Author: nick

[ad_1] On this day in 1995, I helped shatter the coverup of federal killings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. For millions of Americans, those brazen killings epitomized how the U.S. government had become a deadly peril to their rights and liberties. In 1991, an ATF informant entrapped Randy Weaver into selling him two sawed-off shotguns. After ATF officials lied to a federal prosecutor, Weaver was indicted and sent the wrong court date. On August 21, 1992, after numerous illegal incursions onto Weaver’s Ruby Ridge mountaintop property near the Canadian border, three U.S. marshals dressed in Ninja outfits and carrying submachine guns…

[ad_1] Not long after the second Trump administration took office, a new power center emerged in Washington under the banner of “government efficiency.” Through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Elon Musk was handed extraordinary influence over federal agencies, and USAID became an early target, as legal challenges and reporting on DOGE’s efforts to control USAID’s funding streams make clear. Inside USAID, I saw global health, humanitarian response, democracy and governance, and conflict prevention work abruptly stripped down or eliminated. Career colleagues with decades of experience were pushed out or sidelined, partners abroad were left with collapsing funding streams,…

[ad_1] I have spent a lot of time in the Middle East, and think about the place even more when far from its pungent smells and 1,001 Nights mysteries. I was sent there very young because my father owned textile factories in Africa, in Khartoum, and every weekend was spent in Cairo or Alexandria. Both cities back then were still cosmopolitan, with wonderful hotels, nightclubs, and restaurants. Nasser had not yet come to power, although King Farouk had been recently deposed. Outside my house in Alexandria, giant cypresses, Judas trees, and chestnuts kept the great lawns in shadow, and there…

[ad_1] ENRD at the Department of Justice is getting a new name. According to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by ENRD’s Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson, the Environment and Natural Resources Division will be renamed the Energy and Natural Resources Division. From the op-ed: Over the past two decades, the division has played a central role in the responsible production and use of energy, driven by technological advances from the shale revolution to AI. To recognize this evolution, we will now rename it the Energy and Natural Resources Division. The division’s charge to steward America’s environment responsibly…

[ad_1] After Gov. Josh Shapiro claimed there was no interest in participating in the Great American State Fair, Pennsylvanians proved him wrong. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Almost every war produces the same immediate question: who won? Yet the more consequential question is whether either side can convert battlefield pressure into a political order it can sustain. The Islamabad Memorandum, signed by the United States and Iran on June 17, brings that distinction into sharp relief. It is a 60-day framework linking an end to military operations and navigation through the Strait of Hormuz to negotiations over sanctions, Iran’s nuclear program, and a broader political settlement. Its importance lies less in the document’s promises than in the reality that produced it: neither Washington nor Tehran could…

[ad_1] Clad in the Colombian soccer uniform and accompanied by the rattle of drums and the flash of stadium pyrotechnics, President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella approached the podium in Barranquilla last week Sunday and roared, “Colombia, your tiger is here!” De la Espriella, a right-wing populist lawyer who calls himself “the tiger,” clinched a narrow victory in the second round of the country’s presidential election over left-wing Senator Iván Cepeda. De la Espriella is a return to the right for Colombia, which has struggled with crime and disorder under current President Gustavo Petro’s strategy of “paz total” (“total peace”), which…

[ad_1] The relationship between the prime minister and the chancellor is the most important in British politics. In short, they have to get on, or the government doesn’t. History is littered with examples of administrations that became dysfunctional because the first lord of the Treasury—to give the prime minister his full title—and the chancellor of the Exchequer did not see eye to eye. Most recently, when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown fell out in 2005 over the Labour succession, the government largely lost the plot. Andy Burnham, the presumptive heir to the recently resigned Prime Minister Keir Starmer, was in…

[ad_1] After a series of attacks that targeted civilian ships and military bases over the weekend, the U.S. and Iran may have reached yet another (possible, maybe) deal to stop fighting. Iran struck commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday and Saturday. After the U.S. retaliated, Iranian drones targeted American bases in the region. In the early hours of Monday, however, an unnamed American official told The New York Times that a new agreement to stop the fighting was in place. Later, President Donald Trump announced a new round of peace talks that will begin Tuesday in Qatar. The…

[ad_1] Celebrating America Shouldn't Be Such a Partisan Task [ad_2] Source link