Politics

Lingo Telecom "will pay a $1 million civil penalty and implement a historic compliance plan—the first of its kind secured by the FCC—that will require strict adherence to the FCC's STIR/SHAKEN Caller ID authentication rules," the FCC said. The settlement includes "requirements that the company abide by 'Know Your Customer' (KYC) and 'Know Your Upstream Provider' (KYUP) principles" that focus on vetting call traffic to ensure it is trustworthy, and "requirements that the company more thoroughly verify the accuracy of the information provided by its customers and upstream providers."

The calls made before New Hampshire's presidential primary in January were orchestrated by Steve Kramer, a Democratic consultant who was working for a candidate running against Biden. Kramer was indicted on charges of voter suppression and impersonation of a candidate, and the FCC proposed a $6 million fine for Kramer. The calls inaccurately displayed a phone number associated with a prominent New Hampshire political operative.

It includes some of Silicon Valley's biggest names, such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, alongside asset managers like Fidelity. Wealthy people also invested, including Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the American rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs, and Jack Dorsey, X's founder and former CEO.

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular working hours.

Honestly, what’s been really surprising for me, is we know there’s so much dysfunction in Congress. And oftentimes, we just blame the people there for that dysfunction, so I’m gonna give them 60 percent of the blame. Forty percent, or a good chunk, actually has to do with the institution itself. I’ll give you a very small example. Orientation, when the new members first get to know each other, before we start arguing, we’re just all humans, new people to Congress. You don’t really get a lot of time to spend time with the other side of the aisle. The only time I’m with the Republicans is during the classes, and what are you supposed to do in class? Listen. The last half of the day, the social aspect, is all separated by party. So it makes sense why there’s so much dysfunction here.

The decision, passed by a narrow 3-2 vote, changes the zoning around the 643-room hotel and spa to "downtown mixed-use," according to Doral City council documents, allowing for the integrated development of residential and commercial developments.

This zoning change sets the stage for Trump to power ahead with plans to turn the space into "Doral International Towers," a development comprising 1,498 residential units across four, 64-meter-tall towers.

This is shy of the 2,300 units allegedly proposed by Trump for the Doral in 2022, according to CNN's Jake Tapper on X, then Twitter.

Gov. Bill Lee is responding to a new federal investigation into a Tennessee prison that has proven troublesome during its last three audit reports produced by the state.

The U.S. Department of Justice said they opened the investigation into Trousdale Turner Correctional Center after many issues in eight years. Those include stabbings, 196 assaults, two murders, 15 deaths classified as accidental and 90 incidents of sexual misconduct.

Trousdale Turner Correctional Center is a private prison owned by CoreCivic, headquartered in Brentwood. The state contracts the company to run the prison, and its current contract with Tennessee runs until June 2026. The facility opened in 2016 on the campus of a nuclear reactor that never opened in Hartsville. More than 2,000 men who are inmates live there.

He warned me there would be consequences if I failed to comply with his demands to air a white-supremacist video.

Then, nothing happened.

Today, hate-group researchers said they have identified the man behind the anonymous social media app that targeted me and others in Middle Tennessee who, he perceived, were standing in Gabrielle Hanson's path last fall to becoming mayor of Franklin.

And now that man faces his own consequences.

Kai Liam Nix, 20, an active-duty soldier stationed at Fort Liberty in Fayetteville, North Carolina, is now in federal custody.

"I do not want the Senate to be involved in a lengthy process that will detract from its important work," Menendez wrote.

Governor Murphy, a Democrat, is expected to replace Menendez with a close ally, his former chief of staff George Samir Helmy. Mr Hemly will hold the New Jersey Senate seat until a replacement is elected in November.

On Monday, Menendez filed a 30-page motion asking a federal judge to throw out the guilty verdict - the first step in what could be a lengthy appeals process.

Not until its next campaign filing in October will we know how much Elon Musk has donated to America PAC, a Super PAC he launched along with other Silicon Valley elites with the aim of electing Donald Trump. But we do know how much the organization is spending — and, more curiously, that it’s relying on strategists and vendors connected to some of the most expensive failed political campaigns in recent memory.

“I almost feel like that’s the game being played against us by the Speaker,” said Chapman, who helped launch Just Moms STL, a nonprofit that advocates for those suffering from radiation exposure in their local community. “We have to go back and educate all these other elected officials on what happened in St. Louis, because they don’t know. We’re left out.”

Reuters recently published an investigation diving into how a federal health agency failed a neighborhood near Chapman, also ailing from radiation exposure.

It’s a similar story in Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, where communities that sit downwind of former nuclear testing sites have been ravaged by cancers and other diseases yet excluded from RECA benefits for decades.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a 200-word summary that abortion rights advocates used to collect signatures for a ballot measure is valid, clearing the way for the issue to remain on the ballot.

The Arizona secretary of state's office said last week it had certified 577,971 signatures - far above the required number that the coalition supporting the ballot measure had to submit in order to put the question before voters.

Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen on Tuesday certified Montana's constitutional initiative for the November ballot.

Under both measures, abortions would be allowed until fetal viability - the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks.

FTC spokesperson Victoria Graham said the agency was disappointed with the ruling and is "seriously considering a potential appeal."

A powerful group that boasts 28 Republican attorneys general, including many who have sided with oil and gas firms to block states seeking compensation for weather disasters caused by climate change, has raked in millions of dollars from fossil fuel giants and a dark money fund tied to Federalist Society co-chair, Leonard Leo.

The Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga) has roped in about $5.8m from oil and gas giants and their allied lobbying groups since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, campaign finance records show.

Further, Raga has received a whopping $18.8m from the Leo-linked Concord Fund since 2014 when the dark money non-profit first registered with the IRS, according to the liberal-leaning Center for Media and Democracy.

This is not the "when they go low, we go high" speech. Start at about 9 minutes, 30 for the real stuff.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday said it has referred 43 unruly passengers to the FBI for criminal investigation over the past year, as it continues its zero-tolerance policy over serious onboard incidents.

The rate of unruly passenger incidents has fallen by over 80% since record highs in early 2021, the FAA said. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to prioritize investigations of airline passengers committing assaults following a 500% spike in incidents in 2021.

The new cases bring the total of such referrals for violent and threatening behavior on planes to 313 since late 2021.

As the presidential election approaches, a recently designated neo-Nazi terrorist group is covertly seeding violent propaganda on to mainstream social media channels – exposing tens of thousands of unknowing followers to radicalizing messages – according to background research and a report provided to the Guardian by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).

One of those channels on Telegram purports to be associated with Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, with an administrator claiming in group chats discovered by ISD to have had direct contact with the longtime Trump ally who is well-known for playing footsie with extremists and admitting to fomenting revolution.

The UK government listed the Terrogram collective as an official terrorist entity in April. The move spiked public interest in the shadowy network of violent neo-Nazi propagandists on Telegram that preaches accelerationism, which demands followers hasten the collapse of society through acts of terrorism.

The letter from ranking Democratic members of the House committee on education and the workforce, the congressman Robert “Bobby” Scott and the congresswoman Dr Alma Adams, cites testimony from farm workers and advocates in California and a New York Times article on child labor in which an employer in South Carolina admitted to ordering workers to clean up and prepare for an inspection after receiving a tip-off about an upcoming inspection from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha).

“Cristina Gonzalez, a Madera farmworker who picks figs, testified that last August a foreman told workers to spend the first two hours of the next workday picking up trash and cleaning the bathrooms in advance of an inspection,” stated the letter on the California account.

Georgia’s GOP-controlled State Election Board is poised to adopt a rule on Monday that would give county election board members an additional avenue to delay certification of election results, potentially allowing them to throw the state’s vote count into chaos this fall.

The State Election Board’s Monday meeting comes on the heels of a vote less than two weeks before that empowered county election board members to conduct “reasonable inquiry” into allegations of voting irregularities. That rule did not set deadlines for how long such inquiries might last or describe what they might entail, and critics worried that this omission could cause Georgia to miss the Dec. 11 deadline for sending its certified presidential election results to the federal government.

The eight main North American data center markets are Northern Virginia, Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; Silicon Valley in central California; Chicago; Phoenix, Arizona; the New York Tri-State Area; Atlanta; and Hillsboro in Oregon.

At the same time new inventory surged, data center vacancy rates plunged to a record low of 2.8%, CBRE said. Prices for the centers grew, with newer centers typically coming with a premium compared to older ones.

"The demand for high-powered computing has exacerbated the pricing disparity between legacy facilities and new data centers, partially because older data centers don’t have the infrastructure to handle the power demands of today’s users," CBRE's Data Center Trend Report said.

The demand for newer facilities is likely to make smaller markets, including Northern Indiana, Idaho, Arkansas, and Kansas, more desirable, the report said.

The tax credit has led to a growing financial cost to Missouri taxpayers, with over $11.2 million in tax credits authorized in the past year alone. Before the change, the tax credit had been capped at $3.5 million a year. When combined with the $8.6 million the state directly allocates to pregnancy centers, Missouri has become a leader in per capita investment in anti-abortion centers.

While Missouri does not contribute the most overall to anti-abortion groups — Texas, with its much larger population, leads the nation with a $140 million outlay over two years — it stands out for the investment relative to its size. Still, it pales in comparison with this year’s nearly $52 billion budget.

The Republican National Committee is urging the Supreme Court to intervene in an Arizona election dispute this week and block up to 40,000 of the state’s registered voters from casting ballots in the presidential race.

Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from voting in person or by mail.

Florida is one of 13 states that give prosecutors unfettered power to try children as adults without getting sign-off from a judge. And when judges determine the penalties for those kids, they give them higher sentences on average for felony crimes than older, adult offenders, according to a Miami Herald investigation.

In May 2018, the judge in Knight’s criminal case ruled that he should be resentenced. But prosecutors asked to put the resentencing on pause roughly six months later, pointing out that other Florida appeals courts had ruled that decades-long sentences were not necessarily equivalent to life and that the Florida Supreme Court was reviewing the cases to resolve the conflict.

The court agreed to the pause. Knight was stuck in limbo for five years. In that time, the state Supreme Court concluded that long sentences such as Knight’s didn’t automatically violate the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Bernie Moreno’s network of car dealerships is the building block of the Ohio Republican’s campaign for US Senate. Moreno, who is seeking to unseat three-term Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in one of the year’s tightest races, has acquired and eventually sold off more than two dozen dealerships between 2005 and 2022 and grew enormously rich in the process. He is worth as much as $105.7 million, according to financial disclosures—wealth that helped power him to victory in an ugly primary this spring. That private sector track record is also a part of his pitch on the campaign trail, where he describes himself as a self-made man who “mortgaged everything I own in life” to buy his first Nissan dealership in Cleveland and who built a successful company “with no partners.”

The up-by-the-bootstraps campaign trail story belies a more complicated reality. While Moreno describes his immigrant family as “lower middle class” and said they “came here with absolutely nothing,” a New York Times report in May detailed the Morenos’ powerful political and financial connections in Colombia, where one brother runs a major construction firm and another served as president of the Inter-American Development Bank. As he has attempted to position himself as a candidate for the working man, Moreno has been dogged, too, by questions about how he made his money. Earlier this year, my colleague Abby Vesoulis reported that Moreno shelled out more than $400,000 to settle a wage-theft lawsuit in Massachusetts in which “he was forced to admit to shredding overtime-­payment records.” He eventually settled more than a dozen claims of wage theft at his dealerships in the commonwealth, along with a host of other complaints from former employees—outcomes he has blamed on disgruntled workers and “activist” judges.

The US Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a new rule from the Biden administration meant to protect students from discrimination based on gender identity.

The court order issued on Friday rejects a request by the White House to be allowed to temporarily enforce the rule in a number of states.

The ruling is a victory for the Republican-led states that had objected to the rule, and a blow to trans rights activists.

However, the order does not settle the issue and allows legal challenges to continue in lower courts.

The new federal rule issued by the Biden administration in April expands the parameters of a 1972 law known as Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in schools that receive funding from the federal government, including most universities.

The Democratic National Committee projected anti-Trump campaign slogans onto Trump Tower in Chicago on Sunday, one day before the Democratic convention kicks off.

The messages include "Trump-Vance 'weird as hell,'" "Harris Walz fighting for you" and "Project 2025 HQ," a reference to the controversial conservative policy plans written by a slew of allies of former President Donald Trump. Trump has disavowed Project 2025 in recent weeks.