In an eyewitness video analyzed frame by frame by The New York Times, Alex Pretti raises one hand and holds a phone in the other. Federal agents tackle him, and one appears to find and remove a gun holstered on his hip. Then, an agent shoots - and a second follows. They appear to fire nine more shots as Pretti lies on the ground.
One of the most dramatic cases involves Larry Bushart, a retired police officer in Lexington, Tenn, according to NPR. A self-described progressive and "keyboard warrior," he posted memes that mocked Republican officials' mourning over Kirk. He was arrested by local police at the request of Sheriff Nick Weems of Perry County, Tenn. Prosecutors later dropped the charges, and Bushart is now suing, represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Millions nationwide have begun the process of filing their yearly taxes - including many immigrants without a permanent immigration status. But since President Donald Trump's return to the White House, his administration has sought access to IRS data - including taxpayers' addresses - to further its immigration crackdown and locate undocumented immigrants. And last April, ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, secured a data-sharing agreement with the IRS, alarming many taxpayers who use ITINs to file.
Recently, the culprit has often been the federal government. The Department of Homeland Security is putting out white-nationalist dog whistles on X. President Trump posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The subtext of every egregious shitpost from the administration is the same: These people are in charge now, and the old rules don't matter. A great deal of what I find myself scrolling past exudes a threatening, almost anarchical aura.
Residents of East Harlem's El Barrio have waited 80+ years for the Second Avenue Subway. The Trump administration could force them to wait even longer as it withholds federal funding for regional infrastructure projects over an alleged naming issue, no less. It's outrageous, it's unfair, and the MTA backed by Governor Hochul won't stand for it. We're at a pivotal moment for the project sixth months after awarding our largest-ever tunneling contract back in August.
President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government's legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet." - The New York Times A new ruling from the Trump administration says that when the sun disappears at night, we don't know where it goes. All remaining top scientists have been taken from their positions and tasked with getting to the bottom of this.
A source told the Times that the idea had come from deputy director Dan Bongino, a cop-turned-right-wing-podcast-yapper, whose justification for the decision was as follows: "Bongino said, You can have the best female agent take down the biggest case in our history, but if on the Ring door-camera video she's out of shape or overweight, that's going to be the story. He was worried about whether or not they'd look good on a doorbell camera. He said it's the way these times are."
Aguilar's dismissal came after months of escalating tension between his office and the Police Accountability Board on the one side, and the City Council, Berkeley Police Department leadership and other city administrative agencies on the other. Most recently, in December, Aguilar sued BPD Chief Jen Louis in an attempt to get records related to a complaint against the police. This week, a judge denied Aguilar's petition, saying Aguilar had not had the authority to file it in the first place.
Vermont's Democratic Socialist senator and Florida's right-wing governor want to slam the brakes on the hundreds of resource-intensive new facilities springing up across the country to power the artificial intelligence industry. And both point to profits, not the public good, as the real factor motivating the boom. In many ways, the convergence was inevitable. Public wariness about the data-center industry is growing, and politicians could no longer ignore the outcry. Public skepticism of AI is also ubiquitous.
When running for re-election as Florida Attorney General, Pam Bondi touted her efforts to prosecute sex traffickers. "Florida ranks third nationally in calls for help in human trafficking, where young women and children are enslaved and abused. I knew we needed all hands on deck," she said in a 2016 ad that's now gone viral for all of the wrong reasons. "I'll fight to put human trafficking monsters where they belong," she continued. "Behind bars."
Denmark's prime minister and Greenland's premier met with United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio and agreed that talks would be pursued on the running of Greenland, the semi-autonomous Danish territory that President Donald Trump has threatened to take over. Rubio held a 15-minute meeting with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland's Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
The United States military said on Friday that it had struck another vessel suspected of trafficking drugs in the Caribbean, killing three people. The US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) posted an 11-second clip on social media platform X that showed a boat wading through waters before being hit by what the military called "a lethal kinetic strike" and exploding. The vessel "was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations," the statement from SOUTHCOM said.
I believe that in the absence of a unanimous agreement, [the Interior Department] should renew the existing agreements for five years, and then we should start all over. We should scrap the entire process and invent a new one.
