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 incongruity of the increasing numbers of executions and the plummeting numbers of death sentences took both prosecutors and defense attorneys by surprise. "Wow," defense attorney Akil Secret said. "Maybe the times are changing." The precipitous declines raise the question of whether prior capital sentences were justified, Secret said. "If a life-without-parole sentence is sufficient for today's worst crimes, why isn't it sufficient for those crimes from the past where death was imposed?"   read more

Thomas worked at the Bank of New York for 22 years, eventually serving as vice president and regional manager. Beginning in 2004, he worked independently in the banking industry. He took time out in 2007 to run for parliament in Jamaica. He was the candidate of the People’s National Party, but lost. In 2010 he returned to the University of the West Indies as a senior teaching fellow in the Mona School of Business and Management. Thomas was tapped in 2013 to be Jamaica’s ambassador to China.   read more

Mitchell and Jessen acknowledge using waterboarding, loud music, confinement, slapping and other harsh methods but deny that they were torture. "Defendants deny that they committed torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, non-consensual human experimentation and/or war crimes," their lawyers wrote. "This is historic," ACLU attorney Dror Ladin said Wednesday. "Until now, no one responsible for the CIA torture program has ever been forced to admit their actions in court."   read more

A new study indicates that what people really want to ride in is an autonomous vehicle that puts its passengers first. If its machine brain has to choose between slamming into a wall or running someone over, well, sorry, pedestrian. Should manufacturers create vehicles with various degrees of morality programmed into them, depending on what a consumer wants? Should the government mandate that all self-driving cars share the same values, even if that’s not so good for a car’s passengers?   read more

Justice Scalia was an enthusiastic traveler, taking more than 250 privately funded trips from 2004 to 2014. A few weeks before he died, he visited Singapore and Hong Kong. Justice Stephen G. Breyer was the most active traveler last year, taking 19 paid trips, including three to London and two to Paris. The trips were partly to promote his book “The Court and the World,” which was published last year. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was next, with 16 paid trips, but to less exotic places.   read more

"Trump is concerned about a poisoned jury pool," wrote Forge. "After dedicating months to poisoning that pool with dozens of nationally publicized speeches denigrating the claims against him and championing his hollow defense, he should be concerned. He knows the best cure for a snake bite comes from the snake's own venom. After months of spewing venom into the jury pool, Trump is trying to suppress the cure — his own admissions."   read more

"Blood tests are significantly more intrusive, and their reasonableness must be judged in light of the availability of the less invasive alternative of a breath test," said the ruling. For Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court should also require warrants for breath tests. "A citizen's Fourth Amendment right to be free from 'unreasonable searches' does not disappear upon arrest," she wrote. Sotomayor slammed the majority for creating a "categorical exception to the warrant requirement.   read more

The Senate rejected the amendment 58-38, two votes short of the 60 necessary to move ahead with the measure that would give federal law enforcement direct access to email and text message logs, internet browsing histories and other potentially sensitive online data. Sen. Ron Wyden opposed the amendment and decried what he said was the hypocrisy of defending gun rights while pushing for a measure that would undermine the constitutional prohibition against unlawful search and seizures.   read more

The Obama administration on Wednesday decried a ruling by a federal judge that blocks rules for hydraulic fracturing. The Bureau of Land Management and a coalition of environmental groups say the rules are necessary to protect the environment. The bureau's rules would have required petroleum developers to disclose to regulators the ingredients in the chemical products they use to improve the results of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.   read more

More than 300 people across the nation have been charged with stealing more than $900 million in what federal investigators say is the "largest Medicare fraud takedown in history." The people facing criminal and civil charges of health care fraud include 61 doctors, nurses and other medical professionals. "The wrongdoers that we pursue in these operations seek to use public funds for private enrichment," Lynch said. "They target real people - many of them in need of significant medical care."   read more

Corinthian Colleges, once one of the nation’s largest for-profit education companies, engaged in apparently unlawful practices by paying its recruiters based on how many sales leads they converted into actual students, according to documents unsealed last week. The disclosure may make it easier for former students of the defunct institution to have their federal loans forgiven by helping them establish that they were defrauded or that Corinthian violated federal law while it was operating.   read more

Alternative treatments for pain may include chiropractic and osteopathic manipulation, meditation, massage, yoga, acupuncture and cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps people cope with pain by changing how they think about it. Insurance plans may not cover all of these treatments, or impose strict limits on them. Many state Medicaid programs have only begun to grapple with whether to cover nondrug treatments for pain, or how extensively to do it.   read more

With at least 60 oil producers declaring bankruptcy since 2014, orphaned wells have become potential environmental hazards below ground as well as rusted-out eyesores above. Texas officials predict the number of orphaned wells could soar to 12,000, which would be nearly 25 percent more than what regulators can't keep up with now. Landowners, meanwhile, are growing restless with abandoned pump jacks and damage while drillers warn that crackdowns would only put them out of business faster.   read more

Together, the popularity of the assault rifles and small handguns highlight how the industry has changed in recent decades, as people have increasingly turned to guns for self-defense and less for hunting. Manufacturers have acknowledged the central role that assault rifles and concealed handguns play in their financial health. They also often point out that sales frequently rise after mass shootings like the recent attacks in Paris, San Bernardino, California, and Orlando.   read more

Currie can’t be sure what precise factors have led to the reductions in death rates for poor young Americans, but she has some theories. Public health insurance expanded to cover more children and pregnant women. Research has shown measurable benefits to the children with access to the program: There was less infant mortality; they were hospitalized less often as they grew older; they were more likely to finish high school and attend college; and they earned more money in early adulthood.   read more

Advocates say the measure would make the free sanitary supplies more readily available by putting them in restrooms, instead of nurses' offices, in schools with female students in sixth grade and up. Girls who need pads or tampons now have to scramble to try to get to the nurse and then the restroom in breaks between classes. Rather than do that and risk being late, girls learn to "know the friend in that class who has extra pads," Mitchell, 17, said at a rally before the vote.   read more