U.S. News

Former Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan on Monday said he will vote for President Joe Biden in November, arguing former President Donald Trump “has disqualified himself through his conduct and his character.”

“Unlike Trump, I’ve belonged to the GOP my entire life. This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass,” Duncan, a CNN contributor, wrote in an opinion piece published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Duncan told CNN’s Laura Coates Monday night that Trump “is not a Republican” and “doesn’t represent our brand.”

“Donald Trump’s not a Republican. He doesn’t represent our brand. He doesn’t represent our future. He’s a horrible human being at this point, we’re watching that play out hour by hour in the courtroom,” Duncan said. “It’s time to move on. If we’re going to heal as a party and truly get back to doing the things that we should do – and that’s be conservative but not angry or crazy or liars – we should turn the page immediately from Donald Trump.”

In the op-ed titled, “Why I’m voting for Biden and other Republicans should, too,” Duncan outlined why he has decided against backing the GOP nominee. While Duncan admitted Biden’s age is a concern for many and his “progressive policies aren’t to conservatives’ liking,” he wrote he was left with no alternative as he argued a second Trump term would hinder the Republican Party from moving forward.

Another positive step in the right direction for an organization rife with brokenness. There's a lot I don't like about the organization, but this is something a love--a scouting organization open to young women and the lgbtq community. The next step is being inclusive of nonreligious agnostic and atheist youth and leaders. As well as ending the cultural appropriation of Native American peoples.

May this organization continue to build up youth, never allow further violence against youth, and make amends for all the wrongs. There's a lot of good that comes out of organizations like this and I won't discount it even though it's riddled with a dark history.

Third-grade teacher Aurore Soliman, a French national, has taught in classrooms around the world. In France and in Norway, she was hired and automatically benefitted from pay scales and workplace conditions negotiated by teachers unions.

Now, in New Orleans, she’s fighting for one.

Jareh Sebastian Dalke, a 32-year-old Army veteran from Colorado, had briefly worked at the NSA, prosecutors said, and was reapplying to the agency when he tried to sell classified information to a person he believed worked for the Russian government but who actually worked for the FBI.

Florida is continuing to “callously” strip healthcare coverage from thousands of children in lower-income households in defiance of a new federal law intended to protect them.

Since 1 January, more than 22,500 children have been disenrolled from Florida KidCare, its version of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip) that is jointly subsidized by states and the US government for families with earnings just above the threshold for Medicaid.

Florida healthcare officials admit at least some were removed for non-payment of premiums, an action prohibited by the “continuous eligibility” clause of the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act that took effect at the beginning of this year. The clause secures 12 months of cover if at least one premium payment is made.

Last week, the administration of Republican governor Ron DeSantis challenged the rule in federal court Tampa, arguing it makes Chip an entitlement program that illegally overrides a state law requiring monthly payment of premiums.

But it has chosen not to wait for a ruling before continuing to separate children from coverage. Figures from the Florida Health Justice Project show there were 5,552 removals in the month to 1 April, following 5,097 in March, 5,147 in February, and 6,780 in January.

Florida argues the numbers include children aging out or moving into other coverage, and that “disenrollment has been consistent at this level for years”. Notably, the monthly average so far this year is more than 1,500 higher than the whole of 2023.

The FTC is sending 117,044 PayPal payments to consumers who had certain types of Ring devices, such as indoor cameras, during periods when the FTC alleges unauthorized users may have had access to customer videos. Consumers should redeem their PayPal payment within 30 days.

Consumers who have questions about their payment should contact the refund administrator, Rust Consulting, Inc., at 1-833-637-4884, or visit the FTC website to view frequently asked questions about the refund process. The Commission never requires people to pay money or provide account information to get a refund.

The probe is focused on whether McKinsey engaged in a criminal conspiracy when advising Purdue and other pharmaceutical manufacturers on marketing strategies to boost sales of prescription painkillers that led to widespread addiction and fatal overdoses, two of the people said.

The Justice Department is also investigating whether McKinsey conspired to commit healthcare fraud when its consulting work for companies selling opioids allegedly resulted in fraudulent claims being made to government programs such as Medicare, they said.

The times dives into an intelligence report on how TikTok's political algorithm anomalies align with the CCP's Geostrategic Objectives https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.21.23.pdf

This report highlights major differences in the prevalence of hashtags related to subjects like Hong Kong Protests, Tainanmen Square, Tibet, the South China Sea, Taiwan, Uyghurs, Pro-Ukraine, and Pro-Isreal when compared to other major social media platforms.

Additionally the times cited a Wall Street Journal analysis (https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-israel-gaza-hamas-war-a5dfa0ee) which "found evidence that TikTok was promoting extreme content, especially against Israel. (China has generally sided with Hamas.)"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14830625

> ‘Not like other Passovers’: hundreds of Jewish demonstrators arrested after New York protest seder

In 2023 ...

Top 3 import from 🇲🇽 Mexico: +5.29% 🇨🇦 Canada: -2.01% 🇨🇳China: -19.9%

Top 3 export to 🇨🇦 Canada: +1.13% 🇲🇽 Mexico: +0.925% 🇨🇳 China: +0.071%

List of all selected countries: https://x.com/data_graffiti/status/1782836998123974667

Archive link

This looks like a replay of the Albertsons/Safeway merger, with way more stores being sold off to a company unaccustomed to the sort of volume that would make the deal work:

C&S Wholesale Grocers, a supplier to independent grocery stores and owner of a retail pharmacy and 23 supermarkets under the Piggly Wiggly and Grand Union banners, has agreed to acquire a total of 579 stores in a revised divestiture deal worth $2.9 billion.

So the new C&S would be 25 times its current store footprint. Wholesale experience could mitigate that to some extent, but just ask Haggen how suddenly growing by an order of magnitude worked out. The story covers the Washington-state chain completely devoid of context:

In addition, Kroger will sell its Haggen banner to C&S, and C&S will license the Albertsons banner in California and Wyoming and the Safeway banner in Arizona and Colorado.

Again, this is a repeat of what the last merger did in Oregon and Washington, except this time it ropes four additional states into the problem. And, if history is any sort of barometer, there will be systemic failures on the part of C&S that result in the merged behemoth buying back the divested stores for a pittance, creating the same problems they're claiming the new plan will solve.

With an additional hitch: As a wholesale distributor to 7,500 competing independent grocery stores, there's no reason to believe that relationship will survive as a new direct competitor.

Edited because I did some research and had a major error. C&S does operate retail locations well west of the Mississippi.

The House Bill 777 was introduced on March 25 by Representative Kellee Dickerson, who helped fund the Louisiana Freedom Caucus. The bill would criminalize library workers and libraries for joining the American Library Association.

The bill says that "no public official or employee shall appropriate, allocate, reimburse, or otherwise or in any way expend public funds to or with the American Library Association or its successor". Whoever violates the law could face up to two years in prison.

The American Library Association (ALA) is the largest and oldest professional organization for library workers in the nation. It was founded in 1876.

[Edit typo.]

Cross posted from: https://feddit.de/post/11345243

For $5 million dollars, Louisiana’s flagship university will let an oil company help choose which faculty research projects move forward. Or, for $100,000, a corporation can participate in a research study, with “robust” reviewing powers and access to resulting intellectual property.

Those are the conditions outlined in a boilerplate document that Louisiana State University’s fundraising arm circulated to oil majors and chemical companies affiliated with the Louisiana Chemical Association, an industry lobbying group, according to emails disclosed in response to a public records request by The Lens.

Records show that after Shell donated $25 million in 2022 to LSU to create the Institute for Energy Innovation, the university gave the fossil-fuel corporation license to influence research and coursework for the university’s new concentration in carbon capture, use, and storage.

[Edit typo.]

Omar’s questions to the administrators during a Wednesday congressional hearing on antisemitism at Columbia touched on the school’s response to students being sprayed with a chemical at a campus rally for Gaza and its policy surrounding professors harassing students online.

University President Nemat Minouche Shafik announced that two students were suspended in relation to the January protest and that a professor was under investigation for complaints over his social media posts about students.

During a hearing premised on the idea that there is rampant antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, Omar also got Shafik to say that there had been no protests targeting specific ethnic or religious groups — Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, or Jews.

“I think that the line of questioning which my mother asked was definitely a pressure for Columbia University,” said Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, who is a junior at Barnard College, Columbia’s women’s school.

Hirsi, who has been an active participant in campus protests over the war and said she hadn’t received any prior disciplinary warning, noted that other factors may have been at play too. “And then added pressure from me also giving interviews and people knowing that I am the daughter of her at the same time,” she told The Intercept.

Cross posted from: https://feddit.de/post/11319037

U.S. officials have warned in increasingly stark terms about what they say is China's assistance in retooling and resupplying Russia's defense industrial base after early setbacks in its invasion of Ukraine, saying that continued support is a top risk to stable relations between Washington and Beijing.

The U.S. has a long record of extracting resources on Native lands and ignoring tribal opposition, but a decision by federal energy regulators to deny permits for seven proposed hydropower projects suggests that tide may be turning.

As the U.S. shifts from fossil fuels to clean energy, developers are looking for sites to generate electricity from renewable sources. But in an unexpected move, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denied permits on Feb. 15, 2024, for seven proposed hydropower projects in Arizona and New Mexico.

The reason: These projects were located within the Navajo Nation and were proposed without first consulting with the tribe. FERC said it was “establishing a new policy that the Commission will not issue preliminary permits for projects proposing to use Tribal lands if the Tribe on whose lands the project is to be located opposes the permit.”

In November, ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) issued a press release casting himself as a fierce opponent of China. It declared, “Since being elected to the U.S. Senate, Senator Scott has introduced dozens of bills to punish Communist China for its increased military aggression, continued cyberattacks on both private companies and U.S. government agencies, unfair trade practices and stealing of data and intellectual property from American citizens and businesses.” Several months earlier, Scott, who is up for reelection this year, called on Americans to boycott products manufactured in China and to demand that US companies halt doing business there. Last year, he declared that the United States had to “Stop buying [Chinese] stuff. Stop helping them. Stop investing in China.” And he tweeted, “You don’t do business with your enemies.”

Yet contrary to the image he now eagerly projects as a fierce China hawk looking to ban business with China, Scott, a former health care executive whose firm was fined $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud and who is worth hundreds of million of dollars, has a long record of supporting Chinese investment in the United States and personally making money off Chinese commerce.

This data comes via Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering.

While California has hit 100% renewable energy before, for brief moments on exceptionally sunny days, this is the first time the state has sustained that success over an extended period. As Jacobson noted, there was even a portion of a recent day when wind, water, solar, and geothermal power combined to reach 109% of the state's electricity demand, with anything unused going to battery storage.

Though California does still rely on dirty energy as well as clean energy to power its grid, Jacobson predicted that the state will reach its goal of being permanently 100% WindWaterSolar by 2035.

The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.

The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.

The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.”

Cross posted from: https://feddit.de/post/11174494

Experts like Dana Miller, director of strategic initiatives at the nonprofit Oceana, would like Amazon to reduce plastics “because of a moral responsibility … to reduce their impact on the environment.” But the company has been slow to respond to moral appeals from customers and shareholders, including three shareholder resolutions since 2021 invoking plastics’ damages to marine ecosystems and human health. The resolutions, which each received more than 30 percent of shareholder votes, asked Amazon to cut plastics use globally by one-third by 2030. When announcing that it had cut plastics use globally by 11.6 percent, Amazon did not make a quantitative or time-bound commitment to further reductions.

Instead, Amazon seems to have taken its biggest steps to reduce plastic packaging in response to stringent plastic regulations, or the threat of them. “Amazon is a clever company,” Miller said. “They see things in the pipeline and they want to move early.”

President Joe Biden has been urged to ban imports of Chinese-made electric cars to the US.

The chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Sherrod Brown, wrote "Chinese electric vehicles are an existential threat to the American auto industry".

His comments are the strongest yet by any US lawmaker on the issue, while others have called for steep tariffs to keep Chinese electric vehicles (EV) out of the country.

In February, the White House said the US was opening an investigation into whether Chinese cars pose a national security risk. At the time, President Biden said that China's policies "could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security" and that he would "not let that happen on my watch."