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An unofficial Twitter page attributed to a group of anti-capitalist, anti-fascist teens who call themselves the Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front said protesters want to establish the Chinook Land Autonomous Territory, or CLAT, in downtown Portland. The Chinook people include several indigenous groups native to the Pacific Northwest. Portland protesters early Wednesday began to set up tents in the park near the federal courthouse and have barricaded streets to create their own autonomous zone, likened to the since disbanded Capitol Hill Occupied Protest in Seattle. Demonstrators began erecting tents in downtown Portland’s Lownsdale Square, across the street from the federal...

Tweet here: Are ANTIFA leaders being scooped by FEDs now? pic.twitter.com/g7xztBZS0N— JustInformedNews.com (@informed_news) June 9, 2020

Federal law enforcement officials are probing whether "criminal actors" are coordinating violent activities during protests and are looking into reports that "rocks and bricks" have been dropped off to throw at police and other law enforcement as cities across the country grapple with the uptick in violence, a senior Justice Department official said. "You see the hallmarks... We're trying to see if there's a coordinated command and control, you see those bread crumbs and that's what we're trying to verify," the DOJ official said. Another DOJ official said the feds have seen signs of "very organized" coordination from "professional" agitators,...

The Justice Department and other executive branch agencies recommended Thursday that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoke and terminate China Telecom Corp.’s authorizations to provide international telecommunication services to and from the U.S. “Today, more than ever, the life of the nation and its people runs on our telecommunications networks,” said John C. Demers, assistant attorney general for national security. “The security of our government and professional communications, as well as of our most private data, depends on our use of trusted partners from nations that share our values and our aspirations for humanity,” Demers said in a statement. The...

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials tried to hack Indiana’s state electoral system with at least 14,800 “scans” or hits between Nov. 1, 2016, to Dec. 16, 2016, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned. The attacks are the second confirmed IT scanning assault by DHS officials against states that resisted then-President Barack Obama’s attempt to increase federal involvement in state and local election systems by designating them as “critical infrastructure” for national security. Members of the National Association of Secretaries of State voted Saturday at their winter meeting to oppose the designation. They are asking President Donald...

One of the businessmen accused of conspiring with associates of Rudy Giuliani to make illegal campaign contributions argued Thursday in federal court that the government is trying to cover up the "warrantless and unlawful electronic surveillance" it conducted in its investigation, including possible "stingray" technology to track cellphones. Saying it now "appears to be the case" that the government obtained evidence through the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and that it was "inconceivable" that no communications were intercepted, lawyers for Andrey Kukushkin sought an explanation as to the "genesis of such evidence and the extent to which...

Ghislaine Maxwell — the British socialite who’s long been accused of serving as Jeffrey Epstein’s madam — is under investigation by the FBI, according to a new report Friday. Several other “people who facilitated” the dead pedophile’s alleged sexual abuse are also being probed but Maxwell is the main focus, two sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters. One of the sources said the probe is in its early stages and that the FBI is following up with leads its received from women who claim to have been victimized by Epstein. The FBI currently has no plans to interview Prince...

With few exceptions, states are losing the battle with aging bridges in need of repair or replacement. Even states with low percentages of bridges rated poor are finding it difficult to keep up with bridge and road systems that in many cases are 50 years old or older. Utah, which ranks fourth for the lowest percentage of poor bridges, programs a bridge for repair or replacement in the year after it drops to a poor rating, completing the project within four or five years. The Utah Department of Transportation notes, though, that the number of bridges falling from good to...

I have a proposal for federal employees. With the exception of the President and the Vice President, since Congress has a minimum age limit, (25 for the US House, 35 for US Senate), why cannot we consider a proposal for a maximum age limit for Federal Employees. If a federal employee, except for President and VP, obtains the age of 65 or 70, they must retire from the Federal job. If they wish to continue in their Federal job, they do not get their Federal salary. The must live off their pensions and whatever other money they may have. The...

The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates again on Wednesday despite intense, and unprecedented, pressure from Donald Trump to leave rates unchanged. After a two-day meeting the central bank announced rates would rise a quarter of a percentage point, to a range of 2.25% to $2.5%, the ninth such move since late 2015. Trump has waged a public campaign to halt further rate rises, a highly unusual move for a president, calling the increases “crazy” and “foolish” and arguing the Fed’s policy was “the “biggest threat” to the US economy, larger than the administration’s trade dispute with China.

It finally happened. The feds forced an Apple iPhone X owner to unlock their device with their face. A child abuse investigation unearthed by Forbes includes the first known case in which law enforcement used Apple Face ID facial recognition technology to open a suspect's iPhone. That's by any police agency anywhere in the world, not just in America. It happened on August 10, when the FBI searched the house of 28-year-old Grant Michalski, a Columbus, Ohio, resident who would later that month be charged with receiving and possessing child pornography. With a search warrant in hand, a federal investigator...

The administration's goal is to weed out union officials who work exclusively on "official time" and do no work for the taxpayers, according to a source with knowledge of the administration's plans. The overhaul is intended to ensure that official time is only a part-time activity. Under the changes, no federal employee would be allowed to spend more than one-fourth of their paid time on union work, and they must remain licensed and qualified for their official job. The source noted that a review found instances where people in specialized fields such as nursing spent so much time doing union...

Federal investigators tapped the phone lines of President Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, according to a bombshell report by NBC News. The report, citing one source with direct knowledge, said at least one call between the White House and a phone line associated with Cohen was intercepted. The wiretap could dramatically raise the legal stakes for Trump if any potential conversations with his longtime lawyer were swept up by investigators, who are conducting a wide-ranging criminal probe into Cohen’s business activities. According to NBC News, it is unclear how long the phone had been wiretapped or when it was authorized,...

Anyone over the age of 30 has lived through a rather profound shift in federal priorities. A half-century ago, defense accounted for 45 percent of federal outlays at $405 billion. Medicare and health, combining for $45 billion, constituted five percent of the budget. Granted, the budget disparity occurred at the peak of the Vietnam War. But a review of federal budgets during non-war postwar years generally shows defense dwarfing health-related expenses. The entity eating up the largest portion of the federal budget remains the well-fed Department of Health and Human Services, which devours roughly $1.1 trillion. Social Security ($1 trillion),...

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a lawsuit against Motel 6, saying the budget motel chain is voluntarily handing personal information of thousands of guests to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The driver who killed eight people in the Manhattan terror attack was interviewed by feds in 2015 – but officials didn’t have enough information on him to open a case, according to a new report. Authorities with the Department of Homeland Security Investigations Unit had probed Sayfullo Saipov about his possible ties to suspect terrorists, ABC News reported Wednesday. Saipov’s name and address was listed as a “point of contact” for two men whose names were on the Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit’s list after they arrived in the US from “threat countries,

Follow Up and Update (to E. Yore's The Money Trail: Why Catholic Bishops are Silent on Hillary):To the chagrin of the USCCB, their favored candidate didn’t win the election. Despite their scandalous neutrality in the presidential campaign, Donald Trump, carrying the pro life banner,  toppled the Catholic establishment’s choice, the abortion loving, Hillary Clinton.   The article below details the stagering governmental beneficence bestowed on the Catholic Bishops for refugee and immigration programs by the Obama Democratic Administration.  The hundreds of millions in government grants support the Church’s social justice ministry bureaucracy. Is it any wonder that the Bishops promote massive Muslim...

House Republicans greeted current and future federal employees with two controversial body blows in recent days — one amounts to a pay cut and the other would allow new feds to be fired for “no cause at all.” The House Budget Committee approved a spending plan that would save the government $163.5 billion over 10 years by taking that amount from federal employees. (snip) Republicans call their plan “Building a Better America.” But the Americans now working to build a better country through their federal jobs would be called on to sacrifice again, as they have repeatedly over the years....

When Kathy Griffin posed for a photoshoot holding a fake decapitated, bloody head of President Donald Trump in June, she likely didn’t think about the wide-reaching implications of her so-called “joke.” While her controversial stunt resulted in some serious professional consequences, it also earned her a lengthy visit from the U.S. Secret Service. Secret Service agents reportedly tracked down Griffin and interviewed her in person for more than an hour. Further, the investigation into the bloody head debacle remains open. Griffin’s attorney, Dmitry Gorin, has claimed the comedian was merely exercising her “First Amendment rights to tell a joke.” “When...

Throughout the 2016 campaign and into the early stages of his presidency, Donald Trump vowed to make infrastructure improvements around the country. The promise was all part of his brand of populism — spend more money domestically and less abroad. America first. “We need members of both parties to join hands and work with us to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to build new roads and bridges and airports and tunnels and highways and railways all across our great nation,” Trump pledged at a campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida, earlier this year. Given Trump’s Russia investigation toxicity, it will...