President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

While out West the states of Colorado and Washington have legalized recreational marijuana, parts of two eastern states—West Virginia and Virginia—have cracked down harder on those buying, using and selling it. In Hancock County, West Virginia, marijuana busts skyrocketed by more than 2,000% last decade, according to The Washington Post. That was the highest increase in possession arrests among local governments in the country.   read more

The situation has been so bad inside the operation that at least nine veteran employees have quit since 2011, helping to exacerbate the agency’s backlog of investigations into chemical accidents. CSB’s investigations into two 2010 accidents—the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the Tesoro Corporation refinery fire in Washington State—each took four years to complete.   read more

Transgender people generally do not self-identify with the gender with which they were born. It is estimated there are about 8,800 transgender people on active duty currently, according to a report (pdf) from The Williams Institute, a think tank based at UCLA School of Law. Another 6,700 are serving in the National Guard or reserves, making a total of 15,500 transgender individuals helping to protect the United States.   read more

Call it a drug was. Two decades ago, the U.S. government established a special program that allows certain hospitals and medical clinics to purchase expensive pharmaceutical drugs at a discount so they can pass on the savings to patients needing medication. But this effort has come under fire from the drug industry, claiming healthcare providers are taking advantage of the discounts to boost their profits.   read more

Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, added that the agency “sought to regulate sources it said were responsible for 86 percent of all the greenhouse gases emitted from stationary sources nationwide. Under our holdings, EPA will be able to regulate sources responsible for 83 percent of those emissions.” Scalia was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in the 7-2 ruling.   read more

About one fifth of all life insurance being taken out is by companies hoping to reap cash from their employees’ demise. The “cash surrender value,” the amount policyholders can receive before a worker dies, of BofA’s policies is at least $17.6 billion. At Wells Fargo it’s $12.7 billion, and at JPMorgan Chase it’s $5 billion, according to the Times. Banks can use those numbers on their balance sheets as “Tier 1 capital,” a measure of an institution’s strength.   read more

With only seven votes to spare (310-303), Presbyterian Church U.S.A.’s (PC(USA) governing body voted last week to divest $21 million from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. The corporations have reportedly provided Israel with means to destroy Palestinian homes, operate border checkpoints, and develop border barriers between it and Gaza. The church’s decision also included statements affirming the church’s belief in Israel’s right to exist.   read more

The UC Davis MIND Institute released a study showing expectant mothers exposed to certain agricultural chemicals, specifically organophosphates, face a 60% higher chance of having autistic offspring. The danger is especially prevalent during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. Those at risk include residents near fields growing cantaloupes, melons, oranges, tomatoes, cotton and alfalfa.   read more

A team of researchers says they found remains stuffed inside garbage bags, body bags and in some instances nothing at all before their unmarked burials. Skulls were found in red plastic biohazard bags placed between coffins. The haphazard internment included putting multiple bodies in a single bag, making it difficult for anthropologists to determine just how many immigrants were dumped this way.   read more

Thursday’s amendment and the USA Freedom Act must still be approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Barack Obama before they become law. And the legislation would affect only the NSA. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for instance, could still attempt to have corporations install back doors in their products.   read more

If it is not flooding, it is drought—another growing concern in this climate-change century—that could severely affect power plants, many of which rely on volumes of water for their operations. Rising water temperatures will also make it more difficult to cool plant equipment. Oil and gas pipelines near coastal areas risk being hit by rising sea levels and those in the Arctic are in danger from thawing permafrost, which can affect the infrastructure of the lines.   read more

Gallup’s latest survey shows that only 7% of Americans have confidence in Congress. That’s not just the lowest number since Gallup began asking that question in 1973, but the lowest confidence figure for any institution about which it has polled.   read more

Stuck said she was given a list of words to watch for by her supervisor. “There was a list of buzzwords we had gotten,” Stuck said. “There were some obvious ones like fracking, gas, soil contamination. There were probably 15 to 20 words and short phrases that were on this list. If anybody from the public called in and that was part of the conversation, we were not allowed to talk to them.”   read more

In light of the sectarian violence in Iraq, Jones said during his June 11 confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that his first priority as ambassador in Baghdad will be to protect the U.S. embassy and its employees.   read more

The documents do not divulge which governments service RAMPART-A. But it is known that under the program, the NSA has established at least 13 RAMPART-A sites, nine of which were active in 2013, it was reported. Gallagher says the NSA documents “point towards some of the countries involved – Denmark and Germany among them.” The cost of the program to American taxpayers was about $170 million for the period from 2011 to 2013, the documents show.   read more

According to an analysis by Eric Ostermeier of Smart Politics, McCarthy, 49, whose district is in California’s Central Valley, has been in the House only about 7½ years. That’s more than a year less than any other floor leader in the history of the House, and about 10 years less than average. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia), whom McCarthy is replacing, was in the House 10 years, or five terms, before he was elected leader.   read more