United States | News & Politics

June 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday plans to lay out how a $42 billion investment in expanding internet access will be divvied up among the nation's 50 states, in an effort to give all Americans access to high-speed broadband by 2030.

The move will kick off the second leg of Biden's tour highlighting how legislation passed by Congress during the first half of his term will affect average Americans, as his reelection bid gears up.

"We have an historic opportunity here to make a real difference in people's lives and making sure that we deliver on that potential is what we're about every day and to make sure that people feel that at their kitchen table, in their communities, in their backyards,” White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said.

Zients compared the broadband effort to President Franklin Roosevelt's efforts in 1936 to bring electricity to rural America. The administration estimates there are some 8.5 million locations in the U.S. that lack access to broadband connections.

The Journal editorial page accused ProPublica of misleading readers in a story that hadn’t yet been published.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Biden's administration a victory in a long-running fight about how to enforce the nation's immigration laws.

The case concerned the Biden administration's attempt to set guidelines for whom immigration authorities can target for arrest and deportation. Texas and Louisiana sued to block the guidelines, arguing that they were preventing immigration authorities from doing their jobs.

The Supreme Court held by a vote of 8-1 that the states lacked standing to challenge the guidelines in the first place.

Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh described the legal challenge before the court as "an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit."

The states challenging the guidelines "want a federal court to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more arrests," Kavanaugh wrote. "Federal courts have not traditionally entertained that kind of lawsuit; indeed, the States cite no precedent for a lawsuit like this."

Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court's liberals in the majority opinion. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch each wrote separate, concurring opinions that reached the same conclusion, but offered a different legal rationale. Only Justice Samuel Alito dissented, arguing that Texas and Louisiana had met the requirements for standing and should have been allowed to sue.

. . .

A newly declassified government report confirms for the first time that U.S. intelligence and spy agencies purchase vast amounts of commercially available information on Americans, including data from connected vehicles, web browsing data, and smartphones.

By the U.S. government’s own admission, the data it purchases “clearly provides intelligence value,” but also “raises significant issues related to privacy and civil liberties.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified and released the January 2022-dated report on Friday, following a request by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to disclose how the intelligence community uses commercially available data. This kind of data is generated from internet-connected devices and made available by data brokers for purchase, such as phone apps and vehicles that collect granular location data and web browsing data that tracks users as they browse the internet.

The declassified report is the U.S. government’s first public disclosure revealing the risks associated with commercially available data of Americans that can be readily purchased by anyone, including adversaries and hostile nations. The United States does not have a privacy or data protection law governing the sharing or selling of Americans’ private information.

“In a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, [commercially available information] includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained” by other intelligence gathering capabilities, such as search warrants, wiretaps and surveillance, the report says.

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Crowds are gathering in downtown Denver this week to learn about the future of psychedelics like magic mushrooms and MDMA. The five-day Psychedelic Science 2023 event, attracting medical professionals, politicians, celebrities and practitioners, covers a wide variety of subjects from the business of psychedelics to therapeutic uses for these substances.

"We are facing very difficult challenges in mental and behavioral health and we're very excited about the opportunities that psychedelics offer to break cycles of addictions for opioids, to deal with severe depression and anxiety," said Colorado Gov. Jared Polis during his opening address on Wednesday.

Hosted by the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), more than 11,000 people have registered for the event which the organization describes as "the largest psychedelic conference in history." This conference is the fourth of its kind, the most recent gathering took place in California in 2017.

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SS: Single use plastics legislation and plastics treaties in the works could dramatically lower the amount of plastic products firms are allowed to produce in the near future.

Daniel Rodriguez, going to prison for white supremacists, lol

While launching a statewide program to distribute packets to dissolve opioids, Attorney General Ken Paxton worked to connect its leaders with the state’s comptroller, who oversees the distribution of millions of dollars in opioid settlement money.

Many states have instituted "fill out this paperwork or lose your coverage" policies that prey on the disabled by hoping they forget or aren't informed or able to complete the paperwork, resulting in the loss of their Medicaid coverage.

Any thoughts on how the right will try to spin Joe Biden not immediately pardoning his son as a bad thing?

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/news/t/47477

A survey shows perceptions of the Florida governor's favorabilty have dropped, even among Republicans, as he refuses to back down in a feud with Disney.

What do you know about The Conversation? At first blush it seems like a great space similar to Phys.org but less specialized.

From https://theconversation.com/us/who-we-are:

We publish trustworthy and informative articles written by academic experts for the general public and edited by our team of journalists.

On this website (and through distribution of our articles to thousands of news outlets worldwide), you’ll find explanatory journalism on the events, discoveries and issues that matter today. Our articles share researchers’ expertise in policy, science, health, economics, education, history, ethics and most every subject studied in colleges and universities. Some articles offer practical advice grounded in research, while others simply provide authoritative answers to questions that sparked our curiosity.

The Conversation U.S. is part of a global group of news organizations founded in Australia in 2011 by Andrew Jaspan, a former newspaper editor who wanted to encourage academics to engage with the public, and Jack Rejtman. Jaspan led the U.S. launch in October 2014. Our main newsroom is in Boston, with editors working remotely in cities across the country.

There are also editions in Africa, Australia, Canada, France, Indonesia, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom.

... to the surprise of absolutely no one.

Check that fruit!

A lawyer representing Donald Trump in multiple cases is facing legal troubles of his own, New York Law Journal reports.

Another case of "Make Attorneys Get Attorneys"

...for further defamation done the next day after the original suit, right?

....again.