WASHINGTON (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. Billy Long of Missouri was confirmed on Thursday to lead the Internal Revenue Service, giving the beleaguered agency he once sought to abolish a permanent commissioner after months of acting leaders and massive staffing cuts that have threatened to derail next year’s tax filing season.
The Senate confirmed Long on a 53-44 vote despite Democrats’ concerns about the Republican’s past work for a firm that pitched a fraud-ridden coronavirus pandemic-era tax break and about campaign contributions he received after President Donald Trump nominated him to serve as IRS commissioner.
While in Congress, where he served from 2011 to 2023, Long sponsored legislation to get rid of the IRS, the agency he is now tasked with leading. A former auctioneer, Long has no background in tax administration.
Israel might be the most lethal military in the world right now – including us. The combination of intelligence, precision, and lethality is remarkable. What we are learning is that while Iran is a deadly world actor through their support of terrorist groups, they are rather weak in terms actual military power. That’s why they want the nuke… and that’s why they can’t have it.
Israel launched strikes across Iran on Friday, saying they targeted the “heart” of Iran’s nuclear programme.
The strikes killed Hossein Salami, chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards – a powerful branch of the country’s armed forces – other senior military figures and nuclear scientists.
Civilians, including children, were also among those killed, Iranian state media reported. The BBC is not able to independently verify these reports.
The Israeli military said Iran launched about 100 drones towards Israel on Friday morning, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was intercepting. A state of emergency was declared in Israel.
The US said it was not involved in the strikes. Multiple strikes were reported, including on Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility.
The global nuclear watchdog has found Iran has failed to meet its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.
A resolution passed by the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) carries the threat of an eventual referral to the UN Security Council.
It follows a report from the IAEA last week, which cited a general lack of “co-operation” from Iran and raised concerns over secret activities and undeclared nuclear material in areas which have long been under investigation.
Iran’s foreign minister had warned European powers earlier this week that backing the motion would be a mistake and that it would react strongly.
Excellent. The devil is in the details, but it’s progress.
U.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday said that China will supply rare earths upfront to the U.S. as part of a trade agreement.
The relationship between the world’s two largest economies is “excellent,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, while adding, “WE ARE GETTING A TOTAL OF 55% TARIFFS, CHINA IS GETTING 10%.”
He added that full magnets and “any necessary rare earths” will be supplied up front by China and that the U.S. will in turn make certain concessions such as allowing Chinese students to attend U.S. colleges and universities.
The agreement is subject to final approval with himself and China President Xi Jinping, the White House leader said.
Representatives from both sides had on Tuesday revealed that a deal had been reached on trade after a second day of high-level talks in London.
“We have reached a framework to implement the Geneva consensus and the call between the two presidents,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters.
(The Center Square) – Wisconsin ranked 22nd in the American Legislative Exchange Council’s new labor policy rankings.
The state was graded with a total of three stars while Arizona and Utah led the way with 5.5 stars and both Alabama and Arkansas had five stars.
“Wisconsin made history with Act 10, a landmark reform that stood up to entrenched special interests and put power back in the hands of taxpayers,” said Alan Jernigan, manager of the ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force. “That moment inspired a national movement. But real reform is never a one-time event, it’s a continuous process.”
A major international study looking at nearly 300,000 children has revealed a two-way link between the amount of time kids spend on screens and their emotional and social well-being.
Children who spent more time using devices like TVs, tablets, computers, and gaming consoles were at a higher risk of developing problems like aggression, anxiety, and low self-esteem later in life, the study found.
The connection also works in reverse: Children who were already struggling with social or emotional challenges tended to spend more time on all types of screens.
Time spent on gaming consoles was particularly linked to a greater chance of developing issues, according to the study, published Monday in the academic journal Psychological Bulletin.
Of course it’s Spirit. I know they have to do it out of an abundance of caution, but it’s a shame that they had to cancel the flight. That threat didn’t sound credible from the outset.
A Michigan man has been arrested after missing his flight to Los Angeles and calling in a fake bomb threat after being made to book another flight, officials said.
The incident took place last Thursday at approximately 6:25 a.m. at Detroit Metropolitan Airport when an individual, later identified as 23-year-old John Charles Robinson of Monore, Michigan, “used a cell phone to call into Spirit Airlines and conveyed false information about a bomb threat to Flight 2145 departing from Detroit Metro bound for Los Angeles,” according to a statement from United States Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr. from the Eastern District of Michigan United States Attorney’s Office.
“During the call, Robinson stated in part, ‘I was calling about 2145… because I have information about that flight,’ and ‘there’s gonna be someone who’s gonna try to blow up the airport,’ and ‘there’s gonna be someone that’s gonna try to blow up that flight, 2145,’” according to the affidavit. “After giving a description of an individual, he then stated: ‘they’re going to be carrying a bomb through the TSA,’ and ‘they’re still threatening to do it, they’re still attempted to do it, they said it’s not going to be able to be detected. Please don’t let that flight board.’”
The flight was immediately canceled, officials said and the flight’s passengers and crew were deplaned for safety precautions.
On Monday he said he was “retiring” all of the Acip panel members. Eight of the 17 panellists were appointed in January 2025, in the last days of President Biden’s term.
Most of the members are practicing doctors and experts attached to major university medical centres.
Kennedy noted that if he did not remove the committee members, President Trump would not have been able to appoint a majority on the panel until 2028.
“The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” Kennedy wrote.
He claimed that health authorities and drug companies were responsible for a “crisis of public trust” that some try to explain “by blaming misinformation or antiscience attitudes.”
In the editorial, Kennedy cited examples from the 1990s and 2000s and alleged that conflicts of interest persist.
“Most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
Since May 7, 2025, travelers have needed a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license or state ID to board domestic flights. And now, TSA is putting its foot down, telling travelers that their Costco cards do not count as a valid form of ID to travel with.
TSA posted the following message on Facebook: “We love hotdogs & rotisserie chickens as much as the next person but please stop telling people their Costco card counts as a REAL ID because it absolutely does not.”
Several people flocked to the comments section of the Facebook post, writing things like, “I mean at least it has a STAR on it,” and “Im pretty sure that the Costco card is stronger than some passports.” Another jokingly wrote, “So, you’re saying we should bring you a chicken?”
Nearly half (49%) of its adult members — the oldest of whom are in their late 20s — say planning for the future feels “pointless,” according to a recent Credit Karma poll.
A freewheeling attitude toward summer spending has taken root among young adults who feel financial “despair” and “hopelessness,” said Courtney Alev, a consumer financial advocate at Credit Karma.
They think, “What’s the point when it comes to saving for the future?” Alev said.
That “YOLO mindset” among Generation Z — the cohort born from roughly 1997 through 2012 — can be dangerous: If unchecked, it might lead young adults to rack up high-interest debt they can’t easily repay, perhaps leading to delayed milestones like moving out of their parents’ home or saving for retirement, Alev said.
by Owen | 2120, 4 Jun 2525 | Politics | 0 Comments
There are only two scenarios for KJP. Either she knew that Biden has lost his marbles and knowingly lied to the American people about it or she was never near Biden and lied to the American people about her access to the President. I suppose there’s a third option that she was with Biden all the time and just too stupid to notice that he was riddled with dementia, but that seems unlikely for anyone with a moderate degree of intelligence. Either way, there is no way that we can ever trust anything that KJP ever says again. If she was smart, she’d take some high dollar job doing PR for a lefty corporation and drop out of the public eye, but she won’t.
The release from Legacy Lit, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group, said Jean-Pierre has chosen to “look beyond party lines” and is embracing “life as an independent,” a decision it indicated she did not come to lightly.
Jean-Pierre, who served in the Biden administration, is somewhat vague about why she no longer identifies as a Democrat, writing that she feels the current political moment necessitates “freeing ourselves of boxes.”
“Until January 20, I was responsible for speaking on behalf of the President of the United States,” Jean-Pierre said in a statement on Wednesday. “At noon on that day, I became a private citizen who, like all Americans and many of our allies around the world, had to contend with what was to come next for our country.”
She moved to the United States with a dream of studying medicine to transform lives. Then her father was charged with attempting to take them in connection with a fiery assault on pro-Jewish protesters in Boulder, Colorado.
Now Habiba Soliman, daughter of Boulder attack suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman, faces deportation along with the rest of her family.
The family, originally from Egypt, moved to the U.S. from Kuwait. Habiba Soliman recently graduated from high school, but her aspirations were upended when her 45-year-old father was charged with a federal hate crime and 16 counts of attempted murder related to the attack that left a dozen people burned, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor. Two remain hospitalized.
[…]
She won the scholarship and was profiled in the Colorado newspaper where she shared her dream of a “future medical career” in the U.S.
[…]
The family is in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and could not be reached for comment.”This terrorist will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Noem said on the X platform. “We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it.”
The housing market varies greatly by geography, but the national trend is moving toward buyers. If the Fed would get off it’s butt and lower interest rates, Gen Y might be able to afford a house this decade.
There are an estimated 1.9 million home sellers in the U.S. housing market and an estimated 1.5 million homebuyers. In other words, there are 33.7% more sellers than buyers (or 490,041 more, to be exact). At no other point in records dating back to 2013 have sellers outnumbered buyers by this large of a number or percentage. A year ago, sellers outnumbered buyers by just 6.5%, and two years ago, buyers outnumbered sellers.
There haven’t been this many home sellers since March 2020. There haven’t been this few buyers at any point in records dating back to 2013 aside from April 2020, when the onset of the coronavirus pandemic brought the housing market to a halt.
by Owen | 2049, 3 Jun 2525 | Military | 0 Comments
Wow. What a turnaround. It’s amazing how many young men and women want to serve their nation when it’s okay to be proud of it.
The U.S. Army met its annual recruiting target of 61,000 in the first week of June, four months ahead of the scheduled Sept. 30 deadline, after putting in place new initiatives to boost recruitment.
It marks a stunning turnaround for a service that failed to meet its recruiting goals in 2022 and 2023 and struggled in the years since to meet its annual targets.
“The U.S. Army has successfully met its fiscal year 2025 recruiting goals for active duty, signing contracts with more than 61,000 future Soldiers — a full four months before the end of the fiscal year,” the U.S. Army said in a statement. “This achievement represents a significant turning point for the Army and indicates a renewed sense of patriotism and purpose among America’s youth.”
Dan Driscoll, the secretary of the Army, said in a statement that he is “incredibly proud” of the service’s recruiters and drill sergeants.
Threatening letters about President Donald Trump that led to the highly-touted arrest by federal authorities of an undocumented immigrant last month were actually written by a jailed Wisconsin man trying to get him deported, prosecutors said in a new criminal complaint.
Demetric DeShawn Scott, the inmate, hoped to get Mexican immigrant Ramon Morales-Reyes deported because he is a witness in Scott’s upcoming criminal trial for alleged armed robbery and battery against Morales-Reyes, a criminal complaint filed Monday says.
“I got a plan. I got a hell of a plan,” Scott, 52, said in a recorded call from jail on April 27, according to the criminal complaint.
And in a May 16 recorded call, Scott, referring to Morales-Reyes, said, “This dude is a goddamn illegal immigrant and they just need to pick his ass up.”
“I’m dead serious cause I got Jury Trial on July 15th,” the complaint said. “And the judge will agree cause if he gets picked up by ICE, there won’t be a Jury Trial so they will probably dismiss it that day. That’s my plan.”
Scott is now charged in Milwaukee Circuit Court with identity theft and felony intimidation of a witness, and bail jumping in connection with the alleged scam. CNBC has requested comment from his attorney
So the question is… do you still deport Morales-Reyes? I think you do. The fact that Scott exposed him does not change the fact that he is illegal. I’d expedite the trials against Scott, hold Morales-Reyes long enough to have him testify if they need it, and then deport him. I’m sure he’s a fine fellow, but we can’t tolerate illegal aliens any more – even the nice ones.
The suspect, 45-year-old Mohamed Soliman, told investigators “he researched on YouTube how to make Molotov Cocktails, purchased the ingredients to do so, and constructed them,” the federal court documents said.
Soliman took a concealed carry class to learn how to fire a gun, but “had to use Molotov cocktails [for the attack] after he was denied the purchase of a gun due to him not being a legal citizen,” state court documents said.
Obviously working hard for all Wisconsinites. They won this battle years ago. The culture has shifted. But they need to keep pushing to keep the base agitated and donating money.
LGBTQ+ Caucus Chair Sen. Mark Spreitzer argued Wisconsin should update its constitution to ensure no residents’ marriages are in doubt.
“This constitutional amendment would remove discriminatory language from our state constitution and ensure that my right to marry the person I love, and every Wisconsinite’s right to marry the person they love is not dependent on the votes of nine US Supreme Court justices, some of whom have publicly threatened to roll back these rights,” the Beloit Democrat said at a press conference yesterday.
Legislative Democrats and members of the LGBTQ+ Caucus introduced a package of legislation defending LGBTQ+ rights heading into Pride Month in June.
A male suspect was taken into custody on Sunday after multiple people were set on fire during an event calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza at a pedestrian mall in Boulder, Colorado, authorities said.
“We are aware of and fully investigating a targeted terror attack in Boulder, Colorado,” FBI Director Kash Patel said on X. “Our agents and local law enforcement are on the scene already, and we will share updates as more information becomes available.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement that the attack appeared to be a “hate crime given the group that was targeted.” Weiser said the group meets weekly at the Pearl Street Mall in downtown Boulder to “call for the release of the hostages in Gaza.”
“Hate has no place in Colorado,” Weiser added. “We all have the right to peaceably assemble and the freedom to speak our views. But these violent acts — which are becoming more frequent, brazen and closer to home—must stop and those who commit these horrific acts must be fully held to account.”
Warfare has changed. The tactics are different. The technology is different. The ability to wage asymmetric warfare in your enemy’s camp has never been greater. Enemies can hit multiple strategic targets deep in our homeland – including parts of our nuclear deterrence capabilities. I sure as heck hope our military planners are paying attention.
Ukraine says it completed its biggest long-range attack of the war with Russia on Sunday, after using smuggled drones to launch a series of major strikes on 40 Russian warplanes at four military bases.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said 117 drones were used in the so-called “Spider’s Web” operation by the SBU security service, striking “34% of [Russia’s] strategic cruise missile carriers”.
SBU sources earlier told BBC News it took a year-and-a-half to organise the strikes, which involved drones hidden in wooden mobile cabins, with remotely operated roofs on trucks, brought near the airbases and then fired “at the right time”.
[…]
Sources in the SBU earlier on Sunday told the BBC in a statement that four Russian airbases – two of which are thousands of miles from Ukraine – were hit:
Belaya in Irkutsk oblast (region), Siberia
Olenya in Murmansk oblast, Russia’s extreme north-west
Dyagilevo in central Ryazan oblast
Ivanovo in central Ivanovo oblast
The SBU sources said that among the hit Russian aircraft were strategic nuclear capable bombers called Tu-95 and Tu-22M3, as well as A-50 early warning warplanes.
