President Donald Trump spoke before an adoring crowd in Tennessee Saturday, telling his fans, "I could say the stupidest things and you'd clap."

New York Times: Sources: the US DOJ is probing whether ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News violated antitrust law by briefly suspending their White House pool coverage of Trump  —  Major TV networks were notified on Friday that the department was looking into whether they violated antitrust laws when they suspended pool coverage of President Trump.

Despite a wildly unpopular war with Iran, a mass protest movement for peace hasn’t materialized — at least in the ways we’ve been taught to recognize.

Ten years after the Standing Rock protests captured national attention, the tribe is still fighting the project.

Not only has Gov. Gavin Newsom vocally opposed the proposed California billionaire tax, but he also wants to prevent the state from ever passing a wealth tax in the future.

On Friday he endorsed Proposition 42, a ballot measure that would cancel out Proposition 40, the proposed billionaire tax. Prop. 42 would prohibit retroactive taxes like the one-time 5% tax on assets that would apply to any billionaire who lived in California on Jan. 1, 2026 if Prop. 40 passes.

But Prop. 42, funded and placed on the ballot by billionaire and Google co-founder Sergey Brin to defeat the billionaire tax, also would go further, by banning any new taxes on personal property.

That includes pensions and 401K accounts before retirees start drawing retirement income from them. It also includes other investments, financial assets, business holdings, art collections and all other forms of personal wealth that would be affected by the billionaire tax or any future wealth tax.

Newsom’s decision to support Prop. 42 runs counter to his own Democratic Party and some labor unions. It also aligns him with some of the wealthy tech donors with whom he’s maintained longstanding relationships dating back to his days as mayor of San Francisco.

CEO Dana White has long been an ally of President Donald Trump and his administration. Agents would be trained in hand-to-hand combat.

The FBI plans to offer the Ultimate Fighting Championship an exclusive one-year contract to train its special agents in hand-to-hand combat, according to a document released by the agency in September.

The UFC, according to the bureau, is “the sole qualified vendor” capable of providing tactical training that meets FBI standards. The justification for the contract cited the “expertise” the multibillion-dollar global media business has in mixed martial arts, striking techniques, grappling and takedowns.

The bureau said that market research determined that “no other vendor can provide comprehensive training encompassing all required skills at the necessary expertise level within the required timeframe.”

cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/13178599

From WABE Politics News:

Not long ago, Georgia gubernatorial nominee Rick Jackson eagerly compared himself to his fellow billionaire in the Oval Office. He promised to be Donald Trump “with a Southern tone.” And […]

#Atlanta #WABE #AtlantaPolitics #AtlantaNews #theATLBot

Donald Trump urged the Supreme Court on Friday to wade into his years long legal battle with former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and ex-Justice Department officials over the 2016 election, appealing a case that a lower court concluded was “frivolous.”

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2022 against Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and dozens of other people and entities he said conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign by falsely tying him to Russia.

A federal district court dismissed the suit and ultimately ruled that Trump’s attorneys were liable for nearly $1 million in sanctions. The Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that decision last year.

With less than a month until voters determine whether his party will retain control of the House, Senate and governorships in nearly every state, Donald Trump appears increasingly detached from reality amid a political landscape that is growing increasingly perilous for him and his allies.

Trump is embarking on what aides are calling an all-out blitz of campaign rally appearances in support of Republican candidates in states across the country, even in places where Republicans would normally be heavily favored.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/us_politics@piefed.blahaj.zone/p/1020786/boosting-us-oil-supplies-with-russian-diesel-unlikely-to-have-much-impact-on-price

Energy policy experts on Friday expressed doubts that a boost in diesel supply from Russia will have a significant impact on oil prices, whether in the U.S. or globally.

“It’s kind of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic,” said Michael Lynch, distinguished fellow at Energy Policy Research Foundation, a nonpartisan research institution focused on energy and economics.

“If we get diesel from Russia, basically it means that their existing customers are not going to get it and they’ll have to go somewhere else, and that will keep the price basically where it is now,” Lynch said.

And while the White House may be counting on this move to give some relief at the pump for U.S. truckers, ranchers and farmers who have been hit hard by rising diesel prices, that’s not a given.

“The best you could hope for is a tiny dip in prices locally in places like the New York-New Jersey area, Philadelphia maybe,” Lynch said. “It just means that the oil is just going to be shuffled around and it’s not really going to change the price globally or across the U.S.”

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The post As Trump’s Wall Closes in, DHS Intimidates a Border Tribe With Surveillance, Masked Agents and Drones appeared first on ProPublica.

An attorney representing protestors said this infringes on First Amendment rights.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/us_politics@piefed.blahaj.zone/p/1020780/justice-department-won-t-enforce-registration-rules-on-silencers-and-certain-guns

The Justice Department moved Friday to allow more people to purchase firearm suppressors — known as silencers — short-barreled rifles and certain other guns without registering them with the federal government following a court ruling that struck down provisions of a key law.

The Trump administration announced the enforcement policy changes after a Texas judge in August ruled the permitting process was unconstitutional. The judge’s ruling was limited to the parties involved in that case, but the Justice Department said Friday it would no longer enforce the registration requirements more broadly.

“The direction from the President, Congress, and the courts is clear,” Rob Cekada, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in an emailed statement. “ATF is now following suit with our enforcement posture while continuing to ensure we remain focused where we are needed the most: combating violent crime in American communities.”

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