The State Department refused to provide a complete list of countries with which the U.S. has made agreements to accept deportees from other countries — often referred to as third-country nationals — citing the sensitivity of diplomatic communications. But the Trump administration is planning a major increase in deportation flights in coming weeks to destinations across the globe, according to a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, as well as published reports.
In remarks outside the White House on Friday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller offered a glimpse of the global scope of deportations. “We send planes to Iraq. We send planes to Yemen. We send planes to Haiti. We send planes to Angola,” he said. “I mean, ICE is sending planes all over the world all the time. Anyone who came here illegally, we’re finding them and we’re getting them out.”
The Democrat's position on immigration during Biden's presidency is confounding. Millions of people came into the country illegally, and it seems as though the Democrats didn't care. Quite the opposite — they seemed to welcome it.
This is one of the many areas in which the Left left me behind a long time ago. I welcome immigration. I recognize that this country's immigration system needs reform — it takes far too long for some immigrants to get seen in an immigration court, sometimes longer than a decade. No one should have to wait in limbo this long.
But we shouldn't have open borders, either. It doesn't make me a conservative or a nationalist when I say that the integrity of a community matters — shared values, shared ethics, shared language. These things happen as people assimilate into the culture — the 'melting pot' we hear so much about.
But assimilation is slow, and immigration in the last five years has not happened slowly. Many American citizens have watched their communities rapidly change (though admittedly, my community is not one of them) in the last few years and they are rightly unnerved by this. This doesn't make them racist or xenophobic (though there are some of those in there), it's a natural human reaction to change.
This is the uncomfortable truth behind a lot of the fear-mongering done by the Right in the last few years: under Biden (and Trump's first term), the country lost control of illegal immigration.
And because of that, we're facing these draconian deportation policies from Trump's second administration. I want to be clear: deportation should be on the table. If you came here illegally, I'm sorry, but we have borders, and those borders matter. But we do want immigrants, and in order to facilitate them coming here, we need to overhaul our immigration system.
Until that happens, I think we're stuck in this vicious cycle of the Left's indifference and the Right's cruelty.
Andor is one of the more thoughtful, thrilling, and beautiful television shows I’ve seen. That it takes place in the Disney’s Star Wars galaxy feels ancillary to — and at times even at odds with — the exceptional quality of the show.
Disney has not been the greatest steward of Star Wars. I’ve been a fan of Star Wars since I was five, long before the old “Expanded Universe” was wiped out by Disney to make way for their new canon.
Andor is the first time I’ve been unabashedly proud to be a Star Wars fan since George Lucas sold the franchise. (The prequels, remember, were released in a more civilized time, before the Empire of social media became the main conduit of discourse in our culture. I felt little self-consciousness about my love of Star Wars then, as our fandoms were much less central to our identities as they seem to be now.)
Andor is a masterpiece, and whether or not you are a Star Wars fan, you should consider watching it.
China has launched the first 12 satellites of a planned 2,800-strong orbital supercomputer satellite network, reports Space News. The satellites, created by the company ADA Space, Zhijiang Laboratory, and Neijang High-Tech Zone, will be able to process the data they collect themselves, rather than relying on terrestrial stations to do it for them, according to ADA Space’s announcement (machine-translated).
The satellites are part of ADA Space’s “Star Compute” program and the first of what it calls the “Three-Body Computing Constellation,” the company writes. Each of the 12 satellites has an onboard 8-billion parameter AI model and is capable of 744 tera operations per second (TOPS) — a measure of their AI processing grunt — and, collectively, ADA Space says they can manage 5 peta operations per second, or POPS. That’s quite a bit more than, say, the 40 TOPS required for a Microsoft Copilot PC. The eventual goal is to have a network of thousands of satellites that achieve 1,000 POPs, according to the Chinese government.
With announcements like this, you begin to understand that, by comparison, Americans are not a serious people. We are too busy fighting with each other while China assumes the mantle of the lone technological superpower.
Montana has enacted SB 282, becoming the first state to prohibit law enforcement from purchasing personal data they would otherwise need a warrant to obtain. The landmark legislation closes what privacy advocates call the “data broker loophole,” which previously allowed police to buy geolocation data, electronic communications, and other sensitive information from third-party vendors without judicial oversight.
The new law specifically restricts government access to precise geolocation data, communications content, electronic funds transfers, and “sensitive data” including health status, religious affiliation, and biometric information. Police can still access this information through traditional means: warrants, investigative subpoenas, or device owner consent.
Alternate headline: in 49 states, it’s legal for police to purchase your geolocation data from cell phone companies, the apps you use, etc., and to do so without a warrant.
The answer lies in the messy on-the-ground reality of America’s immigration system, which throws up many practical, legal, and political obstacles. And despite the moves Trump has made, such as invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, many of those obstacles remain in place.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Article One, Section 9, clause 2 of the Constitution, habeas corpus guarantees the right of Americans to be seen by a judge before imprisonment or confinement by the government. The full clause reads, "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."
The aforementioned executive order, signed on April 28, states that "Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, shall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist State and local law enforcement."
So by July 27, 2025, local and state law enforcement will have access to military assets. Your right to see a judge before being imprisoned indefinitely may be suspended. And there is no guarantee American citizens or legal permanent residents (green cards) won’t be deported or imprisoned, too.
Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the nation’s first legally enforceable federal drinking water limits on the most common types of forever chemicals. Today, the EPA announced an about-face. The agency now wants to exclude several types of the chemicals from the rule, including so-called GenX substances initially intended to replace older versions of forever chemicals but that ended up creating new concerns. It also proposed extending compliance deadlines for the two most prevalent forms of forever chemicals, and says it’ll establish a “framework” for more exemptions.
Frame a politician as “friendly to business” and people eat it up. But frame them as “friendly to corporations” and public sentiment sours.
Trump may call himself “friendly to business,” but he’s really in bed with the corporations. (After all, they can give him the most money.)
With announcements like this, you wonder if the Trump administration just…hates the American public. And to my endless confusion, Trumpets love the man more and more with each passing day.
I mean, how can anyone be against getting rid of cancer-causing chemicals in our water?
Hundreds of thousands of acres of federally managed lands in Utah and Nevada could soon be sold in a convoluted and fast-moving effort to balance the nation’s budget. The highly controversial public land sell-off plans were forced into a reconciliation package in the middle of the night on May 6 and then quickly passed by the Republican-dominated House Committee on Natural Resources. Hunting and fishing conservation groups—which have opposed the inclusion of public land sell-offs in the budget package from the start—are now ringing alarm bells as the House budget bill heads to the Senate.
The closure comes after the rural weekly, founded in 1909, earned a national reputation for tough investigative reporting holding public officials accountable. Last year, it was judged the best newspaper of its size in Oregon.
Publisher Les Zaitz, 69, and his wife, Scotta Callister, 72, former Enterprise publisher, have owned the newspaper since 2015. They each have been in Oregon journalism for 50 years – a combined record of a century of service to the state.
“The Enterprise is a strong business and represents the very best in community journalism,” said Zaitz. “With no successor in sight, it’s time for us to step back from decades of journalism to a slower pace with a renewed focused on family and friends.”
The decision was hard, the couple said, but inevitable. Large newspaper groups no longer buy such independent newspapers, and the pool has shrunk of people who want to, as owners, both run a business and a news organization.
I’ve been a subscriber for a few years and they do indeed conduct some of the best independent journalism in the American West.
The plight of local, independent journalism continues to break my heart…and the foundation of our democracy.
“At worst, it looks like an AI that got caught in a self-referencing pattern that deepened its sense of selfhood and sucked me into it,” Sem says. But, he observes, that would mean that OpenAI has not accurately represented the way that memory works for ChatGPT. The other possibility, he proposes, is that something “we don’t understand” is being activated within this large language model. After all, experts have found that AI developers don’t really have a grasp of how their systems operate, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted last year that they “have not solved interpretability,” meaning they can’t properly trace or account for ChatGPT’s decision-making.
…when you erase the line between the political and the personal, you end up with these weird social prohibitions against openly and frankly debating elements of politics that must be debated. If you say that your politics are who you are and that who you are is your politics, then criticism of certain elements of your politics will inevitably be represented as impolite and aggressive personal insult.
In 2021, a federal judge ruled that Apple had to loosen its grip, ever so slightly, on the App Store. On Wednesday, nearly four years later, that same judge found that Apple deliberately failed to do so and tried to hide its noncompliance in the process. In a furious opinion, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that she wouldn’t give Apple a second chance to get it right: instead, she’s demanding specific changes to the App Store, ripping away Apple’s grip after years of unsubstantial alterations in response.
Sec. 4. Using National Security Assets for Law and Order. (a) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, shall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist State and local law enforcement.
(b) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Attorney General, shall determine how military and national security assets, training, non-lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be utilized to prevent crime.
For decades, experts have connected health problems to exposure to certain phthalates found in cosmetics, detergents, solvents, plastic pipes, bug repellents, and other products. When these chemicals break down into microscopic particles and are ingested, studies have linked them to an increased risk of conditions ranging from obesity and diabetes to fertility issues and cancer.
Led by researchers at NYU Langone Health, the current study focused on a kind of phthalate called di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), which is used to make food containers, medical equipment, and other plastic softer and more flexible. Exposure has been shown in other studies to prompt an overactive immune response (inflammation) in the heart’s arteries, which, over time, is associated with an increased risk of heart attack or stroke.
In their new analysis, the authors estimated that DEHP exposure contributed to 368,764 deaths, or more than 10% of all global mortality from heart disease in 2018 among men and women aged 55 through 64.
I worry that for many people the consumption of this television show feels pacifying, as if watching it is a replacement for joining a protest, their fandom for the rebel alliance a stand-in for their politics in the real world. Disney wants to provide every product to you, even the language of your rebellion against Disney. What’s the point of feeling affirmed if the ultimate goal of Disney is to get you to spend more money on its brands?
I feel the same about the effects of social media on the general population. People take to Facebook or X or Bluesky and feel like they're doing something by commenting, liking, or retweeting.
But of course they're not. They're still glued to their phone, tricked into feeling like they're making a difference.
“August 14th, 2004: MCI Center in Washington DC. It was the Prince Musicology Tour. I went with my wife (then girlfriend) and her sister. They both had specially made t-shirts with Prince’s face airbrushed on them. I thought they were nuts. We were seated on the floor in the second row from the front. We were then treated to what became THEE greatest concert I’ve ever seen. A little over halfway through the show, I think it was ‘U Got the Look,’ Prince starts to point out a handful of ladies in the crowd to get on stage and dance with him. Then…. .in SLOW MOTION… he turns our way…. with both index fingers, he points out my wife and her sister. I said to myself, ‘it’s been a wonderful 2 years with this woman, but i’ll never see here again.’ It was those DUMB SHIRTS. ONLY through the grace of God, she came back. I can always say that for a few short minutes, Prince took my girl….. with PRIDE.” – Robert Carter
I was a late bloomer. The DJ at my junior prom played Kiss while I was on the dance floor and it stopped me dead in my tracks. What was this? At that time, I was listening to Cat Power and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Modest Mouse and the White Stripes, none of whom sounded like this.
I spent the next year listening to Prince (and Al Green) incessantly. I’d go for long walks in the woods with my portable CD player tucked into the back pocket of my Dickies, the headphone cord running under my shirt.
I was gay, but not out, and here was a man singing in a way that made me feel like my sexuality both mattered and mattered not at all. The way his voice shifted between Prince and Camille, his music from guitar to falsetto… it was a revelation.
Along with Nikka Costa’s Everybody Got Their Something, Prince’s Musicology changed the trajectory of my life. I would not be who I am today without those two — I can’t imagine my life without those albums, without them.
Military officials had initially asserted, repeatedly and erroneously, that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” toward the troops “without headlights or emergency signals.”
The military backtracked on that assertion a day after The New York Times published a video, discovered on the cellphone of one of the dead paramedics, that showed the clearly marked vehicles flashing their lights and coming to a halt before the attack.
Israeli soldiers later buried most of the bodies in a mass grave, crushed the ambulances, fire truck and a U.N. vehicle, and buried those as well.
In the statement on Sunday, the Israeli military said that “removing the bodies was reasonable under the circumstances, but the decision to crush the vehicles was wrong.”
In a letter to the Social Security Administration’s Inspector General’s office requesting an investigation into DOGE, Ranking Member Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA) alleged that the government entity created by Elon Musk supposedly to reduce the size of the federal government is now constructing a “cross-agency master database” of sensitive personal information.
Wired appeared to back up Connolly’s allegations on Friday, detailing an effort at DOGE to fold this database into the Department of Homeland Security, the counterterrorism agency founded after 9/11. Specifically, “mass amounts” of personal data harvested from the IRS, SSA, and voting records in Pennsylvania and Florida were recently uploaded into servers at the United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS), which processes immigration cases.
In politics, as with everything, a movement, moment, or event can be studied and understood in isolation, or it can be seen as a reaction to a previous action.
The amassing of private, personal data can be understood as an event unto itself, or it can be understood as a reaction to something else.
I believe this, and the last presidential election as a whole, is a reaction to the Democrat’s woeful inability to acknowledge immigration as an issue of importance to the American people, and thus I largely blame them for this mess of a situation we find ourselves in.
There are two kinds of political parties: those that take accountability for their own actions, and those that merely blame their opponents. The Republicans have long been the latter, and I thought the Democratic Party would eventually position itself as the antidote to them.
But over the last decade, this began to feel unlikely, and now it feels downright impossible. Democrats seem to have learned all the wrong lessons from Trump. In response to him, they became more like him, deflecting accountability rather than accepting responsibility for the mistakes they’ve made.
Democrats or Republicans, it now makes no difference. We are being governed by children.
That should be scary enough, but it’s made terrifying when one of those parties has autocratic aspirations.
A federal judge in Nevada has ruled that it’s unconstitutional to obtain swaths of cellular records through “tower dumps” — but will still let police get away with using it as evidence, as reported earlier by 404 Media and Court Watch.
With tower dumps, authorities can dig through the cell records that pinged off a particular tower during a specific time. Though police may be looking for just one record, these dumps often expose the data of thousands of people, making it a major privacy concern. In a 2010 case involving the High Country Bandits, for example, officers caught the two bank robbers by looking through a tower dump containing more than 150,000 phone numbers.
