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SAG-AFTRA members Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Susan Sarandon, Melissa Barrera and Cynthia Nixon are among the hundreds of union members calling on their organization’s leadership to keep people from being blacklisted for their views on Palestine.

In a statement provided with an open letter from organization SAG-AFTRA and Sister Guild Members for Ceasefire, members claim their numerous attempts to communicate with leadership about their concerns and work on a ceasefire statement together have been consistently ignored. When asked, SAG-AFTRA declined to comment on the claim or the letter.

Police in California have arrested a man on suspicion of starting the Line Fire - a major wildfire that has burned more than 34,000 acres (53 sq miles) in the state. 

Justin Wayne Halstenberg, a 34-year-old resident of Norco, California, was stopped on Tuesday for arson and is being held in lieu of bail, officials said.

The Line Fire is one of three major wildfires sparked in the last week that are burning out of control in southern California, stretching firefighter resources and threatening thousands of homes.

The father of the 11-year-old boy killed last year when a minivan driver struck his school bus spoke at Tuesday’s Springfield City Commission meeting, again pleading with the community to stop using his son’s name as part of hateful statements toward Haitian immigrants.

Nathan Clark, Aiden Clark’s father, stood next to his wife Danielle at a packed City Commission meeting, urging people to cease using his son to further their political views.

“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone,” Clark told the city hall forum. “The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces, but even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem that our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow their hate.”

Speaker Mike Johnson pulled a vote Wednesday on a temporary spending bill that would keep federal agencies and programs funded for six months as it became increasingly clear the measure lacked the support to pass as a potential partial government shutdown looms.

The legislation to continue government funding when the new budget year begins on Oct. 1 includes a requirement that people registering to vote must provide proof of citizenship. Johnson, R-La., signaled that he was not backing off linking the two main pillars of the bill.

“No vote today because we’re in the consensus building business here in Congress. With small majorities, that’s what you do,” Johnson told reporters outside the House chamber. “We’re having thoughtful conversations, family conversations within the Republican conference and I believe we’ll get there.”

Social Security recipients can expect next year's annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to be the lowest since 2021, following cooler inflation readings in July and August.

On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the consumer price index climbed 2.5% year on year. 

Combined with the 2.6% reading in July, and a similar reading expected for September, Social Security beneficiaries are on track to see a payment increase of about 2.5%, according to The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group. 

That equates to an increase of about $46.80 per month. 

While the lower COLA forecast reflects an economy that is enjoying a slower pace of price growth, Social Security advocates say seniors and others on fixed incomes are uniquely affected by the inflationary environment.

GOP lawmakers and analysts virtually unanimous that Trump was second best to Harris in first presidential debate

Donald Trump’s campaign was in damage control mode on Wednesday amid widespread dismay among supporters over a presidential debate performance that saw Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, repeatedly goad him into going wildly off-message and missing apparent opportunities to tackle her on policy.

Even with Trump insisting to have won the debate “by a lot”, Republicans were virtually unanimous that Trump had come off second best in a series of exchanges that saw the vice-president deliberately bait him on his weak points while he responded with visible anger.

The Republican nominee – who took the unusual step afterwards of visiting the media spin room, a venue normally frequented only by candidates’ surrogates – was non-committal on Wednesday to the Harris campaign’s proposal for a second debate. Despite widespread opinion to the contrary, Trump suggested she needed it because she had lost. “I’d be less inclined to because we had a great night. We won the debate,” he told Fox & Friends.

A Delta aircraft clipped the tail of another plane Tuesday morning at the Atlanta airport.

The collision happened just after 10 a.m. at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport while Delta Flight 295 was taxiing for departure and struck Endeavor Air Flight 5526, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

Video taken at the airport appears to show the Endeavor plane with its tail hanging off its side.

Phony Stark needs to be called out on this. It’s creepy as hell.

😳 🤮

Israel’s military has said it was highly likely its troops fired the shot that killed Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the American-Turkish woman killed at a protest in the occupied West Bank.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said her death was unintentional and expressed deep regret.

The statement came as Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, called the killing of the 26-year-old last week “unprovoked and unjustified”.

A personal assistant convicted of killing and dismembering his former tech entrepreneur boss after stealing about $400,000 from him was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years to life in prison, Manhattan’s district attorney said. 

Tyrese Haspil, 25, was found guilty in June of murder, grand larceny and other charges in the 2020 death of his former boss, Fahim Saleh. 

Prosecutors said Haspil had been hired as an assistant for Saleh, whose ventures included a ride-hailing motorcycle startup in Nigeria, but quickly began to siphon money from Saleh’s businesses. Haspil resigned a year later but continued to steal money, even after Saleh discovered the theft and let Haspil repay him over two years to avoid criminal prosecution. 

Haspil decided to kill Saleh over concerns that his former boss would discover he was continuing to steal from his companies, prosecutors said.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240911120039/https://www.propublica.org/article/russell-maze-nashville-medical-examiner-recants-testimony

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin raised concerns after the justice’s wife reportedly praised an organization’s opposition to Supreme Court reform.

Justice Clarence Thomas faces yet another call to recuse himself, following reporting that his wife, Ginni Thomas, praised a conservative religious group’s opposition to Supreme Court reform. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., called on the justice to recuse himself from cases involving that group, the First Liberty Institute.

ProPublica reported that Ginni wrote in an email to the group, “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”

Of course, calls to reform the court — some of which have been endorsed by President Joe Biden recently — have gained traction due in part to Thomas’ ethics scandals.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump sparred on Tuesday in a contentious presidential debate that repeatedly went off the rails, as Trump pursued bizarre and often falsehood-ridden tangents about crowd sizes, immigration policy and abortion access.

The Philadelphia debate marked arguably the most significant opportunity for both Harris and Trump since Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July, and the event began cordially enough. Harris crossed over to Trump’s podium to shake his hand and introduce herself, an acknowledgement that the two presidential nominees had never met face to face before Tuesday night.

But the cordiality did not last long. After delivering some boilerplate attack lines about the high inflation seen earlier in Biden’s presidency, Trump pivoted to mocking Harris as a “Marxist” and peddling baseless claims that Democrats want to “execute the baby” by allowing abortions in the ninth month of pregnancy.

...

Despite broad public support for Roe v Wade, Trump boasted about his role in reversing it and applauded the supreme court’s “great courage” in issuing its ruling, while he dodged repeated questions about whether he would veto a national abortion ban as president.

The allegations at the center of the case against [D.A. advisor] Teran date to 2018, when she worked as a constitutional policing advisor for then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell. Her usual duties included accessing confidential deputy records and internal affairs investigations.

A few years after leaving the Sheriff’s Department, Teran joined the district attorney’s office. While there, in April 2021, she sent 33 names and a few dozen related court records to a subordinate to evaluate for possible inclusion in either of two internal databases prosecutors use to track officers with histories of dishonesty and other misconduct.

...

The state Department of Justice alleged several of the names Teran sent to her subordinate to consider including in D.A. databases were those of deputies whose files she had accessed while working at the Sheriff’s Department years earlier.

However, testimony during the preliminary hearing last month showed she did not download the information from the Sheriff’s Department personnel file system. In most cases she learned of the alleged misconduct when co-workers emailed her copies of court records from lawsuits filed by deputies hoping to overturn the department’s discipline against them.

But after searching news articles and public records requests, state investigators said they found that 11 of the names hadn’t been mentioned in public records or major media outlets. Thus, prosecutors said Teran wouldn’t have been able to identify the deputies, or know to look for their court records, were it not for her special access while working at the Sheriff’s Department.

...

But the redacted documents already made public contain distinctive notes and markings, as well as identifying dates and apparent redaction oversights, which make it possible to match them to public court records containing the deputies’ names.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240911120231/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-09-09/spotty-redactions-reveal-hidden-names-of-deputies-at-center-of-high-profile-case-against-da-advisor

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/iHXDz

https://archive.ph/WxdTL

It is on.

Israel proposed giving Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar safe passage out of Gaza in exchange for the group freeing the hostages it holds and giving up control of the strip, a senior official said, even as doubts deepen about the two sides’ ability to reach any cease-fire accord.

“I’m ready to provide safe passage to Sinwar, his family, whoever wants to join him,” Israel hostage envoy Gal Hirsch said in an interview Tuesday in the Bloomberg News Washington bureau. “We want the hostages back. We want demilitarization, de-radicalization of course — a new system that will manage Gaza.”