MicroWave

joined 2 years ago
 

Mike Johnson, R-La., said he plans to vote on a stopgap spending bill that includes ICE and CBP, which Senate Minority Leader Schumer, D-N.Y., called "dead on arrival."

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told House Republicans on a conference call Friday that he plans to hold a vote on a bill to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security for 60 days, according to a source on the call.

Johnson's comments signal that the House has no intention, at least for now, to vote on a Senate-passed bill to fund all of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

The Senate left town for a two-week recess after passing the bill by unanimous consent in the early hours Friday, and Democratic senators have vowed to block funding for ICE and CBP without restraints on immigration enforcement operations. That means Johnson’s proposal jeopardizes the Senate's effort to fund the Transportation Security Administration and end extreme delays at airports.

 

The rate at which the U.S. military has used the Tomahawk missiles in the Iran war has reportedly prompted internal talks about increasing supplies

Some Pentagon officials are concerned about the “alarmingly low” supply of Tomahawk missiles remaining in the U.S. military’s arsenal after firing 850 of the weapons into Iran, according to a report.

The rate at which the U.S. military has used the Tomahawk missiles in President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, now in its fourth week, has prompted internal talks about increasing supplies, according to The Washington Post.

U.S. officials told the newspaper that the number of Tomahawks left in the Middle East was “alarmingly low.” Another official told the outlet that the U.S. supply of Tomahawks was closing in on “Winchester,” military slang that means almost out of ammunition.

 

Iran-linked ​hackers have publicly claimed the breach of FBI ‌Director Kash Patel's personal inbox, publishing photographs of the director and other documents to the internet.

On their website, the hacker ​group Handala Hack Team said Patel "will now find ​his name among the list of successfully hacked ⁠victims." A Justice Department official confirmed that Patel's email had ​been breached and said the material published online appeared authentic.

 

Lindell has been embroiled in legal battles related to false claims he made about the 2020 presidential election.

Mike Lindell, MyPillow CEO, a candidate for Minnesota governor and a notorious ally of Donald Trump, was served with legal documents during a live TV interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Gaylord, Texas, on Thursday.

Lindell was speaking with a reporter from the far-right news outlet One America News when a woman interrupted the interview.

After much back-and-forth, Lindell finally grabbed the papers and tossed them on the floor.

 

Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer, is promoting a legally dubious plan experts say could sharply restrict voting rights

Peter Ticktin, an 80-year-old Florida lawyer who has various ties to Donald Trump and represents some 2020 election deniers, has become an outspoken advocate for an emergency executive order on US elections that would overhaul voting rules and rights by ending machine and mail-in voting.

The exact nature and extent of Ticktin’s contact and influence with Trump and other administration officials is not clear. But election experts and analysts see Ticktin’s push for an executive order as worrying, and part of a broader drive by fellow election conspiracists who are now promoting similar and legally dubious emergency order plans to revamp voting rules this year in order to boost Republican fortunes in the fall elections.

A 17-page draft order dated April 2025 that Ticktin has shared with the Guardian and other news outlets would make far-reaching changes in voting rules. It would require all voters in 2026 to re-register with proof of citizenship, end the use of vote-tabulation machinery and compel hand-counting of all ballots, require that counting for all races be finished on election day by midnight, ban mail-in ballots, and make other changes.

 

Papers reveal how chemical lobby influenced policy, reversing Biden-era limits on a common carcinogen

A new trove of chemical producer and US Environmental Protection Agency documents reveal an elaborate industry operation that killed strong regulations around formaldehyde, a highly toxic carcinogen widely used in everyday goods from cosmetics to furniture to craft supplies.

The Biden EPA in late 2024 determined any exposure to formaldehyde increased the risk of cancer and other health problems. The Trump EPA in late 2025 moved to undo those findings and replace them with less protective figures.

The newly released documents show the industry and the Trump EPA’s scientific justification for weakening the protections largely relied on, or aligned with, a small number of studies led by a chemical industry scientist, Rory Conolly, who argued that some exposure to formaldehyde is safe. The Conolly studies were funded by chemical trade groups. Between 2008-2024, the EPA had concluded the research was out of date or unreliable, documents show.

 

Analysts fear Iran has played a weak hand well and the US has blundered into a defining strategic failure

Four weeks into a war that was going to take four days, and that has so far cost the US about $30-40bn and Israel $300m a day, Washington is further away from a diplomatic agreement with Iran than it was in May 2025.

Not only has the war failed to persuade Iran to agree to dismantle its nuclear programme in the comprehensive and irreversible way the US demanded in a 15-point paper that it tabled on 23 May last year, Washington is now having to negotiate to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that has been open ever since the invention of the dhow, with a short exception of a tanker war in the 1980s between Iran and Iraq.

This regression is proving to be perplexing for the American high command. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence, recently said that “the only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping”, but this was not quite right. Iran has not been shooting at shipping that much in recent weeks. Instead, it is the fear of Iran shooting at shipping that is scaring off insurers and tanker owners.

 

SMIC, China's largest chipmaker, has sent chipmaking tools to Iran's military, two senior Trump ‌administration officials said on Thursday, raising questions about Beijing's stance in the month-old U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran.

SMIC which has been heavily sanctioned by the U.S. government over alleged ties to the Chinese military, began sending the tools to Iran roughly a year ago and "we have no ​reason to believe that any of this has stopped," one of the officials said.

The official added that the ​collaboration "almost certainly included technical training on SMIC's semiconductor technology."

 

The Senate unanimously moved to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and part of Customs and Border Protection, in a rare overnight session.

The agreement would fund other DHS components, such as the Transportation Security Administration and US Coast Guard, but the House will still need to act before funded agencies within the department can reopen.

The move is meant to alleviate long lines at airports, while lawmakers continue to debate possible reforms to immigration enforcement by DHS.

 

Across immigration, voting, and LGBTQ+ rights, overlapping systems are quietly redefining identity, access, and belonging in America, writes Joshua Ackley.

Project 2025 is not a future scenario. It is already unfolding, visible in the quiet failures and the louder substitutions that are beginning to define daily life.

What we are watching is not the collapse of government, but its reconfiguration, as the systems meant to serve people weaken while the systems built to monitor, track, and control them become more visible, more coordinated, and more difficult to question.

That shift has moved into airports, one of the most routine and widely shared spaces in American life. A recent case at San Francisco International Airport made that visible in a way that is difficult to dismiss. A woman and her nine-year-old daughter were identified before they ever reached their gate, flagged through passenger data, and located by federal agents inside the terminal. She was detained in public, in front of her child, and deported within days.

 

KEY POINTS

In its periodic update of economic conditions, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast all-items inflation in the U.S. to be at 4.2% for 2026.

The forecast is a sharp step up from the prior projection of 2.8%. Moreover, it is much higher than the 2.7% Fed officials estimated when they updated their own forecasts last week.

The organization cautioned that the Fed and its global counterparts “need to remain vigilant” against inflation threats.

 

A federal judge in California has indefinitely blocked the Pentagon’s effort to “punish” Anthropic by labeling it a supply chain risk and attempting to sever government ties with the AI company, ruling that those measures ran roughshod over its constitutional rights.

“Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” US District Judge Rita Lin wrote in a stinging 43-page ruling.

Lin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said she would delay implementation of her ruling for one week to allow the government to appeal.

But in her ruling, she made it clear she disapproved of the government’s actions, which she said violated the company’s First Amendment and due process rights.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

Thanks for this comment. News about Iran seems to bring out extreme personalities lately it seems like.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Thanks! Appreciate the recognition.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thanks officer

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Thanks, that’s nice to hear from a fellow longtimer.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 27 points 7 months ago (4 children)
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