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  • For the purpose of sections 203, 205, 207, 208, and 209 of this title the term “special Government employee” shall mean an officer or employee of the executive or legislative branch of the United States Government, of any independent agency of the United States or of the District of Columbia, who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform, with or without compensation, for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days

    — 18 USC § 202(a)

    Highlight is mine, but yes. There's a limit of 130 days.

  • Mike Johnson accused Democrats of “cherry pick[ing] three emails out of 20,000 documents” to “try and imply that the president was guilty.”

    Buttery emails anyone?

  • A lot of the Epstein files has been released. However, there are some things not released. Something I'll refer people to HR 4405

    Now in that, let's look at section C of that bill:

    would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, provided that such withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary

    This is a big deal, because Judges ordering things to not be release CAN NOT be released no matter who says so. This is a separation of powers thing. A lot of things are withheld from the public because it's part of various legal cases. The most recent one I can think of is JP Morgan paying out that $290M to victims and there was like some amount paid to the Virgin Islands.

    Now the stuff that's wrapped up by the Judges, if someone leaks any of that, they are going to prison. And the people who are handling those files are very well aware of the consequences of if they say peep about what they've seen.

    This is the part where people are like "what if Trump destroys some evidence?" Well a lot of that evidence was turned over to the courts during Biden. So if the DoJ suddenly made things start disappearing, it's not going to match up with what the court already knows about.

    Many people already know what's in these files. They know what's going to be brought in legal cases. They also know what would happen to them it if they leaked anything they've already seen. And a lot of this information has been steady released to the public.

    So this brings up, what the fuck is Congress bitching about then? What Congress is attempting to do, is code into law a requirement for the information to released to the public no matter what might be contained, WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS AS NOTED IN SECTION C. What this law would do, is not just ensure that justice if done but also ensure that the public is aware of all the details behind the case.

    You know how like some court cases will happen and not everything presented in court is released to the public? Well this would codify into law the requirement to release all of that to the public. Of course, AFTER any kind of trial it was used in, if it wasn't released before a trail began.

  • Most aren't up in 2026. So don't forget this.

  • The Government's argument, I shit you not, "Congress has not given explicit permission to do this."

    Invade cities with ICE, bomb boats in the body of water formerly know as the Gulf of Mexico, literally start a war with a sovereign nation, tariff the fuck out of everyone... BUT OH NO! Feeding kids, that's Executive overreach.

    Man, I'm not religious, but holy fuck I really do hope there is a hell.

  • The 300% increase is because of Republican cuts from OBBBA. Republicans continually do things to reduce the quality and deliverablity of care from these markets. That's the thing, every "failure" can be traced back to Republicans enacting law that greatly affects the overall success of the program.

    What's even more interesting is how flexible the market has been in spite of Republican meddling. But the ACA has offered new avenues for people to have insurance when their situation wouldn't have qualified them for such. This has provided a much needed peace of mind to a large segment of the population.

    For all the things that Republicans tend to throw to deride the program, it continues to provide coverage for people in ways that lawmakers don't always foresee. And that has provided care to people who usually would not have care. Allowed people to go on to make small businesses that would not have otherwise taken the risk. Allow people to get regular checkups and routine care that would have otherwise gone without.

    Republicans have a funny definition of success in the medical domain. Once that circles around dollars to care, when the goal should be amount of care. Or at least in my most humble opinion, we should look at the amount of care we provide to the population as a metric of success. To then toss dollars on top of that metric really begs the question of what is the worth of a person's life? Yes, the ACA lacks a single provider negotiated benefit. Republicans have sought to never allow that to happen. Don't get me wrong, that's a very clear loss for the ACA program, but again, that's at the behest of Republicans.

  • All they have to do is say, ‘Let’s go. Let’s open up our country.’ And everything snaps back into shape.

    Except it doesn't. There's several cuts that have been made to the budget. While ACA has been the most visible because of the Democrat's demands. There are cuts that will remove 3 million people from SNAP. $300 Billion removed from Federal education grants to various schools around the country, including rural schools that severe small populations.

    The ACA cut has been the one that Democrats have really dug in on, but the OBBBA has tons of cuts that are going to affect everyone. And Democrats have been asking since March to have a seat at the table for shaping what was in OBBBA only to have all their motions to bring to the floor denied.

    And that's the thing. Everyone knew that Senate Democrats were going to be needed for the coming CR. They knew this all the way back in March. By May House Republicans started shutting out Democrats and Senate Democrats told them what was going to happen if the House kept pushing Democrats out of everything. They knew what was coming and they still did it.

    Republicans don't get to do the "my way or the highway thing", even when the ACA went into effect there were Republican riders that were enacted along with it. Build Back Better included plenty of pork projects for red states. Inflation Reduction Act helped out tons of deep red districts. I'm sure everyone remembers the member of Congress who voted against it but then told constituents how great it was going to be.

    Democrats help out Republicans, and the OBBBA completely shutting Democrats out of the process isn't how Congress does things. So yeah, Republicans are seeing the result of their choices. And they have the opportunity to make different choices.

  • The big thing about the ACA credits that were approved during the pandemic was that small businesses and self-employed found them incredibly useful. Now that was not what they were originally for, but it has been an unexpected success. It has increased the risk pool and provided the ability for job creators to have insurance for themselves or their employees.

    Republicans have seen this success and for the most obvious reasons are looking to end it, because any success by ACA threatens their narrative of the ACA being a failure.

  • 1979 Datsun 210. Eventually sold the thing for five cartons of cigarettes.

  • I always get a laugh from Prisencolinensinainciusol by Adriano Celentano. But that's "sorta English" so a language I don't speak is probably J'en ai marre by Alizée.

  • What gets me is that studies show that autism is highly genetic.

    In identical twins, ASD in one usually leads to a diagnosis of ASD in the other 96% of the time. Which lines up with a high affinity to genetic factors.

    In fraternal twins we have seen, a 16% when a given sex ASD is diagnosed leading to an opposite sex ASD diagnosis. A 36% when a female ASD is diagnosed leading to a female ASD diagnosis. And a 31% when a male ASD is diagnosed leading to a male ASD diagnosis.

    This lines up with genetic factors from a particular parent that are expressed with the gonosomes. That it affects higher in women is a hint that it may be within the X complex gonosomes. If Tylenol played a serious role in the development of those things then we'd see different data here. That opposite sex fraternal is nearly half the amount for same sex fraternal, really hammers home the notion that we're dealing with something genetic. But at the same time we don't know what genes.

    The core argument with RFK is oxidative stress. But literally everything causes oxidative stress, not getting the correct amount of sleep causes oxidative stress. And that's the bigger issue with the studies that RFK has forwarded about Tylenol. Their argument is a confusion of causation and correlation.

    And this has been pointed out by a ton of concerned scientist. That's not to dismiss the data that RFK has provided, it is pointing out that the data they are using doesn't point to the conclusion they are indicating directly.

    I can imagine that Texas could possibly prevail on their case given that even scientist, including the ones RFK cites, aren't 100% sure that Tylenol has any role in any of this. This isn't the first time some group or even a State sued over poor science, but it's really frustrating because Texas has a duty to provide for their citizens and here they are using a poor conclusion to some data to do something that's no in the interest of their citizens.

  • Just wait till holiday season!

    But the upshot is that commercial airlines heavily fund Republicans. So if they start having issues, they'll start letting their Republican folks know about it.

  • Many were folks who came here via some "legal" means who looked at those crossing during Biden and resented them. That hatred of folks just trying to find a better life now has an entire gestapo ready to arrest and deport anyone who looks too brown to be in American.

    They thought that all that paperwork made them whole in the Republican eyes. They thought those words saying they were a citizen was enough to made confessed racist look the other way. But an administration that doesn't care about the law, doesn't care about what status a sheet of paper says.

    That's what's so crazy about letting your hate get to you. That hate comes back to bite you.

  • a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in a 2-1 ruling, stayed a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term in office.

    US District Judge Karin Immergut is a Federal District Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. A district court is the trial courts of the US federal judiciary, so for Federal cases start here.

    Justice Immergut issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the US Government. This "enjoins" or "prohibits" an action. This action was the deployment of troops to Oregon. TROs have a really high bar because courts are not supposed to carry out any kind of action without a full trial. A TRO usually comes before a full trial can be had because there's some sort of emergency that requires no delay. There's a whole slew of standards to when a TRO can be issued and cannot be issued.

    Once a TRO is issued, the defendant (who it is that is enjoined which would be the President) is allowed a review of that TRO by the appeals court that the district court resides in. There are 13 of them. The first through the eleventh circuit court of appeals, The DC Court of appeals, and the Federal Court of appeals (which is one that hears specific cases under very specific jurisdiction).

    There are a lot of judges that sit on a circuit court, just depends on which one you're talking about, Congress usually creates a new seat in the circuit based on population, case load, or whatever. The ninth circuit is the court that the District Court for the District of Oregon resides in. The ninth circuit is the largest, it has 29 active judges and 24 senior judges. The senior judges don't actively participate in the Courtroom but they can write opinions, issue particular things, and so forth to help out the active judges. Basically, they are at the step just before retirement.

    The active judges break out into groups of threes where they can and sit alone if the must. The entire point is to fill as many courtrooms in the circuit as they can so that they can get lots of case load done. Remember this is a circuit court, so there's no one building for them, there's multiple courtrooms for them all over the ninth circuit which is California to Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. So they've got a lot of ground to cover for all of them.

    A panel of three judges hears any appeals from the district court and then rules on if the district court was justified and followed all of the various rules. But there's no telling which three judges (I mean there is a schedule so there's that) you might get, they're all moving around and trying to keep things moving.

    Okay so that three panel judge stayed (puts on pause) the TRO.

    By Friday, the full 9th Circuit administratively stayed the panel's own stay – "[w]ithout objection from the panel," an order notes.

    This isn't an actual hearing. An administrative review is like a Zoom meeting between all the Judges and they talk about the cases they had, vent, and what not. During that review, one of the Judges pointed out a piece of evidence that attorneys for the State of Oregon submitted that the President lied about the troop deployment. The panel during their Zoom meeting voted and they stayed (put on pause) the stay of the TRO.

    But an administrative review is NOT a proper trial.

    Now, the stay of Immergut's first TRO is paused until Oct. 28, "to allow the completion of the pending en banc proceedings," the court noted.

    En banc means to get ALL OF THE JUDGES together to have a formal hearing. So all 29 now have to come together and have a hearing. Now that might be via Zoom or something, I'm not entirely clear on the process of the Ninth for their en banc, each court sets the rules on when Zoom is allowed or not. But all 29 now have to hear the case. So the stay of the first TRO is paused, or the court stayed the stay of the first TRO. Meaning the TRO many continue to enjoin the President's actions.

    There's a second TRO that's out there. Basically it's filed under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The APA formalizes the process by which the Executive branch's Department's may do things. You know how there's regulation? Regulation isn't LAW. Law requires both chambers of Congress to approve something and the President sign off on it. Regulation/Rule making/etc... is a Department doing something "within the confines of the law". Say like Congress says build me a highway. The Transportation Departmentwill then issue a determination that includes blueprints and what not for the highway in the law. The APA indicates the manner by which they have to do that. With public review, publishing on https://www.federalregister.gov/, etc...

    This second TRO is based on something not followed in the APA.

  • This whole idea avoids two big issues at stake.

    • The United States dollar is weakening.
    • American Ranchers are in desperate need of help to increase domestic production.

    With the US dollar weakening, this creates economic risks for purchase orders of Argentinian beef. There will need specific policy assurances in place and market controls by both Governments to ensure that a continuing weakening US dollar doesn't commit retailers to beef that does nothing to move price to consumer.

    There would need to be ever increasing tariff controls in place and if Trump does not make the midterms, there is a good chance that Congress could curtail his usurping Article I powers from Congress. This could come at a time that would be critical for quick adjustments and if retailers have put in orders that jump suddenly or orders that just get cancelled.

    Record high retail beef prices in the US in 2025 are driven by low domestic cattle supplies and strong demand. This is due in part to several post pandemic droughts the world over. Additionally, changing trade policy has made steady market planning by US cattle producers that much more difficult. The volatility paired with natural factors has cause beef production within the United States to plunge. Independent farmers of beef are in need and losing the battle to commercial beef production that continue to use their market position to maintain higher beef prices and lower production.

    There needs to be movement on multiple fronts within the United States to ensure a healthy beef production that can match the demand being seen. Simply importing Argentinian beef, slaps a band-aid on a wound that's in critical need of prompt attention. And failure to address the complexities of what's driving beef prices higher and just simply applying a stop-gap issue that does nothing long term, will ensure that beef prices don't actually move anywhere in the foreseeable future.

    If this whole thing was part of some larger domestic improvement plan, that would be a different story. But this President is widely known for half assing, or quarter assing, or concepts of a planning his way through his term. There's no way that there's some larger strategy involved here. And so what the President is doing is attempting to curry favor with Argentina and Milei by putting long term US beef viability at stake (no pun intended).

    I expect nothing less from the guy. This is just a foolish plan that is going to blow up in someone's face a few years down the road. This idiot in the White House is just hoping that he isn't that guy left holding the bag when it does.

  • I'm so tired of the President of the United States doing commercials for his private line of cheap Chinese products from the White House.

  • Is this AI generated?

    Man I wish it was. It'd make more sense.

  • When my uncle was president, the fertility rate in this country was 3.5%. Today, it is 1.6%. The replacement rate, in other words the amount of fertility that you need in order to keep your population even, is 2.1%. We are below replacement right now. That is a national security threat to our country and we know why this is happening, and President Trump is addressing the root causes through his MAHA agenda of reducing endocrine disruptors, the exposure to chemicals that decrease fertility.

    You can't debate that. Mostly because it's just illogical altogether. It would like trying to convince someone that pasta doesn't taste like clay bricks. There's no logic to the initial argument, you can't logic that away.

  • A glass of water. About an hour later a cup of coffee. For lunch I usually have a slice of bread toasted, with butter and jam followed by a cup of coffee.

    This pretty much every day.

  • Streaming is all the bad things about the music industry but made a thousand times worse. The pay outs, the requirement of specific laws surrounding streaming that make it different than every other method of music delivery, the lack of control by the consumer, the lack of any kind of ownership, the requirement of always online connectivity, and on.

    I don't want to be that boomer type person, but I'm pretty happy with staying with my CD and DVD collection that I have. I have a massive amount of portability, archiving, and it just works wherever I want to work. No fees, no internet required, and I have an immense amount of control over everything.

    This is just one of those things that I'm glad that I didn't get into this. It has sounded terrible since it was first pitched and I think it's only gotten worse.

  • Technology @lemmy.world

    Chrome VPN Extension With 100k Installs Screenshots All Sites Users Visit

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