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

Advocacy groups said Texas’s education campaign was misleading voters into believing that voting would still be more difficult than it is. The reason is that the campaign omits the word “reasonably." That not only ignores the court’s order, but also leaves voters with the erroneous impression that they cannot vote unless they have exhausted every avenue to acquire an ID. The single word may seem a small matter, but the issue is not: More than 600,000 Texans have none of the required IDs.   read more

The study found more young adults are open to conservative ideology. Twenge said it's surprising as these same young people generally disagree with many traditional conservative viewpoints. "Given young people's support for same-sex marriage and legalizing marijuana, it's surprising that more now identify as political conservatives. Overall, millennials may not be as reliably liberal and Democrat as many had predicted, especially as they are likely to grow more conservative as they get older."   read more

Federal wildlife officials burned more than $1 million worth of rhino horn items in a ceremony Thursday, as they and onlookers raged over continued poaching and trafficking of the endangered animals. The items--whole horns and ornate objects--had been confiscated by U.S. officials before being used in the symbolic event — the first of its kind in the nation. "Wildlife trafficking through the United States, or into the United States, will not be tolerated," said Wildlife Service's Michelle Gadd.   read more

Muslim advocacy groups cheered Qureshi’s nomination. The issue of diversity in the judicial landscape received renewed attention this year after Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, said in May that Gonzalo P. Curiel, the presiding judge in a lawsuit filed by former Trump University students, would be biased against him because of the judge’s Mexican-American background. Trump later said that he did not think that a Muslim judge would be fair to him, either.   read more

U.S. aviation safety officials took the extraordinary step late Thursday of warning airline passengers not to turn on or charge a new-model Samsung smartphone during flights following numerous reports of the devices catching fire. The FAA also warned passengers not to put the phones in their checked bags, citing "recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung." It's unusual for the FAA to warn passengers about a product. Samsung ordered a global recall after an investigation of explosions.   read more

The dairy producers were accused of conspiring to prematurely slaughter more than 500,000 cows between 2003 and 2010 to limit the production of raw milk and drive up prices for yogurt, sour cream and other dairy products. "The biggest dairy producers in the country, responsible for almost 70 percent of the nation's milk, conspired together in a classic price-fixing scheme, forcing higher prices for a basic food item onto honest consumers and families," said attorney Steve Berman.   read more

Colgate Total is the only toothpaste in the U.S. that contains triclosan. For some critics, the decision to take it out of topical products but leave it in an oral product is a bit of a head-scratcher. “We put soap on our hands, and a small amount gets into our body,” said Rolf Halden, who has tracked triclosan for years. But through the gums, “chemicals get rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream." Triclosan may scramble hormones in kids and promote drug-resistant infections, said the FDA.   read more

“We calculate that each upset loss of the LSU football team generates excess punishments of juvenile defenders in Louisiana by a total of more than 1,332 days, including time in custody and probation,” Eren and Mocan wrote. “Importantly, 159 extra days of jail time has been assigned to juveniles convicted of a felony due to an upset loss in a football game.” Not surprisingly, African-American defendants bear the brunt of the judges’ unhappiness about the Tigers’ fortunes.   read more

Imagine a scene straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie: You call a phone number, unaware that it has been wiretapped as part of a federal investigation, and incriminate yourself in a different crime altogether. Judge Gould noted the novelty of the question: Is the evidence admissible when a valid wiretap helps catch someone else who happens to be involved in a different crime? The government needs to stop listening to people's conversations when it knows it shouldn't, said Johnson.   read more

“I would like to be buried in Arlington Cemetery,” she wrote. “Even if there are no ashes left, I would like an empty urn placed at Arlington.” The problem was that the Army never considered the women — who carried weapons, wore uniforms and had access to classified intelligence — to be the same as active-duty male troops. “They gave the ultimate sacrifice, and then when the war was over, they were told, ‘Thank you for your service, the cockpits go back to the men now,'” said Rep. McSally.   read more

Declaring a “moral obligation” to heal the wounds of a secret war, President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged help to clear away the 80 million unexploded bombs the U.S. dropped on Laos a generation ago — more than 10 for every one of the country’s 7 million people. Obama announced the U.S. would double its spending on bomb-clearing efforts to $90 million over three years.   read more

A coalition of New York-based advocates on Tuesday launched a national campaign to press large retailers, restaurant chains and other companies to end on-call and last-minute scheduling, which allows companies to assign shifts to workers with only a few hours’ notice. They say three in five American workers — about 75 million people — are paid hourly, with recent job growth mainly in low-wage jobs, often part-time and subject to last-minute scheduling practices.   read more

In a federal class action, two mothers — one of them a consultant in the $1 billion NFL concussion litigation — trace their adult sons’ deaths to brain injuries they suffered playing Pop Warner youth football. Kimberly Archie and Jo Cornell sued Pop Warner Little Scholars and two other organizations, claiming they failed to protect children from head trauma while playing tackle football and misled parents about safety policies, coaches training and helmet standards.   read more

Albuquerque hauls in more than $1 million a year by seizing cars, sometimes from innocent people, in defiance of state law and public outrage, claims a mother who wants the city’s program declared unconstitutional. The city even writes into its budget ahead of time the money it expects to make from selling seized cars.   read more

Mines are closing and the coal industry is facing a run of bankruptcies and other bad news, but a company backed by a $90 million investment is defying conventional wisdom by preparing to open two new mines in Appalachia, the hardest-hit coal region. This coal won’t be used for electricity but for steel manufacturing. Metallurgical coal prices are up lately due to a mix of international market factors.   read more

“This is opening up a whole new can of worms — we have seen problems with security contractors on the battlefield since 9/11, and there’s been an improvement in oversight in that area, but that came after a decade of problems,” said law professor Laura A. Dickinson. “With drones, this is a new area where we already do not have a lot of transparency and with contractors operating drones there’s no clearly defined regime of oversight and accountability.”   read more