🇺🇸 **Walmart pulls controversial 'Impeach 45' clothing from website after harsh feedback**
*Fox News* - <https://archive.li/68X45>

Walmart has pulled the the controversial anti-Trump “Impeach 45” apparel from its website after receiving harsh feedback online.

The outcry sparked a #BoycottWalmart trend on Twitter as users expressed their distaste for the chain promoting the impeachment of President Trump, echoing some Congressional Democrats.

Ryan Fournier, chairman of the group Students for Trump, was one of the first to discover Walmart was selling the clothing item, according to the International Business Times. He asked the company in a tweet, “What kind of message are you trying to send?”

"These items were sold by third party sellers on our open marketplace, and were not offered directly by Walmart. We’re removing these types of items pending review of our marketplace policies," a Walmart spokesperson told Fox News.

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🇺🇸 **Trump administration is breaking from Obama-era affirmative action policies**
*Fox News* - <https://archive.li/NhALf>

The Trump administration is doing away with a series of affirmative-action policy documents put in place under former President Barack Obama that encourage colleges and universities to use race in admissions processes to promote campus diversity.

The guidelines, implemented under Obama between 2010 and 2016, put forth legal recommendations that officials in the Trump White House say “mislead schools to believe that legal forms of affirmative action are simpler to achieve than the law allows,” according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The Trump administration contends that the Obama-era guidelines go far beyond what the Supreme Court has decided on in regard to affirmative action. The court has ruled that colleges and universities can use affirmative action to help minority students get into school, but conservatives over the years have argued that these programs hurt the chances of white and Asian-American applicants.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited “improper rulemaking.” He said, “The American people deserve to have their voices heard and a government that is accountable to them. When issuing regulations, federal agencies must abide by constitutional principles and follow the rules set forth by Congress and the President. In previous administrations, however, agencies often tried to impose new rules on the American people without any public notice or comment period, simply by sending a letter or posting a guidance document on a website. That’s wrong, and it’s not good government.”
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🦅 **Happy 4th of July**

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🇪🇺 **European Parliament rejects controversial copyright rules in major victory for campaigners**
*Independent* - <https://archive.fo/v2AsG>

The European Parliament has voted against an incredibly controversial new set of copyright rules that campaigners claim could "ban memes".

The law will now be sent for a full reconsideration and debate inside the parliament, during which activists will try and remove the controversial Article 11 and 13.

Article 11 has been referred to by campaigners as instituting a "link tax", by forcing tech companies like Google and Facebook to pay to use snippets of content on their own sites. Article 13 adds rules that make tech companies responsible for ensuring any copyrighted material is not spread over their platforms.

Those rules could force technology companies to scan through everything their users post and check it doesn't include copyrighted material. If it is found, the post will be forced to be removed, which campaigners claim could destroy the kind of memes and remixes that spread across the internet.
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🇺🇸 **Teen attacked at Whataburger for wearing 'Make America Great Again' hat**
<http://archive.is/Y5T8W>

Police are investigating after a teen says he was verbally attacked and assaulted at a Whataburger for wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

In the video, you can see a man throw a drink in 16-year-old Hunter Richard's face before leaving the restaurant with his hat. Hunter said some of his hair was pulled during the assault.

"I support my President and if you don’t let’s have a conversation about it instead of ripping my hat off. I just think a conversation about politics is more productive for the entire whole rather than taking my hat and yelling subjective words to me," he said.

Hunter was with his friends at the Whataburger off Nacogdoches and Thousand Oaks Tuesday night when it happened. They say the attack was unprovoked.
https://twitter.com/brxpug/status/1014417257945018368

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🇺🇸 **Ringleader given 8 years in prison for beating teen with disability in attack livestreamed on Facebook**
*Chicago Tribune* - <https://archive.fo/KtYDl>

The accused ringleader in the racially charged beating of a teen with mental disabilities last year was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty Thursday. The case drew national outrage when the attackers livestreamed video of the attack on Facebook.

Jordan Hill, 20, pleaded guilty to one count each of a hate crime and aggravated kidnapping, becoming the third of four defendants to admit wrongdoing. An attorney for the remaining defendant, Tesfaye Cooper, 20, indicated in court Thursday his client is considering a plea deal as well.

Prosecutors on Thursday painted Hill as the instigator of the attack, saying he led the 18-year-old victim to the apartment where the incident took place and demanded money from the victim’s mother in exchange for his return.

Video posted in January 2017 shows the four defendants — all African-American — cutting the white victim’s scalp with a knife, punching and kicking him and laughing as he was bound and gagged in an apartment on Chicago’s West Side.

The gruesome video drew condemnation, including by then-President Barack Obama. Right-wing pundits used it as a rallying cry, tying it without evidence to the Black Lives Matter movement and blaming permissive policing.

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⚠ **Scott Pruitt Resigns from EPA**
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1014956568129892352

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🇺🇸 **Trump nominates Brett Kavanaugh to Supreme Court**
*AP* - <http://archive.fo/r9zKU>

President Donald Trump is nominating influential conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court as he seeks to shift the nation’s highest court further to the right.

Trump chose the 53-year-old federal appellate judge for the seat opened up by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh would be less receptive to abortion and gay rights than Kennedy was.

Kavanaugh is Trump’s second high court pick after Justice Neil Gorsuch. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch served as law clerks to Kennedy at the same time early in their legal careers.

Kavanaugh is a longtime fixture of the Republican legal establishment. He has been a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington since 2006. He also was a key aide to Kenneth Starr during his investigation of President Bill Clinton and worked in the White House during George W. Bush’s presidency.
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🏳️‍🌈 **Study finds health risks for transgender women on hormone therapy**
*NBC News* - <https://archive.fo/Zscha>

Transgender women on hormone therapy may be at a higher risk for cardiovascular problems, such as stroke, blood clots and heart attack, researchers reported Monday.

The study was done by reviewing eight years of medical records of nearly 5,000 transgender patients in the Kaiser Health system, and looked at patients over the age of 18 who took hormones for gender transition. Over 97,000 cisgender patients — people whose sex assigned at birth matches their gender identity — with similar age and health characteristics were studied for comparison.

“This is the largest study of the health of transgender individuals on hormone therapy ever done,” Dr. Darios Getahun, an author of the study and research scientist at Kaiser Permanente, told NBC News. “Doctors and patients need to be aware of the possibility for increased health risks for transgender women.”

The study found that transgender women, who are assigned the male sex at birth, were twice as likely as cisgender men or women to have the blood clot condition venous thromboembolism. Transgender women on hormone therapy were also found to be 80 to 90 percent more likely to have stroke or a heart attack than cisgender women.
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🇺🇸 **Trump pardons Oregon ranchers at center of 40-day standoff**
*The Hill* - <http://archive.is/H9P9k>

President Trump on Tuesday pardoned a pair of Oregon ranchers whose arson conviction became a focus for opponents of federal government land ownership.

Dwight Hammond, 76, and his son Steven, 49, were convicted in 2012 and sent to prison on arson charges. They had set a series of fires on their ranch that spread to federal land.

The Hammonds’ case became the inspiration for the 40-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. The organizers wanted to protest federal land ownership.

The Hammonds distanced themselves from the occupiers and didn't endorse the action.
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<:ancap:280811320541052940> **The Government Will Allow Cody Wilson's Defense Distributed to Distribute Gun-Making Software**
*Reason* - <http://archive.is/S1shv>

The Justice Department has reached a settlement with the Second Amendment Foundation and Defense Distributed, a collective that organizes, promotes, and distributes technologies to help home gun-makers. Under the agreement, which resolved a suit filed by the two groups in 2015, Americans may "access, discuss, use, reproduce or otherwise benefit from the technical data" that the government had previously ordered Defense Distributed to cease distributing.

Before this, the feds had insisted that Defense Distributed's gun-making files violate the munitions export rules embedded in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Defense Distributed's suit claimed that this was was "censorship of Plaintiffs' speech," since the files in question consist of computer code and thus counted as expression. It also argued that "the ad hoc, informal and arbitrary manner in which that scheme is applied, violate the First, Second, and Fifth Amendments." (The Second because the information in the computer files implicates weapons possession rights.)

Wired also speculates that the settlement is some sign of a Trump administration bending over backwards to satisfy a Second Amendment constituency. Alan Gura, one of the lawyers on the plaintiffs' side—and the attorney who won both 2008's Heller case and 2010's McDonald, two major Supreme Court victories for gun rights—disagrees, noting the administration's record in other ongoing Second Amendment cases.

-
*tl;dr*
>Significantly, the government expressly acknowledges that non-automatic firearms up to .50-caliber—including modern semi-auto sporting rifles such as the popular AR-15 and similar firearms—are not inherently military.
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<:trump:284711336934375425> **Antifa tries to blockade Portland ICE HQ again but got smoked**
https://twitter.com/pdxlawgrrrl/status/1017176379056517120
https://twitter.com/Braidsoffury423/status/1017083464481308672
https://youtu.be/uhWe44a7Yjc

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music to my ears

🇺🇸 **Stormy Daniels arrested at Ohio strip club. Her attorney calls it a setup.**
*CNN* - <https://archive.fo/BWZjS>

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels was arrested early Thursday at an Ohio strip club for allegedly touching patrons on stage in violation of state law.

Daniels, who gained notoriety after suing President Donald Trump following an alleged affair, faces three misdemeanor counts of illegally touching a patron and will be arraigned Friday morning, court records show. She posted a $6,054 bail and was released Thursday morning.

Daniels will plead not guilty to the three misdemeanor charges, her attorney, Michael Avenatti, tweeted. Avenatti said his client was taken into custody while performing at a strip club in Columbus.

Under Ohio law, an employee who regularly appears nude or seminude is prohibited from touching patrons on the premises of a sexually oriented business -- unless it's a family member.
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🇺🇸 **Trump releases letter from Kim Jong-Un**
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1017446575474335744/photo/1

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🇰🇵 **N. Korea announces amnesty to celebrate 70th founding anniversary **
*YONHAP/KCNA* - <https://archive.fo/aKF7k>

North Korea plans to implement a general amnesty next month before celebrating its 70th founding anniversary on Sept. 9, Pyongyang's media said Monday.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that amnesty will be granted to those who were convicted of crimes against the country and people on the occasion of the North's 70th founding anniversary.

The amnesty will take effect on Aug. 1, the report said, noting the cabinet and relevant organs will take practical measures to help the released people settle down to a normal working life.

In this regard, the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly promulgated a decree on July 12, the KCNA said.

According to a full text carried by the Rodong Sinmun on the same day, the decree said it is the intrinsic demand of a Korean-style socialist system and the consistent principle of state activities to protect the independent and creative life of the popular masses and make selfless, devoted efforts for them by thoroughly applying the people-first principle.

The North last carried out a general amnesty in 2015 in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula's liberation from Japan's colonial rule and the founding of the Workers' Party.
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🇺🇸 **Illegal Immigrant BEHEADS 13-Year-Old Special Needs Girl, Murders Grandmother, Officials Say**
*Daily Wire* - <http://archive.is/9Ti0V>

Alabama law enforcement officials say that an illegal immigrant and an immigrant in the United States on a green card are responsible for the brutal murders of a grandmother and her 13-year-old special needs granddaughter in what investigators say is violence related to Mexican drug cartels.

The grandmother, 49-year-old Oralia Mendoza, was allegedly connected to the Sinaloa Mexican drug cartel which is widely considered to be the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world.

Authorities say that Mendoza and Aguilar lived together and were dating and that she had dated Palomino in the past.

He also found a text message sent to an unknown woman during the Georgia drug run, investigators said. In that text, Mendoza asked the woman to pick up her granddaughter from Palomino's wife because she was afraid for their lives, they said. After discovering the text message, Palomino and Aguilar allegedly woke up Mendoza during the night and told her that they were taking her and her granddaughter to somewhere safe, investigators said.

The two men then reportedly took her to a cemetery where she began to argue with Palomino who then stabbed her and left her there to die. The two men then took the granddaughter to a separate location where they allegedly decapitated her.

Several days after the murders, authorities had Aguilar and Palomino in custody. Aguilar allegedly confessed to the crimes.
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another set of doctors and lawyers from mexico.

<:trump:284711336934375425> **Watch: Man kicked out of Trump-Putin press conference**
https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1018875039201026054

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🇺🇸 **National Guard deployment led to more than 10,000 additional arrests of illegal immigrants, says CBP**
*Wash Ex* - <http://archive.is/2GqQv>

The National Guard's deployment to the southwest border in mid-April has led to an additional 10,805 "deportable alien arrests" of people who illegally entered the United States from Mexico, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said Monday.

Because guardsmen are military personnel and not law enforcement officers, they cannot apprehend illegal immigrants. But CBP officers and Border Patrol agents apprehended thousands of additional people that guardsmen helped point out.

The National Guard's presence also helped lead to the interception of more than 3,300 others who were turned back before they crossed into the U.S., CBP press secretary Corry Schiermeyer said in an email to the Washington Examiner. The Guard's deployment has also led to an additional 11,686 pounds of marijuana being seized as a result of their work.

Troops are providing support from the air, surveillance backup, and assistance with infrastructure projects like vegetation clearing and road maintenance, not including border wall construction. Another task is to specifically free up agents to leave their desks and get back out to the field. The troops monitoring remote video surveillance systems have then been able to report sightings to a greater field of agents, and thus the number of apprehensions has increased, officials said.
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🇺🇸 **'Trump Baby' protest blimp is coming to America**
*NBC News* - <https://archive.fo/2YuyY>

Activists from various states including California, Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina and Utah have already reached out to get involved in the 'Trump Baby' tour.

A GoFundMe page to bring the giant blimp of ‘Baby Trump’ — from the recent protests in the U.K. — to the United States has raised more than $10,000 in just three days, doubling its original goal.

"This effort is our commitment to opposing Donald Trump in any way we possibly can," activist Jim Girvan, the co-creator of the fundraising page, told NBC News. "This is an opportunity to get even a little bit closer and even more annoying to the president."

The 20-foot-tall inflatable orange baby with the face of Donald Trump floated over Britain’s parliament as tens of thousands of protesters took the streets in response to the president’s visit. A failed petition to fly the blimp over Trump's golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, prior to his visit, garnered more than 16,000 signatures.

Girvan and Jimenez plan to do a nationwide tour with the blimp starting in August and are hoping to use the money they raised to create an American-made version, instead of transporting the original one from the U.K.

"Some of the plans we are keeping under wraps, but we are looking at Mar-a-Lago, there will be a Trump Baby flying off of his golf course, because he uses it as a hideaway from his job," Girvan said. "He doesn’t like doing his job, he doesn’t even know how to do his job."
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🇺🇸 Elon Musk calls British diver in Thai cave rescue 'pedo' in baseless attack
The Guardian - http://archive.li/xsydd

Elon Musk came under fire on Sunday after launching an extraordinary attack on a British diver who helped rescue the boys trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand, baselessly calling him a “pedo” on Twitter and then doubling down.

Twelve boys and their football coach were rescued from the Tham Luang cave complex by an international team and after a week of intense drama.

The chief executive of the tech giant Tesla offered to assist the rescue mission by providing a submarine. The request was turned down. Musk lashed out on Sunday, saying he would make a video proving that his “mini-sub” would have been successful and adding: “Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.”
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🇺🇸 **Man nabbed in wife’s chainsaw attack was deported 11 times**
*NYP* - <http://archive.is/ikQfS>

Officials say a man accused of attacking his wife with a chainsaw in front of their children at their Los Angeles-area home had been deported from the U.S. 11 times.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lori Haley says 32-year-old Alejandro Alvarez-Villegas is a “serial immigration violator.”

Alvarez-Villegas was arrested on Thursday in a stolen vehicle in Chula Vista, a few miles from the Mexican border.

Police said Alvarez-Villegas is suspected of attacking his wife at their Whittier home, leaving her covered in blood. She is expected to recover.

Alvarez-Villegas has been in and out of the U.S. since 2005.
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🇺🇸 **Mandalay Bay owners sue victims of Las Vegas mass shooting**
*Fox News* - <https://archive.fo/updYm>

The corporate owners of the Mandalay Bay casino filed suit against the victims of last year’s Las Vegas concert mass shooting, claiming it has no liability for the massacre, according to a published report on Monday.

MGM Resorts International went to federal courts in Nevada and California and took on more than 1,000 shooting victims, saying claims against the hotel giant “must be dismissed.” “Plaintiffs have no liability of any kind to defendants,” the complaints argue, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Las Vegas lawyer Robert Eglet, who is representing several victims, told the paper that the hotel’s unusual action is a pre-emptive strike to get the cases heard in federal court instead of state court. Englet said MGM must believe it has better chances of victory in a federal case.

The MGM lawsuits are a “blatant display of judge shopping” that “quite frankly verges on unethical,” according to Eglet. “I’ve never seen a more outrageous thing, where they sue the victims in an effort to find a judge they like,” the lawyer continued. “It’s just really sad that they would stoop to this level.”

An MGM spokeswoman said Monday of the company’s lawsuits: “The Federal Court is an appropriate venue for these cases and provides those affected with the opportunity for a timely resolution. Years of drawn out litigation and hearings are not in the best interest of victims, the community and those still healing.”
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🇪🇺 **Google fined £3.8bn ($5bn US) by EU over Android antitrust violations**
*The Guardian* - <https://archive.fo/r23i0>

Google has been hit with a record €4.34bn (£3.8bn) fine by the European Union for abusing its market dominance in mobile phone operating systems.

The EU imposed the multibillion-euro penalty after finding that the US tech firm required smartphone manufacturers to pre-instal Google’s search and browser apps devices using its Android operating system, otherwise they would not be allowed to use its Google Play online store and streaming service.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, said Google has used its Android mobile phone operating system “to cement its dominance as a search engine”, preventing rivals from innovating and competing “and this is illegal under EU antitrust rules”.

Vestager added: “The vast majority of users simply take what comes with their device and don’t download competing apps. “Or to slightly paraphrase what [US free market economist] Milton Friedman has said ‘there ain’t no such thing as a free search.’”

Wednesday’s verdict ends a 39-month investigation by the European commission’s competition authorities into Google’s Android operating system. Laying out the statement of objections in April 2016, the commission accused the company of abusing its market dominance on three counts. First, by installing Google search as the default search engine on Android devices; second, preventing smartphone manufacturers from running competing systems; third, denying consumer choice, by giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile phone operators to pre-install Google Search.
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👌 **Mayor suspends 4 cops after they pose for photo that some claim included gestures of white power**
*The Blaze* <http://archive.is/1O1ki>

David O’Mary, mayor of Jasper, Alabama, suspended four police officers after a photo of the officers went viral after some local residents said that the cops were making hand gestures to signify white power and supremacy.

The photo in question, which was published in the Daily Mountain Eagle, featured several police officers who were instrumental in successfully carrying out a drug bust on a repeat offender.

In the photo, at least four of the Jasper officers can be seen making an “OK” sign on their legs with their fingers. A Twitter user pointed out the hand gesture, calling them “white nationalist hand signs.” In a tweet, the user wrote, “Jasper, AL police making white nationalist hand signs. Many faces are visible. Please help ID.”

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🇮🇱 **Israel approves controversial 'Jewish nation state' law**
*BBC* - <https://archive.fo/X77VM>

Israel's parliament has passed into law a controversial bill that defines the country as an exclusively Jewish state.

The "Jewish nation state" bill downgrades Arabic as an official language and says advancing Jewish settlement is a national interest. It also states that the "whole and united" Jerusalem is its capital.

Israeli Arab MPs condemned the legislation, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised it as a "defining moment".

The bill, backed by the country's right-wing government, says that "Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it".

It was passed after a stormy session in the Knesset that lasted more than eight hours. Sixty-two MPs voted for the bill, with 55 against. However some clauses were dropped following objections by Israel's president and attorney-general, including a clause that would have enshrined in law the creation of Jewish-only communities.
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Greater israel when?

<:trump:284711336934375425> **Trump asked aide to invite Putin to Washington, White House says**
*CBS* - <http://archive.is/H6KKa>

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a tweet Thursday that President Trump has asked his national security adviser to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington, D.C. in the fall.

The two world leaders have made headlines over their Monday summit in Helsinki, Finland, in which Mr. Trump's performance was widely criticized. Mr. Trump's relationship with Putin has come under close scrutiny amid the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But Mr. Trump has continued to insist that the U.S. should try to have a good relationship with Russia. He also says Russian interference with the election had nothing to do with his surprise victory and that his staff never colluded with foreign intelligence.

Mr. Trump tweeted about the potential "second meeting" with the Kremlin Thursday.

"The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media," he said. "I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear........"

The last time a Russian presidential visit happened was in June 2010 when then-president Barack Obama met with President Dmitry Medvedev.
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"Mr.trump"