"The U.S. government's budget deficit grew nearly 20% in July to $291 billion. Fiscal year-to-date deficit tops $1.6 trillion"

This bid comes after the Department of Justice proposed in March that Google be forced to sell Chrome after a judge ruled the tech giant acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search. Google has not agreed to sell Chrome and has vowed to fight the ruling. 

The Perplexity spokesperson believes the court will soon set terms for remedies, perhaps later this month. (Google is also fighting another federal case where the judge ruled it illegally monopolized adtech, and the DOJ is proposing Google be forced to divest two of its adtech products or otherwise break up its ad business.)

When the DOJ first proposed that Google divest Chrome, both OpenAI and Perplexity expressed interest in buying it. Given that Chrome is the dominant browser, with 68% marketshare according to Statcounter, if the court rules Chrome must be sold, no doubt others worldwide would want to bid as well.

Imo this would kill chrome's dominance on the marketplace

https://archive.ph/8l411

While consumers are losing interest in Tesla’s Cybertruck, the armed forces are on the hunt for a few.

The War Zone, a news site that covers the defense industry, reports [that] the Air Force is planning to buy two Cybertrucks to use as targets for “live missile fire testing.” The testing is set to take place at the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico (an Army base the Air Force also uses).

Typically, when the armed forces collect vehicles to practice blowing them up, they don’t seek out specific brands. And while the Trump administration and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have been sniping at each other on social media for the past couple of months, this brand-name exception is more the result of expected actions by the nation’s enemies.

“In the operating theater, it is likely the type of vehicles used by the enemy may transition to Tesla Cybertrucks, as they have been found not to receive the normal extent of damage expected upon major impact,” the Air Force wrote in a justification document supporting the purchase order. “Testing needs to mirror real-world situations. The intent of the training is to prep the units for operations by simulating scenarios as closely as possible to the real-world situations.”

The Air Force notes that the trucks it is looking to buy do not need to run, but the body, glass, and mirrors must be intact, with little to no damage. It’s a safe bet that officials won’t be buying them from the company.

Not a lot of people are these days. Tesla sold just 4,300 of the trucks in the second quarter of the year, a 51% drop. Last year, Tesla sold just 39,000 of the vehicles, a number it’s unlikely to match this year.

In addition to the Cybertrucks, the Air Force is looking for 31 other cars, including sedans, bongo trucks, pickups, and SUVs, all of which will likely be blown up.

American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are involved in drug trafficking in the U.S. and arms trafficking to Mexico, reveals the book "The Fort Bragg Cartel" by Iraq War veteran and journalist Seth Harp, who unravels a vast network of drug trafficking and corruption embedded in U.S. security forces.

Mexico City, August 3 (SinEmbargo).- While Donald Trump attacks the Mexican government, stating that its efforts are insufficient to prevent Mexican cartels from bringing tons of drugs into the country, journalist Seth Harp reveals in his book The Fort Bragg Cartel how an extensive and "violent drug trafficking network" made up of US military personnel has the army and security forces of that country under control, allowing the expansion and continuation of illegal drug trafficking from other nations, mainly from Mexico.

The Fort Bragg Cartel is scheduled for release on August 12, but Rolling Stone magazine published an "exclusive excerpt" from Harp's book, which highlights the involvement of the U.S. Army Special Forces, particularly those at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and the Airborne Corps, in a vast drug trafficking network that has fueled the expansion and maintenance of Mexican drug cartels.

Through the testimony, resumed, of a former North Carolina state police officer, who also served as an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) task force, identified as Freddie Wayne Huff II, the extensive network of drug trafficking and corruption that is inserted in the security corporations of the American Union is revealed.

According to Harp's investigation, the murders of two "elite special operations soldiers" in December 2020 were sparked by the bodies of two "elite special operations soldiers" found in the woods at Fort Bragg. They were "William 'Billy' Lavigne II, an active-duty Delta Force operator, and Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Dumas Sr., a logistics and supply soldier assigned to the elite Joint Special Operations Command," the report states.

Although after years of investigation, US authorities have identified a suspect responsible for the two homicides, who is awaiting trial after pleading not guilty, former officer Freddie Wayne Huff II is also suspected. After finishing high school, Huff joined the Lexington police force, where he distinguished himself as a very committed officer, which led him to rise professionally, at which point he became aware of the involvement of security personnel in drug trafficking.

“He quickly distinguished himself as a highly motivated young canine officer, with a preternatural ability to find drug money during traffic stops. Many cartel couriers passing through North Carolina lost five- or six-figure sums to Officer Huff, a tall, heavyset white man with pink skin, squinty eyes, and a crew cut,” the book excerpt states.

However, upon arriving at the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) in 2009, one of his colleagues, identified as Culberson, who, in a kind of warning, tells him that all his good work "is in vain", which he will later verify personally, although he does manage to interpret that "the US government could stop the flow of drugs (... ) but chose not to do so", despite which he continues with his work "as an anti-narcotics agent".

After Huff returned to the police force in Lexington in 2010, where, according to his own calculations, he made large seizures of money, around nine million dollars, the agent was promoted to the State Highway Patrol in 2013, a position he held for only a year, despite his excellent performance, since in March 2014, Huff managed to arrest an Asheville insurance executive for drunk driving.

Such an arrest would mark the fate of Freddie Wayne Huff II, as the insurance executive threatened to make him lose his job if he fined him, despite which, the agent did his job without knowing that the detainee "was a donor to the then governor of North Carolina, Pat McCrory", so, in effect, before the month of that event had passed, the policeman lost his job, which created great resentment in him.

“Being summarily fired for fining a friend of the governor, according to Huff, left him resentful of the law enforcement profession. 'When I was fired,' he said, 'I lost everything. I lost my certifications. I lost my expert witness status. I was blacklisted,'” the former police officer's account, published in The Fort Bragg Cartel, states, in which he says that at that moment he remembered “Culberson's cynical words about the true power of the global drug trade.”

After losing his job as a police officer, Wayne Huff turned to buying and selling damaged and defective appliances, where he met the Treviño Morales brothers, heads of the Mexican Zetas cartel, with whom he allied himself in cocaine trafficking. He used his police knowledge to evade U.S. authorities, and was joined by several of his former fellow agents.

“He would wrap the kilos in shop towels soaked in ammonia, vacuum seal them in plastic, and then repeat the process, wrapping the bricks in multiple layers of an extremely pungent chemical that the dogs would do anything to avoid. To fool the X-ray machines, he got a trailer with a hollowed-out rear differential axle and lead-lined cover, a custom job that cost $50,000,” the excerpt from The Fort Bragg Cartel states.

“At the height of his criminal career, Huff transported between 50 and 100 kilos of cocaine every seven to ten days, placing him among the top traffickers in the United States,” the text states, which also recalls Rubén Treviño Morales saying to Huff: “You’re the toughest white kid I’ve ever met,” the Mexican drug lord reportedly told the former American police officer.

As a drug trafficker, Freddie also discovered that members of the military were involved in drug trafficking and consumption, specifically those at the Fort Bragg military base, as he supplied them with the product for a time. He also witnessed how the military plays a significant role in the illegal sale of weapons, many of which end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, the same cartels President Trump insists on combating from within Mexico.

“U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines play a significant role in this clandestine 'river of iron,' which keeps Mexico's paramilitary cartels, especially Los Zetas and their offspring, better supplied than the Mexican government with military-grade machine guns, grenades, anti-tank bazookas, helicopter-mounted rotary cannons called miniguns , and plastic explosives, as well as advanced laser optics and night-vision goggles,” Harp writes.

This was thanks to the business he established with Timothy Dumas, who was the link to "a drug trafficking organization within the military," made up, according to the excerpt published in Rolling Stone, of "Special Forces soldiers who had turned to the dark side during their deployments in Afghanistan." "They were 'trained killers, who had already killed people,' Huff said," according to the American magazine, which also details the destination of the drugs.

“The packages of cocaine that [Wayne Huff] passed to Dumas were in turn distributed among the group, [which the former police officer described as] a confederation of semi-independent traffickers in and around Fayetteville,” who also stole weapons from the U.S. military to sell on the black market. The excerpt even recalls an Associated Press investigation, which in 2021 revealed the case of a “pistol stolen from Fort Bragg that was used in four shootings in New York. The soldier who diverted it to the black market was never identified.”

The Rolling Stone article also mentions the name of Will Lavigne, a man close to Dumas. According to Wayne Huff, he "distributed methamphetamine and cocaine" at Fort Bragg and "to military personnel in and around Fayetteville." Lavigne was the same man found dead years later alongside Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Dumas in the woods at Fort Bragg, a case that served as the turning point for Seth Harp's investigative report.

According to Creative Artists Agency, The Fort Bragg Cartel is Harp's reconstruction of trial transcripts and police records, intended to expose "the blatant cover-ups and law enforcement complicity that have occurred at Fort Bragg in recent years." To do so, he revisits "four interconnected drug-related murder cases. Harp unravels a stark history of drug trafficking in the military, the dark side of America's most prestigious military organizations."

Since his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Mexican government is doing nothing to combat the drug cartels responsible for smuggling illicit substances into the United States. However, the book The Fort Bragg Cartel reveals how the United States authorities themselves allow the continuation and expansion of drug trafficking through the active participation of their members.

The book in question is the following:

Griffin’s comments walk back legal concerns he previously expressed about the whites-only settlement. Earlier this month, Griffin told TMZ that Return to the Land — a community where prospective residents must verify their “ancestral heritage” in a written application and interview — raises “all sorts of legal issues, including constitutional concerns.”

The Forward reported in June about Return to the Land’s hopes of replicating its whites-only settlements across the country, with the stated aim of “trying to put land back under the control of Europeans.” Eric Orwoll and Peter Csere lead the group, which Morgan Moon of the Anti-Defamation League described as one of the most established white supremacist residential communities in the United States today.

In a June 30 email obtained by the Forward through a public records request, Gary McGee, an investigator with the Arkansas Fair Housing Commission wrote that “as of today, AFHC has not discovered any actual property owned by this organization or its founder, nor any advertisements for housing.”

Records show that a limited liability company in both Csere and Orwoll’s name, “Wisdom Woods LLC,” owns adjacent parcels of land totaling 157 acres near the town of Ravenden, where Sky News reporter Tom Cheshire visited the group and spoke with residents of the whites-only community in July.

Griffin did not respond to the Forward’s request for clarification about why the office believed Return to the Land had not broken any laws and whether it had considered the property owned by Wisdom Woods LLC.

McGee’s email appears to echo arguments made by Return to the Land about the legality of the arrangement.

“There is no actual change of real estate title occurring, nor are they renting the land,” Csere wrote in a message to the Forward, differentiating between directly owning land versus purchasing membership units of the LLC that owns the land. “The land stays under the ownership of the business entity that they are becoming a part-owner of.”

Since the Forward’s article was published in June, Return to the Land updated their website with a “legal disclaimer,” writing that “RTTL does not engage in the sale or rental of real estate,” and earlier this week they posted similar information on Substack in response to, “Is RTTL legal?” RTTL says it’s exempt from the Civil Rights Act because it’s a private club, and housing is not the group’s primary purpose.

Arkansas’ attorney general has not contacted Return to the Land, Csere wrote in a message to the Forward, adding that the group continues “to work with legal professionals to explore all facets of our organization, to ensure that we are operating in a lawful manner.”

Despite concerted efforts by advocates and progressive journalists to replace dehumanizing terms for immigrants with neutral terms like “undocumented (person/worker/etc),” recent data from Google Trends indicates a resurgence of dehumanizing terms to describe children and adults traveling from one country to another in search of a better life. This includes the use of dehumanizing language among self-identified liberals like Joe Biden and Trevor Noah.

Lindsay Schubiner, director of programs at Western States Center, an advocacy group that recently published guidelines for journalists on responsible immigration coverage, explains that such language “flattens” people into a caricatured category, mainstreaming language that originates in the hate speech of the far right.

To be clear, language that designates some people as “legal” and some as “illegal” falls into a right-wing trap, implying that some humans deserve human treatment and some do not. In the ongoing struggle to achieve freedom of movement for everyone, we must ensure that our language reflects our commitment to decriminalizing immigration.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Content warning: the linked article contains video and descriptions of violent ICE arrests

ProPublica recently published a piece outlining the growing trend of violent immigration-related arrests involving masked agents, who consistently refuse to identify themselves, smashing vehicle windows and dragging people into the street to arrest them.

Footage from L.A., Baltimore, Massachusetts, and elsewhere shows agents using weapons to break car windows and violently dragging people out of their cars. More than one situation involves children, infants, or pregnant people. The agents don’t seem to care; no person’s vulnerability mitigates the alleged government agents’ willingness to threaten or commit violence.

No person deserves such treatment, regardless of status or any other factor. ICE agents seem to disagree: some of these violent incidents involve damaging the vehicles of American citizens and arresting or detaining them, in spite of the fact that ICE has no jurisdiction over U.S. citizens. This should alarm all of us.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action. Emphasis original.)

According to the Guardian, Stephen Miller, lead xenophobic ghoul in Trump’s cabal, has championed the idea of paying a bonus for every person detained by the Department of Homeland Security. Also this week, ICE announced [that] they are getting rid of any and all age restrictions on hiring. Truly a model of professionalism and standards. Trump and his [neo]fascist pals swore up and down that they had no plans for a bounty of any kind. Later reporting in the New York Times confirmed The Guardian’s report, and noted that the only reason that the bounty didn’t happen was because of the spotlight from journalists and activists.

Bounties create perverse incentives for ICE agents to further break the law in pursuit of Trump’s ethnic cleansing project. Let’s stay vigilant that this grotesque bonus structure never gets put in place.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

The Trump administration is trying to roll back student loan forgiveness for most people currently seeking it, from the debt forgiveness that organizers pushed Joe Biden to do, as well as for nonprofit and public service workers. But there’s one group of people to whom the Trump administration is happy to extend student loan forgiveness: new ICE Agents.

DHS announced this week that along with a 50k signing bonus, newly hired ICE agents will have options for both loan forgiveness and repayment. Life is poised to become much harder for millions of folks with debt across the country, except for those interested in becoming ICE agents. “It is hypocritical to provide additional funding for debt relief for certain categories of workers while seeking to deny it to everyday Americans,” said Sara Partridge, director of higher education at the Center for American Progress.

While the rolling back of loan forgiveness for people in public service will likely be challenged in court, it remains to be seen where DHS will get the money to pay off ICE agent’s student loans.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)