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

His positions at NIST have included chief of the Analytical Chemistry Division, director of the Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory, associate director of laboratory programs and director of the Material Measurement Laboratory. May’s specialty is analytical chemistry research. He helped establish the pollution baseline for Prince William Sound before the opening of the Alaska Pipeline and has also worked on protocols for environmental sample collection for trace organic analysis.   read more

In Northern Iraq, where the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has threatened Kurdish hopes of autonomy, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has joined the American-backed effort against the Muslim militants. The State Department has listed the PKK as a terrorist operation since 1997.   read more

From 2000 to 2011, the median household net worth for the bottom 20% plunged by $5,124—while the richest 20%, the highest quintile, enjoyed a jump of $61,379. Those aged 35 to 44 had the largest percentage decrease in net worth, 41.4%. The ages 65 to 69 really are the golden years; these seniors saw the largest percentage increase in net worth, going up by 25.9%.   read more

One ambassador snuck in under the wire before the State Department made its decision. Daniel Shapiro, the U.S. envoy to Israel, took the challenge and was drenched. He then challenged U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, but she didn’t get a chance to participate before State sent its cable to U.S. missions. As of August 22, more than $53 million had been donated toward ALS research as a result of the Ice Bucket Challenge, according to the ALS Association.   read more

Hart returned to the NTSB as a member in 2009 and was named the board’s vice chairman the same year and has served there since. He has represented the board on investigations including the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, a casino bus crash, and recently was the face of the NTSB during the investigation into the 2013 Asiana airliner crash in San Francisco and several oil tank car accidents.   read more

On July 22, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Jonodev Osceola Chaudhuri to be chairman of the three-member National Indian Gaming Commission. Chaudhuri has been a member of the commission since September 2013 and its acting chairman since October. In 2012, Chaudhuri was named senior counselor to the assistant secretary for Indian affairs in the Department of the Interior, where he served for a year before moving to the gaming board.   read more

In June, when ISIS claimed to have taken charge of five U.S.-made helicopters, the group tweeted that they expected Americans to honor their warranty and service the copters. Jeremy Binnie told The Center for Public Integrity that the M1117 fighting vehicle, manufactured by Textron Marine and Land Systems, has become a favorite of ISIS forces. “I’m sure Textron will be very happy,” Binnie said. “Their vehicle has the thumbs up from the Islamic State.”   read more

In 75 of the biggest cities in the country 60% or more of the police officers live outside the city in which they work. Overall, 49% of black officers, 47% of Hispanic officers and only 35% of white officers live and work in the same city.   read more

A landfill in Wayne County, near Detroit, is one of the few places in the eastern United States with a license to take such waste. As such, drillers and other producers of radioactive materials from nearby states with tougher environmental laws send their waste there.   read more

In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Among its provisions was the order that “the Attorney General shall, through appropriate means, acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers.” The Justice Department was also required to publish an annual report on the data collected. And…that’s pretty much the last anyone heard of that.   read more

UltraViolet says the ads aren’t political. They’re “designed to elevate issues like paycheck fairness, minimum wage increases, and paid family leave and to expose the ongoing attacks on women’s health and economic security,” Karin Roland of UltraViolet, told ThinkProgress. “The goal is to shame and pressure candidates with industries that rely on tourism to make them champions for these causes.”   read more

But many of the Americans with a database entry are in the system only because they were arrested, even though they were never charged or convicted of a crime. Records are often not updated to reflect that an individual was found not guilty or guilty of a minor offense, such as trespassing while exercising free speech rights during a demonstration.   read more

One big problem with the Lone Star State is its requirement of those seeking information to reveal who they are and to provide credit card information in order to access Texas’s corporate registry. In other words, Texas puts more emphasis on personal disclosure in the course of supposedly facilitating corporate disclosure.   read more

Sometimes even a six-figure salary isn’t enough. Ron Packard, who until early this year was CEO of charter school operator K12, made $4.1 million in 2013, according to Conniff. K12 has been accused by the state of Florida of attempting to falsify records, using unqualified teachers, and booking classes of more than 100 students.   read more

Some invoices billed the Army for employees working more than 24 hours a day and DynCorp also is said to have charged the Army for workers unqualified for the positions they were supposed to be filling. The earlier IG investigation showed the Army being billed for one employee working 1,208 hours over 12 days. That’s a lot of multi-tasking considering there are only 288 hours in 12 days.   read more

In Yemen, where a U.S. drone strike last year killed 12 members of a wedding party on December 12, 2013, families of those killed or injured collectively received more than $1 million. That’s more money than the U.S. gave to survivors of similar attacks in Afghanistan over an entire year. The disclosures about the Yemeni blood-money payouts also indicated that those targeted in the attack had nothing to do with terrorism, which the U.S. previously insisted.   read more