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Donald Trump’s administration has found a new way to grant ICE total impunity after a slew of deadly incidents involving federal immigration agents. Last week, FBI agents received notice that their agency would no longer investigate claims of assault against immigration agents, sources told The New York Times. Instead of involving the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations—a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement—would likely be responsible for investigating confrontations, according to the agency’s guidance. The purpose of these investigations is to determine whether federal immigration agents were in fact attacked, but their findings can also be used to prosecute DHS agents who are involved in violent confrontations. Trump administration officials have insisted that anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes” with immigration agents should be charged with felony assault, which is punishable by up to eight years in prison. In multiple violent confrontations between agents and civilians, both fatal and not, the government has been quick to claim that the agents felt threatened.The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security denied that any such change had been made.“The relationship between D.H.S. and D.O.J. in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and F.B.I. will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” the agencies told the Times in a joint statement. “This administration has been clear, anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”Already, hundreds of criminal cases alleging assault against immigration officers have completely fallen apart. If implemented, this guidance would be particularly concerning considering how many lies immigration officials have told about their violent confrontations with protesters and immigrants. Last week, an ICE agent shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man legally in the United States, while he drove with his three-year-old daughter in Maine. The next day, a man in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer while being chased by ICE.The week before that, an ICE agent shot and killed longtime Houston resident and father of three Lorenzo Salgado Araujo while he was driving. Federal agents claimed that he tried to ram the officers—a claim that eyewitnesses denied and that has crumbled under the slightest scrutiny.

This week, about 350,000 Haitians in the US will lose their legal status in light of a US Supreme Court decision on June 25 that allows the Trump administration to gut the Temporary Protected Status program. For decades, immigrants from countries rocked by natural disasters or armed conflict have sought refuge in the US under […]

Millions of people across North America have experienced hazardous air pollution this month as nearly a thousand active wildfires continue to rage in Canada. In addition to releasing hazardous chemicals and smoke darkening skies across the continent, the fires in Canada have also disproportionately impacted Indigenous communities, forcing thousands to evacuate their homes. Republican politicians have been loath to acknowledge the role of the climate crisis in making extreme weather events like this more frequent and intense, instead blaming Canadian officials for poor forest management. President Donald Trump has even threatened to impose new tariffs on Canada over the record levels of hazardous air. Independent Canadian journalist Rachel Gilmore says that while Trump’s comments are “extremely offensive” to people in the country, Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney’s policies — while acknowledging the science — also do little to mitigate the climate crisis as he approves new oil pipelines that would operate for decades. “He’s not exactly taking the climate action that we need here in Canada,” Gilmore says of Carney.

“No-zero” grading policies are becoming more common in US schools. South Carolina is the first state to ban these policies.

Brasília and Washington blame each other for their trade war, which saw the US impose 25% tariffs on Brazilian imports this month.

Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., are racing to win the support of the two most powerful college sports conferences in the country for their proposal to create national rules of the road for athletes.

The post On This Nearly Deserted Alaska Island, You Pay to Keep Hundreds of Empty Buildings Wired for Internet appeared first on ProPublica.

A global AI memory shortage threatens to morph into a geopolitical fight as more countries campaign to shore up their own supply, a South Korean tech executive said.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has attacked the very concept of property taxes. In a speech last year, he portrayed them as unfair. “You buy a home, you pay off the mortgage, and yet, you still have to write a check to the government every year—just for the privilege of living on your own private property. Is the property yours, or are you just renting it from the government?” DeSantis is trying to push through a “reform” to Florida’s property tax system that would eventually exempt the first $250,000 of a person’s home value from being taxed, promising that eventually 60 percent of homeowners would pay no property tax at all. Proposals to eliminate or heavily limit property tax are under consideration in other states, too. The Idaho Republican Party has called for the wholesale elimination of property tax, describing it as “an inherently unjust tax that converts privately owned property into government collateral and threatens homeownership.”