President Donald Trump gleefully announced that, under his direction, U.S. military troops had swooped down on the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento and kidnapped California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We’re charging Newscum with fraud.” When a reporter asked for specifics about the fraud charges, Trump pointed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, clearly taken by surprise, said, “We’re looking into it and will let you know the details as soon as we’ve created them.”   read more

While checks of criminal histories have become routine in the public and private sectors, a regulation being proposed by the Obama administration would remove a barrier that discourages many freed prisoners from applying for jobs. The rule would prevent supervisors interviewing applicants for about half of all federal positions from asking about a job seeker’s criminal or credit history until a conditional offer is made.   read more

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials say there’s no clear evidence the agency violated its own rules when it posed as The Associated Press to unmask a criminal, according to a report obtained through a public records lawsuit. However, the internal FBI report being made public by the AP and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press says “an argument can be made” that field agents bucked protocol by not informing senior brass in Washington of the 2007 operation.   read more

Women would be required to register for the military draft under a House committee’s bill that comes just months after the Defense Department lifted all gender-based restrictions on front-line combat units. A divided Armed Services Committee backed the provision in a sweeping defense policy bill that the full House will consider next month, touching off a provocative debate about the role of women in the military.   read more

Long wait times are a known problem at hospitals and health centers run by the Indian Health Service, particularly in rural areas where unemployment and poverty levels are high, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said Thursday. New patients waited up to four months to see a physician at a facility on the Navajo Nation and up to a month for a routine vision check at a clinic in the Billings, Montana, region, staff told federal investigators.   read more

Wall Street dominates political giving. But it’s these donors, a much smaller subset of the securities sector, who play with the biggest money. The fact that hedge fund money continued to flood the presidential race after one of the donors’ favorite candidates — Rubio — dropped out would be surprising were it not for the anti-Donald Trump movement. For this group, there’s still work to be done with their money — namely, beating back Trump’s ascension to the Republican nomination.   read more

Now that the U.S. government has acknowledged that Western-built chemical weapons sickened U.S. soldiers in Iraq, The New York Times says the CIA can no longer deny access to records about it. The Pentagon acknowledged that more than 600 U.S. soldiers had been exposed to sarin in Iraq. The CDC links the chemicals to burns, blisters, infertility, eye damage, scarring of the respiratory system, and cancer risk. The military denied medical care to soldiers who were wounded by these weapons.   read more

The rapid escalation of border enforcement over the past three decades has backfired as a strategy to control undocumented immigration between Mexico and the U.S., according to new research that suggests further militarization of the border is a waste of money. "Rather than stopping undocumented Mexicans from coming to the U.S., greater enforcement stopped them from going home," said one of the researchers. "Greater enforcement also increased the risk of death and injury during border crossing."   read more

Aircraft which can't be deployed is not a solution to the need for deployed aircraft. The Pentagon's Frank Kendall has called this "acquisition malpractice." Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James: "People believed we could go faster, cheaper, better" by designing and building the F-35 concurrently, "and that the degree of concurrency would work. Indeed it has not worked as well as we had hoped and that's probably the understatement of the day." The F-35 won't be combat capable any time soon.   read more

Suing someone in Nebraska is cheaper and easier. The cost to file a lawsuit in that state is $45. About 79,000 debt collection lawsuits were filed in Nebraska courts in 2013 alone. Suing became an irresistible bargain for debt collectors. It’s a deal collectors have fought to keep, opposing even the slightest increase. For debtors, unaffordable debts turn into unaffordable garnishments, destroying already tight budgets and sending them into a loop.   read more

Vet Brian Sweeney grew emotional after a reporter read him details of the new bladder cancer research. Sweeney recalled in Vietnam once driving through a misty fog of chemicals so thick he had to stop the vehicle and turn around. “I didn’t know it at the time, but that was probably Agent Orange,” he said. When he went to the VA to see if he could receive benefits, the claims specialist “pretty much told me I wasn’t eligible because Agent Orange doesn’t cause bladder cancer.”   read more

Brainard called these unprepared TSA executives "the biggest bullies in government," and said their past efforts to avoid punishment by coming down hard on employees who pointed out misconduct have left a broken, battered workforce with poor morale. "The same people who broke this agency are the same people who are essentially still running it," he added.   read more

Executive Order 10450, signed by President Eisenhower in 1953, allowed broad categories of federal workers, including those with criminal records, drug addiction and "sexual perversion," to be singled out for scrutiny and termination as threats to national security. Suspicions of homosexuality led to between 7,000 and 10,000 workers losing their jobs in the 1950s alone.   read more

The bats were originally proposed for endangered status, but, the group claims, "intense industry pressure" caused the agency to list the species as threatened instead, with a special rule under Section 4(d) of the Endangered Species Act that allowed activities that destroy the bats' forest habitat, such as logging, mining and energy development, to continue. Section 4(d) exemptions are not available for species with an endangered status.   read more

Samples taken from surface waters affected by waste spills in the state's Bakken oilfield region turned up high levels of lead, ammonium, selenium and other contaminants. The researchers found that some spills had tainted land with radium, a radioactive element. The study revealed "clear evidence of direct water contamination" from oil development using fracking, describing the problem as "widespread and persistent." Wastewater spills have worsened as North Dakota's daily output soared.   read more

Drugmakers have been enduring withering criticism over the rising cost of drugs. It does not seem to be working. They've raised prices on brand-name drugs by double-digit percentages since the start of the year, and list prices increased more than 12%, in line with the trend over the five previous years. One of the cruelties of drug pricing is that the burden falls most heavily on those least able to pay it. Uninsured patients often must pay the list price of a drug.   read more

Evidence of compliance is plain to see on most pay stubs, but state and federal laws don't require employers to routinely provide this crucial detail to the government. Without this data, wage enforcers who are empowered to investigate generally wait until a worker complains. And many workers — especially those in precarious situations — fear they'll be fired if they speak up. "It's pretty shocking how common the violations are," said Donna Levitt, a labor enforcement director in San Francisco.   read more