Was Taxpayer Money Used to Fly MAGA lemmings to NY?
Sen. J.D. Vance’s explanation for visiting Donald Trump during the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s hush money trial in New York drew mockery on social media.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejects conservative challenge to the federal consumer protection agency.
NBC News reports: "The justices rejected a business-backed argument that could have hobbled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects people from unlawful financial services practices such as predatory lending."
'The [U.S.] Justice Department on Thursday informed House Republicans that President Joe Biden has formally asserted executive privilege over the audio of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur, a move that DOJ says effectively shields Attorney General Merrick Garland from any criminal exposure as the Republican lawmakers move toward trying to hold him in contempt of Congress."
ABC News reports the Justice Department has already released a full transcript of the interview. The White House believes the audio would be used for "partisan political purposes."
from #CommonDreams
'Most Thorough Legal Analysis' Yet Concludes #Israel Committing Genocide in #Gaza
The report also stresses that other nations are legally obligated to "refrain from recognizing Israel's breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity."
"I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration amid President Biden's disastrous, continued support for #Israel 's genocide in Gaza."
U.S. President Joe Biden and former U.S. President and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump have agreed to debate in two televised broadcasts. These events are usually organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, but the Biden and Trump teams directly negotiated the terms of the showdowns. The Biden campaign says the Commission “is out of step with changes in the structure of our elections and the interests of voters.” But there’s some strategic thinking involved in the move, too. Yahoo! News has more about the changes and why they’re important.
“What is the point of having power," she says, "if you will not use it to stop crimes against humanity?”
Jewish Presidential appointee Lily Greenberg Call resigned in protest at its refusal to stop arming Israel. It's an astonishing letter.
Update: a few minutes after tweeting this, her X account was suspended 🤨
[Eloquent and moving article summing up what the student protests for Gaza have been and where they fit into history. Includes links to 3 very moving videos]
The new shipment was announced "right after the #StateDepartment admits Israel has 'likely' used #US -supplied weapons in violation of humanitarian law," said one journalist.
A damning article on the Biden administration's complicity in the famine in Gaza and the use of starvation by Israel as a weapon of war.
In an internal collective dissent memo drafted this month by numerous employees of USAID, the staff assail the agency and the Biden administration for its “failure to uphold international humanitarian principles and to adhere to its mandate to save lives”.
Many Americans believe Congress could be fixed with a simple solution: Throw the bums out with term limits.
But that creates more problems than it solves, says political scientists.
For one, members in their legally mandated final term in office enjoy a kind of "senioritis" -- and experience apathy toward being productive in their final year, because they don't have to face the voters again at the ballot box.
They're not going to try and stop the genocide.
They're not putting any boots on the ground.
But they still want to be in charge of everything. As usual.
“Arab states have said it should be US-led so the US is trying to work out how it can lead it without having boots on the ground ... "
FT: "US encouraging Arab states to join multinational postwar force in Gaza"
"Biden Moves Forward on $1 Billion in New Arms for Israel
The administration notifies Congress of a large arms package after withholding shipment of bombs last week"
Caitlin Johnston on the US empire:
"No other power has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions and displacing them by the tens of millions. No other power is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, starving people around the world with blockades and economic sanctions, staging proxy wars, color revolutions and coups all over the earth, and working to destabilize and destroy ..."