President claims ‘I don’t need money for the ballroom’ as Senate Republicans move to ditch $1bn funding plan amid fears of alienating voters
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and other Democrats spoke held a news conference, ahead of the vote-a-rama Thursday morning.
“The Republican agenda is one big broken promise,” said Schumer, criticizing the Republican budget bill. “We still haven’t seen the bill, because they are fighting with each other.”
Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.
Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.
Trump v Barbara: In which the court will decide if the administration’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship are unconstitutional.
Continue reading...DNC chair Ken Martin apologizes for initial bid to block release of report on the party’s disastrous election defeat
The Democrats have belatedly published a postmortem on the party’s disastrous 2024 election defeat, after an initial decision to withhold the document triggered an angry backlash.
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), released the report – which fails to mention Gaza or Joe Biden’s age – accompanied by an apology to party members angered by his initial decision to keep the analysis of Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump and defeat in both houses of Congress under wraps.
Continue reading...Approval marks key step forward for project dubbed ‘Arc de Trump’, which will be near Arlington National Cemetery
The Commission of Fine Arts on Thursday approved designs for Donald Trump’s proposed 250-ft triumphal arch in Washington DC.
The vote on Thursday by the panel, which is made up of Trump appointees, marks a key step forward for the project. Next month, the proposed design is set to be reviewed by the National Capital Planning Commission, another federal panel that oversees planning for federal buildings and land.
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Strict restrictions on Americans with exposure to Ebola and hantavirus highlight officials’ previous rhetoric on public health measures
The US is imposing strict restrictions on American travelers who have been exposed in dual Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks in ways that experts say could run counter to their legal rights and affect who will volunteer in future public health crises globally.
The latest restrictions highlight officials’ previous rhetoric on public health measures and their attempts to contain outbreaks now, including reported opposition from the White House to Americans returning home.
Continue reading...Senate will not pass the $70bn legislation ahead of a 1 June deadline set by Trump ahead of the Memorial Day recess
A bid to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol has been derailed by rows over a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and controversial plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.
The US Senate will not pass the $70bn legislation ahead of a 1 June deadline set by the US president, Republican senators told reporters on Thursday, as lawmakers leave Washington for the Memorial Day recess.
Continue reading...Company says work on Paul Erdős planar unit distance problem shows advance in AI reasoning
OpenAI has claimed a further advance in AI reasoning after its technology successfully tackled an 80-year-old maths problem.
The company behind ChatGPT said it had made a breakthrough with a challenge first posed by Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős in 1946: the planar unit distance problem.
Continue reading...Spotify is launching "Reserved," a new feature that will set aside concert tickets for Premium subscribers it identifies as an artist's most dedicated fans based on streams, shares, and other activity. "Getting concert tickets today can feel like a race you're set up to lose," Spotify wrote in a post on Thursday. "You show up at the right time, refresh endlessly, and still miss out. Too often, the experience is stressful, unpredictable, and disconnected from what should matter most: whether real fans actually get tickets. We think there's a better way." From the Hollywood Reporter: Spotify said that starting in the U.S. this summer, select artists will be able to use Reserved to set aside tickets for fans on the platform. The platform has partnered with Live Nation on the program as part of a multiyear agreement. The platform will use streams, shares and other types of activity to "identify an artist's most dedicated fans and hold two tour tickets for them." Fans selected through Reserved will get up to two tickets, and they'll have a day-long window to make a ticket purchase if selected. Spotify didn't give any details on what artists will work with the streaming service for the new feature, or how many tickets artists would set aside with Reserved, though the service acknowledged "there will be significantly more superfans than there are seats available on a tour, so not every fan will receive an offer."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
DHS issued ‘Bolo’ for Ben Palmer, whose videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants went viral
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has circulated a “Be on the Lookout” alert to law enforcement nationwide, targeting a comedian whose satire of US immigration enforcement went viral.
The subject of the alert, known as a “Bolo”, was Ben Palmer, a Nashville-based standup comedian and prankster who created a parody anti-immigration tip website. His revealing videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have garnered millions of views on TikTok and YouTube.
Continue reading...Aimee Bock ran Feeding Our Future, which claimed it helped provide millions of meals to children during the pandemic
A federal judge has sentenced Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock to nearly 42 years in prison for orchestrating what prosecutors called the largest pandemic fraud scheme in the country.
Thursday’s sentencing follows a $250m plot that exploited federal child nutrition programs. The plot later became a flashpoint in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, leading to violent demonstrations and the ICE killings of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Continue reading...Court throws out state’s challenge to judicial finding that inmate convicted of murder is ineligible for death penalty
The US supreme court on Thursday threw out a challenge by the state of Alabama to a judicial finding that a death row inmate convicted of a 1997 murder is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible under the US constitution for the death penalty.
In this highly unusual move, and in a single-sentence, unsigned order, the court dismissed Alabama’s petition for review in Hamm v Smith without deciding it, effectively undoing its earlier decision to take up an appeal by state officials to the method used by a lower court to determine that Joseph Clifton Smith was intellectually disabled and therefore could not be executed.
Continue reading...President claims ‘I don’t need money for the ballroom’ as Senate Republicans expected to ditch $1bn funding plan amid fears of alienating voters
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and other Democrats spoke held a news conference, ahead of the vote-a-rama Thursday morning.
“The Republican agenda is one big broken promise,” said Schumer, criticizing the Republican budget bill. “We still haven’t seen the bill, because they are fighting with each other.”
Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.
Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.
Trump v Barbara: In which the court will decide if the administration’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship are unconstitutional.
Continue reading...