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Local columns

Failure never a reason to quit politics

Politics is the only profession of which I am aware in which competence doesn’t seem to matter. One can fail miserably; one can be corrupt and one can get away with crimes that if committed by someone outside of elective office, arrest, prosecution and a stint in jail would be the result. Yet ...

AG: $1.8B fund to compensate Trump’s allies now scrapped

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is scrapping plans to create a $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate allies of the Republican president, the Justice Department's top official said Tuesday in retreating from a program that faced setbacks in the courts and a fierce political backlash ...

Lie at heart of Trump’s slush fund

The Orwellian “Anti-Weaponization Fund” Trump has created — the legal equivalent of twirling the combination lock on Fort Knox and driving off with gold bars — purports to be righting a wrong. The bogus (and badly written) “settlement agreement,” which is laughable as there was no ...

Court rules Pentagon illegally banned transgender troops

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pentagon policy illegally banned transgender troops from military service, a divided panel of federal appeal court judges ruled on Monday in another legal setback for President Donald Trump's sweeping agenda. The majority opinion — by a three-judge panel from the U.S. ...

Almanac for June 2, 2026

Today is Tuesday, June 2, the 153rd day of 2026. There are 212 days left in the year. Today in history: In 1953, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned at age 27 at a ceremony in London's Westminster Abbey, 16 months after the death of her father, King George VI. Also on this date: In 1886, ...

A nation of suspects

Some of the recent legal challenges to the use of surveillance by the Department of Homeland Security upon Americans have resulted in the revelation of truly terrifying behavior by the government, in direct defiance of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. We now know that the federal ...