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

Officers trained in mental health are in short supply and often unavailable in a crisis. It's estimated that only 3,000 of the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies have mental health response teams. The Treatment Advocacy Center published a study last year showing that police are 16% more likely to shoot and kill mentally ill suspects than other suspects. "It's one of the biggest nightmares for families of people with mental illness ... and for law enforcement, too," said TAC's John Snook.   read more

Several consumer-advocacy groups praised the FCC's plan. The proposal was a good defense "against internet service providers' unpermitted use of personal information," Free Press Policy Counsel Gaurav Laroia said. Drawing on customer information can help broadband providers make more money from digital advertising. Verizon, for example, bought AOL last year for $4.4 billion and is spending $4.8 billion more to buy Yahoo in a bid to build an ad business.   read more

While his wife was delivering the baby, Grassley was asked if they would like to hold their newborn after the procedure. So he held his son between his wife’s neck and chest, while a nurse took pictures. For this, the description on the bill seemed to suggest, he was charged the fee. Grassley posted the bill on Reddit and the story quickly gained steam because it seemed to underscore a national frustration with unexpected hospital fees and arcane medical billing.   read more

"Alaska has some of the highest rates of sexual assault and domestic violence in the nation. We must end this terrible epidemic, and that starts by addressing the thousands of sexual assault kits in the possession of law enforcement," Walker said. "We did not know about this problem before we ordered the audit. It is now a top priority. We owe it to victims and their families to deliver justice to perpetrators and bring closure to these tragic experiences."   read more

Whalen moved to Washington after Obama was inaugurated in 2009 to serve as special assistant to Duncan. The following year, she was named Director of the Implementation Support Unit, which gives technical assistance to states and districts that are putting reform programs in place, including the Race to the Top program. Whalen left government service in 2014 to become Director of Policy for Education Post, a website dedicated to improving public schools.   read more

Law enforcement agencies have mined posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other sites during parades, protests and other large events. One company marketing the technology suggested police track hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter and #ImUnarmed. Police used its software during protests over the death of Freddie Gray, Denver's annual marijuana rally and Martin Luther King Day march and parade. "These programs are a deterrent to free speech," said Baltimore activist Kwame Rose.   read more

Mitchell and Jessen earned $81 million to run the CIA torture program. Lawyer Ladin said allowing CIA officers to be questioned proves that the federal court system can "handle" high-profile cases involving torture. "No victim of terrorism interrogation has ever had their day in court," Ladin said. "The fact this case is moving forward shows that the victims will be able to seek accountability from two men who profited from their pain without the case being ignored due to 'state secrets.'"   read more

The company misled customers about the quality and price of its merchandise, the terms of loan contracts, and its warranty and debt cancellation. One Army private bought a laptop shortly before shipping out for Iraq. For a model that typically retailed for $650, he agreed to pay almost $3,000. After he fell behind on his payments, he was sued in Virginia while stationed in Germany. The company later sought to seize his military pay and froze his credit union account.   read more

The judges asked how much the Constitution protects not only a person's right to wave a banner but also to have it seen. The pacifist symbol held special meaning on the turret of the neighborhood's iconic Ansonia building. Built in 1899, the Ansonia earned its place on the U.S. Register of Historic Places with its connections to social idealism and scandal. It had been designed as a residential hotel with a rooftop farm, a utopian experiment at self-sufficient living.   read more

Hayden became one of the most vocal critics of the Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which included language allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation access to library records and forbade library personnel from disclosing to patrons that they were targets of investigators. She continued to fight the law when in 2003 she was elected to a one-year term as the President of the American Library Association.   read more

The Labor Dept concluded that states have decreased benefits, created hurdles to medical care, raised the burden of proof to qualify and shifted costs to public programs. “We’re sounding an alarm bell,” said Perez. “A critical part of the safety net is being both attacked and eroded...because there are no federal minimum standards for workers’ compensation.” The report details how states have changed their laws to reduce business costs--a trend the report calls a “race to the bottom.”   read more

Al-Ajmi, who was blacklisted as a financer of terror by the U.S. and UN, has organized Twitter campaigns to help fund ISIS's systematic murder and displacement of Assyrian Christians, according to the lawsuit. Because Kuwait is not a signatory to the Hague Convention, St. Francis could not serve al-Ajmi through a centralized authority as it can in other nations. In her ruling, Judge Beeler granted the plaintiff's request to use an alternative method to serve al-Ajmi with the suit: Twitter.   read more

The expansion was first approved in 2012 then held up by environmentalists waging a legal campaign. Environmentalists with WildEarth Guardians had sued the Interior Dept to challenge the mine expansion, which extracts coal from publicly owned reserves, saying it would make climate change worse. "(Federal mining officials) want to say that this is a drop in the bucket. But every drop matters," Nichols said. "This is a huge resource locking in hundreds of millions of tons of carbon emissions."   read more

There is no way to know exactly why certain medical specialties attract Democrats or Republicans. But researchers offered a few theories. One explanation could be money. Doctors tend to earn very high salaries compared with average Americans, but the highest-paid doctors earn many times as much as those in the lower-paying specialties. The fields with higher average salaries tended to contain more doctors who were Republican, while lower-paying fields were more popular among Democrats.   read more

Visa CEO Scharf said 2014 the card networks, banks, merchants and trade groups got together "in a room"... The defendants argued that inviting merchants "in the room" makes allegations of a conspiracy implausible because retailers were the ones affected by the new rules, but the judge disagreed. "We would expect the giant retail chains to be involved in the planning..." Alsup wrote. "Run-of-the-mill merchants, like our plaintiffs, are the ones to suffer under the liability shift."   read more

From 2000 to 2004, Silliman held the post of political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, then returned to Washington as director of the State Dept’s Office of Southern European Affairs. Starting in July 2008, he served as deputy chief of mission in Ankara, Turkey, and in 2010 he became charge d’affaires for the embassy there. During his time in Turkey, Silliman and his wife Catherine appeared on Turkish television, showing viewers what went into an American Thanksgiving dinner.   read more