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

Yahoo conducted the surveillance last year after receiving a classified demand from the NSA or the FBI. Yahoo built a special software program to comply with the government's request. Civil libertarians denounced the reported Yahoo action. The ACLU called Yahoo's reported acquiescence to a government order "deeply disturbing," adding that the order itself appears to be "unprecedented and unconstitutional." The report will likely test the bounds of Yahoo users' already stressed loyalty.   read more

President Obama’s central plank in his strategy to combat climate change is in danger. His plan to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from the nation’s power sector could be undone within a matter of weeks by an unlikely bipartisan collection of senators that includes staunch Republican climate change deniers as well as Democrats who support the administration’s strategy. They want to force the government to assume that burning forests to generate electricity is "a renewable energy source."   read more

On one recording, a DMV worker tells a person asking for an ID that she's not guaranteed to get one. Other workers incorrectly say that no temporary voting credentials are available. Another DMV worker says it could take weeks to get an ID without a birth certificate. "This evidence makes clear that the State does not have — and is incapable of implementing — a functioning safety net for its strict voter ID law," said an OWI attorney.   read more

“It could be the case that people’s political orientations are an anchoring point for applying their knowledge — rather than the other way around,” the Pew report said. Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman who is working to get members of his party to accept climate change, said that language used to discuss the issue has, in part, created the gap in the perceptions of liberals and conservatives. Part of it is that climate change has been framed as a question of belief, he said.   read more

Defendant-intervenor Friends of Animals' legal director Michael Harris said, "This is an important victory for African elephants." The species "has taken a huge loss this past year, largely due to poor conservation management practices. Zimbabwe is one of the worst wildlife managers on earth," he added. "It is about time the United States took action to protect these elephants from Americans seeking to take advantage of Zimbabwe's poor conservation practices in order to take a blood trophy."   read more

The wife and daughter of a Navy commander killed on 9/11 sued the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Friday for its alleged support of al-Qaida's plan to carry out the attacks. The lawsuit came two days after Congress rebuked President Obama's veto of a bill that creates an exception in the law to let American victims of terrorism sue foreign governments for aiding and abetting terror attacks carried out on U.S. soil if they can prove that foreign government officials played a role in the attacks.   read more

WHINSEC trains foreign military leaders on U.S. Army doctrine, with courses on intelligence and command. But some past attendees used their training to commit atrocities in their home nations. Judge Ikuta wrote: "Because disclosing the names of WHINSEC students and instructors would give rise to a 'clearly unwarranted' invasion of privacy, those names are therefore exempt from disclosure..." In his dissent, Judge Watford said that protecting identities takes a back seat to public interest.   read more

"Nightmare speculation" does not justify a policy meant to keep out Syrian refugees, the court ruled Monday. Gov. Mike Pence had adopted the policy, vowing not to let any refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War into his state. States have no power to suspend grants of asylum, however, so Pence instead ordered state agencies to withhold federal grant money from local resettlement agencies that provide refugees with social services. Meanwhile, Donald Trump picked Pence as his running mate.   read more

The U.S. government is no longer responsible for stewardship of internet-management functions, a move that internet-freedom advocates championed as essential to tamping down the misperception of the U.S. as the internet's overlord. Advocates of the transition said keeping the U.S. in its management role would have given countries like China, which censors online criticism of its government, an excuse to divide its networks from the web and crack down more deeply on its citizens' online conduct.   read more

Can physicians leave their own political ideology at the door during something as simple as a checkup? Republican and Democratic doctors differed significantly when it came to politicized issues. Republican doctors were twice as likely as their Democratic counterparts to say they'd discourage any future abortions. And Democratic doctors were 66% more likely to say they'd urge parents of small children not to store guns in the home.   read more

In what could be a significant realignment of political allegiance, Asian-Americans are identifying as Democrats at a quicker pace than any other racial group. And many Republicans worry this election will only accelerate that trend, damaging their party for years to come with what is now the fastest-growing minority in the country.   read more

A number of health services for transgender people will begin to be covered by military insurance beginning Monday. The Pentagon announced in June an end to the military’s ban on transgender service members. The ripple effect of the new health benefits extends beyond active-duty military to include roughly 7 million retirees and children of service members.   read more

When a loved one dies, laws cover how their houses, cars, and other property are passed on to relatives. But the rules are murkier — and currently far more restrictive — when it comes to pictures on Facebook and emails to friends or relatives. Google, Facebook and other companies have said a federal privacy law approved decades before digital storage became common prevents them from releasing electronic memories or records unless the account owner grants permission.   read more

New York’s first legal hemp farm in decades has taken root under a pilot program that’s part of a national resurgence of a plant that’s prized for making food, clothing and shelter but long banned along with its smokable cousin. Hemp has been used for millennia as a source of oil, protein and fiber used in clothing, rope and paper. Modern uses include cosmetics, nutritional supplements, biofuels, building materials and pharmaceuticals.   read more

When Karen Savage and Cherri Foytlin wrote an article about the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill of 2010, they thought it might get a few moments of attention and then fade away. More than three years later, Savage and Foytlin are still defending their article after being sued by a scientific consulting company. The battle is headed to the highest court in Massachusetts. Arguments are scheduled for Friday.   read more

The Supreme Court is set to begin its new term as it ended the last one, down one justice and ideologically deadlocked on a range of issues. The absence of a ninth justice since Antonin Scalia's death in February has hamstrung the court in several cases and forced the justices to look for less contentious issues on which they are less likely to divide by 4-4 votes. It could be several months, at least, before the nation's highest court is again operating at full strength.   read more