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The US is the only wealthy country in the world that does not guarantee paid sick leave for workers.

Trump’s effort to use budget reconciliation for his scheme to take over elections now becomes even more of a stretch. The post Budget Consequences of Lindsey Graham’s Sudden Departure appeared first on The American Prospect.

Read an exclusive excerpt from Brian Tyler Cohen forthcoming book, 'The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World.'

The State Legislator Israel Caucus says it’s an independent nonprofit. The Israeli government discreetly paid for its first D.C. junket.

Twelve Democratic-led states on Monday sued to stop Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing that a merger of two of the country’s largest media companies would hurt American consumers. The attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington joined together to file the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit argues that the merger will hurt the market for film distribution and give the new company too much power over the market for distributing basic cable channels.“The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.If Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. is successful, the company would own two major news networks in CNN and CBS News, the movie studio Warner Bros., and the streaming service HBO Max. Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison, staunch supporters of President Trump, own Paramount Skydance, and would effectively have their own conservative media empire.The merger has also raised concerns that CNN would be overhauled to reflect the conservative political views of the Ellisons. The two Trump allies have already steered Paramount’s CBS News to the right, causing its ratings to plummet and, in the process, an employee exodus from its flagship 60 Minutes program.Trump is very much in favor of the merger, holding a longtime vendetta against CNN over its critical coverage of him, and has discussed who he wants to be fired at the network once the takeover is complete. Other officials in the Trump administration, such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have openly cheered on pro-Trump changes at CNN.The Department of Justice said last month that it would not challenge Paramount’s move, saying it was “not likely to harm competition or American consumers.” Now that decision will go to federal court, where a judge will determine if the damage to the public breaks the law.

President Trump is spending taxpayer funds worth thousands of dollars to make and hang more large banners with his face on them all over federal buildings in Washington, D.C.Democratic Senator Adam Schiff shared newly discovered federal contracts with MeidasTouch News that show government agencies putting their own budgets toward “America First” banners, which include ones of the president’s face.The Department of the Interior made a $39,000 contract for “America First” banners with Trump’s portrait, while the Federal Aviation Administration awarded a $114,000 contract for “Freedom 250” banners. Both contracts went to a Maryland-based graphic design agency called Grafik Industries.Using taxpayer dollars to fund government propaganda and self-promotion by public officials isn’t allowed, Schiff says.“The Trump administration is spending hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars to glorify and pay tribute to a sitting U.S. President and his political agenda,” Schiff said in a statement. “Not only is this a terrible waste of Americans’ hard-earned money, it is clearly against the law. Congress has long outlawed spending tax dollars on propaganda and self-aggrandizement and an eight-story high Donald Trump head certainly qualifies as propaganda.”In September, Schiff issued a report showing that Trump had spent at least $56,000 on promotional banners with his face that were later hung on government buildings, including the Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Health and Human Services headquarters. This is part of a pattern of Trump wanting to put his name and face on as many things as possible in Washington, D.C. and remake the city in his own image.No matter how much money Trump wastes on his propaganda art, it won’t change the fact that his popularity is plummeting and that federal workers in the nation’s capital hate him.

Last spring, it was rumored that agents with the FBI were trained to redact portions of the Epstein files before the documents became public. On Sunday, agency officials admitted to the scheme.It took independent journalist and award-winning podcaster Allison Gill a year, a Freedom of Information Act request, and a subsequent lawsuit against the government to obtain evidence that the bureau had specifically trained its investigators to scrub the Epstein files clean. On Sunday, Gill received a stunning admission from the FBI confirming that the training videos—which were never released as part of the legal mandate—do in fact exist.Numerous federal agents from both the FBI and the Justice Department have shared their experiences of participating in the censorship effort, recounting how they would sometimes be locked in the building for 24- or 48-hour shifts to review hundreds of thousands of files, videos, and photos related to Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking ring. One of the things agents were reportedly instructed to redact was mentions of Donald Trump’s name.“They confided in me that there existed an unclassified share point site where a Powerpoint deck lived, and that the Powerpoint deck had training videos embedded in it, instructing them on how to find and log and mark Trump’s name and other information for redaction,” Gill said in a video report.The bureau’s information management division was predominantly tasked with censoring the documents, despite the fact that the unit has not historically been used to scrub documents for publication. So the FBI had to create specialized training videos for the agents, instructing them how to “use an Excel spreadsheet to log Trump’s name, the page number, and the document,” reported Gill.Even still, Trump was mentioned more than 38,000 times in the initial release of the Epstein files. His name also appeared in an FBI tip sheet listing abuse allegations, including one in which an unknown source accuses Trump of forcing one of Epstein’s victims, presumed to be 13 or 14 years old at the time, to perform oral sex on him “approximately 35 years ago” in New Jersey.

The Pan American Health Organization on Friday warned that the country faces a “critical” emergency that could trigger a major health crisis.