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Donald Trump has made clear that upon his return to office, he intends to sic the authorities under his control on his political enemies and critics. Inauguration Day is still months away, but the newly minted president-elect is wasting no time adding to his list of targets – starting with people speculating that he may sell Truth Social.

“There are fake, untrue, and probably illegal rumors and/or statements made by, perhaps, market manipulators or short sellers, that l am interested in selling shares of Truth [Social],” Trump raged Friday on Truth Social.

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election in convincing fashion, trouncing Kamala Harris in the Electoral College and becoming the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. He claimed during his victory speech that he has “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” to do what he wants — and what he wants, judging by promises he’s made on the campaign trail, is terrifying.

He’ll also be far better-equipped to carry out his agenda than he was during his first term in office.

Trump reportedly did not expect to win...

Update: President Joe Biden signed a massive national security bill that requires that ByteDance divest TikTok or face a ban on app stores as soon as nine months from now.

Biden gave remarks after signing the bill, highlighting the $95 billion outlay for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

He did not mention the provision on TikTok, the popular social media platform that has raised concerns that the Chinese government would get access to user information.

In a video posted on X/Twitter, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said that the new law was “obviously a disappointing moment, but it does not need to be a defining one.”

“Rest assured, we are not going anywhere,” he said, adding that they would challenge the law in the courts.

“The facts and the Constitution are on side, and we expect to prevail again,” he said.

ByteDance has nine months to sell TikTok or face a ban,...

The Department of Justice revealed on Tuesday that it will distribute close to $139 million to victims in response to 139 “administrative claims arising from allegations of sexual abuse” committed by the disgraced ex-usa gymnastics physician Larry Nassar, according to a statement.

“For decades, Lawrence Nassar abused his position, betraying the trust of those under his care and medical supervision while skirting accountability,” Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer said in a statement, via ABC News. The settlement will resolve the mishandling of the highly-publicized case by the FBI, which failed...

Former President Donald Trump has attracted attention with his reversal on the issue of a ban on the Chinese-owned social media app, TikTok.

Last week, Trump took to his Truth Social account to express his thoughts on the proposed TikTok ban being debated in Congress. He wrote, “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business.”

Trump’s post came shortly after a meeting with GOP mega-donor Jeff Yass, a hedge fund billionaire who holds a 15 percent stake in ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. In 2020, Trump spearheaded efforts to ban TikTok in the United States, with concerns over national security.

The connection between Yass and TikTok did not escape the notice of Steve Bannon, former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser. Bannon suggested in his own social media post that Yass’ substantial financial influence may be behind Trump’s sudden change of heart toward TikTok.

Republicans, including former president Donald Trump, have targeted the Justice Department, accusing the agency and its staff of weaponizing the justice system, as well as individual judges. This type of rhetoric has contributed to “toxicity” and an “unprecedented rise” in threats against public officials, said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

“On a weekly basis — sometimes more often — I am getting reports about threats to public officials, threats to our prosecutors, threats to law enforcement agents who work in the Justice Department, threats to judges,” Monaco said in an interview that...

In what’s being billed as the Saudi leader’s “first interview with a major American news network since 2019,” Fox News announced that Bret Baier will sit down with Mohammed bin Salman for a “no holds barred” conversation.

The pre-taped encounter with the controversial crown prince will cover a range of topics, including the future of the kingdom and its relations with the United States.

The latter is of special interest, given that the Saudis and the Russians agreed this year to an oil price cut that has sent futures prices for Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate, the benchmarks for crude oil, up 13% and 14%, respectively, and diesel prices up 40% since May.

More recently, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Ct) this week demanded communications and records from PGA Tour and Liv Golf regarding their planned merger. Liv Golf is financed by the Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which, Blumenthal says,...

New York, April 30 (Ians) The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray has revealed that Chinese hackers outnumber FBI cyber staff 50 to one.

The disclosure came as the US and other countries are facing immense cyber threats, particularly from China.

“To give you a sense of what we’re up against, if each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intel analysts focused exclusively on the China threat, Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI Cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1,” Wray said during a House Appropriations subcommittee meeting, reports CNBC.

China has “a bigger hacking programme than every other major nation combined and has stolen more of our personal and corporate data than all other nations — big or small — combined,” he told the Congress panel.

Other countries like Russia, Iran and North Korea also pose significant cybersecurity concerns.

The FBI is currently probing more than 100 “ransomware variants...

The Power, Amazon Prime Video's electrifying new sci-fi series, feels at once very current and grounded in the roots of its genre. The series is named after a 2016 novel by British author Naomi Alderman, who co-created the adaptation with Sarah Quintrell and Raelle Tucker. A relatively faithful adaptation of the novel, The Power explores a world in which teenage girls suddenly develop the ability to create electricity at will.

Another key player in bringing the events of The Power to life is composer Morgan Kibby. Kibby is a versatile songwriter, producer, and musician, whose rich history of collaboration includes time spent in the band M83 and penning hits with artists including Panic! At The Disco. Kibby's previous scoring work includes Tales of the Walking Dead and The Watcher, though she has stated that The Power is her biggest project yet; the statement is easy to believe, given that The Power...

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Rabbi Marvin Hier is the founder of Los Angeles’ Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance and Moriah Films. He is the only rabbi who has ever been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and he has won two Oscars as a producer of documentaries about the Holocaust.

It isn’t every day that an Orthodox rabbi is invited to deliver a prayer at the inauguration of an American president, but there I was on January 20, 2017 doing just that. To be clear, as the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, I have never endorsed any candidate from either party. But I was honored, as an American Jew born of poor immigrant parents, to stand before the nation and the world and, flanked by presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and incoming president Donald Trump,...

The Justice Department said in a court filing on Monday that it opposes the release of an affidavit that was used to justify its search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property a week ago.

Media outlets, including Dow Jones Co. and ABC News, have sought the unsealing of additional records beyond the search warrant and a property receipt. The latter records, unsealed on Friday, showed that FBI agents retrieved 10 sets of classified material from the property, including those marked as top secret. The search warrant also showed that the search was part of an investigation into potential violations of several federal statutes, including statutes prohibiting concealment, removal or mutilation; gathering, transmitting or losing defense information; and destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.

In its filing, Justice Department attorneys wrote that the “the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing...

London, July 7 (Ians) In an unprecedented move, the heads of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the UK domestic security service MI5 jointly warned about imminent threats by the Chinese government’s global espionage campaign. At a joint event at MI5 headquarters in London, FBI Director Christopher Wray and MI5 Director General Ken […]...

The FBI is warned lawmakers earlier this month that adherents to QAnon could engage in violence against their political opponents, as adherents of the deranged conspiracy become even more fanatical in their belief that the world is governed by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles continues.

The two-page threat assessment, titled “Adherence to QAnon Conspiracy Theory by Some Domestic Violent Extremists” and sent to lawmakers on June 4th, warns that it is “likely” that QAnon followers will believe they have an “obligation” to move on from being “digital soldiers” and engage...

Amidst an opening segment on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” that touched on Texas Governor Greg Abbott lifting the state’s mask mandate and the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team welcoming fans back to the arena with a distressingly phallic animated hand sanitizer bottle, John Oliver devoted some time to respond to conservative media’s predictably histrionic coverage of the Dr. Seuss publication controversy.

Oliver observed that while most news networks devoted significant airtime to FBI director Christopher Wray’s testimony before Congress about what right-wing insurrectionists were behind the Capitol riot, Fox News and its ilk did not. Instead, the conservative network was more interested in Dr. Seuss. The trust that controls the children’s author’s estate has decided to cease publication of six books that contain racially insensitive imagery, which conservative media figure Glenn Beck called “fascism.” Many other conservatives were calling the decision book-banning, which Oliver pointed out is inaccurate.

John Oliver had a lot to unpack as Last Week Tonight hits its first birthday in the white void. For those who are new to the HBO show, production of Oliver’s show shifted to this mystery space at the top of the pandemic, which has proven to be quite entertaining and enjoyable. As much as I would like to see the show return to the studio, there is a peaceful comfort to see Oliver wrap up the week’s news in the white void.

Nonetheless, amid Andrew Cuomo’s growing scandals and Republicans and some Democrats killing hopes of a $15 minimum wage, Oliver started by commenting on the opening of certain spaces as cases of Covid-19 begin to decrease and the vaccine slowly gains traction. He specifically focused on how the Milwaukee Bucks started welcoming fans in limited numbers back into its stadium by a cartoon squirt bottle of hand sanitizer.

In her debut as White House press secretary, Jen Psaki said that the daily briefings will return, but she also signaled a new direction from the years of Donald Trump.

Psaki told reporters that when Joe Biden asked her to do the job, they talked of the “importance of bringing truth and transparency back to the briefing room.”

Her predecessor, Kayleigh McEnany, often took on the tone of a campaign spokeswoman during her tenure, and even held dual roles as the election neared.

That is probably why the first question that Psaki was asked, by the Associated Press’ Zeke Miller, had to do with whether she saw her primary role “as promoting the interests of the president” or as someone “to provide us with the unvarnished truth so that we can share that with the American people.”

“I come to this podium having served in the White House and at...

YouTube, which remains one of the sole major platforms on which President Trump still operates a live account, has taken down two channels belonging to former White House chief strategist and prominent alt-right figure Steve Bannon.

The bans resulted from claims made by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani during a stream on Bannon’s War Room channel on Friday, where Giuliani claimed that the election had been stolen, The Mercury News reports. The War Room channel, which distributed episodes of Bannon’s podcast of the same name, counted 330,000 subscribers prior to its shuttering. YouTube also banned a second Bannon channel for violating its three-strike rule dubbed Trump at War -- A Film by Stephen K. Bannon, per The Mercury News.

YouTube said it removed a video from Bannon’s channel back in November for making threats against people -- presumably referring to when he called for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci...

The latest Senate hearing facing the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook played out as expected: Republicans complained that the platforms were too aggressive in their moderation practices; Democrats suggested that they have been too lenient to control the flow of misinformation.

That was particularly true as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-ca), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, queried Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about President Donald Trump’s false claims that he won the election and of mass voter fraud.

“On November 7th, President Trump tweeted this, ‘I won this election by a lot.’ That is obviously not true. President Trump lost the election. The warning label that Twitter applied to the tweet says, ‘Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted. Does that label do enough to prevent the tweet’s harms when the tweet is still visible and is not accurate?...

Donald Trump, in one of his first major acts as a lame duck president, has fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

The president said Monday that he has named Christopher Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, as his acting replacement.

“I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately…..Chris will do a Great job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.”

…Chris will do a Great job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020

Trump’s action signaled potentially months of turmoil during the presidential transition period, with other administration figures, including FBI director Christopher Wray and even Attorney General William Barr, reportedly cited as the source of the president’s unhappiness.

Twitter is taking action against Steve Bannon after the former White House chief strategist made controversial comments on his podcast Thursday.

During a Thursday episode of his War Room YouTube podcast, Bannon suggested that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray should be fired but things should also be taken “a step further.”

“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put the heads on pikes, right? I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to Federal Bureaucrats: you either get with the program ...

Twitter is taking action against Steve Bannon after the former White House chief strategist made controversial comments on his podcast Thursday.

During a Thursday episode of his War Room YouTube podcast, Bannon suggested that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray should be fired but things should also be taken “a step further.”

“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put the heads on pikes, right? I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to Federal Bureaucrats: you either get with the program ...

The fortunes of the global record industry can be neatly summed up in three stats: Its peak came in 1999, back when Ricky Martin was Livin’ La Vida Loca, as the world’s record companies generated nearly $29 billion; by the close of 2013, according to Ifpi data, that number had been slashed in half, falling to below $15 billion; and last year, thanks to growth almost entirely driven by streaming, it had recovered to just over $19 billion – an upswing from the industry’s nadir, but still roughly $10 billion off the peak of the CD boom.

Washington — Oak Creek. Charleston. Pittsburgh. Charlottesville. Poway. And now, El Paso.

That’s just to begin the list of places victimized by violence fueled by racism, bigotry, homophobia, or white supremacy — a list that grows longer with no end in sight. Hate crimes climbed by 17 percent in 2017, according to the FBI. The bureau’s director, Christopher Wray, told lawmakers last month that most of the domestic terrorism cases involving race were “motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.”

“Every marginalized community is under attack right now,...

It will come as no surprise that the White House is in chaos, but what is shocking is that this fact is being confirmed by President Donald Trump’s outgoing Chief of Staff John Kelly.

In an exit interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kelly admits that the White House is not quite the “well-oiled machine” that Trump loves to brag about. Two specific instances he cited as chaotic were the implementation of the travel ban and the “zero-tolerance” family separation policy at the Mexican border.

When the travel ban...

United States senators are taking turns reading the FBI’s updated background investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. But the report is unaccountably incomplete. The FBI interviewed only one of Kavanaugh’s three accusers. And investigators failed to interview key witnesses who could have helped corroborate allegations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh, or exposed lies he appears to have told the Senate while under oath. Most striking, the FBI did not interview Kavanaugh, himself.

Nor did the FBI interview Kavanaugh’s first accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, nor any...