The president and his supporters are proponents of a doctrine known as the “unitary executive” theory – the idea that the president should have complete control over the executive branch. Under this theory, the president should be able to fire any member of the executive branch, and laws – like the one at the center of this case – that restrict his ability to do so violate the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of government.

The dispute before the court next week began in March, when Trump fired Rebecca Slaughter, whom he originally nominated to the FTC in 2018. In 2023, then-President Joe Biden renominated her to serve a second term, which was scheduled to end in 2029.

Slaughter pointed to a long history – dating back to the founding of the United States – of “multimember agencies whose members are protected from at-will removal.” All three branches of government, she said, “have recognized that this agency structure advances the liberty interest that the separation of powers exists to protect”: Congress has created such agencies, presidents “have signed into law numerous bills creating, funding, and empowering ‘some two-dozen multimember independent agencies,’” and the Supreme Court has upheld those laws “time and again.”

Trump v. Slaughter: An explainer

On Monday, Dec. 8, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, a battle that has been brewing, on one hand, since soon after President Donald Trump […]

^{Amy Howe (SCOTUSblog)}

A bill introduced on Wednesday by California's Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Juan Vargas would authorize the attorney general to appoint temporary immigration judges that have served on appellate panels, are administrative judges in other agencies, or have 10 years of immigration law experience.

Such limits would preclude much of the administration's effort to authorize up to 600 military lawyers to be temporary immigration judges; as part of that move, the White House scrapped the requirement that temporary immigration judges should have immigration law experience.

Three weeks after flash floods in Texas’ Hill Country killed more than 100 people, state lawmakers chastised Kerr County leaders for rejecting money a year earlier to create a warning system that could have alerted residents to rapidly rising water.

But Kerr leaders were not the only ones who rejected the state’s offer, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. In the five years since the fund’s launch, at least 90 local governments turned down tens of millions of dollars in state grants and loans.

Leaders from about 30 local governments that the news organizations spoke with said the state grants paid for so little of the total project costs that they simply could not move forward, even with the program’s offer to cover the rest through interest-free loans. Many hoped the state program would provide grants that paid the bulk of the costs, such as the ones from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which typically supply at least 75%. They believed that they could raise the rest.

Texas Lawmakers Criticized Kerr Leaders for Rejecting State Flood Money. Other Communities Did the Same.

Texas created a $1.4 billion fund to help pay for projects to guard against destructive flooding. But after learning that so many local communities turned down the money, two lawmakers who approved the program acknowledged it was flawed.

^{cengiz.yar@propublica.org (ProPublica)}

The US Virgin Islands, where Epstein's two private islands were located, provided the files to the committee following a subpoena for the content on 18 November

There are four video files in the new batch of files released by the House Oversight Committee.

They're all captured on Epstein Island and show us the swimming pool, inside bedrooms and their adjoining bathrooms - where there are products still on the shelves.

We've put some of the key parts together in the short video below.

New images of Epstein's private island home released by House Democrats - follow live

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released the new trove of pictures and videos from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein's private island.

^{BBC News}

PS5 ha ricevuto oggi 3 dicembre 2025 un nuovo aggiornamento di sistema, distribuito a sorpresa da Sony e già in fase di rilascio anche in Europa. Si tratta del firmware identificato con il codice 25.08-12.40.00, un update di dimensioni contenute – circa 1,3 GB – che però interviene su alcuni aspetti pratici dell’esperienza d’uso, in particolare sui messaggi e sulla stabilità generale della console.

TUTTI I DETTAGLI: PS5, nuovo aggiornamento di sistema 25.08-12.40.00: cosa cambia con l’update del 3 dicembre 2025

PS5 aggiornamento 25.08-12.40.00: novità e miglioramenti a messaggi e stabilità

PS5 aggiornamento 25.08-12.40.00: il nuovo firmware di dicembre 2025 migliora messaggi, usabilità di alcune schermate e stabilità generale del sistema.

^{Redazione (Atom Heart Magazine)}

A federal judge late Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from making widespread immigration arrests in the nation’s capital without warrants or probable cause that the person is an imminent flight risk.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington granted a preliminary injunction sought by civil liberties and immigrants rights groups in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In addition to blocking the policy, she ordered any agent who conducts a warrantless civil immigration arrest in Washington to document “the specific, particularized facts that supported the agent’s pre-arrest probable cause to believe that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.”

Howell also required the government to submit that documentation to plaintiffs’ attorneys.

The ruling is similar to two others in federal lawsuits that also involved the ACLU, one in Colorado and another in California.

Another judge had issued a restraining order barring federal agents from stopping people based solely on their race, language, job or location in the Los Angeles area after finding that they were conducting indiscriminate stops, but the Supreme Court lifted that order in September.

https://apnews.com/article/homeland-security-immigration-arrests-dc-6c12be267fa341c48dcc82b147aa8740

I wondered about the robots.txt

I can see the case for it, I could also see the case for allowing at least Google to index the site.

Has there been some discussion about this previously?

https://medium.com/@hrnews1/how-google-disabled-movie-reviews-at-the-request-of-film-studios-fe4239eb8022

cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/42954242

French President Emmanuel Macron should privately and publicly stress the importance of human rights in Sino-French relations during his visit to China from December 3 to 5, 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. Macron’s visit is one of several top-level engagements between European and Chinese leaders amid the complex and shifting geopolitical relationships among Europe, China, and the United States.

President Macron should signal his commitment to taking concrete action in response to deepening repression by China. Key issues include

• labor rights abuses in China’s supply chains;
• commercial drones produced by China-based companies being used by Russia to attack civilians in Ukraine;
• and China’s use of transnational repression to target critics abroad, including in France.

“China’s disregard for human rights has important implications for France, from weapons used in unlawful Russian attacks in Ukraine to abusive supply chains that hinders fair competition for European industries,” said Bénédicte Jeannerod, France director at Human Rights Watch. “Macron should break the silos between human rights and other issues and show leadership by including rights concerns in high-level policy discussions with China.”

...

France: Macron Should Address Repression in China Visit

French President Emmanuel Macron should privately and publicly stress the importance of human rights in Sino-French relations during his visit to China on December 3-5, 2025.

^{Human Rights Watch}

Monthly meetings are held on the first Thursday of each month, at 13h00 to 14h00 Eastern Time (currently 18h00 to 19h00 UTC). You can find them listed in the SocialCG Calendar. The next meeting will be held (tomorrow) on 4 December 2025.

Meeting link: meet.jit.si/ap-forum-wg

Discussions will continue re:

• Mastodon context issues (backfill not possible at the moment)
• Context (topic/thread) deletion and moving between audiences (communities/categories)
• Draft FEP for the above
• Cross-posting (stalled?)

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/googles-agentic-ai-wipes-users-entire-hard-drive-without-permission-after-misinterpreting-instructions-to-clear-a-cache-i-am-deeply-deeply-sorry-this-is-a-critical-failure-on-my-part