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Tulsi Gabbard shows how far she’ll go to politicize intelligence to help Donald Trump

Tulsi Gabbard shows how far she’ll go to politicize intelligence to help Donald Trump

David Corn writes: The Trump administration has launched a war on former Obama administration officials, and to do so, it has engaged in one of the most egregious and obvious acts of politicizing intelligence in decades. On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released formerly classified US intelligence reports about the 2016 election that she said were evidence of an Obama administration “conspiracy to subvert President Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency.” In a hysterical press release, she accused former…

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After major law firms bent the knee, a corps of ‘little guys’ jumped in to fight Trump

After major law firms bent the knee, a corps of ‘little guys’ jumped in to fight Trump

The New York Times reports: President Trump’s executive orders seeking to punish big law firms have led some of them to acquiesce to him and left others reluctant to take on pro bono cases that could put them at odds with the administration. But as opponents of the White House’s policies organized to fight Mr. Trump in court on a vast range of actions and policies, they quickly found that they did not need to rely on Big Law. Instead,…

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National Park Service dragged into Trump’s effort to cover up America’s ugly past

National Park Service dragged into Trump’s effort to cover up America’s ugly past

The New York Times reports: At Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, the Trump administration is set to review, and possibly remove or alter, signs about how climate change is causing sea levels to rise. At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the administration will soon decide whether to take down exhibits on the brutality of slavery. And at Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, Trump officials are scrutinizing language about the imprisonment of Native Americans inside…

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Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on education and Palestine shortly before publication

Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on education and Palestine shortly before publication

The Guardian reports: In March 2024, six months into Israel’s war in Gaza, education in the territory was decimated. Schools were closed – most had been turned into shelters – and all 12 of the strip’s universities were partially or fully destroyed. Against that backdrop, a prestigious American education journal decided to dedicate a special issue to “education and Palestine”. The Harvard Educational Review (HER) put out a call for submissions, asking academics around the world for ideas for articles…

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Techno-hubris: AI chatbots remain overconfident — even when they’re wrong, study finds

Techno-hubris: AI chatbots remain overconfident — even when they’re wrong, study finds

Carnegie Mellon University: Artificial intelligence chatbots are everywhere these days, from smartphone apps and customer service portals to online search engines. But what happens when these handy tools overestimate their own abilities? Researchers asked both human participants and four large language models (LLMs) how confident they felt in their ability to answer trivia questions, predict the outcomes of NFL games or Academy Award ceremonies, or play a Pictionary-like image identification game. Both the people and the LLMs tended to be…

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How John Roberts laid the foundations for an American dictatorship

How John Roberts laid the foundations for an American dictatorship

Peter M. Shane writes: No one on the Supreme Court has gone further to enable Donald Trump’s extreme exercise of presidential power than the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts. Associate justices have also written some important opinions shaping executive power, and the Court has issued ever more important unsigned orders, but the most transformative opinions—the opinions that directly legitimize Trump’s unprecedented uses of power—are Roberts’s handiwork. This is not happenstance. Under Supreme Court practice, the most senior…

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Trump officials accused of defying a third of the judges who have ruled against him

Trump officials accused of defying a third of the judges who have ruled against him

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump and his appointees have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling, a Washington Post analysis has found, suggesting widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system. Plaintiffs say Justice Department lawyers and the agencies they represent are snubbing rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence, quietly working around court orders and inventing pretexts to…

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Migrants at ICE jail in Miami made to kneel to eat ‘like dogs’, Human Rights Watch reports

Migrants at ICE jail in Miami made to kneel to eat ‘like dogs’, Human Rights Watch reports

The Guardian reports: Migrants at a Miami immigration jail were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to kneel to eat food from styrofoam plates “like dogs”, according to a report published on Monday into conditions at three overcrowded south Florida facilities. The incident at the downtown federal detention center is one of a succession of alleged abuses at Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice) operated jails in the state since January, chronicled by advocacy groups Human…

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A federal trial in Boston reveals the sprawling plan behind Trump’s attacks on pro-Palestinian students

A federal trial in Boston reveals the sprawling plan behind Trump’s attacks on pro-Palestinian students

Cristian Farias writes: In April, U.S. District Judge William Young, who sits in Boston, made a procedural ruling from the bench that seemed to catch the lawyers in the courtroom by surprise. Like many other judges these days, Young had convened a hearing to consider whether to grant a preliminary injunction—which, in the normal course, would put a quick stop to an illegal or otherwise unconstitutional government policy. By one count, in the first seventy days of Donald Trump’s presidency,…

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Most of the people being thrown into ICE detention centers have never been convicted of any crime

Most of the people being thrown into ICE detention centers have never been convicted of any crime

Eric Schlosser writes: Three weeks ago, Donald Trump attended the opening of an immigrant-detention center in the Florida Everglades, about 50 miles west of Miami. “Pretty soon, this facility will handle the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” the president said. Officially named Alligator Alcatraz, it was constructed in eight days by the state of Florida on a disused airport runway. The detention center features tents that contain chain-link cages crammed with bunk beds,…

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The U.S. government’s growing trove of social media data

The U.S. government’s growing trove of social media data

Brennan Center for Justice reports: Reviewing individuals’ social media to conduct ideological vetting has been a defining initiative of President Trump’s second term. As part of that effort, the administration has proposed expanding the mandatory collection of social media identifiers. The proposal would widen the government’s social media surveillance dragnet to include not only travelers, visa applicants, and visa holders, but also their U.S. citizen contacts. By linking individuals’ online presence to government databases, officials could more easily identify, monitor,…

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Marjorie Taylor Greene warns Trump that ‘dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies’

Marjorie Taylor Greene warns Trump that ‘dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies’

Politico reports: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday appeared to send a pointed message to President Donald Trump: If the Department of Justice does not release more information on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, his supporters will no longer stand behind him. Without naming Epstein, the Georgia Republican on social media said the president is “dangling” only bits of information to his supporters despite promises during the 2024 campaign that his administration would be transparent with the public. “If you tell…

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Why Trump’s Epstein cover-up matters

Why Trump’s Epstein cover-up matters

Paul Blumenthal writes: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to [AG Pam] Bondi on Friday claiming that “approximately 1,000 personnel” from the FBI were put on round-the-clock duty to review “approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records” and “instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned.” Of all the stories, scandals and policies that have followed Trump since he entered politics, why has this one, above all others, caused such enormous…

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