Donald Trump on Thursday claimed the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was "nothing" compared to ongoing pro-Palestinian campus protests, the latest instance in which he has downplayed a racist incident that was one of the most criticized moments of his presidency. Speaking in a Manhattan courtroom hallway at the day's end of his criminal hush money trial, Trump blamed President Joe Biden for student protesters who have set up encampments as they call for a cease-fire in the war Israel launched after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack. Biden has recently, as he often does, publicly brought up the Charlottesville rally that sparked his decision to run against Trump in 2020, where torch-wielding white supremacists marched to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, chanting "You will not replace us!" and "Jews will not replace us!" Read more
As protesters chanted "Blood on your hands" at Tennessee House Republicans on Tuesday after they passed a bill that would allow some teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns on public school grounds, and bar parents and other teachers from knowing who was armed. The 68-28 vote in favor of the bill sent it to Republican Gov. Bill Lee for consideration. If he signs it into law, it would be the biggest expansion of gun access in the state since last year's deadly shooting at a private elementary school in Nashville. Members of the public who oppose the bill harangued Republican lawmakers after the vote, leading House Speaker Cameron Sexton to order the galleries cleared. Four House Republicans and all Democrats opposed the bill, which the state Senate previously passed. The measure would bar disclosing which employees are carrying guns beyond school administrators and police, including to students' parents and even other teachers.
Zack Scrivner, the Kern County Supervisor, is under investigation for allegedly sexually assaulting his pre-teen daughter, as stated by Sheriff Donny Youngblood during a press conference on Thursday. Scrivner, a Republican, is currently the Supervisor of Kern County and a long-time friend of former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Deputies dispatched to the scene discovered Scrivner had already been disarmed and had sustained two stab wounds in a physical altercation with his children, sparked by the assault allegations. Thirty guns, electronic devices, and psychedelic mushrooms were seized from Scrivner's residence, leading to forensic examinations to determine potential influence.
When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg first brought charges against Donald Trump in March 2023, the legal theory behind the indictment remained remarkably unclear. Bragg had charged Trump under New York Penal Law 175.10, falsifying business records in the first degree. The falsification of business records alone is a misdemeanor under 175.05"but Bragg had boosted the charge to a felony by alleging that Trump fudged the records with the "intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof." But what other crime?
The indictment didn't say. Now, a year later, with the trial finally underway, Bragg's legal theory has come into focus"if you know where to look. ...
There's a new Linux distro on the scene today, and it's a bit specialized. Its development was led by the automotive electronics supplier Elektrobit, and it's the first open source OS that complies with the automotive industry's functional safety requirements.
Boeing's new spaceship has been cleared for its first-ever crewed liftoff. Over the past two days, NASA and Boeing held a flight readiness review (FRR) for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, which will send agency astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to and from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Boeing's Starliner capsule. The FRR found no serious issues, meaning CFT is go for launch on May 6 as previously planned, NASA announced today (April 25).
Chipotle says its employees can choose chicken once again. Last week, the chain asked its U.S. and Canadian employees to temporarily select another protein for their work meals to preserve the company's supply of chicken. The directive applied to both corporate staff and restaurant employees.
After he spent much of the last year of his presidency trying to ban TikTok, Donald Trump's abrupt effort to defend the Chinese-owned app late last week caught many in Washington by surprise. But for people who've been watching Trump's TikTok policies closely, it was part of a pattern: Changing course when an interested billionaire donor was in the mix.
The majority of young people support a permanent ceasefire. However, of the 16 issues polled, "Israel/Palestine" ranked as the 15th most important compared to the others " only viewed as more important than student debt. Read more
Josh Marshall - We are where we should know we are. The Roberts Court is a corrupt institution which operates in concert with and on behalf of the Republican Party and to an ambiguous degree right-wing anti-regulatory ideology. If we believe in a different set of policies or even democratic self-governance we will have to succeed at that with the Supreme Court acting as a consistent adversary. Read more
A Ukrainian fighting force known as the "Georgian Legion" trolled MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in the best way on X Wednesday. Greene posted a video of a nightclub in Ukraine, perpetuating the right-wing conspiracy theory that the war in Ukraine isn't actually happening. Responding to Greene's assertion that "Ukraine is BOOMING!" and that in "most countries who are under attack, bars and restaurants shut down," the Georgian Legion invited Greene on a special all-access tour of the battlefield. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post recently trolled Greene with a cover picture of the MAGA Congresswoman wearing a Soviet-style sable hat with the headline "NYET MOSCOW MARJORIE."
Feminism made the error of telling us to behave and think like men. This error was a grave one, and women like myself are paying for it, like gamblers in a casino that has been fixed. We are not men, and in living the single life, with its casual encounters, we play for much higher stakes and have more to lose. I wish I had not been taught to throw the dice so high. Even Shakespeare's princes needed someone to look after them in their old age.
From the outset, Justice Alito, along with several other conservatives on the bench, was highly skeptical of the government's indictment of former President Donald Trump for his role in fomenting the Jan. 6 insurrection, going so far as to suggest not only that Trump may be immune from prosecution but also that the federal fraud conspiracy law he is charged with violating may not be valid, either. Read more
A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders. Al-Hayya did not say whether his apparent embrace of a two-state solution would amount to an end to the Palestinian conflict with Israel or an interim step toward the group's stated goal of destroying Israel. Read more
The White House is seizing on remarks by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that former President Donald Trump was resistant to accepting any bipartisan compromise to toughen border security laws.
A senior Cuban diplomat has expressed his nation's commitment to further boosting ties with China but ruled out the possibility of hosting any foreign military bases, even as an intensifying geopolitical feud between China and the United States comes to the Caribbean.
