The proposed budget would cut funding next year for IGs at the Environmental Protection Agency, Homeland Security, State Department, the Treasury, Department of Agriculture, and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the report.

The IG offices at the General Services Administration, Defense Department, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services and the Justice Department were not given the budget increases requested.

jerseyhoya wrote:

slugsrbad wrote:538 House Forecast released today. States a 69-75% chance for Dems to take the House depending on which forecast you use.

75% feels about right at this point

Anecdotally we've polled in a couple districts this week that the model has at 2/3+ to stay GOP and one was tied and the other had the Dem narrowly ahead. But unlike the presidential it's not like he's got enough district specific polling to drill down individually.

Trump believes he has emerged looking strong and decisive in his escalating feud with Brennan, the aides said
...

aides would prefer a more thorough process or that he drop the matter altogether, and they are scrambling to review the list of people Trump says he would like to strip of clearances. These officials said Trump did not focus on his power to remove clearances until this summer.
...

“The process is essentially meaningless,” one White House aide said. “If Trump wants to do it, he’ll just do it.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke suggested that climate change may have a role in the recent wildfires that have ravaged California. When asked by CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang whether he accepted that climate change was part of the problem, Zinke said "of course." He also acknowledged that "temperatures are rising."

However, Zinke also reiterated an argument that he made earlier this week, blaming environmental groups for preventing dead trees from being cleared due to their opposition to the logging industry.

"The only endangered species happens to be a logger," Zinke said.

Earlier this week, Zinke blamed "environmental terrorist groups" for California's destructive wildfires in an interview with Breitbart Radio.

At 9:06 a.m. on August 1, 2014, just over an hour after the start of a humanitarian ceasefire, fighters from the Hamas terror group emerged from a tunnel in the southeastern part of Rafah and attacked a nearby IDF unit, killing two soldiers and capturing Lt. Hadar Goldin, dragging him back into their tunnel.

Six minutes later, troops in the area initiated the so-called Hannibal Protocol, a controversial order giving commanders near unlimited freedom to do anything necessary to prevent the capture of a soldier.

According to IDF figures, in the ensuing offensive, 42 armed Palestinian combatants were killed, along with 72 others, whom the military acknowledged were likely civilians. The high death toll led to the day’s events later being called “Black Friday.”

According to the army’s findings, the Israeli offensive lasted approximately 10 hours, during which time artillery cannons launched some 250 shells, tanks fired approximately 140 shells and Israeli aircraft conducted dozens of strikes against targets in the city, which is home to approximately 150,000 people

Congressional candidate Marty Nothstein was placed on unpaid leave from his decade-long post as executive director of the Lehigh Valley velodrome in February after its board was notified he was the subject of a sexual misconduct investigation, The Morning Call has learned.

The unspecified misconduct claim was lodged with a U.S. Olympic-related organization and dates to an alleged incident from about 2000, the year Nothstein won an Olympic gold medal, according to a velodrome board email reviewed by reporters.

The alleged misconduct may have occurred at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center in Trexlertown, according to a February email to the board from Andy Ralston, then board president, that was recently reviewed by reporters.

The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it," Trump tweeted Friday morning.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said in an administrative complaint this week that Facebook violated the Fair Housing Act because its targeting systems allow advertisers to exclude certain audiences, such as families with young children or disabled people, from seeing housing ads.

"When Facebook uses the vast amount of personal data it collects to help advertisers to discriminate, it's the same as slamming the door in someone's face," HUD Assistant Secretary Anna María Farias said in a statement Friday.

Service providers such as Facebook typically aren't liable for the actions of their users. In a separate, civil lawsuit filed by housing advocates, the Justice Department says Facebook doesn't fall under that category because it mines user data, some of which users have to provide, and customizes ads for specific audiences. The government says that counts as being a content creator, rather than merely a transmitter of user content.