https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/05/22/grand-rapids-police-officer-christopher-schurr-patrick-lyoya-shooting-death-kent-county-retrial/83789722007/

Schurr, 34, faced up to life in prison on the second-degree murder charge. The former officer shot and killed Lyoya, a 26-year-old Congolese immigrant, in April 2022, when a traffic stop ended in a struggle between the two men over Schurr's Taser.

At a press conference after Becker's announcement, Schurr's attorney, Matt Borgula, said court rulings and trial testimony showed that Lloya had “exclusive control of the Taser” before Schurr made a split-second decision to shoot him. The testimony overcame "misinformation" that was spread by the plaintiff's attorneys and city officials that Lloya was lying prone on the ground and was "executed," he said.

The President of CBS News and the executive producer of 60 Minutes have have quit their jobs following the lawsuit filed against CBS for deceptively editing a 2024 Kamala Harris interview.
CBS is expected to settle the lawsuit soon.
https://thehill.com/media/5312467-cbs-executives-resign-trump-lawsuit/
Trump-related crisis deepens at CBS News

The departure of two top executives at CBS News in recent weeks has shaken journalists at the outlet and fueled speculation the network’s corporate parent will soon settle a high-profile lawsuit brought against the company by President Trump.

The resignation this week of CBS President Wendy McMahon came just weeks after that of “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens.

The back-to-back resignations served as the latest sign that a brooding crisis for one of the country’s largest and oldest broadcast news networks is reaching an inflection point.

Though they did not mention Trump’s lawsuit explicitly as they announced plans to leave, McMahon and Owens made clear they were convinced they could no longer independently lead CBS, which has come under increased legal and regulatory threat from Trump’s administration.

“In some ways, it feels like Trump has already won this fight,” one Republican political operative told The Hill this week. “He wants to be covered positively by all of these networks, and this is a pretty clear sign his plan to intimidate is working.”

Trump sued CBS News and “60 Minutes” last fall over an interview the program aired with former Vice President Kamala Harris just days before she faced off with Trump in the November election.

As part of his $10 billion suit, the president’s attorneys argued producers for the program intentionally edited portions of the interview with Harris to cast her in a more positive, coherent light.

https://www.latintimes.com/mike-johnson-argues-congress-needs-stock-trading-support-their-families-due-frozen-salaries-583098

House Speaker Mike Johnson defended stock trading as a necessary income boost that allows members of Congress to "take care of their family."

Johnson noted that Congressional salaries have been frozen since 2009 while speaking to press on Wednesday. "When you adjust for inflation...Congress today is making 31% less than they made in that year. It goes down every year," he said.

The annual salary for a member of congress is $174,000.

"If you stay on this trajectory, you're going to have less qualified people who are willing to make the extreme sacrifice to run for Congress," Johnson warned. "At least let them, like, engage in some stock trading so that they can continue to take care of their family."

The practice of Congress members engaging in stock trading has come under a renewed scrutiny following Trump's announcement of sweeping tariffs placed on trade partners around the globe. Many of the tariffs have since been renegotiated, with the market reacting to news of administrative policy changes.

Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are among prominent politicians calling for an investigation into insider trading after NASDAQ call volume showed large spikes on April 9, just minutes before Trump announced a pause on tariffs for non-retaliating countries.

Congress members are required to file annual financial disclosures by May 15. "We're about to learn a few things," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media last month.

Capitol Trades, which tracks congressional trading, has already revealed some startling numbers. Freshman Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) — who introduced a bill to ban congressional stock trading — has made over $5.6 million with 490 trades since he was elected last November, according to the site.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/trump-admin-settlement-jan-6-shooting-ashli-babbitt/3917159/
the tRump admin still refuses to bring the evil killer to justice
>you can't post with that subject

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/us/politics/supreme-court-religious-charter-school-oklahoma.html

A divided Supreme Court rejected a plan on Thursday to allow Oklahoma to use government money to run the nation’s first religious charter school, which would teach a curriculum infused by Catholic doctrine.

The court split 4 to 4 over the Oklahoma plan, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself from the case, and the decision provided no reasoning.

That deadlock means that an earlier ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court will be allowed to stand. The state court blocked a proposal for the Oklahoma school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which was to be operated by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, and aimed to incorporate Catholic teachings into every aspect of its activities.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/21/nuclear-weapons-leaders-describe-workforce-woes-doge/83770727007/
Top leaders of the agency responsible for the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile admitted to DOGE-related staffing challenges at a Senate hearing.

Asked by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, if a hiring freeze, resignations and attrition could bring “some pretty important vacancies,” acting National Nuclear Security Agency defense programs head David Hoagland said, “That’s very true.” Hoagland said at the May 20 hearing that his office had "shifted people around" to meet "critical needs."

Hundreds of NNSA staff were fired by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year, amid a $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons upgrade, in a chaotic wave of layoffs. Most were later rehired. Other critical staffers agreed to leave their jobs under DOGE's "fork in the road" resignation offer.

King said NNSA claims that staffing shortages hadn't placed agency's mission at short term risk "strikes me as implausible."

The NNSA struggled with staffing and talent pipeline issues for decades before the new Trump administration, a recent USA TODAY investigation found. Then Musk launched efforts to reduce the federal workforce, which further destabilized the NNSA workforce, experts said.

The agency currently faces a near-total hiring freeze and lost more than 130 of its 2,000 federal employees to the DOGE deferred resignation program. More than 300 more employees were fired and reinstated in February damaging morale.

Looks like the DNC is up to its old tricks again, rigging elections and ejecting elected leaders
The Hill reports on the chaos at the DNC as they try to eject Hogg from his position for calling for challengers for certain incumbents
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5304916-dnc-turmoil-primary-challengers/
DNC infighting threatens to throw party into ‘chaos’

Infighting at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is threatening to consume Democratic leadership just as the midterms are starting to kick into gear.

The tensions come after a DNC panel moved forward this week with the potential ouster of two elected officials, including gun control activist David Hogg.

Now officials find themselves in a war of words over the issues at play, with Hogg alleging the move is a sign of party insiders seeking to force him out over his calls for supporting primary challengers to certain incumbents.

Though others at the DNC deny the vote was related to Hogg’s efforts, the feud is stirring up drama that Democrats want to avoid as they focus on regaining control of the House and possibly flipping the Senate next year.

“I hate to be the party of chaos when the GOP is doing such a good job of it,” Democratic consultant Marj Halperin said. “This isn’t the priority voters want the DNC to be focused on.”

Pressure had been bubbling up for weeks, even before the DNC’s Credentials Committee voted Monday in favor of holding a new election for the two positions that Hogg and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta currently hold.

Hogg, who was elected to one of the DNC’s vice chair positions in February, first sparked controversy last month when he indicated that his group, Leaders We Deserve, would launch a $20 million effort to back primary challenges to incumbent House Democrats in safe seats. He emphasized that the group wouldn’t target Democrats running in competitive districts or those who have been effective at standing up to President Trump.

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/21/nx-s1-5404970/ambassador-israel-mike-huckabee-interview

TEL AVIV, Israel — The new U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told NPR he is "outraged" at the leaders of Britain, France and Canada for condemning Israel's new military offensive in Gaza.

"The prolonged suffering for everybody is on Hamas, and I'm outraged that the U.K., Canada, France, they're blaming the wrong perpetrator," Huckabee, the former Republican governor of Arkansas, said in an interview Wednesday at a U.S. Embassy office in Tel Aviv.

Israel launched an intensified offensive in Gaza on Sunday, ordering mass evacuations, stepping up airstrikes throughout the territory and killing hundreds of Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. Under intense international pressure, Israel has begun to allow a small amount of aid into the enclave this week after imposing a total blockade on the entry of food, medicine and other goods for nearly three months — but the new aid has not yet been distributed to civilians in Gaza.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-melania-intimate-imagery-bill-sign-c7416b4935f8ccac9fd2909e494da9f1
President Donald Trump on Monday signed into law the Take It Down Act, a measure that imposes penalties for online sexual exploitation that first lady Melania Trump helped usher through Congress, and he had her sign it, too, despite what sounded like a mild objection on her part.

“C’mon, sign it anyway,” the president told his wife. “She deserves to sign it,” he said.

After she added her signature, the president held up the document to show both of their names to the audience at the ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. Melania Trump’s signature is merely symbolic since first ladies are not elected and they play no role in the enactment of legislation.

In March, Melania Trump used her first public appearance since resuming the role of first lady to travel to Capitol Hill to lobby House members to pass the bill following its approval by the Senate.

At a signing ceremony, she called the new law a “national victory” that will help protect children from online exploitation, including through the use of artificial intelligence to make fake images.

“AI and social media are the digital candy for the next generation, sweet addictive and engineered to have an impact on the cognitive development of our children,” she said. “But unlike sugar, these new technologies can be weaponized, shape beliefs and, sadly, affect emotions and even be deadly.”

The president said the proliferation of images made using AI means that “countless women have been harassed with deepfakes and other explicit images distributed against their will.” He said what’s happening is “just so horribly wrong.”

“Today, we’re making it totally illegal,” Trump said.