them to cut services.

Now, even Mr. DeSantis is backing away from the proposal, which is set to appear on the November ballot. The backlash reflects the real-world budgetary challenges that come with one of the Republican Party's core beliefs " that taxes should be lower.

Property taxes, which tend to fund local services, have come under particular scrutiny of late, as Republican state lawmakers around the country search for new strategies to address the affordability crisis.

Mike Fasano, the tax collector for Pasco County, Fla., is a lifelong Republican and a DeSantis fan. But if the proposal passes, he says, it will have a "devastating impact on our county, and counties throughout the state."

He checked off the services in Pasco that could be hit, including "the sheriff's department, fire-rescue, veterans' services, senior services, parks and rec, libraries."

More: Sari Bashi, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said publishing the photo itself constituted a war crime, because of the prohibition under international humanitarian law against depicting prisoners or detainees in humiliating states.

"There's the posting, and then there's what it appears to show," she said. That, too, may be a war crime, she said: "The way in which he was confined raises strong concerns that the method of confinement was a form of punishment that could amount to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, or even torture," depending on how much the man suffered.

Israeli soldiers have frequently posted apparently incriminating photographs and videos of themselves during the war. Rights groups say it reflects a cultural shift in the military that is at odds with its insistence that such incidents break with its rules and norms.

"The soldiers are taking their cue from the highest levels," Ms. Bashi said. She recalled that the defense minister, Israel Katz, had met with and was said to have apologized to five reservists after charges were dropped against them in a case involving the abuse of a Palestinian prisoner who suffered broken ribs, a punctured lung and a torn rectum.

"If I were a foot soldier," Ms. Bashi said, "I would think this is all OK and even desirable."

Oneg Ben Dror, a project coordinator for Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, who also said the published photo was evidence of two war crimes, said the mistreatment depicted was exceptional only because it had been so clearly documented. Thousands of Palestinians have testified to having been tortured in Israeli prisons and military camps, she said.

"It's not a unique case," she added. "This time, the soldiers took a photo of it."

Amani Sarahneh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Association, said the photo showed how Israeli soldiers acted with impunity and underscored the "violence and brutality" that detainees have endured.

She also argued that the original dissemination of such a photo was "an effort to shape public consciousness through intimidation and psychological deterrence by using images such as these and the impact they have on Palestinians more broadly."

Japan would have sunk the carrier, they've got lots of experience taking out US warships.

Play stupid games...

AI is big tech's pipe dream. The only way the current version of "AI" takes all jobs is by crashing the economy when the bills come due for these vastly overextended companies.

This is the same freak who forced his child to give blood so he could use it in transfusions to stay young. No sympathy.

I'm with Al Green on this one.

...restoring gun rights to some people with mental illness

Never want to hear the it's not the guns it's mental health argument again.

We've already got rules for this.

Note: On January 24, 2020, the Department of State amended its B nonimmigrant visa regulation to address birth tourism. Under this amended regulation, U.S. consular officers overseas will deny any B visa application from an applicant whom the consular officer has reason to believe is traveling for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States to obtain U.S. citizenship for their child.

Republican "leadership."

5-4?!?