pelespirit

The administration had asked the justices to lift a federal judge’s order that blocked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from terminating Biden-era protections.

This litigation is separate from lawsuits over Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport alleged Venezuelan gang members. On that issue, the Supreme Court ruled against the administration on Friday, telling it that more notice is needed for people to challenge their removal under the act.

To try to tackle this, the Welsh Labour government, alongside Plaid Cymru, introduced measures to curb second-home ownership. This included giving councils the ability to push council tax on second homes to 300% the usual rate. They also closed a loophole whereby second-home owners could register as a business in order to pay the much lower business rates.

Gwynedd council used these powers to hike council tax to 150% in April 2023. By the end of 2024, house prices had fallen by 12.4% as second-home owners tried to sell up. In Pembrokeshire, house prices fell by 8.9% after the council increased the council tax to 200% on second homes (though this was reduced to 150% recently).

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/38099622

Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation.

The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration's decision in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid organisations.

Some stocks that are due to expire as early as July are likely to be destroyed, either by incineration, using them as animal feed or disposing of them in other ways, two of the sources said.

The warehouses, which are run by USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), contain between 60,000 to 66,000 metric tonnes of food, sourced from American farmers and manufacturers, the five people said.

An undated inventory list for the warehouses - which are located in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai and Houston - stated that they contained more than 66,000 tonnes of commodities, including high-energy biscuits, vegetable oil and fortified grains.

New York University said it would deny a diploma to a student who used a graduation speech to condemn Israel’s attacks on Palestinians and what he described as U.S. “complicity in this genocide.”

Logan Rozos's speech on Wednesday for graduating students of NYU’s Gallatin School sparked waves of condemnation from pro-Israel groups, who demanded that the university take aggressive disciplinary action against him.

In a statement, NYU spokesperson John Beckman apologized for the speech and accused the student of misusing his platform “to express his personal and one-sided political views.”

Gov. Greg Abbott has signed into law a slate of fresh corporate protections, including provisions making it harder for shareholders to file lawsuits against publicly traded companies, like the one in Delaware that blocked a massive pay package for Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, spurring him to move his companies to Texas.

The Republican governor said the measures would “attract businesses, attract job creators, and will ensure that Texans are going to have plentiful job opportunities to earn a great paycheck for decades to come.”

Under the new litigation law, shareholders could only bring so-called derivative claims that allege wrongdoing by executives if they hold a 3% stake in the company. The law also insulates all corporate directors and officers from most shareholder claims brought in the state’s new business courts, unless it can be proven that they committed fraud or knowingly broke the law. The changes would also shield executive’s emails, texts and other communications from shareholder inspection in most cases.

US military commanders will be told to identify troops in their units who are transgender or have gender dysphoria, then send them to get medical checks in order to force them out of the service.

A senior defense official on Thursday laid out what could be a complicated and lengthy new process aimed at fulfilling Donald Trump’s directive to remove transgender service members from the US military despite years of service alongside all the other two million US troops.

The board oversees virtually every aspect of state elections, large and small, from setting rules dictating what makes ballots valid or invalid to monitoring compliance with campaign finance laws. In the Supreme Court race, it consistently worked to block Griffin’s challenges.

When Josh Stein won a four-year term last fall, a Republican supermajority in the state legislature passed a law, then overrode his predecessor’s veto, to transfer this power to the state auditor. It was an unusual step. No other state has elections overseen by the state auditor.

Stein sued to block the law and, initially, a lower court sided with him. But in April, the state’s Court of Appeals, which has a Republican majority, issued a three-sentence decision overturning the lower court’s ruling without hearing oral arguments.

Days after President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term, the acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency sent an email to the entire workforce with details about the agency’s plans to close diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and included a plea for help.

“Employees are requested to please notify” the EPA or the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources agency, “of any other agency office, sub-unit, personnel position description, contract, or program focusing exclusively on DEI,” the email from then-acting Administrator James Payne said.

No employees in the agency, then more than 15,000 people strong, responded to that plea, ProPublica learned via a public records request.

"We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran. Primary jurisdiction is with SS [Secret Service] on these matters and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support."

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said on X: "Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of Trump."

She said her department and the Secret Service would investigate the matter.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino posted on X, accusing Comey of "a plea to bad actors/terrorists to assassinate the POTUS' while traveling internationally", referring to Trump's current tour of the Middle East.

The “ATSC Transition” is championed by the National Association of Broadcasters, who want to effectively privatize the public airwaves, allowing broadcasters to encrypt over-the-air programming, meaning that you will only be able to receive those encrypted shows if you buy a new TV with built-in DRM keys. It’s a tax on American TV viewers, forcing you to buy a new TV so you can continue to access a public resource you already own.

It’s not clear why Grok decided to answer every question with information about “white genocide,” the conspiracy theory that white people are being killed off by non-white people around the world. Musk, who grew up in apartheid South Africa, has helped spread the absurd idea, but there isn’t any strong reporting yet on whether he was trying to tinker with his AI project to make it conform to his worldview.

Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media the same day that President Donald Trump unveiled bruising new tariffs that caused the stock market to plummet, according to records obtained Wednesday by ProPublica.

Trump Media, which runs the social media platform Truth Social, fell 13% in the following days, before rebounding.

The disclosure forms do not include the specific amount of stocks sold or their worth but instead provide a rough range. The documents do not say exactly what time she sold the shares or at what price. The company’s stock price closed on April 2 at $18.76 and opened the next morning, after the press conference, at $17.92 before falling more in the days ahead. In addition to selling between $1 million and $5 million worth of Trump Media shares, Bondi’s disclosure form shows she also sold between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of warrants in Trump Media, which typically give a holder the right to purchase the shares.