#political-interference

#political-interference

State of play: Democratic attorneys general fromthefivestates - California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York - filed a lawsuit against the administration just one day prior. The Department of Health and Human Services officials claimed cutting off funding was necessary due to systemic fraud in the child care system. Yes, but: The suit, filed Thursday evening in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that the freeze was triggered by viral misinformation, political rhetoric and public threats from Trump and top officials, not by fraud findings.

The chief minister of Gibraltar made a series of grossly improper and sinister interventions to interfere in a live criminal investigation in order to protect his friend, mentor and business partner from the consequences of a search warrant, a public inquiry has found. The retired England and Wales high court judge and inquiry chair, Sir Peter Openshaw, concluded that Fabian Picardo acted to protect James Levy KC when police were at Hassans law firm, where Levy was a senior partner, on 12 May 2020.

The plan will see the intelligence services deliver security briefings for political parties and issue new guidance to election candidates to help them recognise, resist and report suspicious activity; work with professional networking sites to make them a more hostile operating environment for spies; and tighten rules on political donations through a new Elections Bill. He will add that the government will continue to take further action against China-based actors involved in malicious cyber activity against the UK and our allies.

Lex Greensill has accused Kemi Badenoch of interfering in an insolvency case for political ends as the last Conservative government sought to protect David Cameron from scrutiny for his involvement in a lobbying scandal. The financier, whose companies paid Cameron millions of pounds, claimed that the current Tory leader used her former ministerial position as business secretary to restructure an inquiry into his activities.

Queensland's controversial ban on puberty blockers and other hormone therapies is unlawful because of a failure to properly consult health executives on a decision affected by political interference, a court has heard. The supreme court in Brisbane on Wednesday heard the ban should be overturned as part of a legal challenge launched by the mother of a transgender child. The mother cannot be identified for legal reasons.

The chilling warning comes as a new culture of fear and silence has descended on NASA after Trump officials instituted dramatic staff reductions, along with alleged unilateral budget cuts and the gagging of an important program that allows people to air safety and performance issues without fear of reprisals, according to the report released by Democrats on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

If I were a federal prosecutor in Utah bringing murder charges against Tyler Robinson in the killing of Charlie Kirk, this would strike me as more than a little ominous. The future of their case would likely rely in large part on the president and the crew of his big ship of fools. They've already mucked around with the case of Luigi Mangione in New York, who is charged with the murder of healthcare executive Brian Thompson.

The already tumultuous landscape of U.S. vaccine policy faces more turmoil in what's anticipated to be a politically charged two-day meeting of a recently overhauled advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is an independent panel of experts that has traditionally met three times a year to make science-based recommendations about who should receive certain vaccines.

The first part of this past summer, I was preoccupied with preparing three different grant applications. Writing grants is a normal part of my job. Heck, sometimes it feels like it is the majority of my job as an academic scientist. So, those couple of months were not out of the ordinary; I often spend those early summer months preparing for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) summer cycle.

US president Donald Trump is an avowed climate science sceptic who during his second term has followed through on promises to slash funding for renewable energies like wind, and to promote oil and gas. But the administration has also gutted agencies that produce climate information used by millions of Americans. In February, only weeks after taking office, around 800 people were dismissed from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),

The complaint asserts that FBI Director Kash Patel indicated directly to one of the ousted agents, Brian Driscoll, that he knew the firings were likely illegal but was powerless to stop them because the White House and the Justice Department were determined to remove all agents who had helped in investigations surrounding Trump.

The move is a chilling escalation of Trump's weaponization of the DOJ against perceived political opponents. It's also part of an obvious and long-standing effort to gain control of the Fed. Like the politicization of law enforcement, seizing power over the central bank is a power grab straight out of the authoritarian playbook, and one with predictable, ugly outcomes for America's economy and democracy.

In 1937, Joseph Stalin commissioned a sweeping census of the Soviet Union. The data reflected some uncomfortable facts in particular, the dampening of population growth in areas devastated by the 1933 famine and so Stalin's government suppressed the release of the survey results. Several high-level government statistical workers responsible for the census were subsequently imprisoned and apparently executed. Though the Soviet authorities would proudly trumpet national statistics that glorified the USSR's achievements, any numbers that did not fit the preferred narrative were buried.

The new policies are the agencies' first response to two White House executive orders that directed agencies to put political appointees in charge of decisions about science funding and integrity. The policies could shape the work of the nearly 300,000 scientists and engineerswho work for federal agencies and the almost US$200 billion of science funded by the US government.

Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,

More than 150 injuries from traffic crashes could have been avoided and nearly a quarter-million New York City bus riders had faster commutes had the Adams administration had not stymied several street redesigns at the behest of powerful interests - in at least one case allegedly in exchange for bribes - according to a Streetsblog analysis. Since taking office in 2022, Adams and his aides intervened in at least seven key Department of Transportation safety projects that could have reduced crashes by more than 50 percent and sped up bus trips by 24 percent, based on agency studies of similar overhauls elsewhere.

A group of 20 writers, academics, and psychoanalysts alleges serious governance issues at the Freud Museum, leading to political interference and an alienating atmosphere.

"This is very worrying, because if past is prologue, it may suggest that they are preparing to eliminate or emasculate the committee," Peter Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told The New York Times.