FirstCircle

Cook has openly embraced Trump, particularly in his second term, attending the president’s inauguration, presenting him with an engraved golden trophy, and giving money to the White House to help construct the president’s $300 million pet project ballroom.

The relative workplace calm may be over. “I hope we never find out, but I seriously started wondering what our leadership would do if an Apple employee was summarily executed by our government,” wondered one employee.

Many workers claimed hypocrisy between Apple’s longtime professed commitment to progressive values and causes and the extent to which its CEO has cozied up to the Trump administration. “But but but…. we changed the Apple website to MLK last Monday, so that cancels out.” Another pointed sarcastically to the company’s recent announcement of Black History Month Apple Watch bands. “Went to hang out with the guy who didn’t even acknowledge MLK Day and took away park access on the day,” commented one worker.

For some, the affront was personal. “As a lifelong Minnesotan and an Apple badged employee for over half my life I feel pretty abandoned by the company that has told me it stands for humanity more times than I can count,” wrote another worker. “Silence on ICE violence speaks volumes.” Another pointed out the “Three retail locations in the Twin Cities and not a peep” from Cook. “This isn’t leadership. This is an absence of leadership.” To which a colleague quickly countered: “I disagree, this IS leadership. This is intentional, nobody travels to the white house by mistake.”

An Apple employee who has spent decades at the company said they had noticed a marked cultural and political shift within Apple under Cook’s tenure. “A lot of people are talking about how Steve Jobs would have never given a gold bar to a politician,” referring to the 24-karat gold trophy Cook presented Trump at the White House in August.

There is something destabilizing about having known someone only as a child and then hearing they were gunned down in the street. The person you see in your mind lying in that street is still a child. I’m sure his mother feels that way, too, or she sees him at every age all at once, including those he did not live to see.

After Alex was wrestled down to the ground, and after a federal agent pulled the trigger and Alex went still, nine more shots were fired into his body. I keep reading reports that there was a struggle before the first gunshot, but all I see is a person trying to keep his head off the ground while seven masked men surround and beat him. Certainly, through his training as an ICU nurse, he knew that it was important to protect his head. Once in the old neighborhood, when he was seven or eight, he’d fallen off his bike, his helmet splitting cleanly in half like a cantaloupe. He showed the halves to all the neighbor kids as a way to warn them to never ride without one.

The lies being told about him by America’s most powerful people are flagrantly incongruous to anyone who watches the videos. He doesn’t reach for his weapon at his waistband, which he had the legal right to carry, and which an agent removed from him before they killed him. He was not approaching the officers when they pepper-sprayed him and tackled him to the ground. He was helping up a woman who those same agents had just shoved to the curb.

The other video that’s gone most viral of Alex shows him providing a final salute for an ICU patient at the VA hospital where he worked. Alex speaks in a low, reverent tone before a flag-draped body, demonstrating the same compassion we saw in the footage of him helping a woman who’d been pushed to the ground by federal agents. It’s the same caring tenor of his voice in his last words: Are you okay?

During Friday’s episode of The Paul Allen Show on Twin Cities radio station KFAN, Allen, Chad Greenway, and Alec Lewis opened the show discussing the intense cold weather in the region. One person mentioned the recent story about a Los Angeles Rams player putting cayenne in his socks to stay warm, and Allen mentioned the urban legend about trees “exploding” from cold weather.

Umprompted, Allen then interjected by asking, “In conditions like this, do paid protesters get hazard pay? Those are the things that I’ve been thinking about this morning.”

A few minutes later, the conversation switched to football, and Allen once again worked a paid-protester reference into a discussion about NFL coaching hires.

“Everybody’s catching strays this week. [Brian] Flores, Kevin Stefanski from Baker [Mayfield], Charlie ‘Biyatch’ caught one out of nowhere. They’re just all over, paid protesters caught one this morning,” he said, referencing his earlier comments.

Herrera said 10-year-old Karla is stressed thinking of the school she’s missing.

“She would at least want to finish elementary school,” Herrera said.

Spokane Public Schools board member Nikki Otero Lockwood held a moment of silence at Wednesday’s board meeting after she learned of the young student’s detention.

“The child’s absence is deeply felt by classmates, educators and a school community that is grieving and trying to make sense of this loss,” Lockwood said.

Karla is an “amazing” girl and left everyone with that impression, Herrera said. She came to Spokane at 4 years old and eventually enrolled in school and learned English. She loves books, Herrera said, and was teaching herself to write Japanese characters.

Herrera said Karla “was saying goodbye to everything she knew with that kind of innocent certainty only a child has.”

Karla is now one of the 1,700 children in custody since family detention centers reopened in April.

Tiul Caal will likely remain in detention until his next court hearing slated for March 9 under immigration Judge Veronica Marie Segovia.

Segovia, who was appointed as an immigration judge in November 2023, is known for denying immigrants asylum in the U.S., and more often than other immigration judges across the board.

Segovia denied a Turkish immigrant’s asylum case in 2025, despite the Department of Homeland Security stating the immigrant had met the legal requirements for asylum, according to a report by the Guardian. Segovia suggested the immigrant’s rape, torture and beatings he experienced in Turkey were “not as bad” as the report states.

Segovia saw 193 cases in the first 11 months of 2025. She granted other forms of relief for eight of those cases, but only granted full asylum for one of them, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center.

Her asylum denial rates are also significantly higher than her counterparts, data shows. Segovia denied 36% more asylum claims than other immigration judges across the U.S. in that same time period.

The Texas processing center is crowded, Tiul Caal told Mesa, with many detainees falling ill because of poor conditions.

The FDA initiated the first recall in an Aug. 19 notice, announcing certain raw frozen shrimp products processed by Indonesian company PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati (doing business as BMS Foods) had tested positive for Cesium-137, also known as Cs-137. A handful of manufacturers sold these products under different brand names to retailers nationwide.

The FDA published an expanded recall notice on its website on Dec. 19, one of 12 notices that have been issued in the growing recall.

Cs-137 is a radioisotope of cesium, meaning it is a chemical element that emits radiation as it breaks down. It is man-made and is produced by nuclear fission, according to the FDA. In the United States, it is used in medical devices and measurement gauges.

Because it is widespread around the globe, trace amounts can be found in the environment, including soil, food and air, the FDA said. Agencies, including the FDA and U.S. Customs & Border Protection, test for, monitor and regulate the presence of the substance due to the risks associated with long-term exposure.

The FDA said low-level radiation exposure over time can lead to serious health complications. Exposure to Cs-137 alone can cause burns, acute radiation sickness, cancer and death. Due to the risks, governing agencies restrict potential exposure to lessen the possibility of these long-term impacts.

Two civilian women and an officer were injured by the shooter, who Eddy identified Saturday as 77-year-old John Drake, of nearby Mullan, Idaho.

Eddy said he didn’t know Drake’s motive, and he’s “not sure we ever will.”

He said Drake shot two women who were sitting in a pickup outside the sheriff’s office, in the legs. He initially said an officer was shot in the ear inside the sheriff’s office but clarified Saturday that the officer, who law enforcement has not identified, got hit in the ear with a glass shard caused by Drake’s gunfire.

Eddy said all three victims’ injuries were minor. Drake had several guns with him at the time of the shooting, he said.

Eddy said Saturday that no one ever expects someone to come into the sheriff’s office and open fire.

I think it's called a "baffle". The original one, which was probably between 12-15 years old, held up well but eventually started coming apart such that drops of crud could spray up and out of the disposal on occasions when the motor was on. I was expecting a tedious and potentially expensive repair that would involve removing the unit from the sink. But it turns out, at least with the brand I have (Insink--or), that the baffle is designed to be easily replaced. All you have to do is reach in and yank out the old one (nothing holds it in but friction), then plug the new one back in its place. Done.

The old baffle had all kind of nasty brown crud on the bottom of it and there are horrors inside the unit of course, but it's working fine. I don't often use the unit and that no doubt accounts for its longevity. The best part, apart from how easy the fix was, was how cheap it was - the baffles themselves cost me less than $10 each online.

Congressional Republicans are reportedly trying to insert anti-abortion language into government funding legislation as the shutdown continues, with the GOP and President Donald Trump digging in against a clean extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits as insurance premiums surge.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, sounded the alarm on Saturday about what he characterized as the latest Republican sneak attack on reproductive rights.

Wyden said Saturday—which marked day 39 of the shutdown—that “Republicans are spinning a tale that the government is funding abortion.”

“It’s not,” Wyden continued. “What Republicans are talking about putting on the table amounts to nothing short of a backdoor national abortion ban. Under this plan, Republicans could weaponize federal funding for any organization that does anything related to women’s reproductive healthcare. They could also weaponize the tax code by revoking non-profit status for these organizations.”

“The possibilities are endless, but the results are the same: a complete and total restriction on abortion, courtesy of Republicans,” the senator added. “Trump said he’d leave abortion care up to the states. Well, this latest scheme makes it crystal clear: A de facto nationwide abortion ban has been his plan all along.”

Trade deals many had hoped would quickly emerge after President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on some of the United States’ biggest agricultural customers haven’t come. A farm bailout is no sure thing on Capitol Hill. And farmers — many of whom voted for Trump — say time is running out.

“It just seems like things have stalled all summer long,” said Brian Warpup, who grows corn and soybeans on his 3,900-acre farm in northeastern Indiana. “We’re always hopeful that those negotiations are moving forward, but yet with harvest here, patience may be running thin.”

Across the US, farmers describe increasingly dire circumstances stemming from a confluence of factors — trade wars, Trump’s immigration crackdown, inflation and high interest rates.

Though the challenges vary in different parts of the country, farmers in some cases, particularly on the West Coast, are struggling to find labor to pick their harvest. Others, especially in the Midwest, said they can’t sell what they’ve produced. And many are scrambling to find storage.

“This is not your ordinary farm crisis. We call it ‘farmageddon,’ and it’s really a tough time,”

With cancellations surging, many subscribers reported technical issues. On Reddit’s r/Fauxmoi, one post read, “The page to cancel your Hulu/Disney+ subscription keeps crashing.”

Another added, “Already cancelled my Disney subscription,” while others said they faced looping logins and stalled forms. These firsthand accounts suggest Disney’s systems struggled under the unusual traffic volume.