House Approves $95 Billion Aid Bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan
After months of delay at the hands of a bloc of ultraconservative Republicans, the package drew overwhelming bipartisan support, reflecting broad consensus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/20/us/politics/house-vote-aid-ukraine-israel.html

The House voted resoundingly on Saturday to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as Speaker Mike Johnson put his job on the line to advance the long-stalled aid package by marshaling support from mainstream Republicans and Democrats.

In four back-to-back votes, overwhelming bipartisan coalitions of lawmakers approved fresh rounds of funding for the three U.S. allies, as well as another bill meant to sweeten the deal for conservatives that could result in a nationwide ban of TikTok.

The scene on the House floor reflected both the broad support in Congress for continuing to help the Ukrainian military beat back Russia, and the extraordinary political risk taken by Mr. Johnson to defy the anti-interventionist wing of his party who had sought to thwart the measure. Minutes before the vote on assistance for Kyiv, Democrats began to wave small Ukrainian flags on the House floor, as hard-right Republicans jeered.

Some of the 49 migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard by the state of Florida are now able to legally work in the United States and have temporary protections from deportation — because they are considered victims of a potential crime, their attorney says. The migrants are eligible for protections because they applied for a special kind of visa meant for crime victims who are helping law enforcement in the investigation of suspected criminal activity. They applied for what are known as U visas last year after they said they had been tricked into taking charter flights from San Antonio, Texas to the Massachusetts island with false promises of jobs and other aid, said Rachel Self, an attorney for the migrants. The migrant flight program — a taxpayer-funded operation led by Gov. Ron DeSantis and a politically connected private contractor — was designed to remove “unauthorized aliens” from Florida. But critics, including immigration advocacy groups, have pointed out that the migrants had legal status in the United States as asylum seekers and that they were found in Texas, not Florida. DeSantis has maintained the flights were conducted lawfully and that migrants boarded the flights “voluntarily.” Yet the recruitment tactics used in the first iteration of the governor’s migrant relocation program have resulted in a criminal investigation by the Bexar County sheriff in Texas and a federal lawsuit by some of the migrants who have claimed they were deceived by the state. Now, some of the migrants have been granted U visas, which are “set aside for victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are helpful to law enforcement or government officials in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. They can eventually lead to permanent lawful status in the United States.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article287896095.html

Judge should be removed from the bench and then tried for treason
https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/04/22/brooklyn-man-convicted-over-gun-hobby-by-biased-ny-court-could-be-facing-harsh-sentence-n2173162

I look forward to reading the Fox News and Newsmax article on this.

GOP operative’s conviction over illegal Russian contributions to Trump campaign upheld
The Hill
FILIP TIMOTIJA
April 20, 2024 at 2:01 PM

https://www.aol.com/news/gop-operative-conviction-over-illegal-180109584.html

A GOP political operative’s conviction over steering illegal Russian contributions to former President Trump’s 2016 campaign was upheld by a federal appeals court on Friday.

The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal of Jesse Benton, a veteran political operative.

Benton was convicted in late 2022. He had been charged with helping to orchestrate an illegal donation to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) for a Russian national, Roman Vasilenko.

Benton’s consulting firm received $100,000. The operative created a fake invoice on which he said the fee was for consulting. He then arranged for Vasilenko to meet with Trump at a fundraiser without revealing his nationality to the campaign or the former president, according to court documents.

Benton kept $75,000 for himself and used the remaining $25,000 to contribute to the campaign, according to a Justice Department release. He listed himself as a contributor for the donation, concealing the actual source of the funds when filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Those charged in the election fraud attempt to destroy US democracy for Trump included the state chair of the Republican party.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trumps-2020-fake-electors-charged-state-crimes-arizona-rcna149214

A state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday indicted so-called "fake electors" who backed then-President Donald Trump in 2020, following a sprawling investigation into the alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election in the state.

One month after the 2020 election, 11 Trump supporters convened at the Arizona GOP’s headquarters in Phoenix to sign a certificate claiming to be Arizona’s 11 electors to the Electoral College, though Biden won the state by 10,457 votes and his electors were certified by state officials. The state Republican Party documented the signing of the certificate in a social media post and sent it to Congress and the National Archives.

Among those charged is Kelli Ward, who served as chair of the Arizona GOP during the 2020 election and the immediate aftermath. She tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol: “Congress is adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures.” Ward was a consistent propagator of false claims that Arizona’s election results were rigged.

Others charged include: state legislators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman; Michael Ward, Kelli Ward’s husband; Tyler Bowyer, the Republican National Committee's Arizona committeeman and the chief operating officer of the Trump-aligned Turning Point USA; Greg Safsten, the former Arizona GOP executive director; former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon; Robert Montgomery, the former head of the Cochise County GOP; and Republican Party activists Samuel Moorhead, Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino.

>The indictment lists Trump as "Unindicted Coconspirator 1." It also includes redacted names of other people who have been charged in the case but have not yet been served.

https://www.cleveland.com/business/2024/04/feds-sue-popular-convenience-store-charging-racial-discrimination-in-hiring-practices.html

Feds sue popular convenience store, charging racial discrimination in hiring practices

BALTIMORE, Md. -- Federal officials have sued the Sheetz convenience store chain, claiming the company discriminated against job applicants who were Black, Native American and multiracial.

The discrimination occurred, the federal government said, as the company automatically eliminated job applicants that Sheetz deemed to have failed a criminal background check.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit in Baltimore against the company and two subsidiaries, charging that the convenience store and gas station chain’s practices have a disproportionate impact on minority applicants and thus run afoul of federal civil rights law.

Sheetz on Thursday denied the charges.

“Diversity and inclusion are essential parts of who we are,” company spokesperson Nick Ruffner said in a statement to The Associated Press. “We take these allegations seriously. We have attempted to work with the EEOC for nearly eight years to find common ground and resolve this dispute,”

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4612055-ai-generated-child-pornography-threatens-to-overwhelm-reporting-system-research/

Child pornography generated by artificial intelligence (AI) could overwhelm an already inundated reporting system for online child sexual abuse material, a new report from the Stanford Internet Observatory found.

The CyberTipline, which is run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), processes and shares reports of child sexual abuse material with relevant law enforcement for further investigation.

Open-source generative AI models that can be retrained to produce the material “threaten to flood the CyberTipline and downstream law enforcement with millions of new images,” according to the report.

“One million unique images reported due to the AI generation of [child sexual abuse material] would be unmanageable with NCMEC’s current technology and procedures,” the report said.

“With the capability for individuals to use AI models to create [child sexual abuse material], there is concern that reports of such content—potentially indistinguishable from real photos of children—may divert law enforcement’s attention away from actual children in need of rescue,” it added.

Several constraints already exist on the reporting system. Only about 5 percent to 8 percent of reports to the CyberTipline result in arrests in the U.S., according to Monday’s report.

https://apnews.com/article/misinformation-anonymous-accounts-social-media-2024-election-8a6b0f8d727734200902d96a59b84bf7

NEW YORK (AP) — The reposts and expressions of shock from public figures followed quickly after a user on the social platform Twitter who uses a pseudonym claimed that a government website had revealed “skyrocketing” rates of voters registering without a photo ID in three states this year — two of them crucial to the presidential contest.

“Extremely concerning,” Twitter owner Elon Musk replied twice to the post this past week.

“Are migrants registering to vote using SSN?” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former President Donald Trump, asked on Instagram, using the acronym for Social Security number.

Trump himself posted to his own social platform within hours to ask, “Who are all those voters registering without a Photo ID in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Arizona??? What is going on???”

State election officials soon found themselves forced to respond. They said the user, who pledges to fight, expose and mock “wokeness,” was wrong and had distorted Social Security Administration data. Actual voter registrations during the time period cited were much lower than the numbers being shared online.

Stephen Richer, the recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, refuted the claim in multiple Twitter posts while Jane Nelson, the secretary of state in Texas, issued a statement calling it “totally inaccurate.”

Yet by the time they tried to correct the record, the false claim had spread widely. In three days, the pseudonymous user’s claim amassed more than 63 million views on Twitter, according to the platform’s metrics. A thorough explanation from Richer attracted a fraction of that, reaching 2.4 million users.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-national-dies-russian-controlled-donetsk-russian-journalist-2024-04-19/

Russell Bentley, a 64-year-old American who has been fighting with pro-Russian fighters against Ukraine since 2014, was kidnapped and killed, according to his battalion and Russian media reports.

Russell, who was known by his call sign “Texas,” died in Donetsk, Margarita Simonyan, the head of pro-Kremlin RT, said in a Telegram post.

“He fought there for our people,” Simonyan said. “Terrible. Kingdom of heaven.”

The battalion he worked in, “Vostok,” confirmed he died in a social media post Friday.

“Russell Bentley was killed,” the battalion said. “We have to agree that such people and their cover-ups make evil banal.”

An official from Donetsk confirmed Bentley died, adding that Bentley’s wife informed him of the death.

Bentley had gone missing earlier this month after reportedly going to help after a Ukrainian strike in Donetsk, according to local police. He and his wife had been in line to deal with some administrative documents, when he went to go help. But when his wife went looking for him she only found his car, with his baseball cap, glasses, and a broken phone, according to news outlet Mash.
>His colleagues had reportedly suspected him of being a western spy.

Americans have for years been going to Ukraine to fight in the war. Since Russia invaded Ukraine again in 2022, Americans have joined foreign fighter legions to help Ukraine defend against Russia’s unprompted invasion, including Trevor Reed, the U.S. Marine who was freed from Russian prison, as The Daily Beast reported.

Popular kids show Bluey praised for introducing same-sex couple in season finale
The 49th episode of Bluey Season 3 featured a subtle reference to the show's first-ever same-sex couple
Dylan Murray

Published Apr 18, 2024, 18:12:22 GMT+1
Last updated Apr 18, 2024, 18:12:20 GMT+1

https://www.unilad.com/film-and-tv/disney/bluey-praised-gay-couple-season-finale-the-sign-313539-20240418

The Australian kid’s TV show Bluey has become one of the most critically acclaimed shows of its genre since its debut in 2018.

Upon Bluey’s eventual arrival worldwide on Disney+ a year later in 2019, the show became incredibly popular among both children and adults.

The popular show details the life of Bluey, a seven-year-old blue healer, and her little sister Bingo, a five-year-old red healer, alongside a supporting cast featuring their friends and family

The popular show details the life of Bluey, a seven-year-old blue healer, and her little sister Bingo, a five-year-old red healer, alongside a supporting cast featuring their friends and family