Global
Be afraid. The Trump Administration has “put on leave” — effectively fired — 35 experts from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for signing a letter to Trump saying that his mass elimination of emergency experts is threatening the lives of Americans. Another 155 signed but masked their names.
Trump’s announced scheme: completely eliminate FEMA and turn over emergency evacuation to privateers.
The firings were pushed by Elon Musk when he headed DOGE. The cuts were the core cause of the deaths in the Kerr County, Texas flood.
Trump’s own appointed FEMA director, Cameron Hamilton, criticized the cutting of 2,000 emergency workers (a third of the agency’s staff) and the interference by political hacks, especially by Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, slowing down life-saving response to floods. Trump fired him, too.
Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans on September 9, 1965, days after I had begun my senior year in high school. Those were the old days when school didn’t start until after Labor Day. The night the hurricane came, our whole family stayed, along with others, in the city’s central business district on the 4th floor of the old California Company building on Loyola Avenue, a stone’s throw from the central library and not much more to City Hall. My brother and I had to sit in to play hands of bridge to help make up foursomes among the adults. Our house didn’t flood, but the streets had enough water that, when we returned, I could paddle my 14-foot pirogue around the neighborhood and up Paris Avenue. It took a week for the water to subside and power to return. Having a gas stove was a lifesaver, which is part of the reason I still hang onto one now.
We don't yet know if Robin Westman, the Minneapolis Annunciation Church mass shooting suspect, was on psych drugs. But we do know mass shooters in the U.S. tend to be young, obsessive, male loners and many have been prescribed psychoactive drugs.
For example, Eric Harris, one of the two shooters at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado in 1999 which ushered in the current spate of mass shootings, was on the psychotropic drug Luvox. Prescribing information for the antidepressant says, Close supervision of patients and in particular those at high risk should accompany drug therapy.
Jeff Weise who fatally shot his grandfather, his grandfather's girlfriend and seven people at the Red Lake Senior High School in 2005, was on the well-known antidepressant Prozac.
Should your employer be allowed to ban you from taking another job? Most Americans would say that’s ridiculous — but it’s more common than you think.
When I was head of the policy office at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), I read thousands of public comments about how employers used “noncompete clauses” to trap workers into jobs. Many people shared deeply personal stories of being stuck in abusive workplaces, enduring punishing commutes, or working for years and years without a raise.
Noncompete clauses force workers to agree not to take a job with a competitor after they leave their position. They’re often framed as tools to prevent senior executives from taking trade secrets with them. But the evidence tells a different story.
