The head of the Federal Election Commission chastised Catholic bishops during a pair of interviews this week, accusing church hierarchy of “hiding behind” their nonprofit status and declaring that this year’s U.S. election amounts to a “spiritual war” that threatens the country’s “Christian moral principles.” FEC Chairman James E. “Trey” Trainor III made the remarks during an interview released on Wednesday (Sept. 16) by Church Militant, a controversial conservative Catholic media outlet, and in a separate phone interview with Religion News Service. Trainor, who is Catholic and attends Mass weekly, was asked by Church Militant founder Michael Voris about a priest who recently published a viral video in which the cleric declares that no Catholic can be a Democrat. Voris pressed Trainor about news that, in response to the video, a bishop plans to attempt “fraternal correction” of the priest, with the hierarch arguing the priest has inflicted a “wound” upon the church. “I don’t think a bishop has the right to tell a priest that they can’t come out and speak,” the FEC chairman said.

Williamson County sheriff’s office leaders rewarded deputies who used force on the job with steakhouse gift cards, according to two former employees, one of whom made the admission to Texas Rangers investigating the agency’s aggressive tactics. Among the deputies who received gift cards to places such as Logan’s Roadhouse were J.J. Johnson and Zach Camden, the officers involved in the March 2019 death of Javier Ambler II. Officers used their Tasers on the Black 40-year-old father four times as he gasped that he had a heart condition and could not breathe. In a recorded interview with Texas Rangers, former deputy Christopher Pisa said Cmdr. Steve Deaton rewarded deputies he considered “WilCo badass.” “They had the intention that we were all ‘WilCo badass’ and, if you went out there and did your job and you had to use force on somebody and he agreed with it, then you would get a gift card,” Pisa said in an audio recording obtained by the American-Statesman.

Pope Francis is giving his blessing to a new Vatican think tank that is seeking to prevent the Mafia and organized crime groups from exploiting the image of the Virgin Mary for their own illicit ends. The Vatican’s Pontifical Marian Academy launched the think tank Friday at a conference titled “Liberating Mary from the Mafia.” It was a reference to the historic relationship between the Italian mob and the Catholic Church, and the popular displays of Marian devotion by mobsters in Italy and beyond. In a message from the pope read out at the start of the conference, held at Rome’s Museum of Civilizations, Francis said the religious and cultural image and patrimony of the Madonna “must be preserved in its original purity.”

BI Director Chris Wray told lawmakers Thursday that antifa is an ideology, not an organization, delivering testimony that puts him at odds with President Donald Trump, who has said he would designate it a terror group. Hours after the hearing, Trump took to Twitter to chastise his FBI director for his statements on antifa and on Russian election interference, two themes that dominated a congressional hearing on threats to the American homeland. Referring to antifa, the president wrote: “And I look at them as a bunch of well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the Comey/Mueller inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source, and allows them to get away with “murder”. LAW & ORDER!” The Twitter barbs thrust Wray again into a spotlight that he has spent three years trying to avoid after his predecessor, James Comey, became entangled in politics before being ultimately fired. Though Wray said as recently as Thursday that the FBI made unacceptable mistakes during its investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump nonetheless has intermittently lashed out at Wray over the pace of fixing those problems and continues to regard his intelligence community with suspicion because of the Russia probe. Wray did not dispute in his testimony Thursday that antifa activists were a serious concern, saying that antifa was a “real thing” and that the FBI had undertaken “any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists,” including into individuals who identify with antifa. But, he said, “It’s not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology.”

Ex-cops attempted to throw out a Rogers Park tenant at gunpoint. The police report tells a different story.

In late April, as COVID-19 raced through meatpacking plants sickening and killing workers, President Donald Trump issued a controversial executive order aimed at keeping the plants open to supply food to American consumers. It was a relief for the nation’s meatpackers who were being urged, or ordered, to suspend production by local health officials worried about the spread of the coronavirus. But emails obtained by ProPublica show that the meat industry may have had a hand in its own White House rescue: Just a week before the order was issued, the meat industry’s trade group drafted an executive order that bears striking similarities to the one the president signed.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) on Wednesday ditched an agreement with the White House and Republicans to support two anti-abortion judicial nominees from her state, instead voting against both. Duckworth, who has a strong record in support of women’s reproductive rights, was expected to vote for the nominees, David Dugan and Stephen McGlynn, as part of a bipartisan package of President Donald Trump’s court picks. Under Illinois’ selection process for judicial nominees, the president’s party picks candidates for three out of every four district court vacancies, the other party picks the fourth candidate, and both parties agree to a package where all four nominees move forward together. That was the case here ― except in the end, Duckworth couldn’t stomach Dugan’s and McGlynn’s nominations. Both were Republican picks for lifetime seats on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. “After my own careful review of their qualifications ... I found both have a troubling record on constitutionally-protected reproductive health rights demonstrating extreme bias against women’s rights and science that undermines my confidence that they could serve as the fair and independent judge that every Illinoisan deserves in the courtroom,” Duckworth said in a statement provided to HuffPost. “I remain committed to safeguarding our Delegation’s longstanding judicial selection agreements with this and future Presidential administrations while ensuring our state’s judicial vacancies are handled in a fair, non-partisan and thorough manner,” she continued. “But it’s clear based on Mr. Dugan and Mr. McGlynn’s records and statements that I must ultimately oppose their nominations to serve lifetime appointments on the federal bench.” Despite Duckworth’s opposition, Dugan and McGlynn were both confirmed. Fellow Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who also supports abortion rights, voted for both of them... For some reason, a handful of other senators who support abortion rights also voted to confirm Dugan and McGlynn. Sens. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) voted to confirm Dugan, while Manchin and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) voted to confirm McGlynn. Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), the lone pro-choice GOP senators, voted to confirm both nominees.

The Trump administration said it is banning China’s TikTok and WeChat from mobile app stores beginning this Sunday, Sept. 20, in a seemingly unprecedented move that will sharply raise tensions with Beijing. The White House will take other action to curb WeChat’s use beginning Sunday, and will give TikTok until Nov. 12 until further limitations kick in. Western companies and bankers are still wrangling with TikTok’s owner, the White House and Chinese authorities to try to arrange a sale of some of TikTok’s business. TikTok has enjoyed explosive growth in the United States, where its users number in the tens of millions. “Today’s actions prove once again that President Trump will do everything in his power to guarantee our national security and protect Americans from the threats of the Chinese Communist Party,” U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. “At the President’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of U.S. laws and regulations.”

Fantasy author Terry Goodkind, known for his long-running The Sword of Truth series, has died at the age of 72. His agent confirmed his passing to Tor Books and Tor.com. Born in 1948, Goodkind first established a career as a woodworker and artist, before eventually writing his first novel, Wizard’s First Rule, in 1994. The novel follows Richard Cypher, a woodland guide in a magical world, who learns that he’s a long-sought-after First Wizard, and that he has a destiny to save the world.

Preface: There is very little in this blog post that is interesting from a technical perspective. The discovered vulnerability is incredibly basic but fairly high risk. Due to the nature of the application, and the fallout from our disclosure attempt, we wanted to write up our findings. The TL;DR is that giggle has been exposing user’s phone numbers, private images and location to the world. Normally we wouldn’t post a vulnerability like this so soon after discovering it but the owner of the app refuses to listen to us and continuously claims no vulnerability exists. We tried to get in contact with her via a third party (after we had been blocked) to let her read this post before publishing it but, again, she showed no interest. (edit: We wrote but didn’t publish this article before the vulnerability was fixed. Giggle has told us it has now been fixed so we feel comfortable releasing these details.) (edit2: Sall is threating us with legal action.) (edit3: We’ve had some questions about the phrasing in the first public tweet. We standby our words. Not knowing how this would play out, we wanted to make it clear that we didn’t support the app or the founder, but wanted to report the issue. Companies can be unpredictable when reporting vulnerabilities and we wanted to avoid a situation where they would be publicly praising us or even mentioning us on their website etc.) (edit4: An apology from Giggle has been made and no futher legal action will be taken)

The president accused the left of attempting to ‘demolish’ the constitution and impose ‘tyranny’ through progressive education.

A Salt Lake City police officer has been charged after allowing a police K9 to bite suspect who was complying with orders and had his hands raised in the air. KSL's Morgan Wolfe reports.

Today The.Ink is bringing you the first glimpse of a devastating new book, “Unprepared: America in the Time of Coronavirus.” The book, edited and compiled by Jon Sternfeld, with an introduction from Timothy Egan, isn’t what you may think — a too-soon retelling of the pandemic. Rather, it’s a raw, diaristic, primary-source-only chronicle of America’s descent into a historic plague. Reading the passage below, I was struck by how much I have forgotten — especially the early, ignorant days of the pandemic in which most of us knew little, and many people in power were asleep on the job, and some people did know things and tried to warn us.

FIRMS could be forced to randomly test for Class A drugs in a bid to stamp out cocaine use by office staff. Home Secretary Priti Patel said demand from ­middle-class users fuelled county lines networks that use children as runners.

An incumbent Democratic lawmaker who opposed equal marriage has been defeated by an unapologetic gay drag queen in a landslide primary win.

A high school teacher suggested Kyle Rittenhouse — charged with killing two during Wisconsin protests — was a possible hero alongside Gandhi and Malcolm X.

The Washington Post reported that the White House scuttled a plan for the Postal Service to send out over 650 million masks to avoid causing "panic."

On September 21, 1945—five months after Franklin Roosevelt’s death—President Harry Truman assembled his cabinet for a meeting that one historian has called “a turning point in the American century.” The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s proposal to share atomic bomb information with the Soviets. Stimson, who had directed the Manhattan Project, maintained that the only way to make the Soviets trustworthy was to trust them. In his proposal to Truman, he wrote that not sharing the bomb with the Soviets would “almost certainly stimulate feverish activity on the part of the Soviets . . . in what will in effect be a secret armament race of a rather desperate character.” Henry Wallace, the secretary of commerce and former vice president, agreed with Stimson, as did Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson (though he later changed his position), but Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal laid down the definitive opposition. “The Russians, like the Japanese,” he argued, “are essentially Oriental in their thinking, and until we have a longer record of experience with them . . . it seems doubtful that we should endeavor to buy their understanding and sympathy. We tried that once with Hitler. There are no returns on appeasement.” Forrestal, a skilled bureaucratic infighter, had made his fortune on Wall Street and frequently framed his arguments in economic terms. The bomb and the knowledge that produced it, Forrestal argued, was “the property of the American people”—control over it, like the U.S. seizure of Japan’s former Pacific Island bases, needed to be governed by the concept of “sole Trusteeship.” Truman sided with Forrestal. Stimson retired that very same day, his swan song ignored, and Wallace, soon to be forced out of the Truman administration for his left-wing views, described the meeting as “one of the most dramatic of all cabinet meetings in my fourteen years of Wash­ington experience.” Forrestal, meanwhile, went on to be the country’s first secretary of defense in 1947 and is the man who illustrates perhaps more than anyone else how Cold War militarism achieved its own coherence and legitimacy by adopting economic logic and criteria—that is, by envi­sioning military power as an independent domain of capital expenditure in the service of a political economy of freedom. From his pivotal work in logistics and procurement during World War II, to his assiduously cultivated relationships with anti–New Deal congressmen and regional business leaders sympathetic to the military, Forrestal both helped to fashion and occupied the nexus of an emerging corporate-military order. He only served as defense secretary for eighteen months (he committed suicide under suspicious circumstances in 1949), but on the day of that fateful cabinet meeting, he won the decisive battle, advocating for what he once called a state of ongoing “semi-war.”

Employees fear Zuckerberg’s commitment to free speech is more about protecting the president than the company’s ideals. In late 2019, during one of Mark Zuckerberg’s many trips to Washington to defend Facebook in front of Congress, he stopped for a private dinner with Donald Trump and offered the president a titillating statistic. “I’d like to congratulate you,” Zuckerberg said. “You’re No. 1 on Facebook.” At least that’s the story as told by Trump, on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in January. Trump is technically not the top politician by followers on Facebook. That would be former President Barack Obama. But as the country’s most powerful newsmaker and the person in charge of a government that’s been aggressively pursuing antitrust cases against big tech companies, he does have leverage over Zuckerberg. So the chief executive officer could be forgiven for flattering Trump. Any moment that the president is happy with Facebook is a moment he’s not pursuing hostile regulation—or more likely, sparking a bad news cycle.

A heavily criticized recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month about who should be tested for the coronavirus was not written by C.D.C. scientists and was posted to the agency’s website despite their serious objections, according to several people familiar with the matter as well as internal documents obtained by The New York Times. The guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus. It came at a time when public health experts were pushing for more testing rather than less, and administration officials told The Times that the document was a C.D.C. product and had been revised with input from the agency’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield. But officials told The Times this week that the health department did the rewriting itself and then “dropped” it into the C.D.C.’s public website, flouting the agency’s strict scientific review process. “That was a doc that came from the top down, from the H.H.S. and the task force,” said a federal official with knowledge of the matter, referring to the White House task force on the coronavirus. “That policy does not reflect what many people at the C.D.C. feel should be the policy.” The document contains “elementary errors” — such as referring to “testing for Covid-19,” as opposed to testing for the virus that causes it — and recommendations inconsistent with the C.D.C.’s stance that mark it to anyone in the know as not having been written by agency scientists, according to a senior C.D.C. scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of repercussions.