pelespirit

The Department of Veterans Affairs is asking its employees to report “any instance of anti-Christian discrimination” to a newly launched task force.

VA Secretary Doug Collins, in an email sent to employees Tuesday, said the department launched a task force to review the Biden administration’s “treatment of Christians.” Collins is a former Air Force chaplain.

“The VA Task Force now requests all VA employees to submit any instance of anti-Christian discrimination to Anti-ChristianBiasReporting.@va.gov,” the email obtained by Federal News Network states. “Submissions should include sufficient identifiers such as names, dates, and locations.”

Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.

There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.

Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.

Working with Maria Stephan, a researcher at the ICNC, Chenoweth performed an extensive review of the literature on civil resistance and social movements from 1900 to 2006 – a data set then corroborated with other experts in the field. They primarily considered attempts to bring about regime change. A movement was considered a success if it fully achieved its goals both within a year of its peak engagement and as a direct result of its activities. A regime change resulting from foreign military intervention would not be considered a success, for instance. A campaign was considered violent, meanwhile, if it involved bombings, kidnappings, the destruction of infrastructure – or any other physical harm to people or property.

Source in article from 2019

"Most borrowers … they're not in danger of delinquency today, but in five months, they could be," says Scott Buchanan, executive director of nonprofit trade group Student Loan Servicing Alliance. "And so taking action today is pretty important."

In a press release on Monday, the Education Department said it will send notices of wage garnishment — seizing up to 15% of a borrower's disposable income — "later this summer." In the meantime, it is urging borrowers in default to start making monthly payments or enroll in an income-driven repayment plan.

The analysis by Gabriel Zucman, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, estimates that the 19 wealthiest U.S. families now control 1.8%—or $2.6 trillion—of the nation's total household wealth.

In 2024, those ultrarich households saw the largest single-year wealth increase on record.

Consider: The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse, some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely.

The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety.

These stark reductions have been centered in little-known children’s services offices housed within behemoth agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, offices with names like the Children’s Bureau, the Office of Family Assistance and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In part because of their obscurity, the slashing has gone relatively overlooked.

Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers in Florida passed a slew of immigration bills that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed less than an hour after they were sent to him. “Today, the Florida Legislature has passed the strongest legislation to combat illegal immigration of any state in the entire country,” DeSantis said. “We are ahead of the curve on ending the illegal immigration crisis.”

Since the call from Trump, hundreds of local law enforcement agencies nationwide have stepped up to help US Immigration and Customs Enforcement with its detention and deportation agenda. The agencies are participating in what is known as the 287(g) program, which deputizes local police and jails with immigration enforcement powers.

Agencies can participate in different ways. Officers on patrol, for example, can notify ICE if they’ve encountered someone with an immigration warrant. County jails can also hold immigrants for ICE, or detention deputies can be granted the power to conduct their investigations on people they suspect could be living in the US without status.

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore all jobs and funding for the Voice of America and other US-backed news outlets, ruling that efforts to dismantle it violated the law and Constitution.

Judge Royce Lamberth said the administration acted "without regard to the harm inflicted on employees, contractors, journalists, and media consumers around the world".

He ordered the administration to take steps to restore employees and contractors to the jobs they had prior to the executive order, and to do the same for Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

The judge found the administration also likely violated the International Broadcasting Act and Congress' power to appropriate funding.

Four congressional Democrats traveled to El Salvador to demand the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. The Congress members will meet with U.S. embassy officials to advocate for Abrego Garcia's release.

Reps. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, Maxine Dexter of Oregon, Maxwell Frost of Florida, and Robert Garcia of California all made the trip to El Salvador.

The lawmakers followed Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who also made a trip to San Salvador last week in an effort to secure his release.

Florida officials first became aware that Centene owed the state money in 2021. At the time, Ohio, Mississippi and other states were reaching settlements with the Medicaid giant after it overbilled for prescription drugs.

The overbilling was uncovered by politically connected Mississippi law firms, which helped states negotiate settlements with Centene in exchange for millions of dollars in contingency fees, the New York Times reported last year.

The data the law firms used to calculate how much each state was owed is hidden from the public, the Times reported, making it impossible to know whether Centene paid its full share.

Florida signed on with one of the firms, Liston & Deas, in December 2021. Months earlier, other lawyers working with the firm on the Centene settlements donated $100,000 to the Republican Party of Florida and $10,000 to then-Attorney General Ashley Moody’s political committee.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in the first of two cases in April involving religion and public schools. In Mahmoud v. Taylor a coalition of parents from Montgomery County, Md., contend that requiring their children to participate in instruction that includes LGBTQ+ themes violates their religious beliefs and thus their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.

While its cyber abilities receive notably less attention than those of other intelligence agencies (like, say, the NSA), the FBI has a fairly sophisticated hacking arsenal, the likes of which isn’t without controversy. In 2022, the New York Times reported that the FBI had sought to procure a tool that could hack “any phone in the U.S.” The tool was sold by the NSO Group, the notorious Israeli spyware vendor, whose products have been ensnared in hacking scandals all over the world. In 2023, the New York Times reported that a federal agency had disobeyed the Biden administration, which had issued a rule that barred federal agencies from doing deals with NSO. The FBI was asked to investigate which agency had disobeyed the White House and ultimately found that the agency itself had bought the tool.

Several recent operations helmed by the FBI have demonstrated the agency’s increasingly powerful cyber capabilities. In January, it closed a backdoor to thousands of U.S. computers infected with Chinese malware by taking over the hackers’ command-and-control server. In 2023, the FBI also used one of its NITs to somehow unmask a Tor user who was part of an anti-terrorism case. That same year, the bureau hacked and infiltrated a ransomware gang known as “Hive,” which allowed it to ultimately disrupt the criminal operation. In general, the bureau knows what it’s doing when it comes to cyber, even if it does keep a low profile.