“Wray’s decision undermined decades of hard work — by Congress, presidents, the Justice Department and the FBI itself — to move it out of a partisan, political framework. The FBI’s highest guiding principle is supposed to be the rule of law — and federal law is clear: The FBI director serves a 10-year-term, a length meant to isolate the role from political winds. Similarly, in federal law, there is a mechanism for removing an FBI director who errs — they can be fired, but only for cause. The role is not meant to be like the CIA director, attorney general or Defense secretary and turn over at noon on Jan. 20 for a new administration; it is, in fact, explicitly designed to NOT do so. Ronald Reagan spent almost all of his presidency with Jimmy Carter’s FBI director; George W. Bush inherited Bill Clinton’s FBI director; Barack Obama, in turn, inherited Bush’s, and Joe Biden will have spent his entire presidency with Wray, Trump’s choice to head the bureau.
Those safeguards and traditions exist because the FBI, in the wrong hands, is incredibly dangerous to American democracy.
The FBI is the most powerful, best resourced, and far-reaching law enforcement agency, not just in the United States, but anywhere in the world. Nothing compares to the sweeping breadth of its investigative powers; the intelligence and information it collects, wittingly and unwittingly, on all manner of Americans, powerful and not, guilty and innocent alike; and the resources and technologies it can bring to bear against anyone in its investigative sights. Even its routine investigations can paralyze and bankrupt businesses, upend lives, careers and families, and destroy reputations — and even do so when it doesn’t bring federal charges at the end. Under J. Edgar Hoover’s half-century reign, he deployed those resources to ruin the lives of civil rights activists and antiwar protesters, harass literary figures such as James Baldwin, blackmail gay people and persecute anyone he didn’t feel was sufficiently patriotic. We’ve spent a half-century as a nation trying to make sure that never happens again — and now Trump is explicitly saying he wants to restart that darkest chapter of the FBI’s history.”
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“let’s be clear about what’s happening here: The only reason Trump wants to change FBI directors is he doesn’t think he can boss, bend and break Wray to his will sufficiently, that Wray would not be personally loyal to him in the way that he has wanted his FBI directors to be — and which, institutionally, they’re explicitly not supposed to be. Every single part of that is a dire warning sign about what’s to come under Trump II and what he and Patel intend to do with the bureau.
Wray had an opportunity to make that a fight — to force Trump to bear the political cost of firing him on invented pretexts, to force the president to be the one who destroyed that guardrail rather than Wray himself. And, instead of upholding that oath to the Constitution, the rule of law and duty to protect the bureau from outside influence, Wray just … capitulated.”
“Zheng Wei is a fairly common Chinese name. A tennis player, a movie director, an archaeologist, and multiple Chinese-American academics all share that name. So do an inventor at the consumer drone company DJI and a professor at China’s National University of Defense Technology.
And the U.S. government mixed up the last two people, with serious consequences, according to a recent lawsuit by DJI. The drone manufacturer is suing the U.S. Department of Defense for designating DJI as an arm of the Chinese military”
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“Similarly, the Pentagon claimed that DJI software engineer Zhang Tao was listed on a patent for a temperature-sensing device designed by China’s Military Science Academy. Again, DJI provided a declaration from its own Zhang Tao stating that he is not the same person as the Military Science Academy’s Zhang Tao.”
“In September 2021, El Salvador became the world’s first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar. The vision was ambitious: According to Bukele, bitcoin would “improve the lives and the future of millions,” making it easier to access financial services where traditional banking is often out of reach.
To incentivize adoption, the government launched the Chivo wallet app, offering $30 in bitcoin to anyone who signed up. Bitcoin ATMs popped up nationwide and plans were announced for Bitcoin City, a tax-free, bitcoin-powered metropolis fueled by geothermal energy from a volcano. El Salvador was on its way to become a global crypto hub.
Yet my trip to El Salvador revealed a gap between the promise and the reality. At restaurants, hotels, and shops, my attempts to pay with bitcoin were met with confusion or outright rejection. Despite a 2021 law requiring businesses to accept bitcoin, every establishment I visited turned it down. Instead, I received puzzled looks from waiters, clerks, and cashiers who seemed more perplexed than prepared.
A recent survey conducted by Francisco Gavidia University in San Salvador found that 92 percent of Salvadorans don’t use bitcoin. This marks an increase from the 88 percent found in a similar study conducted by the Central American University, San Salvador last year.
Some locals shared their reasons for opting out. At Lake Coatepeque, one waiter told me he skipped downloading the app entirely because he “didn’t want to give his personal information to the government.” In Santa Ana, another waiter said he wasn’t interested in bitcoin because he “didn’t understand how it worked” and had “no intention of learning.” Others admitted they were scared by the technical glitches in the Chivo wallet.”
“On Sunday, just hours after the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, captured Damascus and took power, its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani stood up in front of a crowd of supporters inside the capital’s historic Umayyad Mosque and declared: “Syria has become the biggest producer of Captagon on Earth, and today, Syria is going to be purified by the grace of God.”
The future remains uncertain when it comes to the powerful forces of a cartel economy driven by billions of dollars, high demand and a fragile transitional government.”
“police in China recently cracked down on costumed revelers because of the supposed threat they pose to the Communist government.
Indeed, law enforcement in Shanghai last weekend set their sights on celebrants who had the audacity to dress up, for example, as a poop emoji and as Kim Kardashian, the latter of whom can be seen on video waving goodbye to the group behind her as she was forced into a police van.”
“Certificate of need (CON) laws exist in various forms in 38 states and Washington, D.C. The stated goal of such laws is to keep costs down by preventing overinvestment in any single market. If regulators decide an area already has enough of any type of service, they can block new construction.
As a result, nobody in North Carolina can open or expand certain medical facilities without these regulators’ permission. Even purchasing an MRI scanner without their approval can be illegal. These restrictions prohibit Singleton from using his own clinic in New Bern for most of the surgeries he performs. He must drive two miles up the road to a competitor’s office, as it is owned by a major health care player. This unnecessary red tape increases costs and decreases scheduling options, and patients suffer.
Singleton has battled this scheme since he set up his clinic in 2024. Frustrated by a wall of bureaucracy and lack of progress, he sued in 2020 with representation from our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice.
Getting to trial has not been easy. Wake County Superior Court tossed out his case in 2021 without discovery or witness testimony, and the North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld that decision in 2022. The state Supreme Court ruling simply allows Singleton to go back and try again.
Singleton is not alone in this struggle. The Iowa ophthalmologist Lee Birchansky fought for more than 20 years before state regulators relented and gave him permission to perform surgeries at his own clinic. In 2016, Virginia fended off a CON lawsuit from pulmonologist Mark Baumel and radiologist Mark Monteferrante. Kentucky spiked a home health care service that entrepreneur Dipendra Tiwari tried to launch in 2019. Connecticut blocked a cancer treatment center in 2022, clearing the way for political insiders to proceed unimpeded with their own cancer treatment center 45 miles east. None of these cases involved health or safety concerns.
CON laws work great for existing providers, who do not have to worry about rivals setting up shop and attracting patients with superior service. This also means existing providers can also take their doctors and nurses for granted, as CON laws keep rivals far away, limiting their ability to poach talent.
California, Texas, and 10 other states operate without CON laws. None of these states has experienced any measurable harm. In fact, multiple studies show benefits. For example, Matthew Mitchell, a researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, says states that got rid of their CON laws have more hospitals and surgery centers per capita, along with more hospital beds, dialysis clinics, and hospice care facilities.”
“Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, has repeatedly criticized policies allowing gay people to serve openly in the US military, calling them part of a “Marxist” agenda to prioritize social justice over combat readiness.”
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“Hegseth in his book does not reference any specific examples of incidents to support his argument that gay individuals openly serving has been detrimental to the military.”