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The Trump regime has launched an attack on knowledge itself

The Trump regime has launched an attack on knowledge itself

Adam Serwer writes: The warlords who sacked Rome did not intend to doom Western Europe to centuries of ignorance. It was not a foreseeable consequence of their actions. The same cannot be said of the sweeping attack on human knowledge and progress that the Trump administration is now undertaking—a deliberate destruction of education, science, and history, conducted with a fanaticism that recalls the Dark Ages that followed Rome’s fall. Every week brings fresh examples. The administration is threatening colleges and…

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Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem tell ICE to supercharge immigrant arrests

Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem tell ICE to supercharge immigrant arrests

Axios reports: In a tense meeting last week, top Trump aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that immigration agents seek to arrest 3,000 people a day, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. Why it matters: The new target is triple the number of daily arrests that agents were making in the early days of Trump’s term — and suggests the president’s top immigration officials are full-steam ahead in pushing for mass deportations. The increased pressure on agents comes as…

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Trump has no plan for who will grow food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work’

Trump has no plan for who will grow food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work’

The Guardian reports: Last spring, Carmelo Mendez was pruning peach trees in Colorado on a temporary visa, missing his children and wife back home, but excited about how his $17.70 hourly wage would improve their lives. This spring, he’s back in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala frantically searching Facebook for a job on one of the thousands of farms across the US that primarily employ guest workers like him. Mendez is one of the more than 300,000 foreign agricultural workers…

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Immigration courts are dismissing cases of those sent to El Salvador, potentially cutting off their return

Immigration courts are dismissing cases of those sent to El Salvador, potentially cutting off their return

NBC News reports: Before he was sent to an infamous supermax prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, Andry Hernandez Romero was waiting for an immigration judge to decide whether he would be granted asylum in the United States. And even after his deportation, Hernandez’s lawyers fought to keep his asylum claim open as a way of ensuring he didn’t disappear from the American legal system. But an immigration judge in San Diego dismissed Hernandez’s asylum claim on…

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Judge says government should release Russian scientist

Judge says government should release Russian scientist

The New York Times reports: A federal judge on Wednesday said she would grant bail to Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist employed by Harvard University, in an immigration case stemming from Ms. Petrova’s failure to declare scientific samples she was carrying into the country. “There does not seem to be either a factual or legal basis for the immigration officer’s actions” in stripping Ms. Petrova of her visa on Feb. 16, Christina Reiss, chief judge of the U.S. District Court…

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Trump doesn’t like this taco

Trump doesn’t like this taco

Politico reports: Wall Street has a new shorthand about President Donald Trump — and he’s not happy about it. Traders have reportedly come up with the acronym TACO, which stands for “Trump always chickens out,” to take advantage of the trade environment created by the president’s habit of threatening to impose tariffs on countries, and then backing off at the last moment. He bristled when asked about it Wednesday in an Oval Office press conference. “Don’t ever say what you…

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An ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over human origins

An ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over human origins

Scott Sayare writes: On a late-summer day in 2001, at the University of Poitiers in west-central France, the palaeontologist Michel Brunet summoned his colleagues into a classroom to examine an unusual skull. Brunet had just returned from Chad, and brought with him an extremely ancient cranium. It had been distorted by the aeons spent beneath what is now the Djurab desert; a crust of black mineral deposits left it looking charred and slightly malevolent. It sat on a table. “What…

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Dramatic rise in threats against federal judges since Trump took office

Dramatic rise in threats against federal judges since Trump took office

The New York Times reports: Threats against federal judges have risen drastically since President Trump took office, according to internal data compiled by the U.S. Marshals Service. In the five-month period leading up to March 1 of this year, 80 individual judges had received threats, the data shows. Then, over the next six weeks, an additional 162 judges received threats, a dramatic increase. That spike in threats coincided with a flood of harsh rhetoric — often from Mr. Trump himself…

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As Trump’s tariffs incentivize fraud, trade crime is soaring, U.S. firms say

As Trump’s tariffs incentivize fraud, trade crime is soaring, U.S. firms say

The New York Times reports: As President Trump’s tariffs have ratcheted up in recent months, so have the mysterious solicitations some U.S. companies have received, offering them ways to avoid the taxes. Shipping companies, many of them based in China, have reached out to U.S. firms that import apparel, auto parts and jewelry, offering solutions that they say can make the tariffs go away. “We can avoid high duties from China, which we have already done many in the past,”…

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Hurdles being imposed on international students by the Trump regime pose a threat to U.S. economy

Hurdles being imposed on international students by the Trump regime pose a threat to U.S. economy

Politico reports: The Trump administration is weighing requiring all foreign students applying to study in the United States to undergo social media vetting — a significant expansion of previous such efforts, according to a cable obtained by POLITICO. In preparation for such required vetting, the administration is ordering U.S. embassies and consular sections to pause scheduling new interviews for such student visa applicants, according to the cable, dated Tuesday and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. If the administration…

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After receiving a $1 million donation, Trump pardons a tax cheat

After receiving a $1 million donation, Trump pardons a tax cheat

The New York Times reports: As Paul Walczak awaited sentencing early this year, his best hope for avoiding prison time rested with the newly inaugurated president. Mr. Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Mr. Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago. Ms. Fago had raised millions…

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White House stunned as Hegseth inquiry brings up illegal wiretap claims

White House stunned as Hegseth inquiry brings up illegal wiretap claims

The Guardian reports: The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap. The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of…

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Within Pete Hegseth’s divided inner circle, a ‘cold war’ endures

Within Pete Hegseth’s divided inner circle, a ‘cold war’ endures

The Washington Post reports: An enduring rift among Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s cadre of senior advisers has divided the Pentagon’s front office and fueled internal speculation about his long-term viability in the Cabinet post after several episodes that attracted White House scrutiny, according to numerous people familiar with the matter. The conflict within Hegseth’s inner circle persists even after he purged several political appointees in April and attempts to portray a sense of unity among his remaining brain trust. His…

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Trump cuts are killing a tiny office that keeps measurements of the world accurate

Trump cuts are killing a tiny office that keeps measurements of the world accurate

Wired reports: Cuts made by the Trump administration are threatening the function of a tiny but crucial office within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that maintains the US’s framework of spatial information: latitudes, longitudes, vertical measurements like elevation, and even measurements of Earth’s gravitational field. Staff losses at the National Geodetic Survey (NGS), the oldest scientific agency in the US, could further cripple its mission and activities, including a long-awaited project to update the accuracy of these measurements, former…

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