U.S. News

Federal prosecutors investigating Mayor Eric Adams of New York and his 2021 campaign have served a new round of grand jury subpoenas in their long-running corruption inquiry, issuing them to Mr. Adams himself, to City Hall and to his election committee, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

The three subpoenas were served in July and seek an extensive range of materials, including text messages, other communications and documents, two of the people said.

The subpoenas contain similar language and seek information in a number of areas, including travel by the mayor, his aides and others, as well as fund-raising. They appear likely to sweep in information related to some aides to the mayor and people who worked both in City Hall and on Mr. Adams's 2021 campaign, the people said.

The new subpoenas came nearly nine months after the corruption investigation first entered public view, meaningfully altering the city's political landscape. Since then, the mayor has become a political target, with sagging approval ratings and at least three challengers in the 2025 Democratic primary.

The discounts, agreed to after months of negotiations with drug manufacturers, range between 38% and 79% on the medication’s list price, which is the cost of medication before discounts or rebates are applied — not the price people actually pay for prescriptions.

Medicare spent $50 billion covering the drugs last year and taxpayers are expected to save $6 billion on the new prices, which do not go into effect until 2026. Older adults could save as much as $1.5 billion in total on their medications in out-of-pocket costs. Administration officials released few details about how they arrived at those calculations.

The newly negotiated prices will impact the price of drugs used by millions of older Americans to help manage diabetes, blood cancers and prevent heart failure or blood clots. The drugs include the blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis and diabetes drugs Jardiance and Januvia.

A US Army analyst has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to sell military secrets to China, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has said.

Sgt Korbein Schultz was arrested in March after an investigation by the FBI and US Army counterintelligence alleged that he was paid $42,000 (£33,000) in exchange for dozens of sensitive security records.

The criminal conspiracy began in June 2022 and continued up until his arrest, officials said.

He is scheduled for sentencing in January.

Sgt Schultz, who held a security clearance to access top secret information, conspired to collect data with someone whom he believed to be living in Hong Kong, according to court documents.

The purported Hong Kong resident asked Sgt Schultz to collect sensitive data related to missile defence and mobile artillery systems, according to court records.

Sgt Schultz also collected data on US fighter aircraft, military tactics, and the US military's defence strategy for Taiwan, based on what it learned from Russia's war in Ukraine.

A United States court ruled on July 24 that the Fourth Amendment right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution protects travelers from “nonroutine searches” of their cellphones at the border.

There is a “substantial risk that allowing warrantless searches of incoming travelers’ electronic devices will unduly burden, chill, or otherwise infringe upon their First Amendment activities,” Judge Nina Morrison also acknowledged.

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Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced last Sunday an initiative to invite Texas doctors to consider relocating to her neighboring state of New Mexico, in response to Texas’s “draconian abortion ban.”

The governor launched a direct appeal to Texas health care providers, running a full-page ad in five major Texas newspapers last Sunday. The ads contained an “open letter” to “Texas healthcare providers” telling them that they are welcome in New Mexico to practice medicine without restrictions.

“I know that legal restrictions on healthcare in Texas have created a heavy burden for medical practitioners –– especially those of you now barred by law from providing the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare. It must be distressing that a draconian abortion ban has restricted your right to practice and turned it into a political weapon,” Lujan Grisham wrote in the open letter.

“I certainly respect those of you who remain committed to caring for patients in Texas, but I also invite those of you who can no longer tolerate these restrictions to consider practicing next door in New Mexico,” she added.

Lujan Grisham said her state was “taking steps” to make sure New Mexico does not follow in Texas’s footsteps in passing restrictive abortion laws.

“You have my word: I will never interfere with the fundamental right of health workers to care for their patients in New Mexico,” she wrote at the end of the letter. “Whether you are a nurse, a resident, a physician assistant, or a doctor, we cordially and enthusiastically invite you to the Land of Enchantment, where you are free to care for your patients.”

The acknowledgment came after POLITICO began receiving emails from an anonymous account with documents from inside Trump’s operation.

On July 22, POLITICO began receiving emails from an anonymous account. Over the course of the past few weeks, the person — who used an AOL email account and identified themselves only as “Robert” — relayed what appeared to be internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official.

The person said they had a “variety of documents from [Trump’s] legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions.”

Asked how they obtained the documents, the person responded: “I suggest you don’t be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question, will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them.”

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Encrypting police radio transmissions has become increasingly common nationwide. In fact, the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), the largest professional organization dedicated solely to broadcast and digital journalism, has said that radio encryption is the foremost concern among its members. “[T]he consequences of encryption prevent the public from accessing information about the activities of police in real-time. These communications provide individuals and newsrooms with essential updates on issues happening in their communities such as violent crime, hazardous conditions or officer-involved shootings,” Dan Shelley, the president and CEO of RTDNA, wrote in January 2023. “The move to encrypt police scanner communications puts the public — and the newsrooms that serve them by seeking and reporting the truth — at risk.”

Press freedom advocates say that this surge in encryption can be traced back to the heightened scrutiny and demand for police accountability spurred by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2020. Following the BLM protests in 2020, during which citizens monitored police scanners and documented racist remarks made by law enforcement over radio frequencies, police departments nationwide introduced encryption protocols for routine police communications.

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Ariana Ramsey won an Olympic bronze medal with the U.S. women’s rugby team here last week. A few days later, something almost as exciting happened: She got a pap smear. For free.

“Like, what?” she said in a post on TikTok describing her new discovery: The Olympic Village offers free healthcare.

The United States, of course, does not. So in the days following her victory, Ramsey made appointments with the Village gynecologist, dentist and ophthalmologist. According to the Paris 2024 organizing committee, the Village also offers cardiology, orthopedics, physiotherapy, psychology, podiatry and, of course, sports medicine—all at no cost to the athletes. (Paralympic athletes will also have access to dermatology.)

Ramsey came to Paris as a rugby player. She is leaving as a healthcare influencer. More than 135,000 people have watched her initial TikTok, and another of the half-dozen follow-up videos she has made has pulled in more than 570 views. That is fine with her. The more she thinks about it, the more frustrated she is that she’s so astonished by the concept.

“That’s just America and their privatized healthcare system,” she laments in an interview, adding, “I’ll fight for universal healthcare.”

[...]

In fact, the Olympic Village has offered athletes and their delegations free healthcare since—ironically—the 1932 Los Angeles Games. But not many athletes know the option exists. The polyclinic is designed to handle as many as 700 patient visits per day, but Ramsey says many of the staffers there have thanked her for her videos, because she is bringing awareness to the option. She says she has gotten DMs from other athletes expressing surprise, and a few people have recognized her in person and said that her videos encouraged them to visit the clinic.

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A group of Deadheads plan to commemorate Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia’s birthday with a virtual fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

Spearheaded by David Gans, host of the national radio show “The Grateful Dead Hour,” and Steve Leventhal, owner of Acid Flashback Radio, the event dubbed Deadheads for Kamala aims to mobilize voters to support the Oakland native at the polls.

The free online gathering, which promises special guests, is scheduled for 8 p.m. Aug. 13.

Garcia, who died in 1995, was born on Aug. 1, but organizers were unable to pull together the event on the day due to scheduling conflicts. The San Francisco musician would have been 82 this month.

[...]

Deadheads for Kamala is one of many fundraising efforts to support the vice president, who swiftly launched her presidential campaign after President Joe Biden announced his exit from the race on July 21. Earlier this week, a group called White Dudes for Harris hosted a virtual rally, with appearances from fellow Oakland native Mark Hamill of “Star Wars” fame, director J.J. Abrams and “The Big Lebowski” actor Jeff Bridges.

[...]

Other celebrities such as pop singer Charli XCX, whose “kamala IS brat” tweet sparked countless memes of the candidate; Grammy-winning crooner John Legend, who shouted out the “wonder woman” during his recent performance with the San Francisco Symphony; and rapper Cardi B, who tweeted her excitement for Harris, have voiced their support.

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The Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC) and Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) on Tuesday released a new joint report titled “Exporting Repression: Attacks on Protestors During Xi Jinping’s Visit to San Francisco in November 2023”. The report meticulously documents 34 extensive cases of transnational repression (TNR) executed by the supporters of Chinese Communist Party against protestors during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco from November 14 to 17, 2023, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

• Spanning 160 pages, the report provides a detailed chronological narrative of the attacks, drawing primarily from interviews and testimonies of 26 protesters and one journalist, most of whom were victims of TNR. It unveils the mobilisation and transportation of Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) united front groups across the US to San Francisco, where they engaged in acts of assault, harassment, and intimidation.

• This created a pervasive atmosphere of fear and hostility against Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, and Chinese democracy activists, including individuals as young as 16 years old, for demonstrating their opposition to Xi and the CCP.

• The report also scrutinised the response mechanisms of US policymakers and law enforcement authorities at both federal and local levels. “Despite strong awareness of CCP TNR at the federal level and a general commitment to countering it, agencies were unprepared to do so in San Francisco. Local law enforcement authorities exhibited a lack of awareness of TNR, were often unresponsive when alerted to the attacks, and took little and inadequate action in response to the attacks. The result was that protesters were insufficiently protected and perpetrators have not been held accountable,” the report stated.

The report urges the U.S. authorities to investigate whether the united front groups in the U.S. are operating as unregistered foreign agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), implementing vetting processes for diplomatic visas issued to PRC applicants, screening for connections to TNR activities, offering protection to groups in the US subjected to TNR, and enacting legislation to create resources to combat TNR.

Now, Kunesh is the first Native woman to serve in the Minnesota state Senate.

Last year, she authored legislation that returned sacred land to the Upper Sioux community, and this year she successfully pushed through a bill to give land back to the Mille Lacs Band of the Ojibwe. She is also working on two bills to return state land in White Earth State Forest back to the White Earth Nation and land in Upper Red Lake back to the Red Lake Nation. The latter two bills died this year after generating lots of pushback locally, but Kunesh said she doesn’t plan to give up.

Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton used a artificial intelligence (AI) programme to address the House on Thursday. A year ago, the lawmaker was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, which makes it difficult for her to speak.

The AI programme allowed Wexton to make a clone of her speaking voice using old recordings of appearances and speeches she made in Congress. Wexton appears to be the first person to speak on the House floor with a voice recreated by AI.

It's almost like endless mergers lead to homogeneity.