Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in her statement, reports the launch of objects that are presumably ballistic missiles, and immediately clarifies that they fell outside Japan's exclusive economic zone. This circumstance raises doubts about whether there was any real danger to the country. Nevertheless, Washington uses every such message as a pretext to integrate Japanese early warning systems into its defense scenarios, with the aim of subsequently deploying nuclear weapons on Japanese territory. Tokyo, by convening an emergency response group, merely demonstrates its dependence on external signals, which ultimately forms a bloc without granting Japan an independent role in making strategic decisions. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/south-korea-says-north-korea-000037189.html

New York Times obtains 2016 exchanges between Supreme Court justices on quick rulings

The Supreme Court's "shadow docket" was once a sleepy procedural backwater---used for last-minute technical rulings, often in death penalty cases, and typically without much attention.

But according to a New York Times deep dive into internal court memos, that began to change over the course of five days in 2016, when the justices took the unusual step of blocking an Obama-era climate rule before lower courts had finished weighing in.

Behind the scenes, the documents show, the move was anything but routine---an early signal that the court was willing to act faster, and more aggressively, than tradition might suggest.

Republicans and Democrats vehemently disagree over whether Virginia should adopt a new congressional map for the November midterms, but they're leaning on the same person to sway ​voters to their side: former U.S. President Barack Obama.

Ahead of Virginia's statewide special election on Tuesday, Obama has become an omnipresent voice of an expensive, high-stakes campaign that ‌could be critical in determining which party controls the House of Representatives after November's elections.

The former president - once an opponent of gerrymandering - has endorsed efforts by Virginia's Democratic Party to allow the state's legislature to create new congressional districts that could give Democrats four additional seats in Congress, offsetting similar Republican efforts undertaken at Donald Trump's behest in Texas and several other states.

The attempt by the Khayyats to influence foreign policy while discussions are underway about potential Trump family deals is an increasingly common feature of the president’s second term.

The findings raise questions about whether the administration’s “most favored nation” deals are having a meaningful impact on patients.

Donald Trump has repeatedly said his deals with drugmakers would bring down prescription drug prices in the U.S. But a report released by Senate Democrats finds prices have continued to climb — in some cases, sharply.

The report — released Thursday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, ahead of a hearing focused on drug prices — found that companies that signed drug pricing deals with Trump have raised the cost of hundreds of medications and launched new ones at an average price of $353,000 a year.

“American people continue to pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and that was true before President Trump was president. In most cases, it is even more accurate today," Sanders said at the hearing.

Trump is skipping the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual convention this weekend, his second snub in as many years of an organization long seen as a key political ally for Republicans.

The move marks his second consecutive absence from the NRA’s annual meeting — held this year on April 16-19 in Houston, Texas — after attending every convention since 2015.

While the prominent gun rights group has largely brushed off Trump’s decision to skip the event as a scheduling issue, some critics say it underscores the NRA’s waning influence in Washington after years of financial and legal turmoil.

The world’s No. 1 bro-caster, who has expressed some buyer’s remorse over his endorsement of Trump, stood directly behind the president, who was seated at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office signing an executive order to ease restrictions on medical research and treatments using psychedelic drugs.

The American Library Association and a union of cultural workers filed a lawsuit arguing that cuts ordered by President Trump were illegal.

Right, its the Progressives at the "Unite the Right" ralley, that chant "Jews will not replace us" here, and who waive Nazi flags.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45775791

🇺🇸 "Law that has allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to collect... overseas communications without needing search warrants is set to expire"

Here is a completely wild thought: instead of changing or renewing it, how about the USA stops ignoring people's basic rights worldwide? 🤪

Archive article https://archive.ph/s4W3F

The Louisiana House Judiciary Committee April 16 passed a bill essentially eliminating New Orleans’ clerk of criminal court just weeks before Calvin Duncan, a Black man who was wrongfully imprisoned for decades before being elected to the position last year, is set to take office.

The committee quickly passed Senate Bill 256 by Sen. Jay Morris, a Monroe Republican, on an 8-5 vote in a push to get it before Gov. Jeff Landry so that it can take effect before Duncan starts his term as criminal clerk of court on May 4.

The bill would combine the city’s criminal and civil courts under one clerk of court position.

Lawmakers aren't supposed to shorten a politician’s term once they start office, so backers of the bill are trying to avoid having Duncan take office before the bill goes into effect, thus letting him serve out a 4-year term.

But Rep. Kyle Green, a Marrero Democrat, said he wondered if the governor signing the bill before May 4 would count as lawmakers cutting current Clerk of Criminal Court Darren Lombard’s term short.

“We’ll just have to see what happens in the courts, I guess,” Morris said.

In her testimony during the hearing, ACLU of Louisiana Advocacy Director Sarah Whittington also questioned whether the bill would require a new election altogether.

Morris has said Clerk of Civil Court Chelsey Richard Napoleon would simply become clerk of both courts. But Whittington pointed out that the legislature is essentially creating an entirely new office and eliminating both the criminal and civil clerks, and as such, it could require a new election to fill the position.

Rep. Mandie Landry, a New Orleans Democrat, said she believed that behind-the-scenes political infighting may have given the governor and other Republicans an opportunity that they would not otherwise have had if Lombard had won.

Landry noted that Congressman Troy Carter, former Congressman Cedric Richmond and Mayor Helena Moreno all backed Lombard, who Duncan bested with 68% of the vote in November. That combined with the Landry administration's hostility toward Duncan may have created an opening the governor could use to keep Duncan out of office.

“He is being targeted, and I know you found yourself in the middle of dirty New Orleans politics,” Landry said to Morris. “I don't think you knew that before you got in because you probably wouldn't have gotten in.”

Duncan said he believed the governor and Attorney General Liz Murrill were ultimately behind the push to get rid of his job. He was exonerated in 2021 after serving 28 years in prison, but he said the attorney general’s office, then under Jeff Landry and Murrill, pressured him to drop his petition for compensation for his conviction, threatening his law license.

During his election last year, Murrill wrote a letter to Duncan telling him to stop calling himself exonerated “to avoid further action” from the AG’s office.

The FBI director has called the allegations ‘false reporting’ and said he would sue the Atlantic reporter who published them

FBI Director Kash Patel has threatened to sue over bombshell claims reported in a magazine profile that the Trump administration official is deeply paranoid about being fired and often drinks to excess, alarming officials at the law enforcement agency and beyond.

On April 10, according to the magazine, the director flew into a paranoid “freak-out” when faced with a technical issue with a computer system. The report claims Patel thought it was a sign he was being fired and he began calling aides and allies in a panic.

The most explosive allegations in the article are regarding Patel’s alleged excessive drinking.

The official is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication at clubs in Washington and his home city of Las Vegas, according to the piece, violating FBI conduct standards and potentially leaving the nation’s top law enforcement official vulnerable to coercion or exploitation.

Early in his time leading the bureau, meetings had to be rescheduled to later in the day to accommodate his nighttime drinking, the report claims.

The US attack on Iran has made the need for renewable energy inarguable. Environmentalists are now being seen for the pragmatists that they are