Trump announced that from now on the NFL will be known as the NTL: The National Trump League. The Super Bowl will be renamed the Trump Bowl, and professional players must be called Trumpball Players. Anyone, on any level, who refuses to comply with Trump’s orders will be arrested and charged with being a threat to national security.   read more

With all that cash, Right to Rise has been able to block out key spots for TV commercials and digital advertising. And since they had plenty of time before Bush declared, they were able to work with the former Florida governor to record interviews that will later be used in commercials. The upshot is that even though Right to Rise and the Bush campaign can no longer coordinate their efforts, the Super PAC can run on autopilot.   read more

Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature will still be in charge of the election maps, but they could come out giving Democrats a chance to win a few more congressional seats in the 2016 election. In Wisconsin, in 2012, the first year the new districts were used, Republicans captured 60 of 99 legislative races, even though a majority of the votes cast in the election were for Democrats.   read more

CMS has been secretive about the audits and their results, which have yet to be released. Also not released is the reason why CMS opted not to extrapolate the results of the audits to recover the overcharges from the five companies, which were estimated at $13.5 billion in 2010. The agency moved to do that in 2008, but backed off after the insurance industry weighed in. Now, Congress is getting involved.   read more

The suit claims that the stores are not forced to be vigilant about sales to minors and to straw purchasers—those who buy guns for others who aren’t allowed to. The stores are immune from lawsuits for the results of their gun sales thanks to a law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, pushed through Congress in October 2005 at the behest of the gun industry. So the plaintiffs are going after the cities where the stores are located.   read more

The Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors voted to “not do new business for a period of five years with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS. As Yves Smith pointed out, it’s only common sense “to stay away from known crooks.”   read more

Roof was arrested in March in Columbia, South Carolina, on a narcotics charge. That normally would have prevented Roof from buying the gun the following month. However, Columbia is split between two counties and the county initially contacted by the FBI investigator through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System had no record of Roof’s arrest. The law says that retailers may release a gun if there is no response on the investigation within three days.   read more

The investigation showed that the APA ensured that its ethics policy did not conflict with the standards the Defense Department was using to permit torture of terror suspects. “Notably, APA officials made their decisions based on these motives, and in collaboration with DoD officials, without serious regard for the concerns raised that harsh and abusive techniques were occurring, and that they might occur in the future,” according to the report.   read more

The incarceration rate as of 2010 was 3.3% for the native-born and 1.6% for immigrants. That ratio has held steady over the preceding three decades as well. Among young, less-educated men, the differences are even more pronounced. The study showed that 10.7% of native-born men without high school diplomas are incarcerated. The numbers for similar men from Mexico are 2.8% and from El Salvador and Guatemala 1.7%.   read more

Huppenthal ignored the auditor’s findings and told the Tucson district to drop the program or face significant funding cuts. The district dropped the Mexican-American studies program. Huppenthal was later found to have made blog posts equating welfare recipients with “lazy pigs” and that there should be no Spanish-language radio, TV, billboards or newspapers. He ran for re-election in 2014 but lost in the Republican primary.   read more

The restrictions are coming as the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) reported that Adeang and Nauru President Baron Waqa took thousands of dollars in bribes from Getax, an Australian phosphate dealer. When Waqa and Adeang were in opposition in 2010, according to ABC, they told former Getax director Ashok Gupta: “We can create a new business relationship that can take this country to a higher level of development and of course taking also your business to even more success.”   read more

The bill, McCain said, “would rebuild the wall between commercial and investment banking that was in place for over 60 years, restore confidence in the system and reduce risk for the American taxpayer.” Added Warren: “Despite the progress we’ve made since 2008, the biggest banks continue to threaten our economy. The biggest banks are collectively much larger than they were before the crisis, and they continue to engage in dangerous practices that could once again crash our economy.”   read more

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Wednesday that “people need to work longer hours.” Hillary Clinton responded by tweeting “Anyone who believes Americans aren’t working hard enough hasn’t met enough American workers.” It might come as a surprise to Bush who grew up amid family wealth, but American workers already put in longer hours than those in economic engines such as Germany and Japan. U.S. workers put in 1,789 hours of labor each year, more than Japan (1,729) or Germany (1,371).   read more

The church has not used marijuana in its services yet, but “there’s going to come a time, baby,” said Levin. The church has a long road before its members will be able to take part in the sacrament of smoking marijuana. Attorneys say it will have to prove it’s an actual religious belief that requires the use of marijuana, but anti-drug laws may still apply. It’s unclear whether the same scrutiny was to be applied to business owners claiming the right to discriminate against LGBT customers.   read more

Under Pope’s leadership, the FLRA has gone from being rated as one of the worst places to work in the federal government to one of the best. In 2010 the Partnership for Public Service and the American University Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation recognized the FLRA as the “most-improved” small agency.   read more

In 2009, she worked with multilateral organizations as economic counselor to the U.S. mission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. Tamlyn was sent to Lisbon in 2011 as the deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Portugal and returned to the State Department in Washington in 2013 as director of the Office for the Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan.   read more

Some Republicans objected to the anti-Confederate flag measures, prompting Rep. Ken Calvert's amendment that would largely undo them. “After the murder of nine black parishioners, I never thought that the U.S. House of Representatives would join those who would want to see this flag flown by passing an amendment to ensure” its continued flying, McCollum said. “For House Republicans it appears the cost of getting the votes...is to literally wrap themselves in this banner of racism."   read more