Irish rockers U2 became the latest high-powered musical act to condemn the federal immigration raids with the surprise release Wednesday of a six-track EP that kicks off with a song for slain Minneapolis protester Renee Good.

Following in the footsteps of Bruce Springsteen, Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish and other artists, U2 recorded “American Obituary,” a four-minute plus musical condemnation of the crackdown that left Good, the mother of three, dead on Jan. 7.

"Renee Good, born to die free. American mother of three. Seventh day, January. A bullet for each child, you see," frontman Bono sings in the high-energy rocker. "The color of her eye. 930 Minneapolis. To desecrate domestic bliss. Three bullets blast, three babies kissed. Renee the domestic terrorist?"

"America will rise against the people of the lie," the chorus chants.

"I am not mad at you, Lord," the song continues, an apparent reference to Good's final words that were captured on video. "You're the reason I was there. Could you stop a heart from breaking, by having it not care? Could you stop a bullet in midair?"

Titled "Days of Ash," the EP was released on one of Christianity's most somber days, Ash Wednesday.

The release also includes a poem set to music called "Wildpeace," by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, and other songs that focus on the ongoing clashes in Gaza, Iran and Ukraine.

After pulling out of the World Health Organization, the Trump administration is proposing spending $2 billion a year to replicate the global disease surveillance and outbreak functions the United States once helped build and accessed at a fraction of the cost, according to three administration officials briefed on the proposal.

The effort to build a U.S.-run alternative would re-create systems such as laboratories, data-sharing networks and rapid-response systems the U.S. abandoned when it announced its withdrawal from the WHO last year and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations.

While President Donald Trump accused the WHO of demanding “unfairly onerous payments,” the alternative his administration is considering carries a price tag about three times what the U.S. contributed annually to the U.N. health agency. The U.S. would build on bilateral agreements with countries and expand the presence of its health agencies to dozens of additional nations, the officials said.

“This $2 billion in funding to HHS is to build the systems and capacities to do what the WHO did for us,” one official said.

The Department of Health and Human Services has been leading the efforts and requested the funding from the Office of Management and Budget in recent weeks as part of a broader push to construct a U.S.-led rival to the WHO, officials said. Before withdrawing from the agency, the U.S. provided roughly $680 million a year in assessed dues and voluntary contributions to the WHO, often exceeding the combined contributions of other member states, according to HHS. Citing figures in the proposal, officials said the U.S. contributions represented about 15 to 18 percent of the WHO’s total annual funding of about $3.7 billion.....

Experts and medical societies have said withdrawing from the preeminent global health alliance is scientifically reckless because global cooperation is key to controlling and preventing infectious diseases. They said exiting the WHO makes the U.S. less prepared to respond to health emergencies such as the coronavirus pandemic or the West African Ebola crisis from 2014 to 2016, which killed more than 11,000 people in the largest outbreak of the deadly disease since the virus was discovered in 1976.

Three military veterans and a historic preservationist on Thursday sued the Trump administration over President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot triumphal arch, arguing that the new structure would disrupt the experience of visiting Arlington National Cemetery and interfere with the intent of nearby monuments.

Michael Lemmon, Shaun Byrnes and Jon Gundersen, who served in the Vietnam War and later worked as U.S. diplomats, say that the arch would obstruct “the symbolic and inspiring view” from the cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial. Calder Loth, a retired senior architectural historian for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, said the new structure would undermine the historic relationship between Arlington National Cemetery and other monuments by interrupting long-planned sight lines, including along Memorial Avenue.

Public Citizen, a government watchdog organization, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and is seeking to halt the project until the Trump administration secures approval from Congress and federal review panels.....

Trump has touted the arch as a priority, telling Politico in December that he hoped to begin construction “sometime in the next two months.” The Post reported that Trump has told allies that he wants the arch to be 250 feet tall to correspond with the nation’s 250th anniversary this year.

“I’d like it to be the biggest one of all,” the president told reporters last month. A triumphal arch in Mexico City, currently the largest in the world, measures 220 feet.

Federal review panels have yet to receive proposals for the project, and Congress has not signed off on its construction.

Memorial Circle, the plot of land that the president has targeted, is controlled by the National Park Service and is currently used as a traffic roundabout. A 1901-1902 report overseen by the Senate Park Commission, which laid the groundwork for constructing the National Mall and beautifying much of the city’s core, appears to envision some sort of structure in the circle, drawings show.

Last spring, the United Kingdom and Mauritius reached a diplomatic agreement over the Chagos Islands, which had been under British control for two centuries. Under the deal, Mauritius, an island country in the Indian Ocean, would gain sovereignty over the islands, and the British government would make annual payments to Mauritius to lease one of the islands, Diego Garcia.

This was of interest to the United States because there’s a U.S. military base on Diego Garcia.

When the agreement was announced, the Trump administration was pleased. In fact, it issued a statement touting the deal, saying it “secures the long-term, stable, and effective operation of the joint U.S.-U.K. military facility at Diego Garcia.”....

At that point, the diplomatic process moved forward, without controversy — right up until a month ago, when Donald Trump published an odd, middle-of-the-night statement to his social media platform, condemning the U.K.’s decision as “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”

Trump went on to describe the agreement as an “act of total weakness” and an example of why he wanted to seize control over Greenland. (He didn’t fully explain what the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean had to do with Greenland, which is roughly 7,000 miles away.).....

In fact, British officials largely ignored the president’s weird harangue and proceeded to implement their policy of transferring ownership of the islands to Mauritius. That didn’t pose much of a problem for the administration, which quietly reversed course: Just four weeks after Trump’s online condemnation, the State Department issued a formal statement, announcing U.S. support for the deal.

That was on Tuesday. One day later, Trump issued a new statement, condemning the agreement anew. The rant, published to his social media platform, rambled on for a while before concluding:

This land should not be taken away from the U.K. and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally. We will always be ready, willing, and able to fight for the U.K., but they have to remain strong in the face of Wokeism, and other problems put before them. DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!

So to recap, the administration endorsed the agreement, only to have Trump reject it, only to have the administration re-endorse the agreement, only to have Trump reject it again.

Time will tell what becomes of the issue, and by all accounts, there’s nothing to suggest the U.K. is prepared to back out of the agreement it’s already reached. But the conflict between Trump and his own team doesn’t just reinforce concerns about the administration’s competence; it also signals to the world that no country, including our closest allies, can count on foreign policy consistency from the planet’s preeminent superpower.

FBI Director Kash Patel flew today on the FBI’s Gulfstream jet bound for a trip to the winter Olympics in Italy to watch one of his favorite sports: men’s ice hockey, according to three people familiar with his plans.

Patel, an avid hockey player and fan, will be at the Olympic festivities and plans to attend the bronze medal competition in men’s ice hockey on Saturday and the competition for the gold medal on Sunday, the people said.

An FBI official confirmed Patel’s travel plans, but said he has several official government purposes for attending, including a meeting with an ambassador, briefings on Olympics security and other government meetings.

Patel’s travel to Italy was reported Thursday afternoon by CBS.

Government accounts estimate it costs U.S. taxpayers at least $5,000 per flight hour for the FBI Gulfstream to fly, meaning Patel’s trip to Milan is likely to cost as much as $75,000.

Former Trump administration White House lawyer Ty Cobb delivered a dire warning Wednesday on MS NOW about the growing network of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities that are planned and funded — and suggested that Trump having that much detention power and resources at his disposal is horrifying.

Cobb's warning came in the middle of a discussion with anchor Ari Melber, about the possibility ICE might try to engage in election interference by stationing agents at polling places.

"What is your legal view of the limits on ICE under current law?" asked Melber, himself an attorney. "To be out in a way that might be voter intimidation in any voting period when we get to the midterms?"

"So that's an excellent question," said Cobb. "I think we're going to see the courts gradually parse through that. You know, ICE actually has no local law enforcement authority in any of the states. They're only supposed to manage the limited number of federal crimes entrusted to them, and they shouldn't be there. But it's going to take a series of court battles, I think, to prevent them from being there. And it may come down to a conflict between, you know, state National Guards and ICE absent, absent an invocation of the Insurrection Act, which I think we will see in advance of, of the election. So I think — I think people should be very, very concerned and very, very animated about what's coming."

To understand the reason for fear, Cobb continued, consider Garry Kasparov, the Russian world chess champion turned dissident of the Putin regime.

Kasparov, he said, "has been very outspoken about, you know, the gulags that are being built around the country and the fact that they're intended not only to house, you know, illegally detained immigrants, of which we have thousands now, but also likely dissidents and people of color on a going forward basis. You know, what is happening in this country."

"You don't think that's just an international parallel gone too far?" Melber pressed him. "You believe that's something that Trump would, would try to do and get away with?

"So I'll put it this way," said Cobb. "You know, Trump is deporting people on a trajectory and at a pace that's not very different from the number of deportations that happened under Obama. However, the number of illegally detained people is extraordinarily high. And he's building, you know, dozens of prisons to house up to 8,000 people. We've never needed that before. That's — that's, you know, well over 150,000 beds. Who are they for and who are they going to be for when, when detainees are gone?"

"You don't think that's just an international parallel gone too far?" Melber pressed him. "You believe that's something that Trump would, would try to do and get away with?

"This is, this is — this is, as Garry Kasparov says, this is not a drill," he added.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A visibly shaken Donald J. Trump told reporters on Thursday that the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor set a dangerous precedent of pedophiles facing consequences.

“King Charles released a statement where he said no one is above the law,” he said. “That was a horrible thing to say.”

Calling Andrew’s arrest “disgraceful,” Trump said it had made him “rethink the whole idea of becoming king.”

“If you can be a member of the royal family and still get arrested, what’s the point in having a crown?” he said. “You’re better off just having your own supreme court.”

The government’s failure to comply with court orders has been a theme of Donald Trump’s second term as president. The question has been what judges can do about it.

The answer may be to hold government officials and lawyers in contempt — or at least threaten to do so.

Underscoring the dire state of the rule of law in this country, Minnesota’s chief federal district judge last month set a hearing for the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt, after the government failed to comply with an order to provide an immigrant a bond hearing or release them from custody.

The judge, Patrick Schiltz, acknowledged that he was taking an “extraordinary step” in the case of Juan Hugo Tobay Robles. But he explained why he felt the need to do so: The “extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed.”

Yet, the acting ICE chief, Todd Lyons, was never held in contempt. The government complied with the judge’s order before the hearing, thus rendering his appearance moot.....

The latest bold judicial response in Minnesota came this week, when a judge ordered a Trump government lawyer to be held in civil contempt. Such contempt is used to force compliance, whereas criminal contempt punishes violations.

The civil contempt order came in yet another immigration-related case, with U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino saying Wednesday that, starting Friday, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Isihara would have to pay $500 for each day that Rigoberto Soto Jimenez is not in possession of his identification documents. “For avoidance of doubt, the coercive fine will continue until the certification of compliance is filed on the docket,” the Biden-appointed judge’s order said.....

Later Wednesday, Paul Blume of Fox 9 in Minneapolis reported that Soto Jimenez’s lawyer said the government had given her client an overnight delivery tracking number and that the lawyer believed his identification papers would arrive on Thursday, nullifying any fines.

If that’s how this one ends, then it will have been another instance of the government doing what it had to do all along but only in the face of contempt consequences. That shouldn’t be necessary to run a legal system, but the contempt tool is there for a reason — and this administration is giving judges every reason to use it.

A decades-long study suggests that men with higher intelligence quotient ratings are less likely to hold conservative political views.

The study comes from researchers at Saarland University and Philipps-University Marburg, institutions in Germany.

According to PsyPost, "The team based their research on the 'Cognitive Complexity-Openness Hypothesis.' This concept suggests that people with higher intelligence are generally more open to new experiences. They are also thought to be better equipped to handle complex or nuanced ideas. If this hypothesis holds true, gifted individuals might reject rigid political dogmas. They might gravitate toward more flexible or moderate positions. The researchers aimed to test if this theoretical flexibility translates into specific political preferences in adulthood."

The project started in 1987, and initially "involved examining over 7,000 third-grade students. The researchers administered standardized intelligence tests to this large group. These tests measured reasoning abilities and the speed at which the students processed information."

The students were then tracked into adulthood, measuring their IQ all the while and tracking them in "gifted" and "non-gifted" categories, and their political positions were examined in a four-part questionnaire.

"The researchers then analyzed the four specific dimensions of the detailed questionnaire. For economic libertarianism, socialism, and liberalism, the analysis again showed no statistical difference between the groups. Giftedness did not appear to push individuals toward or away from these specific ideologies," said the report. "However, a distinct pattern emerged regarding the dimension of conservatism. The researchers found an interaction effect between giftedness and sex. This means the relationship between intelligence and conservatism depended on whether the participant was male or female."

"Specifically, non-gifted men scored higher on conservatism than gifted men," noted the report. "The non-gifted men were more likely to endorse values related to tradition and strict social order. Gifted men were less likely to hold these traditional conservative views."