“Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.
Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.
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Also among the corrections: DOJ revealed that a DOGE team member was briefly granted access to private Social Security profiles even after a court prohibited it. Shapiro said the access was never “utilized.” And in another instance, a DOGE team member had access for two months to a “call center profile” that contained private information.
“It is unknown at this time whether any [private information] was accessed,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro also revealed that despite prior assertions in court, SSA’s DOGE team members “were using links to share data through the third-party server ‘Cloudflare.’”
“Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data and when used in this manner is outside SSA’s security protocols,” Shapiro indicated.”
Even when comparing an electric vehicle getting electricity from a gas power plant to a gas vehicle, electric vehicles are still more carbon friendly because a car’s engine is less efficient at generating power than a gas power plant, and because a lot of carbon is used to transport gasoline. And, as electric grids use more and more low-carbon sources, the electric cars have an even greater carbon advantage.
The Bible doesn’t take a position on abortion. Where it talks about the accidental killing of a fetus, it does so suggesting the fetus is property rather than having the value of a human life.
The 89% of fraud is committed by Somalis stat is misleading. 89% of the people convicted in a specific fraud scandal, the Feeding Our Future case, were of Somali descent. The ring leader was a white woman. So, this stat just refers to the percentage of convictions in one large fraud case.
Trump says a lot of things, and a lot of it is nonsense. Some of it turns into serious policies with huge consequences. But even the things he says that don’t come true have large consequences because he is president. Investors, businesses, and consumers have to make decisions, and Trump’s actions can impact that, so they have to deal with his words and the potential consequences. Even dealing with just his words, costs companies tons of money.
“In a recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy announced his plans to log off of X, citing its “warped projection of reality.” And Ramaswamy isn’t alone in heading for the digital exits. During a recent appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, the conservative commentator and former Breitbart editor Raheem Kassam bleakly proclaimed that he was deleting the app from his phone.
“X is a post-apocalyptic cesspool of bots, pedophilia and political illiteracy,” Kassam wrote in a text message when asked about his decision. “I deleted it from my phone because it was making me dumber.”
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A new feature rolled out earlier this year displaying the country where an account is based inadvertently revealed that many of the most active pro-Trump and MAGA accounts are based abroad.”
“Trump announced plans in June to undo the name changes of nine Army bases, ignoring the recommendations of an independent commission. Service officials found other soldiers with similar names to help justify the reversal and get around the legal restrictions. Fort Hood in Texas — originally named for Confederate General John Bell Hood, for example — was renamed for World War I Col. Robert Hood.
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Changing the base titles away from the Confederate names cost almost $40 million in 2023. Administration officials have not said how much reverting back to the controversial names has cost.
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Wright is seeking to keep numerous units operating across the country, including coal-fired plants in Michigan and Washington state, and gas- and oil-fired units in Pennsylvania. In several cases, the Energy Department issued extensions on orders to go beyond an initial 90 days. The most recent order — issued days after halting five major offshore wind projects under construction — keeps a damaged and aging coal plant operational in Colorado. The order was issued one day before the unit was slated to close permanently.
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FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, including Reps. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.), are working with Kennedy to fast-track psychedelic medicine research.
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in July, ICE quietly adopted a policy that radically transformed the treatment of all immigrants living in the United States: Rather than the presumption that they would live freely — unless an immigration judge determined they were dangerous or likely to flee their proceedings — ICE would instead classify them as “applicants for admission,” a legal designation that requires them to be locked up without the opportunity for bond.”
The biggest block to peace in Palestine is Israelis who are not willing to compromise for peace and Palestinians who are not willing to compromise for peace. Such positions are strong among the right in Israel, and appear to be the majority position among Palestinians. A peace deal can’t last when a terrorist is willing to blow it up and return the nations to war.
“Few alphabet soups have as many letters as California’s system for financing affordable housing.
The time and headaches developers must endure when seeking funding from acronym-laden state agencies helps drive up California’s nation-high cost to build apartments for low-income residents, strangling housing production in a state badly in need of affordable places to live.
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after six years of half-measures and stalled reforms, the governor has unveiled a proposal to streamline the system, while at the same time consolidating power in his office. In the state budget proposal he released this month, Newsom outlined a plan to move decisions over potentially billions of dollars annually in cash, tax credits and bond allocations to a new housing agency he controls, and by doing so, strip authority from State Treasurer Fiona Ma.”