“Stand” will be published Nov. 11, St. Martin’s Press announced Wednesday. In April, the New Jersey Democrat made headlines by delivering the country’s longest continuous Senate floor speech — just over 25 hours. The 56-year-old Booker spoke in opposition to numerous Trump administration policies, whether the desire to make Canada part of the United States or cuts to Social Security offices.
“This book is about the virtues vital to our success as a nation and lessons we can draw from generations of Americans who fought for them,” Booker said in a statement.
The president will send a $9.4 billion rescissions package to Congress next week, giving Republicans an opportunity to enact cuts suggested by Elon Musk’s White House DOGE office.
Much like the Crimean War (the 1853 one, not the most recent one), the Ukranian War is proving to be a pivot point in the technological evolution of warfare. We will never fight another war like we have in the past.
In an ever-evolving conflict, soldiers have had to rapidly adapt to new threats posed by changing technology. And the latest threat comes from fibre optic drones. A spool of tens of kilometres of cable is fitted to the bottom of a drone and the physical fibre optic cord is attached to the controller held by the pilot.
“The video and control signal is transmitted to and from the drone through the cable, not through radio frequencies. This means it can’t be jammed by electronic interceptors,” says a soldier with the call sign Moderator, a drone engineer with the 68th Jaeger Brigade.
When drones began to be used in this war in a big way, both militaries fitted their vehicles with electronic warfare systems, which could neutralise drones. That protection has evaporated with the arrival of fibre optic drones, and in the deployment of these devices, Russia currently has the edge. Ukraine is trying to ramp up production.
“Russia started using fibre optic drones much before us, while we were still testing them. These drones can be used in places where we have to go lower than usual drones. We can even enter houses and look for targets inside,” says Venia, a drone pilot with the 68th Jaeger Brigade.
“We’ve started joking that maybe we should carry scissors to cut the cord,” says Serhii, the artillery man.
Fibre optic drones do have drawbacks – they are slower and the cable could get entangled in trees. But at the moment, their widespread use by Russia means that transporting soldiers to and from their positions can often be deadlier than the battlefield itself.
Admittedly, I have a bias because I hate tariffs and I am not a lawyer, but I think I agree with the court. The Executive Branch does not have the power to arbitrarily impose tariffs in the Constitution and the notion that we have an economic emergency is dubious, at best. I certainly wouldn’t want a Leftist president to declare an economic emergency and make all kinds of sweeping arbitrary decisions and I don’t want Trump doing it either. Yes, this means that Congress needs to get off their asses, but that’s how our government was designed.
A federal court ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority with his reciprocal tariffs, dealing a blow to a major tenet of the president’s economic agenda.
A three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law that Trump invoked to justify the tariffs, does not actually give the president the power to unilaterally implement the sweeping duties.
“The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs,” the judges wrote in their ruling.
“The Trafficking Tariffs fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders,” they continued.
Dow futures jumped 400 points Wednesday on news of the ruling.
Implementing tariffs typically requires congressional approval, but Trump chose to bypass Congress by declaring a national economic emergency, and using the purported emergency as justification for invoking the tariffs on his own.
The Trump administration swiftly appealed the ruling Wednesday.
“Foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the United States has fueled America’s historic and persistent trade deficits,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement after the order.
“These deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base – facts that the court did not dispute.”
The WNBA says it cannot substantiate claims that racist fan behavior took place during a game in Indianapolis between the Chicago Sky and Indiana Fever earlier this month.
The league said its investigation included gathering information from fans, team and arena staff, as well as an “audio and video review of the game.”
“We appreciate the quick action by the league and the Indiana Fever to take this matter seriously and to investigate,” Chicago Sky CEO and President Adam Fox said in a statement. “This process demonstrates the league’s strong stance on stopping hate at all WNBA games and events, and we will continue to support those efforts.”
Both Congress and the Supreme Court seem poised to kneecap what may be the only meaningful remaining constitutional check on the presidency: lower federal court judges.
Britain’s King Charles IIIarrived in Canada on Monday for his first visit as its head of state, where he’ll carry out a highly-symbolic whistle-stop trip seen by many as a show of support following increasingly frayed relations between Ottawa and Washington.
During his two-day visit, Charles, 76, will deliver a speech in Canada’s parliament and celebrate the country’s cultural heritage and diversity, according to Buckingham Palace. He will be accompanied by his wife, Queen Camilla.
Soon after their arrival on Monday, Charles and Camilla will meet with community organizations at an Ottawa park, according to the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office. Later on Monday, the pair will plant a tree on the grounds of Rideau Hall, the monarch’s usual residence while visiting Canada.
[…]
Carney said last week that his compatriots “weren’t impressed” after Charles extended a second state invitation to the US president. Trump would be the first elected political leader in modern times to be hosted twice by a British monarch.
“It was at a time when we were being quite clear about the issues around sovereignty,” Carney said.
Good. It’s comical how hard Reuters tries to politicize this. As Americans, don’t we want answers to these questions? In neither case were any perpetrators brought to justice.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The FBI will launch new probes into the 2023 discovery of cocaine at the White House during President Joe Biden’s term and the 2022 leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a top official announced on Monday.
Dan Bongino, a rightwing podcaster-turned-FBI deputy director, made the announcement on X, saying that he had requested weekly briefings on the cases’ progress.
Both incidents have been popular talking points on America’s right.
“Over six years ago, after it was reported I had been jumped, City Officials in Chicago set out to convince the public that I willfully set an assault against myself. This false narrative has left a stain on my character that will not soon disappear,” he wrote.
He added, “These officials wanted my money and wanted my confession for something I did not do. Today, it should be clear… They have received neither.”
Smollett said his decision to settle “was not the most difficult one to make,” explaining, “I was presented with an opportunity to make a charitable donation in exchange for the case being dismissed.”
During the ongoing massive manhunt for 10 inmates who escaped from a New Orleans jail last week, authorities say the use of facial recognition cameras run by a private organization helped lead to the recapture of one of the fugitives — even as the police department has come under scrutiny by critics from civil rights organizations to conservative politicians over its use of the technology.
Earlier this week, New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told ABC News that facial recognition cameras maintained by Project N.O.L.A. had been used in the New Orleans manhunt despite the fact that she recently ordered a pause in the automated alerts her officers had been receiving from the group, which operates independently of the police department.
[…]
In a March 27, 2025 letter to Kash Patel, who was then acting director of the federal Bureau Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms Explosives, Biggs, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, and Davidson raised concerns over news reports indicating the ATF utilized facial recognition technology to identify gun owners. “The Subcommittee has concerns about ATF’s use of facial recognition and Al programs and the effects that its use has upon American citizens’ Second Amendment rights and rights to privacy,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter, requesting documents on policies and training in the use of facial recognition technology.
ISLAMABAD, NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Pakistan will not get water from rivers over which India has rights, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday, upping the rhetoric in a standoff over water access triggered by a deadly attack in Indian Kashmir.
Pakistan’s chief legal officer, in an interview with Reuters, responded that Islamabad remained willing to discuss water sharing between the neighbours but said India must stick to a decades-old treaty.
India said last month it was suspending the Indus Waters Treaty in a slew of measures after the April 22 attack in Indian Kashmir that New Delhi blamed on Islamabad – a charge Pakistan dismisses.
Excellent. Where are you, Wisconsin? I believe in the freedom of people to eat and drink crap at their own expense, but if I’m paying for it, I only want to pay for healthy-ish food. Yes, I understand that there are widely differing opinions on what is healthy and what is not, but we can all agree that soda is terrible for you.
The move, announced Monday by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, would affect about 152,000 people in Nebraska enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps families pay for groceries.
“There’s absolutely zero reason for taxpayers to be subsidizing purchases of soda and energy drinks,” Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen said in a statement. “SNAP is about helping families in need get healthy food into their diets, but there’s nothing nutritious about the junk we’re removing with today’s waiver.”
Six other states — Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Indiana, Iowa and West Virginia — have also submitted requests for waivers banning certain foods and drinks or, in some cases, expanding access to hot foods for participants, according to the USDA.
Too slow. Too often wrong. But the judicial process is working.
The US Supreme Court has said it will allow the Trump administration to terminate deportation protections for some 350,000 Venezuelans in the US.
The ruling lifts a hold that was placed by a California judge that kept Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in place for Venezuelans whose status’ would have expired last month.
Temporary Protected Status allows people to live and work in the US legally if their home countries are deemed unsafe due to things like countries experiencing wars, natural disasters or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions.
The ruling marks a win for US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly tried to use the Supreme Court to enact immigration policy decisions.
I can’t let that last sentence go. This is literally a story about how Leftists sued to stop Trump from doing what he is empowered by the Constitution to do and this bonehead reporter says that Trump “has repeatedly tried to use the Supreme Court to enact immigration policy decisions?” What an idiot.
On the issue itself, Biden arbitrarily granted TPS for hundreds of thousands of foreigners because he wanted to flood the country and destabilize it with mass migration. I support healthy immigration and want to keep our doors open to refugees from around the world. But we can only absorb so many people at a time before it overwhelms our social safety net and undermines our nation. I understand that Venezuela is a socialist hellhole that people want to escape. It is not Americans’ responsibility to be the safety net for failed nations. We can help some, but only with our reasonable ability to absorb the population.
And what Biden did, Trump has the power to undo. It sucks for the Venezuelans who will be sent back to their homeland. I hope they work hard to reclaim their nation from its socialist nightmare.
The car bombing outside a California fertility clinic that killed one person and injured four others appears to have been driven by anti-natalist ideology, according to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the incident.
The suspect, identified by authorities as Guy Edward Bartkus, is believed to have detonated the explosive in Saturday’s attack, which claimed his own life.
Investigators are focusing on social media posts made by the suspect, including a 30-minute audio recording, which they say support anti-natalist views. While the posts and the recording are still being verified, officials believe they reflect the ideology behind the bombing. Anti-natalism refers to the belief that no one should have children.
Prayers for his speedy recovery, but this raises more questions about the honesty and transparency of the Biden family and his administration.
Former US President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, a statement from his office said on Sunday.
Biden, 82, was diagnosed on Friday after he saw a doctor last week for urinary symptoms.
The cancer is a more aggressive form of the disease, characterised by a Gleason score of 9 out of 10. This means his illness is classified as “high-grade” and that the cancer cells could spread quickly, according to Cancer Research UK.
The obvious inconsistency is that Biden is an elderly man with a private physician and was, until very recently, his health was the rightful concern of the American people. Biden has a phalanx of doctors and they all missed diagnosing one of the most common cancers in elderly men? We are supposed to believe that?
Or, the more likely scenario, is that the same doctors and Biden supporters who lied to us about his dementia also lied to us about his cancer.
Again, I sincerely pray for his speedy recovery, but the cancer within his government needs to also be excised.
Frankly, Moody’s was negligent by not lowering it sooner. Until our politicians control spending and get our debt under control, we are a credit risk. Pretty soon our Congress is going to be getting payday loans to keep the spending going.
The US was stripped of its last top credit rating by Moody’s Ratings, reflecting deepening concern that ballooning debt and deficits will damage America’s standing as the preeminent destination for global capital and increase the government’s borrowing costs.
Moody’s lowered the US credit score to Aa1 from Aaa on Friday, joining Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings in grading the world’s biggest economy below the top, triple-A position. The one-notch cut comes more than a year after Moody’s changed its outlook on the US rating to negative. The credit assessor now has a stable outlook.
[…]
The shift comes at a time when the federal budget deficit is running near $2 trillion a year, or more than 6% of gross domestic product. A weaker US economy in the wake of a global tariff war is set to increase the deficit as government spending typically rises when activity slows.
That outlook comes as the overall debt level for the US has already surpassed the size of the economy in the wake of profligate borrowing since Covid. Higher interest rates over the past several years have also pushed up the cost to service the government’s debt.
[…]
The US government is on track to surpass record debt levels set after World War II in just four years, reaching 107% of gross domestic product by 2029, the Congressional Budget Office warned in January.
Former FBI director James Comey has been interviewed by the US Secret Service after he shared then deleted a social media post that Republicans alleged was an incitement to violence against US President Donald Trump.
Comey voluntarily participated in the questioning at the law enforcement agency’s Washington DC headquarters and was not being held in custody, sources told US media.
It comes a day after he posted on Instagram a photo of seashells that spelled the numbers “8647”.
The number 86 is a slang term whose definitions include “to reject” or “to get rid of”, however, it has more recently been used as a term to mean “kill”. Trump is the 47th US president
Comey, whom Trump fired as FBI director in 2017, was interviewed on Friday afternoon about what he meant by the post, and whether he intended it as a threat to Trump or an attempt to inspire others to commit violence, according to CNN.
A budget bill, long touted by Donald Trump as the “big, beautiful bill” hit a roadblock on Friday when lawmakers from the president’s own party voted against it in congress.
Five Republicans joined all Democrats in delivering a stunning setback to President Trump’s domestic agenda, demanding deeper budget cuts.
Trump, who has muscled through close votes several times this year, urged lawmakers to unite behind the legislation. “We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!,” he posted on Truth Social.
The bill’s chances of success are not hopeless, but its failure gives the Trump administration its first legislative bruise of the year.
Support for the bill among Republicans varies. Some hard-liners want to see the budget cuts go further, while other Republicans have expressed concern about cuts to programmes like Medicaid, which their constituents are dependent on.
I’m with the content creators on this one. One could make the argument that having an AI model scoop up copyrighted material for training is okay as long as the model doesn’t actually copy it. In that sense it would not be any different than a person reading a book or listening to a song and using that knowledge to inform some future work. But there isn’t anything that prevents an AI model using the material in a way that violates the copyright. At the very least, it would seem that the tech companies should pay the content creators for their work or pay them if their work is used by the AI model in the future.
Late last year, the U.K. government kicked off a consultation on proposals that would give tech giants and AI labs like OpenAI a legally sound way of using copyrighted content to train their advanced foundational models.
Under the proposals, artists would have to opt out of having their copyright-protected works from being scraped by large language models. LLMs like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini rely on huge amounts of data to generate humanlike responses in the form of text, images, video and audio.
This led to concerns from the U.K.’s creative industries, as it would mean placing the onus on content creators to request not to have their data used for the training of AI models — which, they argue, would amount to giving their valuable work away.
While this story is written to insinuate that the federal government is inappropriately favoring Musk, this is happening all across the country. It’s a good thing. The federal government’s regulatory overreach works to retard growth and we should celebrate the Trump administration for pulling the government regulators back.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s regulatory problems have started to fade into the past.
Since the start of the second Trump administration, federal agencies that had scrutinized Musk and his business empire in recent years have begun to look a lot different. At the Department of Agriculture, for example, President Donald Trump fired the person who had been investigating the Musk company Neuralink. At other agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Trump and Musk have tried to slash the number of employees — potentially hobbling those regulators’ ability to enforce the law against companies including Musk’s Tesla and X.
In the past few months, Trump’s Justice Department has dropped a case against Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, and his Labor Department has canceled a planned civil rights review of his automaker, Tesla. Another regulatory matter against SpaceX has entered settlement talks with the National Labor Relations Board.
Merlin on FBI To Investigate Dobbs Leak and White House Cocaine: “There are reasons why Obama 3.0 issued all those auto-penned pardons. Their major players will stonewall any legal process, weather…” May 27, 12:38
MjM on Comey’s Shell Game: “Of course when I say many I mean only about 1-2% of the US lib population… Oh, it is WAY…” May 21, 20:13
Tuerqas on Comey’s Shell Game: “>T, what an intellectually dishonest argument. How? Intellectually explain it to us. You read, believe and quote proven liars in…” May 21, 16:24
jonnyv on Comey’s Shell Game: “**Have have = You have. ^^^ Stupid swipe text.” May 21, 11:56
jonnyv on Comey’s Shell Game: “T, what an intellectually dishonest argument. Have have made us all dumber for putting that to writing. Making up statistics.…” May 21, 11:55
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