Larry Summers, Peter Theil, Steve Bannon... Russian Connections. Fun stuff.
(in South Park)
There's an investigation into a child sex trafficking ring, plus the US president and his deputy engage in some of the most disturbing scenes the show has ever put on screen. It's quite the episode
A provision of the government funding bill that passed the Senate on Wednesday could give Republican senators a big payday over the government allegedly spying on them. The legislation, expected to become law this week and end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, looks like it would allow the aggrieved senators to sue the government for at least $500,000 in statutory damages. Read more
Google is hosting a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, and tell local cops whether to contact ICE about the person, while simultaneously removing apps designed to warn local communities about the presence of ICE officials. ICE-spotting app developers tell 404 Media the decision to host CBP's new app, and Google's description of ICE officials as a vulnerable group in need of protection, shows that Google has made a choice on which side to support during the Trump administration's violent mass deportation effort.
Newly released emails suggest that President Donald Trump may have spent his first Thanksgiving in office accompanied by none other than Jeffrey Epstein.
Adolf Hitler most likely suffered from the genetic condition Kallmann Syndrome, researchers and documentary makers said Thursday, following DNA testing of the Nazi dictator's blood. According to the Cleveland Clinic in the U.S., the syndrome can "disrupt the process that drives puberty" and manifest in symptoms that include undescended testicles and a micropenis. The research also quashes the suggestion that Hitler had Jewish ancestry, the researcher say.
Dummkopf Trumpf's imbecilic ukase to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War could cost as much as two billion dollars. The name change, which must be approved by Congress, would require replacing thousands of signs, placards, letterheads and badges, as well as any other items at US military sites around the world that feature the Department of Defense name. New department letterhead and signage alone could cost about $1 bn. One of the biggest costs would be rewriting digital code for all of the department's internal and external facing websites, as well as other computer software on classified and unclassified systems. The government could decide not to make every change to the Department of Defense branding, which could bring down the cost. Read more
Nick Fuentes claimed on X that "MAGA is dead," a cryptic tweet that followed a long day of bad news for Trump and the MAGA base. Earlier in the day, Democrats released a series of damaging emails between disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, that implicated Trump. The emails caused a rift between Trump and Republicans, with one analyst saying it may make the party's support for Trump "unsustainable" going forward. Fuentes is a well-known white supremacist whom right-wing provocateur Tucker Carlson recently interviewed on his eponymous podcast. The episode generated a lot of backlash from conservatives and appeared to cause a rift in the GOP.
Despite President Trump's waves of pardons for allies and supporters who sought to overturn his 2020 election loss and his clemency for all Capitol riot defendants, at least one federal case with tethers to the 2020 election still lingered. Now, a federal judge in Houston has sentenced Abigail Shry to 27 months in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release, after she pleaded guilty to phoning a vulgar, violent and racist threat to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in August 2023. The threat was made hours after Chutkan was assigned to oversee Mr. Trump's criminal case for allegedly conspiring to overturn his 2020 loss, of which Jan. 6 was a component. In court Wednesday before Judge Keith Ellison, Shry apologized to anyone who was subjected to hearing her "abhorrent" voicemail, saying that it "was not and is not reflective of my character or beliefs."
USDJ Jeffrey Cummings (Northern District of Illinois) ordered the Trumpf junta to release hundreds of people from ICE gulags who are believed to have been arrested without warrants or probable cause, in violation of the Castanon Nava federal consent decree. The judge ordered ICE to fully release 13 people by this Friday who the junta has agreed were unlawfully arrested, and to place up to 615 others on alternatives to detention monitoring programs starting no later than 21 Nov until the court makes a final determination about whether their arrests violated the decree. As many as 1,100 people out of 1,852 arrested by ICE in the Chicago area prior to 7 Oct may have already been deported without due process or left the US via voluntary departure in order to avoid prolonged stays in inhumane immigration concentration camps. His Honor also ordered ICE to stay deportation and voluntary departure proceedings for individuals pending release on alternatives to detention. Read more
A sharp rise in students entering the University of California system without middle school-level math skills is raising alarms among educators. A new internal report from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) reveals that the percentage of incoming students scoring below Algebra 1 on placement exams"a math course typically completed by the end of eighth grade"has tripled over the past five years. Read more
(AP) " Approval of the way President Donald Trump is managing the government has dropped sharply since early in his second term, according to a new AP-NORC poll, with much of the rising discontent coming from fellow Republicans.
Russell Vought advances plan to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The Trump White House doesn't just want to curtail the CFPB's efforts, it also wants to stop them " permanently. Read more
The Milan Attorney General's Office has opened an investigation into a chilling case that recalls the infamous Sniper Alley of Sarajevo " the city besieged from 1992 to 1996 by Serb-Bosnian militias during the Bosnian War. From the surrounding hills, they shot at passersby who had no choice but to cross that street and expose themselves to being killed. It is estimated that more than 11,000 civilians were murdered in this way. The investigation, revealed by Italian media, concerns an alleged crime of intentional homicide aggravated by cruelty and vile motives. Its central thesis is that some Italians paid to go to Sarajevo for the weekend and shoot at people, as if it were a hunting trip. Ordinary citizens, with ties to far-right circles and passionate about weapons, allegedly hired this service as a kind of human safari in the besieged city.
Iran is grappling with its worst water crisis in decades, with officials warning that Tehran -- a city of more than 10 million -- may soon be uninhabitable if the drought gripping the country continues. President Masoud Pezeshkian has cautioned that if rainfall does not arrive by December, the government must start rationing water in Tehran.
