FBI’s Bongino no longer claims DC pipe bomb was ‘an inside job’; suspect said to be pro-Trump

FBI’s Bongino no longer claims DC pipe bomb was ‘an inside job’; suspect said to be pro-Trump

USA Today reports: FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino brushed off questions about his past claims that the FBI had covered up the identity of the person who placed pipe bombs outside of political party headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021. In a Dec. 4 interview following the arrest and identification of a man accused of being the would-be bomber, Fox News’ Sean Hannity reminded Bongino, his former colleague, of his past social media and podcast comments. Bongino said the FBI was…

Read More Read More

AI labs Meta, Deepseek, and Xai earned some of the worst grades possible on an existential safety index

AI labs Meta, Deepseek, and Xai earned some of the worst grades possible on an existential safety index

Fortune reports: The Future of Life Institute’s latest AI safety index found that major AI labs fell short on most measures of AI responsibility, with few letter grades rising above a C. The org graded eight companies across categories like safety frameworks, risk assessment, and current harms. Perhaps most glaring was the “existential safety” line, where companies scored Ds and Fs across the board. While many of these companies are explicitly chasing superintelligence, they lack a plan for safely managing…

Read More Read More

Russian hybrid attack? Military drones enter no-fly zone to target Zelenskyy’s arrival in Dublin

Russian hybrid attack? Military drones enter no-fly zone to target Zelenskyy’s arrival in Dublin

The Journal reports: Four unidentified military-style drones breached a no-fly zone and flew towards the flight path of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plane at sea near Dublin Airport late on Monday night, The Journal has learned. The plane landed, slightly ahead of schedule, just moments before the incident happened at about 11pm. The drones reached the location where Zelenskyy’s plane was expected to be at the exact moment it had been due to pass. The drones then orbited above an…

Read More Read More

New findings reveal human rights violations at Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and Krome detention centers

New findings reveal human rights violations at Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and Krome detention centers

Amnesty International today released a new report documenting cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment at two immigration detention centers in Florida: The Everglades Detention Facility (“Alligator Alcatraz”) and the Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome). The report, Torture and enforced disappearances in the Sunshine State: Human rights violations at “Alligator Alcatraz” and Krome in Florida, reveals human rights violations that, in some cases amount to torture, occurring at Krome and “Alligator Alcatraz” within an increasingly hostile anti-immigrant climate in Florida under…

Read More Read More

Lawmakers horrified by video of military strike killing shipwrecked sailors

Lawmakers horrified by video of military strike killing shipwrecked sailors

The Intercept reports: Lawmakers who saw a video of a U.S. attack on wounded and helpless people clinging to the wreckage of a supposed drug boat on September 2 described the footage as deeply disturbing. A small number of members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate and House Armed Services committees, as well as some staff directors, saw the recording during closed-door briefings Thursday with Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the head of Special Operations Command,…

Read More Read More

Life during wartime in New Orleans as feds terrorize Latinos who saved a city

Life during wartime in New Orleans as feds terrorize Latinos who saved a city

Will Bunch writes: When the day New Orleans had feared for weeks finally came on Wednesday, it began with a lie as wide as the meandering Mississippi River. A port city somehow dubbed the Big Easy despite its centuries of big trouble woke up to a frigid blast of Arctic air and a claim from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that local immigration raids it’s named the “Catahoula Crunch” would narrowly target “criminal illegal aliens roaming free thanks to…

Read More Read More

Condemning millions for one man’s crime

Condemning millions for one man’s crime

George Packer writes: Most of us are lucky enough to avoid any direct encounter with the true nature of Donald Trump’s presidency. But over time, abstract nouns such as authoritarianism and xenophobia lose their hard edges with too much use. It can take some personal experience to bring home what the Trump administration is doing to human lives and values. The solitary Afghan man who allegedly shot two members of the West Virginia National Guard near the White House last…

Read More Read More

Federal judge bars some warrantless immigration arrests in D.C.

Federal judge bars some warrantless immigration arrests in D.C.

The New York Times reports: A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday ordered federal immigration officers to stop making arrests there without a warrant unless they could show that a suspect was a flight risk. It is the latest in a series of decisions in lower courts that have challenged President Trump’s immigration tactics as he escalates his mass deportation agenda and expands his deployment of law enforcement officers to major urban centers across the country. Some of those…

Read More Read More

ICE recruits violent misfits ‘not ready to tie their own laces’

ICE recruits violent misfits ‘not ready to tie their own laces’

The Daily Mail reports: The Trump administration’s frantic push to hire 10,000 new deportation officers by year’s end has spiraled into what insiders describe as a national embarrassment – with lax vetting and a signing bonus of up to $50,000 luring in a wave of woefully unfit recruits. An exhaustive Daily Mail investigation has exposed how Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lowered standards so dramatically that the new cohort now includes recent high school graduates and applicants who can ‘barely…

Read More Read More

For Dozzy Donald, war is peace

For Dozzy Donald, war is peace

Susan Glasser writes: Just after 1 P.M. on Thursday, Donald Trump appeared at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, in Washington, D.C., to preside over a signing ceremony with the Presidents of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Trump praised the two leaders for having the courage to put their names on the “very detailed, powerful agreement” to end the decades-long conflict between their countries—and praised himself for “succeeding where so many others have failed” in…

Read More Read More

Killing shipwrecked survivors isn’t just illegal — it endangers U.S. servicemembers

Killing shipwrecked survivors isn’t just illegal — it endangers U.S. servicemembers

Mark Nevitt writes: According to recent media reports, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth verbally ordered special forces to “kill everybody” ahead of a Sept. 2 operation targeting alleged drug traffickers in international waters. That order allegedly resulted in a follow-on “double tap” strike that killed two survivors who were clinging to wreckage. I agree with Professor Jack Goldsmith that if the media reporting is accurate, this military operation is a “dishonorable strike” that is illegal under international law and the laws…

Read More Read More

Family of Colombian fisherman killed in U.S. boat strike files complaint alleging he was murdered

Family of Colombian fisherman killed in U.S. boat strike files complaint alleging he was murdered

ABC News reports: The family of a Colombian fisherman who died in a U.S. military boat strike in September has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleging the U.S. government illegally killed him. Alejandro Carranza was killed in a strike in the Caribbean on Sept. 15, according to the petition, filed on Tuesday. “From numerous news reports, we know that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like…

Read More Read More

Pentagon watchdog report: Hegseth risked endangering troops with Signal messages

Pentagon watchdog report: Hegseth risked endangering troops with Signal messages

The Atlantic reports: For nearly nine months, Trump-administration officials have defended top national-security leaders who shared information in a Signal chat about U.S. strikes in Yemen, first reported by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inadvertently included in the group. Officials played down the severity of the breach and insisted that the information wasn’t classified. Now the Pentagon’s top watchdog has concluded that the information Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared in the chat could have put the…

Read More Read More

FBI headquarters seeks ‘seditious conspiracy’ probe of Democratic lawmakers

FBI headquarters seeks ‘seditious conspiracy’ probe of Democratic lawmakers

Bloomberg Law reports: FBI headquarters is pressuring the bureau’s domestic terrorism agents to open a seditious conspiracy investigation into six Democratic lawmakers who advised military service members to defy unlawful orders, according to three people familiar with the situation. Such an investigation, which has not yet been opened, would mark a more serious step than the FBI’s voluntary inquiry that several of the Democrats derided last week and would escalate the administration’s use of law enforcement to probe the president’s…

Read More Read More