The “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has apparently been dissolved with eight months still remaining on its contract, ending a drawn-out campaign of invading federal agencies and firing thousands of federal workers.

“That doesn’t exist,” office of personnel management (OPM) director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about Doge’s status, adding that it was no longer a “centralized entity”.

The statement confirmed longstanding suspicions that Doge, created by an executive order that Donald Trump signed on his first day, was on its way out. The tech billionaire Elon Musk and the former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy were tapped to lead the effort and were expected to drive “large scale structural reform” through 24 July 2026.

Why did the DOJ create a second indictment document that makes it look like no charge was rejected?

Trumpism’s most revealing and defining moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the US president started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size of the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it. Then, after nationwide protests against his rule, he posted on social media an AI video of himself wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet labeled “King Trump”, which proceeded to bomb American cities and Americans with a graphically vivid load of human poop.

As disorienting as it is to watch the president try to upend the old idea of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.

We have watched over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of love into a figure of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in the Gospel; we went from “the meek shall inherit the Earth” to “the meek shall die of cholera.” This has happened more slowly, over decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.

What particularly hurts is the fact that at no point did we manage to fight back, not effectively anyway. Without intending to, we surrendered control of the idea of Jesus. It is a story that may provide some insights into how to fight the attack on democracy.

Despite the US’s economic success, income inequality remains breathtaking. But this is no glitch – it’s the system

The Chinese did rather well in the age of globalization. In 1990, 943 million people there lived on less than $3 a day measured in 2021 dollars – 83% of the population, according to the World Bank. By 2019, the number was brought down to zero. Unfortunately, the United States was not as successful. More than 4 million Americans – 1.25% of the population – must make ends meet with less than $3 a day, more than three times as many as 35 years ago.

The data is not super consistent with the narrative of the US’s inexorable success. Sure, American productivity has zoomed ahead of that of its European peers. Only a handful of countries manage to produce more stuff per hour of work. And artificial intelligence now promises to put the United States that much further ahead.

This is not to congratulate China for its authoritarian government, for its repression of minorities or for the iron fist it deploys against any form of dissent. But it merits pondering how this undemocratic government could successfully slash its poverty rate when the richest and oldest democracy in the world wouldn’t.

The army secretary has little in his résumé to suggest he can end the war between Russia and Ukraine

Little in Dan Driscoll’s résumé – past or present – suggests he has the qualifications to understand the often-tortured and bloody history of relations between Russia and Ukraine.

A former investment banker with a degree in business administration, the current US army secretary’s main calling card for a prominent role in the Trump administration may be a friendship with JD Vance dating from when they were at Yale Law School together.

Against that thin backdrop, Driscoll now finds himself in the unlikely role of US point man between Kyiv and Moscow as Donald Trump seeks to live up to his promise to end the near four-year war between the two countries, something he once promised to do on “day one” of his presidency.

Israeli warplanes bombed tent encampments and displacement shelters while troops moved deeper into Gaza City, expanding the "yellow line" and seizing more territory.

The 17-year-old was held more than five hours Friday in an ICE facility, his brother said.

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The accounts being discussed here have pushed agendas within the US, and commented on US politics regularly. Many are also named to echo political movements, like some MAGA accounts.

However, these ‘political influencers’ have been found to be based outside the US, raising questions about the motives.

One profile going by 'MAGA NATION' with a follower count of over 392,000, is based out of eastern Europe. Similarly, ‘Dark Maga’ a page with over 15,000 followers is based out of Thailand. ‘MAGA Scope’ which boasts over 51,000 followers is actually operated out of Nigeria, and ‘America First’, an account with over 67,000 followers is based out of Bangladesh.

“At this time thousands of MAGA-aligned influencer accounts and large political pages that claim to be based in the U.S. are now being investigated and exposed with many of them traced to India, Nigeria, and other countries,” a news aggregator page on X noted.

Archive: https://archive.ph/DYs5O

A new congressional map was abruptly passed by Republicans in mid-September – but voters have a chance to rebuke politicians and stop it from going into effect

The philosopher and the sex trafficker were in contact long after Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, documents reveal

Chomsky had deeper ties with Epstein than previously known, documents reveal

The prominent linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky called it a “most valuable experience” to have maintained “regular contact” with Jeffrey Epstein, who by then had long been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, according to emails released earlier in November by US lawmakers.

Such comments from Chomsky, or attributed to him, suggest his association with Epstein – who officials concluded killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges – went deeper than the occasional political and academic discussions the former had previously claimed to have with the latter.

Chomsky, 96, had also reportedly acknowledged receiving about $270,000 from an account linked to Epstein while sorting the disbursement of common funds relating to the first of his two marriages, though the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor has insisted not “one penny” came directly from the infamous financier.

NEW YORK (AP) — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. personally directed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to update its website to contradict its longtime guidance that vaccines don’t cause autism, he told The New York Times in an interview published Friday.

His comments provide clarity into who directed the CDC’s website change, after many current and former staffers at the agency were surprised to see new published guidance on Wednesday that defies scientific consensus. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic, has upended the public health agencies he oversees and pushed for and enacted changes that have unsettled much of the medical community, which sees his policies as harmful for Americans.

“The whole thing about ‘vaccines have been tested and there’s been this determination made,’ is just a lie,” Kennedy said in the interview, which was conducted Thursday.

The CDC’s “vaccine safety” page now claims that the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is not based on evidence because it doesn’t rule out the possibility that infant vaccines are linked to the disorder. The page also has been updated to suggest that health officials have ignored studies showing a potential link.

It directs the federal government to mobilize law enforcement resources, including the post-9/11 counterterrorism apparatus and Joint Terrorism Task Forces, against individuals and organizations that fall within these expansive categories. In the months since, the administration has apparently already started kicking law enforcement into gear to crack down on its political enemies.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein has reported on multiple instances of arrests being made through the directives laid out in NSPM-7. For example, Klippenstein reported on one incident involving Elias Cepeda, an English professor arrested on Sept. 26 participating in a protest outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois. DHS issued a press release describing him as having “suspected ties” to antifa and highlighting several of his social-media posts as concerning. Cepeda was carrying a firearm for which he reportedly has a valid concealed-carry permit. He was held about 12 hours in federal custody before being moved to state custody and quickly released.

“In other words, you don’t have to have committed a crime to be investigated or even arrested and detained,” Klippenstein wrote last month. “You just have to have committed wrongspeech, as defined by NSPM’s broad indicators.”

While some have noted that NSPM-7 carries little formal authority — there is no provision in U.S. law for designating domestic groups as terrorist organizations — the memo’s power does not rely on legal force. Its intent is to shape behavior, which is already having tangible effects. By signaling that a broad range of ideological positions and activities could draw federal scrutiny, NSPM-7 is intended to chill speech and activism.

In what it’s calling an “aroma ad,” home goods and fragrance corporation Bath & Body Works is pumping vanilla and fresh pine scent from diffusers attached to steel girders in the tunnels connecting the subway beneath Grand Central Station in New York City.

As The Associated Press reports, commuters’ olfactory senses are being assaulted by the “Fresh Balsam” scent as part of a promotion campaign in collaboration with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

Trump said he would even be comfortable moving back to New York City and living there with Mamdani as mayor, saying he was surprised how much they had in common.

For months, Donald Trump warned New Yorkers against electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor, referring to him as a “communist lunatic.” Mamdani, meanwhile, called Trump a “despot.”

All of that was put aside in an extraordinary Oval Office get-together Friday, the first face-to-face meeting between the two men.

Trump, who sought to kneecap Mamdani during the campaign, was exceedingly complimentary of the self-described democratic socialist, while Mamdani repeatedly talked up his hope that he and the president could work together to lower costs for New Yorkers.

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has pardoned 31 Ukrainians jailed in Belarus on criminal offences, it was reported on Saturday, the latest step in Minsk’s effort to thaw relations with the West.

They were released “as a gesture of goodwill”, in accordance with agreements reached between Lukashenko and U.S. President Donald Trump at Ukraine’s request, Belarusian state agency Belta said, citing Lukashenko’s spokesperson, Natalia Eismont. Those freed were handed over to Kyiv, according to the report.

Earlier this week, Lukashenko pardoned two jailed Catholic priests at the request of the Vatican.

Belarus, Russia’s close and dependent ally, has allowed the Kremlin to use its territory to send troops and tanks into Ukraine, and later to place nuclear weapons there. Moscow and Kyiv have also conducted prisoner swaps on Belarusian land.

Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron first for over 30 years, has recently tried to repair relations with the West. Weeks after a phone call with Trump in August, he pardoned 51 political prisoners under a U.S.-brokered deal that saw some sanctions lifted from the country’s national airline, Belavia.

The transportation department has unveiled a first crash test dummy in the US modeled specifically on female anatomy, a move officials say is meant to close decades of safety gaps in vehicle testing.

Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, unveiled the THOR-05F, an advanced female design for a crash-test dummy with upgraded technical specifications. According to the transportation department, the dummy will be incorporated into federal vehicle crash testing once a final rule is published.

Although men make up the majority of annual car-crash victims, women are more likely to die in collisions of comparable severity. Women are also 73% more likely than men to sustain serious injuries in a crash, according to studies. In addition, they face a higher risk of specific trauma, including pelvis and liver injuries.

The Fox News announcement of a new podcast series on Jesus Christ has turned into a bizarre holiday tale in Hollywood, as several actors attached to massive, 52-episode project claim their recordings date back 15 years and are being released without their prior knowledge.

But reps for Bell claim that the actor was blindsided by the announcement, as she had recorded the audio 15 years ago. She only learned that Fox planned to release a podcast with her name attached the day before the announcement, when her team received an invitation to appear on Fox & Friends the following day, her reps told Rolling Stone. Her team added that she never gave permission for the original audiobook – The Truth and Life Dramatized Audio Bible, released in 2010 and acquired by Fox News Media via a licensing deal with a company called Gulfstream Studios – to be repurposed into a new podcast.

Reps for Cox, McDowell and Rhys-Davies confirmed to Rolling Stone that they were similarly shocked by the news, with some only learning of the new podcast as news of Bell’s confusion circulated on Thursday. “Brian recorded audio for a project over a decade ago,” a rep for Cox said in a statement. “He was unaware that the audio would be repurposed for a new podcast series in 2025. Brian only became aware of the podcast today.”

Rolling Stone also obtained a note from a producer associated with the new podcast at Fox, in which they requested a celebrity cast member “not mention that this audio New Testament Bible was produced years ago, we’d like it to feel like something that was produced more recently”.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/42209784

Prosecutors said Friday that Luigi Mangione’s death penalty case in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson should carry on unimpeded, urging a judge to reject a defense push to dismiss charges and rule out capital punishment over Attorney General Pam Bondi’s public statements suggesting Mangione deserves execution.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan also asked U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett to deny the defense’s bid to suppress certain evidence collected during the arrest last year, including a 9 mm handgun, a notebook in which authorities say Mangione described his intent to “wack” an insurance executive and statements he made to police.

“Pretrial publicity, even when intense, is not itself a constitutional defect,” prosecutors wrote in a 121-page court filing, citing prior rulings from the Supreme Court and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

As for the evidence, which Mangione’s lawyers contend was collected without a warrant and without him being read his rights, prosecutors said police officers were justified in searching the suspect’s backpack to make sure there were no dangerous items. His statements to officers, they said, were made voluntarily and before he was taken into police custody.

Rather than dismissing the case outright or barring the government from seeking the death penalty, prosecutors argued, the defense’s concerns can best be alleviated by carefully questioning prospective jurors about their knowledge of the case and ensuring Mangione’s rights are respected at trial.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found Texas’ 2026 congressional redistricting plan pushed by President Donald Trump likely discriminates on the basis of race.

The order signed by Justice Samuel Alito will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map favorable to Republicans to be used in the midterm elections.

The court’s conservative majority has blocked similar lower court rulings because they have come too close to elections.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/42210452

A Grays Harbor County resident died Friday after earlier testing positive for a type of bird flu never before detected in humans, state health officials reported.

The death was the second from bird flu recorded in the U.S. since 2022. It was also the first human case in the state this year — and the first in the country in at least eight months.

The University of Washington virology lab revealed this month the virus is H5N5, a variant previously reported in animals but not in humans.

The risk to the public remains low, according to state health officials. No other people have tested positive, and monitoring of those who were in close contact with the patient continues.

Bird flu rarely infects people and makes them sick. When it does, symptoms are typically mild, health officials said. Most cases in people have occurred after they exposure to sick or infected animals. No person-to-person transmission has been documented in the U.S.

The Washington resident, an older adult with underlying health conditions, was hospitalized in early November with a high fever, confusion and respiratory distress, health officials have said. They were treated at a King County hospital. Other details about the patient were not disclosed.

The patient had a mixed backyard flock of domestic poultry that was exposed to wild birds, and was likely exposed to the virus through domestic or wild birds, health officials said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/39145318