Trump said he would send the National Guard to Toronto and impose 50% tariffs on all Los Angeles products. AllGov reporter Sidney Finster suggested that perhaps Trump had confused the two cities. Because Toronto is in Canada, not the United States, Trump can’t send the National Guard there. And because Los Angeles is in the United States, Trump can’t impose tariffs on a U.S. city. Trump defended his position by saying, “I’m always right.”   read more

Nearly two-thirds of respondents expressed support for stricter laws, with majorities favoring nationwide bans on the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons such as the AR-15 and on the sale of high-capacity magazines holding 10 or more bullets. By a 55% to 43% margin, respondents said laws that limit gun ownership do not infringe on the constitutional right to bear arms. But responses also revealed a partisan divide: 87% of Democrats support stricter gun laws compared with 41% of Republicans.   read more

The White House has reached an agreement with Costa Rica to serve as a temporary host site for the most vulnerable migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras while they wait to be processed as refugees. The U.N. high commissioner for refugees has agreed to set up an unusual process for reviewing requests for people in their home countries to qualify as refugees and send them to Costa Rica if they are facing immediate danger.   read more

Some scholars liken the website's timeline to a work of propaganda. “It’s not a lie, but it’s disingenuous,” said professor Young. “It does not come to grips with the full reality of the war, the extent to which it was an illegal war and the extent to which the public was lied to about the war.” One of her qualms is that entries for the My Lai massacre and publication of the Pentagon Papers fail to mention attempts by military and political leaders to obscure information about the events.   read more

A new survey shows a real discomfort with the idea of meddling with human abilities. Pew asked about three techniques that might emerge in the future: using gene editing to protect babies from disease, implanting chips in the brain to improve people’s ability to think, and transfusing synthetic blood that would enhance performance by increasing speed, strength and endurance. The public was unenthusiastic on all counts, even about protecting babies from disease.   read more

The sale of the vecuronium bromide by an unknown third party may show how difficult it could be for manufacturers to prevent such sales in states such as Arkansas that have execution secrecy laws. Reprieve's Maya Foa defended Pfizer and Hospira, saying no pharmaceutical company wants its drugs used in executions. In a bid to resume executions, the Republican-led Legislature passed the execution secrecy law last year. It requires the state to keep the details about its execution drugs secret.   read more

"Workers in the restaurant industry are among the lowest-paid workers in our economy," said David Weil. "They shouldn't have to deal with paychecks that don't accurately reflect their hard work." Said Sen. Harry Reid: "The actions taken by Restaurant Associates are despicable and their contract should be terminated. The Senate must refuse to do business with any unscrupulous vendors who flout the law and put profits above the rights and economic security of their employees."   read more

"In all these cumulative ways, you start to get the strong sense that when he says 'we and us,' he's only talking about whites in the U.S.," said Sandoval. Some point out that Trump's slogan "America First" was also the slogan of the America First Committee, an isolationist, anti-Semitic group whose goal was to keep the U.S. from joining Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany. They opposed the acceptance of shiploads of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.   read more

Obama said he supports the bill's goal, but he sent the measure back to Congress because it would immediately end salaries and benefits to staffers carrying out the official duties of former presidents. He says the measure doesn't provide enough time for these employees to be moved to another payroll. Obama says the bill would also interfere with the Secret Service's ability to protect ex-presidents.   read more

Intelligence officials have expressed concern that handing the contract to a foreign-owned company could leave the system more vulnerable to an attack. Evidence emerged several months ago that Telcordia had improperly used a number of foreign nationals, including a Chinese citizen, to do computer coding for early work on the system. Only “vetted U.S. citizens” were supposed to work on the project. As a result, the FCC forced the firm to scrap the work it had done and start over.   read more

In February, the U.N. proposed new emissions standards for international flights that would require an average 4% reduction in fuel consumption during the cruising phase of flight. This was met with criticism from environmentalists who felt the standards did not go far enough. They have also debated findings from studies cited by the U.N. and the EPA, which state that aviation accounts for less than two percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Activists have argued that it's actually about 5%.   read more

His vision grew dull, his head dizzy. Within months, he experienced a cough so persistent that it left him gasping for breath. By 2012, he was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung ailment. When he began coughing up blood, he suspected a connection to his work. Now, workers are stepping forward and filing lawsuits targeting specific ash sites. More than a half-dozen such cases have surfaced around the country in the past three years.   read more

Allegations of evidence destruction have swirled around the case since May. The defense team believes the government removed some fixtures from a room in the CIA prison used for torture, but did not entirely destroy the structure. The prosecution has offered photographs and diagrams as a substitute for the top secret evidence, the report said, noting that prosecutors have apparently not revealed the identity of the nation housing the prison to preserve foreign relations.   read more

Perhaps what the researchers found is evidence of a technological advance in political communication, of both parties exerting more partisan discipline in keeping all their members using the same language. But even if it’s just communications strategy that’s driving the polarization of language, it still matters. In a world of complex challenges, it’s hard to come up with constructive solutions when the decision-makers can’t even agree on what words to use in talking about them.   read more

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is poised to adopt strict new national rules that will curtail payday lending. These will limit the number of loans that can be taken in quick succession and will force companies to check that their borrowers have the means to repay them. But lenders — and even some consumer advocates who favor stronger regulation — are grappling with the uncomfortable question of what will happen to customers if a financial lifeline that they rely on is cut off.   read more

A new Illinois law limits how police can use devices that cast a wide net in gathering cellphone data and are at the center of a lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department. The technology, a cell site simulator, is perhaps best known by the brand name Stingray. It gathers phone-usage data on targets of criminal investigations, but it also gathers data on other cellphones — hundreds or even thousands of them — in the area.   read more

A divided Virginia Supreme Court on Friday set aside Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s executive order restoring the voting rights of more than 200,000 felons, siding with the GOP lawmakers who argued the governor’s action was unconstitutional. In a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court of Virginia ordered the state to cancel the registrations of the more than 11,000 felons who have signed up to vote since McAuliffe issued his executive order in April.   read more