Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sent messages to all members of Congress terminating their positions, stating “Your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment.” All Democratic and independent members of Congress, as well as two Republicans, found themselves locked out of their offices after everything inside had been confiscated.   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

Cox has helped Caddo become one of the leading users of the death penalty. “From 2010 to 2014, more people were sentenced to death per capita here than in any other county in the United States, among counties with four or more death sentences in that time period,” said the Times. During this span, Cox secured more than a third of Louisiana’s death sentences. The Catholic has come to see executions as a legitimate way to get back at murderers. “Retribution is a valid societal interest,” he said.   read more

PEER's Jeff Ruch accused Engler of “spending taxpayer money like a drunken sailor. He is assembling a mercenary force paid to do his only bidding,” CSB has limited discretionary funds to support its mission—preventing chemical accidents and investigating their causes. A large amount of those funds have been diverted to pay for the legal and consulting contracts awarded by Engler. “These...maneuvers have set the Chemical Safety Board on a course to tear itself apart," said Ruch.   read more

The presence of asbestos in the crayons and kits is “scary,” according to EWG, because “a child exposed to asbestos is 3.5 [times] more likely than a 25-year-old to develop mesothelioma, a lung disease, that is only caused by asbestos, because of the long lag time between exposure and diagnosis. In the case of the crime scene kits, people could inhale airborne asbestos fibers” due to the fact the kits use powders that children are instructed to remove by blowing on it.   read more

The Native Americans led by Amanda Blackhorse started their challenge nine years ago to nullify a total of five team-name trademarks and one related to its cheerleaders, the Redskinettes. Blackhorse’s attorney called the judge’s ruling “a huge victory” and a “watershed event.” However, he said the legal fight probably is not over. “The team has been fighting this case so hard...and scorching every square inch of earth that it's hard to imagine they will not appeal,” he said.   read more

The use of renewable energy in the U.S. has reached levels not seen in more than 80 years. Last year, 9.8% of the nation’s energy consumption was supplied by renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Transportation now uses 13% of all renewable domestically. Energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass have been expanding in use since the beginning of this century by an average of 5% per year. Hydroelectricity is still the largest source of renewable energy.   read more

Fallin’s actions prompted questions about whether she would refuse a court order to remove the monument. A gubernatorial spokesman said it was too early to answer that. “The Supreme Court did not give any leeway in their opinion," said ACLU's Ryan Kiesel. "The bipartisan, seven-member majority did not say remove the monument except if you look into your crystal ball and think the law might allow it at some point in the future and go ahead and keep it. The court said: Remove the monument.”   read more

The agency, which represents irrigators in the Klamath River Basin, was supposed to use some of the money to pay for a feasibility study examining the effects on fish and wildlife of farmers using groundwater instead of river water. Instead, the money was spent by the agency to supply farmers with groundwater during the drought. PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein said the money “became a kind of slush fund for this irrigation agency. It’s not benefiting the fish or the wildlife.”   read more

“The smoke from these fires has risen above 20,000 feet, and the jet stream has been acting like a highway and transporting that smoke all across the country,” said meteorologist Dustin Bonk. The biggest impact has been in Minnesota, where the air quality has been compared to that in areas of heavy pollution such as Beijing. Minnesota’s state Pollution Control Agency reported that “fine particle levels had reached unhealthy levels in a diagonal band across the state.”   read more