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Palestinians in northern Gaza reported one of the worst nights of Israeli bombardment in weeks after the military issued mass evacuation orders on Monday, while Israeli officials were due in Washington for a new ceasefire push by the Trump administration.

The Justice Department on Friday fired at least three prosecutors involved in U.S. Capitol riot criminal cases, the latest moves by the Trump administration targeting attorneys connected to the massive prosecution of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Those dismissed include two attorneys who worked as supervisors overseeing the Jan. 6 prosecutions in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington as well as a line attorney who prosecuted cases stemming from the Capitol attack, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

A letter that was received by one of the prosecutors was signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi. The letter did not provide a reason for their removal, effective immediately, citing only “Article II of the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States,” according to a copy seen by The Associated Press.

"The framework conditions in Europe are not ideal, but they are stable."

Roessner's comments are indicative of a trend that has taken hold in recent months: Investors and companies are increasingly turning to Europe, drawn by an infrastructure- and defence-led spending push that offers stability at a time when Trump's erratic tariff policies have made the U.S. market a less safe bet, according to more than a dozen interviews with executives and fund managers.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/32450606

Murtaza Hussain and talia jane
Jun 29, 2025

"Far-right activists, including members of Betar—a pro-Israel extremist group known for racist violence—have been running a constellation of WhatsApp group chats to plan counterprotests against pro-Palestine demonstrations and commit potential hate crimes against Muslims in New York City.

The chat logs show its members, including individuals publicly affiliated with Betar US, discussing a range of plans and ideas...

Betar US also appears to have had some coordination with local government, with one member stating that they were forwarding information to a local state assemblyman."

In Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego, homeless Californians describe their experiences over the past year as camping ban enforcement has increased.

President Donald Trump’s spending cuts and border security package would inject roughly $150 billion into his mass deportation agenda over the next four years, funding everything from an extension of the United States’ southern border wall to detention centers to thousands of additional law enforcement staff.

The current annual budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the government’s primary department for immigration enforcement, is around $10 billion. If the Republican president’s big bill passes in Congress, the immense cash infusion could reshape America’s immigration system by expanding the law enforcement and detention network while increasing costs to legally immigrate to the U.S.

The bill, which top White House aide and immigration hawk Stephen Miller has called “the most essential piece of legislation currently under consideration in the entire Western World,” sets aside $45 billion to expand the network of immigrant detention facilities for adult migrants and families.

The standards in adult facilities, the bill notes, would be set at “the sole discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

More than $12 billion was also requested for 18,000 new ICE and Border Patrol personnel.

THE IMPACT: ICE has said it wants to increase its current detention capacity from about 41,000 people to 100,000. It’s part of what ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, has suggested is a deportation system that could function “like Amazon, trying to get your product delivered in 24 hours.”

ICE currently has about 6,000 deportation officers, a number that’s been stagnant for years.

While expanding staff and detention centers would make it easier for the administration to increase deportations, even the tens of billions of dollars the bill requests may not be enough to meet Trump’s goals. Miller has said ICE should be making 3,000 arrests per day of people in the country illegally. That’s a vast increase over the roughly 650 arrested a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term.

Smucker joins a growing number of big food companies that have announced plans to eliminate artificial dyes.

A Colorado funeral home owner who stashed nearly 190 dead bodies in a decrepit building and sent grieving families fake ashes received the maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison on Friday, for cheating customers and defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 aid.

Jon Hallford, owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court last year. Separately, Hallford pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse in state court and will be sentenced in August.

At Friday’s hearing, federal prosecutors sought a 15-year sentence and Hallford’s attorney asked for 10 years. Judge Nina Wang said that although the case focused on a single fraud charge, the circumstances and scale of Hallford’s crime and the emotional damage to families warranted the longer sentence.

With a mother’s practiced, guiding hand, 80-year-old Janith Farnham helped steer her 60-year-old daughter’s walker through a Sioux Falls art center. They stopped at a painting of a cow wearing a hat.

Janith pointed to the hat, then to her daughter Jacque’s Minnesota Twins cap. Jacque did the same.

“That’s so funny!” Janith said, leaning in close to say the words in sign language too.

Jacque was born with congenital rubella syndrome, which can cause a host of issues including hearing impairment, eye problems, heart defects and intellectual disabilities. There was no vaccine against rubella back then, and Janith contracted the viral illness very early in the pregnancy, when she had up to a 90% chance of giving birth to a baby with the syndrome.

Within hours of the ruling, which curbs nationwide injunctions, challengers filed new court papers seeking to block Trump's plan via a different legal avenue.

Almost as soon as the Supreme Court released its ruling limiting the ability of judges to block Donald Trump's plan to end birthright citizenship, challengers brought new legal claims seeking the same result by a different means.

While the court on Friday said judges cannot issue sweeping "universal injunctions" that can apply nationwide in many cases, it left open the option of plaintiffs seeking broad relief via class action lawsuits.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed such a lawsuit in New Hampshire on behalf of immigrants whose children may not obtain U.S. citizenship at birth if Trump's order were to go into effect.

In a separate case in Maryland, in which groups had obtained a nationwide injunction, lawyers filed an amended complaint seeking similar class-wide relief for anyone affected by Trump's plan within hours of the ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman plans to bankroll a New York City mayoral campaign, arguing that his affluent associates are poised to flood the election with money in an effort to defeat Democratic Socialist frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.

Ackman said he was “gravely concerned” because he believed the left-wing candidate’s policies would be disastrous, triggering an exodus of the wealthy that would endanger New York’s public services by hollowing out its tax base.

Arguing that his own support of President Trump would automatically disqualify anyone Ackman might put forward, the activist investor said he was making a public appeal: Anyone capable of taking down Mamdani in the Nov. 4 election should step forward and volunteer.

“Importantly, there are hundreds of millions of dollars of capital available to back a competitor to Mamdani that can be put together overnight (believe me, I am in the text strings and the WhatsApp groups) so that a great alternative candidate won’t spend any time,” he wrote.

“So if the right candidate would raise his or her hand tomorrow, the funds will pour in.”

It’s unclear whether New Yorkers would honor such a candidate. The recent intervention by Elon Musk in Wisconsin’s state supreme court election indicated the voting public does not always respond well to billionaires using their money to sway races.

New York mayoral races are notoriously unpredictable due to the city’s chronically low turnout. In 2017, for example, Bill de Blasio won reelection with only 14% of registered voters coming out to support him.

A large influx of New Yorkers heading to the voting booth because they are as concerned as Ackman could easily affect the outcome. If Cuomo can hold on to enough fundraisers, political pundits also point out, it’s possible he could run as an independent like Adams, splitting the left vote and spoiling the race.

Ackman, however, argued all these factors would support the emergence of a centrist candidate looking to position themself on the national stage. It could even be another businessman like Bloomberg, he suggested, although Ackman in an earlier post appeared to indicate he would not seek to run himself.

“For the aspiring politician there is no better way to get name recognition, build relationships with long-term donors, and to showcase oneself,” the hedge fund manager wrote, pitching the campaign like a business deal. “The risk/reward of running for mayor over the next 132 days is extremely compelling as the cost in time and energy is small and the upside is enormous.”