The Texas Secretary of State’s Office used a controversial federal data tool to flag more than 2,000 potential noncitizens on the state’s voter roll last year. But in an April letter to federal immigration officials, Secretary of State Jane Nelson raised concerns about its accuracy.

In that letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials, obtained as part of a public records request by Democracy Forward — a nonprofit legal organization advocating for democracy through litigation and public policy — and shared with Votebeat, Nelson said her office wanted “to make sure that you are using the most accurate data,” and asked agency officials to notify her office if they are able to “confirm the citizenship of any individuals previously identified as non-citizens” in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said the agency has not yet received a response from USCIS. Nelson resigned from her role last month. Her last day is July 17, and the governor has not yet appointed a replacement.

Nearly half of all Democrats in the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to cut off US military aid to Israel, a move that underscored a dramatic shift away from the US support the Mideast ally has enjoyed for nearly 60 years.

While House lawmakers ultimately rejected Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-Ky.) amendment to a national security spending bill that would have eliminated the $3.3 billion in annual foreign military financing provided to Israel’s military, the details of the vote were viewed as an encouraging sign by defenders of Palestine and the rule of law.

Massie and 103 Democrats voted for the measure, while 215 Republicans and 98 Democrats rejected it. The overall tally was 104 for, 314 against, and 10 "present" votes, with 9 absences.

Big changes are coming to Android apps, but they're not the changes Google wanted. The settlement between Google and Epic that aimed to put to rest the companies' long-running antitrust battle is being withdrawn, and that means third-party app stores are coming to the Play Store. Google has confirmed that it will begin distributing rival app stores next week, setting the stage for competing platforms to take a bite out of Google's Android revenue stream.

This case has the potential to upend software distribution on Android, and it's all because of V-Bucks. In 2020, Epic Games was frustrated that it had to pay a 30 percent cut to Apple and Google every time someone bought a bundle of V-Bucks in a mobile version of Fortnite. The publisher added a direct purchase option to the game in violation of both Apple's and Google's rules. Naturally, Fortnite was pulled from the App Store and Google Play, kicking off the antitrust lawsuit that is only now reaching its conclusion.

While Apple suffered little penalty in its Epic case, Google was tripped up by its anti-competitive management of the supposedly open Android ecosystem. Google used its market position to discourage device makers from promoting or pre-loading non-Google app stores and attempted to hide that conduct. The remedies set by Judge James Donato included lower fees, mirroring Google Play apps in other stores, and most vitally, placement of alternative app stores in Google Play.

Trump’s latest attack on American democracy relies on an old tactic. Throughout his second administration — and even dating back to his first — Trump appointees have laundered documents they claim prove Democratic and “deep state” malfeasance through credulous right-wing outlets, counting on MAGA media to amplify their conspiracy theories and hoping that mainstream outlets would pick them up as well. Now they’re applying the same playbook to election denial.

On Thursday night, Trump plans to use a White House address to relitigate his Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. While details are sparse, reports suggest he could use declassified intelligence documents to accuse China and Venezuela of election interference and target the 2020 Senate elections in Georgia. Allies in the election denial community have suggested such claims could be used as a "predicate" to declare a “national emergency” that would justify an executive order implementing voter suppression policies by fiat.

Right-wing journalist John Solomon and Trump crony Bill Pulte, recently installed by the president at the White House and as acting director of national intelligence, respectively, are reportedly leading the effort to scrounge up the documents Trump will use to make his case — and taking those records out of context to support his conspiracy theories (“They try to put bits and pieces together and then make these conclusions,” one administration official told MS NOW).

The White House has found a novel way to ensure Donald Trump’s nominees ascend to power.

Federal judges in the Western District of Washington swore in former King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney Wednesday morning. Within 54 minutes, Trump fired him.

The district’s 17 federal judges have been trying to find a replacement for Seattle’s First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd, after Trump failed to formally nominate him. Floyd was appointed in October, though his name was never officially advanced to the Senate for consideration.

Federal law grants a district’s judges the power to appoint a U.S. attorney if the president and the acting attorney general fail to do so within 120 days, subsequently stonewalling the procedural Senate hearings.

The New York Times journalist Jonathan Swan has spent the past 11 years covering President Trump through three political campaigns, his first, and now second, term in office and the ongoing war with Iran. Swan says aside from the COVID-19 pandemic, he can't remember a time where Trump looked "as stuck as he looks right now."

"It's pretty clear he realizes that this war [with Iran] has not gone well, has not played out the way that Netanyahu pitched him or that Trump himself thought [it] would play out," Swan says. "Trump is someone who is naturally given to hubris, but I think we saw a very extreme version of that with this war."

Swan and his co-author Maggie Haberman spoke with more than 1,000 sources for their new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. The book paints a picture of an unrestrained president remaking the American government and its international relations in profound ways.

The Department of Justice wants to intervene in a lawsuit to force a massive voter roll purge in California.

Tom Fitton, the president of the far-right legal group Judicial Watch, boasted on social media Wednesday that the DOJ seeks to “clean nearly 1 million dirty voter names from California’s voter rolls” after the department filed its motion to intervene as a plaintiff Monday.

Judicial Watch has led the charge in seeking to purge voter rolls in Oregon, Colorado, Kentucky and New York.

The motion comes nearly two months after Judicial Watch filed its initial complaint, arguing the state has not made a “reasonable effort” to purge the names of voters who have moved out of state, in accordance with Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Thousands of visitors were told to evacuate a remote Minnesota wilderness area accessible only by boat as wildfires send dangerously heavy smoke over the U.S. Midwest and Northeast this week.

More than 100 wildfires are burning in Canada and winds are carrying the smoke southeast. Warnings about unhealthy air conditions Wednesday extended from Minnesota through Toronto and into New York. Unusually hot summer temperatures were expected, too.

The best advice is to stay indoors to avoid both the smoke and the extreme heat, said Tyler Hasenstein, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

"Those two things coinciding with each other is not good from a health perspective," he said.

JD Vance sought last week to use a military helicopter to ferry himself and his son across Washington for a golf lesson, one of a number of allegedly unusual travel requests that has left the Republican’s security detail “fed up,” MS Now reports.

The alleged travel plans aboard Marine Two were ultimately canceled due to weather, but Secret Service agents nonetheless discussed it among themselves unhappily, according to the outlet.

Past vice presidents have had Secret Service agents drive their children to activities, rather than use military hardware, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars per hour to operate.

This week, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR) won a key battle in its fight to reverse a visa-restriction policy that the Trump administration had used to attempt to revoke green cards and deport non-US citizens who work on misinformation, disinformation, fact-checking, content moderation, compliance, and trust and safety.

In an opinion published Tuesday, US District Judge James Boasberg granted a preliminary injunction blocking the State Department from enforcing the policy until the CITR’s lawsuit is resolved.

On its face, the policy does not require visa denials or deportations. Instead, it authorizes immigration investigations into individuals suspected of helping foreign adversaries attempt to manipulate public opinion by suppressing US speech.

New York became the first US state to enact a moratorium on new datacenters on Tuesday.

Governor Kathy Hochul issued an executive order mandating a one-year statewide pause on the large facilities used to power artificial intelligence products, which she signed at a mid-morning press conference.

“As datacenter development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” Hochul, a Democrat, said in a statement.

The order will pause the state permitting process for proposed “hyperscale” datacenters, defined as having electrical capacity of more than 50 megawatts, and direct state regulators to create standards focused on environmental impacts, energy demand, water usage and other factors, the governor’s office said.

BORK!BORK!BORK! Paris might sometimes be called "The City of Light" or perhaps "The City of Love" by the romantically inclined. Judging by this hotel's elevators, "The City of Bork" is more appropriate.

Spotted by eagle-eyed Register reader Nathaniel in a Paris hotel, what we assume to be digital signage is instead stalled on the all too familiar American Megatrends BIOS configuration screen. The computer behind the scenes also seems a bit overpowered to serve information for hotel services.

Instead of enticing elevator riders into the undoubtedly delightful bars and restaurants of the establishment (apparently a Novotel not far from the Eiffel Tower) or whatever it should be doing, this screen has temptations of an altogether more technical nature.

A CometLake CPU? An i5 no less? Sort of up-to-date. And that 8 GB of RAM? The way memory prices are going, that might be enough to buy you a nice hotel room in some cities, and at least a decent coffee and a croque monsieur in Paris.