“Federal law provides that the Register of Copyrights be appointed by and supervised by the Librarian of Congress, which is a position that requires presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. The previous Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, was fired Thursday by the White House with no reason provided in a two sentence email.
Hayden was confirmed by the Senate in 2016 to serve a 10-year term. She appointed Perlmutter, who assumed her position in Oct. 2020.
Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee which oversees the Library of Congress and U.S. Copyright Office, is alleging it is “no coincidence [Trump] acted less than a day after [Perlmutter] refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”
Perlmutter and her office issued a lengthy report about artificial intelligence that included some questions and concerns about the usage of copyrighted materials by AI technology, an industry which Musk is heavily involved in.
“This action once again tramples on Congress’s Article One authority and throws a trillion-dollar industry into chaos,” Morelle continued in a statement. “When will my Republican colleagues decide enough is enough?””
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/10/trump-u-s-copyright-official-00340306
Trump has sat for only 12 ‘daily’ intelligence briefings since taking office
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-briefing-frequency-00338946
“A group of 49 white South Africans departed their homeland Sunday for the United States on a private charter plane having been offered refugee status by the Trump administration under a new program announced in February.
The group, which included families and small children, was due to arrive at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Monday morning local time, according to Collen Msibi, a spokesperson for South Africa’s transport ministry.
They are the first Afrikaners — a white minority group in South Africa — to be relocated after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 7 accusing South Africa’s Black-led government of racial discrimination against them and announcing a program to offer them relocation to America.
The South African government said it is “completely false” that Afrikaners are being persecuted.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/11/49-white-south-africans-leave-for-us-after-trump-offered-them-refugee-status-00341204
“A huge fire that burned the largest shopping center in the Polish capital Warsaw to the ground a year ago was set deliberately by people acting on behalf of Russia, Donald Tusk said Sunday.
European countries, particularly those in the east of the bloc, have been plagued by Russian espionage in recent years. Arson attacks are another common tool used as part of Russia’s hybrid warfare strategy.
“We now know for sure that the great fire of the Marywilska shopping center in Warsaw was caused by arson ordered by Russian special services,” Tusk said. “Some of the perpetrators have already been detained, all the others are identified and [are being] sought. We will get you all!”
Tusk had said in March that evidence from Lithuania suggested Russia was to blame for the attack, in line with suspicions in Poland, but his statement on Sunday was unequivocal in assigning responsibility to Russia.
The Lithuanian investigation found that a May 9, 2024 arson attack on an IKEA store in Vilnius, as well as the May 12, 2024 Marywilska fire, were set by Ukrainian citizens acting on behalf of Russia, Tusk wrote in March. A week earlier, Polish prosecutors had said a Belarusian refugee was responsible.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-warsaw-poland-fire-donald-tusk/
“President Donald Trump’s push to cut billions of dollars in government contracts is rattling the niche community of scientists who collect, study and share human brains.
Two of the country’s brain banks, which have worked with the government to store and distribute specimens to researchers studying diseases like Parkinson’s and ALS for more than a decade, told POLITICO they had temporarily stopped taking new donations for fear the administration would not renew their contracts. Even though both facilities — home to nearly 8,000 brains between them — eventually received six-month extensions from the National Institutes of Health, the relief came too close to a May 1 deadline.
The director of the University of Maryland Brain and Tissue Bank said it turned away as many as 30 brains from people hoping to do something positive with the remains of a loved one who lived with a neurological disease. The Mount Sinai Brain Bank in New York would have accepted roughly 10 more if it had known its contract was being renewed, according to its program director.
The funding whiplash demonstrates some of the practical consequences of the Trump administration’s rapid-fire approach to cutting federal spending, where even the potential for funding lapses create real setbacks.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-injected-uncertainty-into-federal-contracting-donor-brains-went-to-the-grave-00337337
“The United States has generated $46.6 billion this year from tariffs as of May 8, the latest data available — 46.3% more than the same time last year. Federal income taxes, meanwhile, brought in $2.4 trillion in 2024.
And the $14.7 billion difference in tariff revenue year-on-year is just part of the story. High levies can cause huge surges in revenue that later level off as trade patterns shift and businesses seek to lower costs along their supply chains.”
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2025/trump-tariff-income-tracker/
The U.S. can’t produce its advanced weaponry fast enough. In a large war, they will quickly run out of ammunition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5DuxMnlYu4
https://reason.com/2025/04/08/border-cops-try-to-make-an-end-run-around-attorney-client-privilege/
Mel Gibson Got His Gun Rights Back, but Millions of Americans With No History of Violence Are Still Waiting
https://reason.com/2025/04/09/mel-gibson-got-his-gun-rights-back-but-millions-of-americans-with-no-history-of-violence-are-still-waiting/
The United States military is going to lose its technological edge because it doesn’t invest enough in science.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRfh331wTCs