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

Zero-tolerance emerged as a popular strategy in Baltimore more than 15 years ago. Its effectiveness was touted by O'Malley, who was elected in 1999 at a time when homicides were regularly topping 300 a year. He defended the approach again Wednesday, saying the report did not account for improvements under his watch. Current police leaders in Baltimore have disavowed zero-tolerance policing, but the legacy remains in the persistent stops and searches that yield neither citations nor arrests.   read more

Residents said all Muslims "are killers" and that women who wear burqas are "scary and disgusting." Another wondered where the money for the mosque had come from, telling the commission that "all Muslims who live in America are on food stamps," according to the complaint. There was an unprecedented FBI background check after the mayor's office received emails asking if anyone affiliated with the mosque was "on the terrorist watch list."   read more

Attorney Deepak Gupta called the ruling "unprecedented in American law." He added: "Never before has a U.S. court allowed someone who lost a case in another country to come to the U.S. to attack a foreign court's damages award. The decision hands well-heeled corporations a template for avoiding legal accountability anywhere in the world. And it throws the entire international judgment-enforcement framework out the window. We will be exploring all available options for further review."   read more

Sen. John McCain, a longtime champion of the visa program, was blunt. “People are going to die,” McCain said on the Senate floor, challenging a fellow Republican who was blocking more visas. “Don’t you understand the gravity of that?” Republican infighting has left in question whether a special visa program for translators who assisted the military during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be renewed, a devastating blow to 12,000 Afghans whose immigration applications are in limbo.   read more

The Justice Dept. said it would ask law enforcement and medical examiner’s offices to fill out forms when there is a news report or another indication that a person died while in police custody. The proposal comes as police killings of African-Americans have fueled protests in recent years and led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The resulting scrutiny has focused attention on the lack of reliable and comprehensive data about how many people are killed by the police each year.   read more

The action will potentially spur broad scientific study of a drug that is being used to treat dozens of diseases in states across the nation despite little rigorous evidence of its effectiveness. The restriction has so limited the supply of marijuana federally approved for research purposes that scientists said it could often take years to obtain it and in some cases it was impossible to get.   read more

A federal court on Wednesday blocked a lower court from allowing voters in Wisconsin to cast ballots without photo ID, stating the lower court was too lenient in loosening a state voter ID law. The injunction adds new confusion into a fierce battle over the 2011 law in a battleground state, three months before the presidential election. “The election is looming, and everyone understands the importance of finality,” said Myrna Pérez. But “the timing is going to be very tight."   read more

More and more states seek ways to help the richest Americans protect their wealth from creditors, divorcing spouses and tax collectors. The federal government leaves it to each state to draw up its own trust laws, and several have tried to go as far as they can without inciting accusations that they are abetting tax evasion. Yet many states hope to dip a spoon in the trillion-dollar-plus pot of cream that had traditionally been preserved in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands.   read more

BLM's Sarah Levy defended the new plan, calling it the result of a painstaking effort to balance opposing interests. But loggers and environmentalists are all in agreement: the new plan won't work. The real dispute is centered on the rural counties in western Oregon who say they are stymied by their inability to tax the majority of their land base because it is owned by the federal government.   read more

The Justice Dept. has found that the Baltimore Police Dept. for years has hounded black residents who make up most of the city’s population, systematically stopping, searching and arresting them, often with little rationale. In a blistering report, coming more than a year after Baltimore erupted into riots over the police-involved death of a young black man, Freddie Gray, the Justice Dept. is sharply critical of policies that encouraged police to charge black residents with minor crimes.   read more

The new data came as a relief to researchers, who had been taken aback by a rise in the nation’s death rate in 2015, an event that has happened only a few times in the past 25 years. It was propelled in part by an increase in mortality from drug overdoses. A flattening of the mortality rate from heart disease meant that rises in the death rate from drugs were no longer being offset. Last year was the first time since 1993 that the death rate from heart disease did not decline.   read more

Wind-turbine opponents persuaded the court that the government issued a permit to an Ohio wind farm without fully considering ways to reduce the deaths of endangered Indiana bats. In its application for a permit, Buckeye Wind estimated that its wind-generation facility would injure or kill 5.2 bats per year. The Indiana bat has been listed as an endangered species since 1967. Though the species does not hibernate in the area of that facility, it migrates through it.   read more

The development of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense missile system began in 2002 with an initial goal of operational capability by late 2004. Today, the system has a pitiful test record and no demonstrated ability to stop an incoming missile. Ultimately, the taxpayer funded program has resulted in an excessive expenditure with no recorded operational capacity. Fifteen years and $40 billion later, we are left with an unreliable anti-ballistic missile system and a gaping hole in our pockets.   read more

A gallon of regular gas costs $2.74 in Hawaii but just $1.82 in South Carolina. A $5 hamburger in California may be a dollar cheaper in Nebraska. The “real value” of a dollar is highest in Mississippi, Arkansas ($114.30), Alabama ($113.90), South Dakota ($113.60) and Kentucky ($112.70). It buys the least in the District of Columbia ($84.70), Hawaii, New York ($86.40), New Jersey ($87.30), California ($89) and Maryland ($90.70).   read more

Denver police will begin collecting racial information about the people they contact following recent protests and complaints about a lack of accountability. Chief White said it's difficult to determine if racial profiling is an issue without the facts. "Officers need to know and citizens need to know how everyone's actions are going to be held accountable," he said. Community activists rejected claims by authorities it would be too time-consuming to collect information on traffic stops.   read more

Why are there so few expert lawyers arguing on behalf of criminal defendants? Justice Sotomayor said that the main factor is vanity: Many criminal defense lawyers are too reluctant to cede the glamour of Supreme Court arguments to specialists. “I think it’s malpractice for any lawyer who thinks, ‘This is my one shot before the Supreme Court, and I have to take it,'” she said. Also tilting the playing field against criminal defendants: The Supreme Court itself is dominated by former prosecutors.   read more