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

The shift comes at a time of conflicting narratives about gun violence in America. During the past 25 years, violent crime has decreased dramatically in the U.S. But the number of mass shootings per year has surged. Applications for concealed-carry permits have hit records in some places, giving rise to a group of people who consider themselves part of a concealed-carry lifestyle. In 1994, about 44 million Americans owned 192 million guns. Today, about 55 million Americans own 265 million guns.   read more

Donovan returned to Tokyo in 2005 as deputy chief of mission in the embassy there. During his tenure, he had to help manage the reaction to a U.S. Marine being accused of raping a girl in Okinawa. He had a short stint as an associate professor at the National War College before being named foreign policy adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 2014, he was named managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s Washington office, a post held until he became ambassador.   read more

Al-Hawsawi's torture features prominently in the declassified Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, which describes harsh treatment on al-Hawsawi in a footnote. Ruiz said injuries from being sodomized causes his client to soil himself in blood and feces, accompanied by excruciating pain. "To this day Mr. al-Hawsawi continues to have to choose between defecating and eating because whenever he has bowel movements he has to reinsert parts of his anus back into his anal cavity."   read more

The lawsuit challenges the FBI's preposterous claim that U.S. intelligence preceding the war in Iraq is not a matter of public interest. The Times said Hage met with an adviser to Pentagon officials and laid out Iraq's position that it did not have weapons of mass destruction and that it would consent to an investigation and search by U.S. troops. Hage said that ''the Iraqis were finally taking [U.S. invasion] seriously and they wanted to talk." The U.S. invaded Iraq anyway.   read more

A Connecticut judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack, delivering a blow to an ambitious effort to hold accountable the makers of the assault rifle used in the 2012 massacre. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who include relatives of nine of the 26 people who were killed in the shooting, as well as a teacher who survived, contended that the law’s exception for cases of negligent entrustment justified the complaint.   read more

By Friday, Cross’ story had been shared more than 38,000 times and had attracted more than 14,000 comments, transforming her Facebook page into a forum where minority professionals reflected on the difficulties they face from people who doubt their qualifications or abilities. “Tamika, I know exactly how you feel, when people don’t want your help, because of the color of your skin,” Iniece Crawford wrote. “I go through this on a regular basis and I’m just a pharmacy associate."   read more

After beginning his diplomatic career tracking protests and politics in Honduras, he moved to Spain and worked on economic issues before serving as the ambassador’s aide during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. In Mexico, Symington cultivated the political opposition, worked on anti-drug issues, helped congressional visitors looking at NAFTA, and reported from Chiapas during the Zapatista revolt.   read more

The Justice Department is moving forward with plans to collect data on how often law enforcement officers use force and how often civilians die during encounters with police or while in police custody. It comes amid several years of high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of police officers. FBI Director James Comey said at a House committee hearing last month that in the absence of data, "we're driven entirely by anecdote, and that's a very bad place to be."   read more

Maryland began pulling 30 children out of homes owned and managed by AdvoServ in August, but hadn’t yet relocated a teenage girl when she died a month later after being manually restrained by staff. In June, a lawsuit was filed against AdvoServ in state court in Delaware, alleging that a teenage boy from Maryland was left unsupervised and raped repeatedly by other clients during more than four years in the company’s homes. His neck was injured during a restraint performed by workers.   read more

The report argues that the decades-long "war on drugs" has failed, with rates of drug abuse still high. It says criminalization of drugs tends to drive people who use them underground, making it less likely they will get treatment. However, D,A, Michael Ramos said decriminalization would pose "huge dangers": property crime would increase, and rehabilitation programs would wither if drug abusers no longer had the threat of incarceration as an incentive to participate.   read more

"The threats from persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals are well-documented," said EPA's Jim Jones. "The new law directs us to expedite action to reduce the risk for these chemicals, rather than spending more time evaluating them." The chemicals the EPA will expedite include two flame retardants, a chemical used to make rubber compounds, an agent that makes rubber "more pliable," and an additive to fuel, oil, gasoline or lubricant, according to an agency press release.   read more

Out of all white students who attended public colleges in 2014, almost 20% attended highly selective schools. Asian students fared even better, with 31%. But only 9% of black students and 12% of Latinos attended public universities with the most-selective admission rates. Authors of the study say it helps explain why disproportionately few minorities earn college degrees.   read more

With guns a major flash point in the presidential race, gun-control advocates are spending tens of millions of dollars on a central message: Stronger firearms laws can reduce gun violence. Although the NRA has long rejected that assertion, a growing body of evidence supports the link between gun restrictions and reduction in violence. The latest analysis concludes that gun fatalities in states with weaker laws are more than three times as high as in those states with tougher restrictions.   read more

Muslim immigrants sued over policies that swept hundreds of people into detention in the weeks after the attacks. They were subjected to beatings and humiliating searches. The Justice Dept later said the government had made little or no effort to distinguish between suspects and Muslim immigrants. “To suggest that the most powerful people in our nation should escape liability when they violate clearly established law defies the most fundamental principle of our legal system," said Meeropol.   read more

A disproportionate number of those arrested are African-Americans, who smoke marijuana at rates similar to whites but are arrested and prosecuted far more often for having small amounts for personal use.The report found that while whites are more likely than blacks to use illicit drugs, black adults were more than 2 1/2 times as likely to be arrested. In terms of marijuana possession, black adults were more than four times as likely to be arrested as white adults.   read more

The lag in pay for female partners could stem from several factors. One is that the “old boys network” still has an outsize influence because of connections made in law school or earlier that affect who is hired to handle their corporate legal matters. Female partners earned an average of $659,000 annually compared with an average of $949,000 for male partners. Female partners take home thinner paychecks because, it appears, men are better at receiving credit for landing big cases.   read more