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The federal govt is being sued by civil rights organizations to give protection to voter recordsdata seized by the FBI in a raid at a Fulton County, Georgia, elections constructing last month.

The NAACP, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Below Law, the Georgia Coalition of the Of us’s Agenda, and diversified groups filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court docket for the Northern District of Georgia Sunday to “prohibit the Trump administration from misusing the voter recordsdata” it seized as half of the raid.

Donald Trump has prolonged claimed the 2020 election became once stolen from him despite no evidence of voter fraud. Georgia became once won by President Biden in that election, and which potential that, the Trump administration last month launched an investigation into Fulton County, the largest and most Democratic-leaning county in the declare.

“Having already failed to overturn the authentic outcomes of the 2020 presidential election by invoking counterfeit claims of frequent voter fraud, promoting faux electors, and inciting a violent insurrection, Trump and his minions are refusing to give up the ‘misplaced motive,’ trampling even extra vote casting and privateness rights right through,” stated Damon Hewitt, the president and govt director of the Attorney’s Committee, in a statement. “Satirically, here’s occurring in the same jurisdiction where Trump pressured declare elections officials to ‘catch 11,870 votes’ to be in a position to expose himself the victor in 2020.”

The Georgia raid has raised concerns that Trump is seeking to gain a justification to grab over elections in battleground areas, particularly pondering that Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard became once inexplicably characterize and chanced on to be giving updates to Trump the next day. The president claims the raid came about on the orders of Licensed professional Overall Pam Bondi, who hasn’t cleared issues up.

Gabbard has spent the last several months investigating prolonged-debunked claims of voter fraud from the 2020 election, a departure from her supposed job overseeing U.S. intelligence. Below her search, the FBI seized shut to 700 ballots and diversified election materials from Fulton County, in conjunction with tabulator tapes from scanners that depend votes, digital pollphotos created when ballots had been counted and then recounted, and all voter rolls.

This original lawsuit joins one more criminal action filed by the county earlier this month to advance all seized materials. Meanwhile, Trump and his Republican allies proceed to push for a federal takeover of elections, with the president threatening to push through voter I.D. even with out Congress. It appears to be the prolonged flee of free and good-looking elections rests on whether or no longer the courts can cease the Trump administration.

President Trump is blaming Maryland Governor Wes Moore for sewage pollution in the Potomac River, one thing Moore has no regulate over. 

“There could be a huge Ecological Disaster unfolding in the Potomac River on story of the Snide Mismanagement of Local Democrat Leaders, particularly, Governor Wes Moore, of Maryland,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday afternoon. “A sewer line breach in Maryland has precipitated millions of gallons of raw sewage to be dumped straight into the Potomac River, a result of incompetent Local and State Administration of Significant Waste Administration Systems. Right here’s the same Governor who cannot rebuild a Bridge. It’s miles obvious Local Authorities cannot adequately handle this calamity.” 

Trump added that he’s “directing Federal Authorities to directly provide all obligatory Administration, Direction, and Coordination to give protection to the Potomac, the Water Supply in the Capital Station, and our treasured Nationwide Resources in our Nation’s Capital Metropolis.” 

Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin reposted Trump’s message. 

It sounds like Trump heard “sewage emergency in Maryland” and took the alternative to shit on a popular Dark Democrat and most likely 2028 presidential candidate with out doing his compare.  

“He’s appropriate blatantly lying about this,” The Neutral’s Andrew Feinberg wrote on X. “The pipe is maintained by ⁦DC Water⁩ and runs alongside the Clara Barton Parkway, which is maintained/flee by the Nationwide Park Provider. It has nothing to discontinue with ⁦Governor Wes Moore⁩.”

A big overflow of sewage spewed into the Potomac River in January after a enormous pipe burst, ensuing in contamination in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland. Federal authorities had been already concerned earlier than Trump’s Truth Social put up Monday, because the Nationwide Park Provider has been closely working with DC Water to contend with the grief.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland, which Trump became once most likely referring to in his put up, collapsed in 2024 when a cargo boat struck one of its piers, and is projected to delivery relieve up in 2030. 

Donald Trump’s so-known as Department of Wrestle is threatening to nick ties with Anthropic because it won’t serve the Pentagon behavior mass surveillance on People or create fully self sustaining weapons that the administration can expend nonetheless it likes.

A senior Trump administration authentic suggested Axios Monday that the Pentagon became once bored stiff after Anthropic refused unfettered expend of its AI methods. “The whole lot’s on the table,” in conjunction with slicing ties altogether, the authentic stated.

An “neat replacement” would must always unexcited be chanced on, in the occasion that they ended the relationship, the authentic added.

Final summer, Anthropic signed a contract with the Pentagon valued up to $200 million—but the firm set arduous boundaries in opposition to its methods being feeble to compose weapons, behavior surveillance, or facilitate violence. For months, the Pentagon has sought to barter with Anthropic to let the military expend its tools for “all lawful capabilities,” in conjunction with weapons trend and intelligence gathering, with out being compelled to argue particular person expend cases.

In January, tensions came to a head after an govt at Anthropic reportedly reached out to an govt at Palantir to place a expect to whether or no longer it had feeble the firm’s Claude AI assistant as half of the U.S. military raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. (Spoiler alert: It did.)

“It became once raised in this kind of technique to point out that they would well perhaps moreover detest of their tool being feeble, because clearly there became once kinetic fireplace right through that raid, other folks had been shot,” the senior authentic suggested Axios.

A spokesperson for Anthropic denied that this kind of conversation had taken scheme in an announcement to Axios, asserting the firm had “no longer mentioned the utilization of Claude for explicit operations with the Department of Wrestle. We dangle also no longer mentioned this with any industry companions, exterior of routine discussions on strictly technical matters.”

“Anthropic’s conversations with the DoW thus a ways dangle centered on a particular set of Usage Coverage questions—namely, our arduous limits round fully self sustaining weapons and mass domestic surveillance—none of which expose heart’s contents to most modern operations,” the spokesperson added.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell urged to The Wall Street Journal that the Department of Wrestle’s relationship with Anthropic became once under assessment. “Our nation requires that our companions be willing to serve our warfighters fetch in any battle,” Parnell stated.

Meanwhile, Anthropic appears to be to handiest be wading further into politics. Final week, the firm announced that it would pledge $20 million toward Public First, a effectively-organized PAC that will oppose groups funded by the firm’s rival OpenAI.

Faded President George W. Bush won’t defy the “code of silence” that prevents ex-U.S. leaders from publicly chastising their successors, but he’s it appears to be no longer in opposition to throwing shade.

In a Presidents’ Day essay published Monday by the professional-democracy institution Extra Perfect, Bush’s adoring search toward the qualities of The US’s first president handiest served to underscore appropriate how unpresidential the most modern administration has change into.

Bush waxed poetic on several of George Washington’s qualities, but paid speak attention to ones which will most most likely be currently briefly provide. Those included “humility,” a deep appreciation for history, a reverence for recordsdata superior to his maintain, and an unwillingness to retain vitality “for vitality’s sake.”

“Our first president could well dangle remained all-worthy, but twice he selected no longer to,” Bush wrote. “In so doing, he set an frequent for all presidents to stay up to.”

Bush also dissected Washington’s commitment to a code of behavior that became once opinion to be, at the time, to be the “gentlemanly arts.” Washington, per Bush’s compare, “schooled himself” by copying “the 110 maxims from Principles of Civility and Decent Behavior in Firm and Dialog,” a text authored by French Jesuits in the unhurried sixteenth century.

“Rather about a the qualities that came to be linked with Washington’s leadership, from self-regulate and courteousness to modesty and diplomacy, could also be traced to that quick e book on manners,” Bush wrote.

Washington’s repeated choices to step down from vitality had been serious classes for the nation, per Bush, who argued that Washington’s resolution to step down as commander of the U.S. Navy after the Revolution, and his later resolution to whole his presidency after two terms,  “ensured The US wouldn’t change into a monarchy, or worse.”

The message carried speak weight pondering that Donald Trump has continuously contested election outcomes in fruitless grasps at vitality, in conjunction with an strive to overthrow the 2020 presidential election and threats to flee for president a third time, in opposition to the constraints of the legislation.

However Washington’s efficiency—and his commitment to constructing an enduring governmental foundation—became once paramount no longer appropriate to his success but to the prolonged flee of the Oval Workplace and the nation, per the forty-third president.

“Our first chief helped define no longer handiest the persona of the presidency but the persona of the nation,” Bush wrote. “Washington modeled what it system to place the good-looking of the nation over self-hobby and selfish ambition. He embodied integrity and modeled why it’s price meaning to. And he carried himself with dignity and self-restraint, honoring the scheme of business with out permitting it to alter into invested with shut to-mythical powers.”

A minute-town Kansas mayor is in trouble for vote casting illegally as a noncitizen—but he has the reinforce of his town.

Joe Ceballos became once recently reelected mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, by a happy 101-20 margin. However appropriate hours earlier than the outcomes came in, Ceballos, a criminal everlasting U.S. resident, became once charged in declare court docket with three counts of election perjury and three counts of vote casting with out being licensed.

The Trump administration gleefully highlighted the case as it strengthened lawful-fly claims of frequent voter fraud. Hometown Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin included Ceballos’s portray and a reproduction of his signature on a voter registration produce on a press open, asserting, “This alien dedicated a felony by vote casting in American elections.”

However the town of Coldwater, nearly fully Republican, is rallying round their mayor, who voted for Donald Trump in the last three elections and has lived in the town since he became once a young particular person. Ceballos, 55, came to the United States at the age of 4 from Mexico, shifting round loads in conjunction with his household earlier than settling in Coldwater, shut to Kansas’s border with Oklahoma. He bought his green card in 1990.

Ceballos suggested The Contemporary York Instances that he has by no draw been relieve to Mexico since he left. Whereas he feeble to serve police as a Spanish interpreter, he doesn’t discuss the language thoroughly for the time being. According to the Instances, by all appearances he’s a Kansan—he drives a Ram truck, has a dinky Southern Plains accent, and wears cowboy boots.

“I unexcited strongly imagine in Trump’s immigration laws about, ‘Let’s win the imperfect guys out of here.’ , they’re murderers, they killed other folks, they molested other folks, let’s win them out of here,” Ceballos stated to the publication. “However I no doubt feel like I don’t fit that class. And I no doubt feel like that’s how they’re treating me.”

Ceballos has a misdemeanor battery conviction from 1994 for a battle exciting multiple other folks, which he stated became once linked to his first marriage. He doesn’t appear to dangle had any brushes with the legislation since then. After he became once charged with vote casting illegally, he resigned. However the folk of Coldwater dangle advance to his protection, with adverts being positioned in the native newspaper to enhance Ceballos at his court docket listening to, which became once so effectively attended that it became once standing-room handiest.

Kansas Licensed professional Overall Kris Kobach, who has railed in opposition to voter fraud for greater than a decade, is seeking to create an instance out of Ceballos. At a news conference asserting the prices in opposition to Ceballos, he stated, “Noncitizen vote casting is a precise discipline. It’s now not any longer one thing that occurs once in a decade. It’s miles one thing that occurs reasonably usually.”

Truly, noncitizen vote casting occurs very usually ever in the U.S., with fully about a cases. Ceballos freely admits that he voted illegally, but he stated he didn’t know that he couldn’t vote as a everlasting resident and that he had by no draw been suggested that he couldn’t. Final twelve months, he utilized to alter into a citizen, and he answered “sure” to a federal authentic in an interview who asked if he had ever voted. That, Ceballos says, is when every thing went downhill.

Now Ceballos fears he’ll be chanced on guilty and deported to Mexico, a ways from his household, or picked up by ICE earlier than he even returns to court docket. Will the president he voted for snatch an hobby, or expend him as a poster child for voter fraud and interpret his deportation?

A resolve ordered Internal Secretary Doug Burgum on Monday to revive a slavery-linked show off at the President’s House in Independence Nationwide Historical Park in Philadelphia.

Burgum ordered the Nationwide Park Provider last month to grab away the Philadelphia show off at the frail declare of President George Washington, which unexcited contains stays of the quarters wherein he held enslaved Dark other folks.

Now, Settle Cynthia Rufe has ordered Bergum to place the show off relieve up, after a lawsuit from the metropolis of Philadelphia.

Rufe started her ruling with a quote from George Orwell’s 1984: “All history became once a palimpsest, scraped neat and reinscribed precisely as usually as became once obligatory. In no case wouldn’t it were doable, once the deed became once done, to show off that any falsification had taken scheme.”

She then become her attention to the matter of enslaved Africans at the President’s House.

“At the turn of this century, historians identified the positioning of the first authentic declare of the President of the United States, where Presidents Washington and Adams lived right through their terms,” she wrote in her characterize. “This historical compare also identified recordsdata about 9 enslaved Africans whom President Washington owned, dropped at the authentic presidential declare, and turned around interior and out of Pennsylvania, a custom which done with out enslaved other folks from petitioning for his or her freedom under Pennsylvania legislation.”

“It’s now not any longer disputed that President Washington owned slaves,” Rufe continued. “And yet, in its argument, the govtclaims it on my own has the vitality to erase, alter, snatch away and conceal historical accounts on taxpayer and native govt-funded monuments within its regulate. Its claims on this regard echo Great Brother’s enviornment in Orwell’s 1984.”

Right here’s one of many first blows to President Trump’s culture struggle on national parks. His “ Restoring Truth and Sanity to American Historical past” govt characterize became once an ahistorical attack on almost any mention of Dark, LGBTQ, or females’s history.

Burgum has yet to answer.

This fable has been updated.

Bari Weiss’s variant of CBS Files has opted to relieve Peter Attia on as a network contributor, despite his recently published ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Attia became once named as an on-air contributor in January—one of 19 that Weiss stated she became once “so enraged” to introduce to the broadcasting behemoth’s lineup appropriate three weeks ago. CBS has no longer made its region on Attia public, but staffers who spoke with The Guardian indicated that the network intended to retain him as an on-air analyst.

“All americans internally unofficially concluded he became once staying as of about per week ago,” one CBS Files staffer suggested The Guardian.

The celeb wellness influencer shared a full lot of messages with Epstein right throughout the 2010s—after the financier pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution, per recordsdata made public by the Justice Department unhurried last month. A straightforward see for Attia’s title in the Epstein recordsdata trove returns 1,838 outcomes. One of the messages are superficially benign, pertaining to to effectively being steerage, while others stamp at a darker truth.

In a June 2015 e-mail headed “original shipment,” Attia wrote to Epstein: “You [know] the largest discipline with turning into guests with you? The lifestyles you lead is so atrocious, and yet I will’t repeat a soul … ” The e-mail included an image, even supposing its contents had been redacted by the DOJ.

In a single more crass exchange with the convicted sex criminal, Attia cracked about the numerous effectively being advantages of giving oral sex to females.

“Pussy is, certainly, low carb,” Attia wrote to Epstein in February 2016. “Peaceable looking ahead to outcomes on gluten state, even supposing.”

In a message to Epstein’s assistant dated January 2016, Attia stated that he goes into “JE withdrawal” when he fails to survey him. A twelve months later, he selected to expend time with the convicted sex trafficker rather than visiting his infant son, who had been hospitalized after getting into cardiac arrest.

Staffers at CBS Files had been reportedly pissed off by the resolution to relieve Attia on the firm payroll.

“We’re pissed off about it,” one more unidentified CBS employee suggested The Guardian.

In a prolonged public apology posted to X earlier this month, Attia described his outed communications with Epstein as “embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible.”

Earlier this month, interior sources suggested the Contemporary York Put up’s On the Money publication that Weiss had agonized over the resolution of whether or no longer to relieve Attia—in enormous half because she felt that “contrarian voices like his” had been needed to restructuring CBS Files’s industry model.

Faded Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon once known as Jeffrey Epstein “God” right through a text message exchange, newly launched govt recordsdata show off.

In Would possibly perhaps perhaps perhaps 2018, the 2 males had been having a dialogue about forex trading, wherein Bannon praised Epstein’s financial acumen.

“Bannon hammers; God shorts,” Bannon wrote.

“I don’t recall to mind myself that methodology,” Epstein replied.

“I discontinue,” stated Bannon.

Bannon stated in the statement that the documentary, which a spokesperson claims will most likely be launched later this twelve months, would “extinguish the very myths [Epstein] created.” However Bannon is continuously harmless of helping to plot those “myths.” Used to be it obligatory for Bannon to name Epstein “God”?

The remainder of the launched texts and emails between Epstein and Bannon show off the pair working collectively and asserting a shut friendship. Epstein offered to camouflage Bannon’s scientific prices, and the pair shared multiple meals collectively at Epstein’s mansion in Long island.

At one point in 2018, Epstein suggested one more affiliate, regarding Bannon, “We dangle change into guests.” That very same twelve months, Epstein suggested Bannon, “Whatever you will want, I’m in,” of Bannon’s efforts to characterize a ways-lawful political parties round the arena. As of late, Bannon can claim all he likes about seeking to extinguish Epstein’s myths, but he no longer handiest sold into them but additionally sought to support and give protection to the sex criminal.

Democratic House Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries unexcited refuses to dangle interplay with rising calls to abolish ICE, even because the agency is in the nadir of its recognition.

The Left Hook podcast host Wajahat Ali read Jeffries a list of facts when they looked collectively Friday on The Pleasure Reid Demonstrate.

“Sixty-five percent of different folks taken by ICE had no convictions, that’s from the Cato Institute, a lawful-fly institute. ICE has killed eight other folks this twelve months on my own that everyone is conscious of of.… Over 60 percent of People now detest of ICE. Which draw in three weeks, it’s long past from 30 percent to 60 percent,” Ali stated. “Once you lead on one thing, other folks will apply. It appears the wind is at the relieve of your relieve for the first time ever.… You stated you wanna rein in ICE.… Why no longer lead, and snarl ‘abolish ICE’?”

“What you’re telling us is that you just in point of truth favor our taxpayer dollars to pay for a lawless, masked, armed agency to proceed terrorizing our cities,” Ali continued. “I’m seeking to resolve out the methodology you as a chief could also be telling People that their taxpayer dollars must always be going to ICE.”

“I don’t understand anything that you just appropriate stated,” Jeffries replied curtly.

“I spoke English,” Ali replied.

“I don’t understand anything that you just’ve appropriate stated to me after I’ve made sure that taxpayer dollars must always be feeble to create lifestyles extra inexpensive for the American other folks, no longer brutalize or ruin them. That’s your total reason we’re on this battle lawful now,” Jeffries continued. “That’s your total reason that DHS is making ready to shut down.”

Whereas Jeffries is lawful regarding why DHS is currently (partly) shut down, this can completely reopen. And a few are skeptical that the requires of Jeffries and Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer are sturdy sufficient to cease ICE from committing extra damage, or if agents could also abide by them when the moment comes.

Ali all every other time asked Jeffries to grab a stance on abolishing ICE.

“I’m gonna expend the language that I wanna expend; you can expend the language that you just wanna expend. And the language that I’m the utilization of lawful now relates to those form of intrepid, significant, dramatic adjustments which will most most likely be designed to build lives lawful now.”

Can asking ICE agents to wear body cameras and no longer detain U.S. citizens (which is already unlawful) no doubt be described as “intrepid, significant, dramatic” swap?

“I feel Wajahat Ali became once sure. He acknowledges the most modern battle, but asks Manual Jeffries to handbook on the prolonged term operate of abolishing ICE,” one liberal user shared on X. “I don’t understand the chief’s reticence on that rather easy, and frankly moderate, region.”

Donald Trump’s White House is posting about President’s Day in the creepiest methodology doable.

In honor of the vacation, the White House Monday posted a menacing portray of Trump accompanied by the quote: “I became once the hunted, and now I’m the hunter.”

That explicit cliche comes from an unwieldy interview with NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich last month, where Trump offered a outlandish description of the adaptation between his first and 2d terms in scheme of business. “In a technique, I became once the hunted, and now I’m extra of the hunter,” Trump stated.

The president went on to claim he’d been “hunted by these outrageous other folks,” and openly bragged about getting revenge on his perceived political enemies.

Revenge is a significant half of the criticism-fueled Trump presidency. The president reportedly holds day-to-day conferences with Department of Justice staffers to debate his ongoing plots in opposition to other folks like frail Special Counsel Jack Smith, Long island District Licensed professional Alvin Bragg, and Contemporary York Licensed professional Overall Letitia James. On the opposite hand, publicly asserting one’s diagram to see revenge is no doubt very imperfect for winning court docket cases.

The White House’s declaration that Trump has transformed into a “hunter” comes as his administration has resoundingly failed to switch after any of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators. It’s no longer so worthy that they’re missing shots but that they’re refusing to grab any.

However whenever you put a expect to some females, Trump became once continuously a predator—and the White House is conscious of it too.