404 Media

2025-08-29 15:32:28

Trump Take LEGO

Add LEGO to the list of hobbies that Trump has made more expensive and worse with his tariff policy. Thanks to America’s ever shifting trade policies, LEGO has stopped shipping more than 2,500 pieces from its Pick a Brick program to both the United States and Canada.
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Pick a Brick allows LEGO fans to buy individual bricks, which is important in the fandom because certain pieces are hard to come by or are crucial to build specific types of creations. LEGO, a Danish company, says that program will no longer be available to Americans and Canadians.

LEGO fansite New Elementary first noticed the change on August 25, four days ahead of the August 29 elimination of the de minimis trade exemption in the US. Many of the individual LEGO bricks in the Pick a Brick collection cost less than a dollar and it’s likely that the the elimination of the de minimis rule, which waived import fees on goods valued less than $800, made the Pick a Brick program untenable.

Some LEGO sets are simple boxes of a few pieces and others are vast and complicated reconstructions of pop culture icons that use thousands of individual bricks. The LEGO Millenium Falcon, for example, uses more than 7,000 individual pieces. When a specific piece goes missing it can be hard to replace. To service that need, third party services like BrickLink sell allow people to purchase individual pieces. LEGO’s in-house version of this is its Pick a Brick store, a place where enthusiasts could choose from thousands of different individual LEGOs and buy them piece by piece, usually for less than a dollar each.

A small subset of the Pick a Brick pieces, around 1,500 of them the store calls its bestsellers, are shipped to the United States from a warehouse in America. But the “standard” collection of less popular pieces ship from Denmark, where LEGO is headquartered. Those pieces, more than 2,000 of them according to fans, are no longer available in the United States and Canada.

The Pick a Brick website called this a service pause. “In the US & Canada, Standard pieces are temporarily unavailable. You can still shop our Bestseller range which includes thousands of the most popular bricks and pieces ready to order,” said a message at the top of the site.

LEGO fans online said that they saw their shopping carts emptied in the middle of building projects. “This is annoying. I just set up a big PAB order and then saved it. I just looked and 18 of my items are no longer available,” a comment in the r/LEGO community said.

“My whole Standard cart was wiped out... regret not ordering now. Had a lot of dual molded legs in there for Star Wars figure boot upgrades, looks like they're all gone now,” said another.

Others were upset that Canada was lumped in with the United States. “Why are we being caught up in Trump’s tariff shitstorm??? Ship the [Pick a Brick] orders straight to Toronto or something! We’re practically neighbours. We even share a land border with Denmark now,” one commenter said.“This is inherently unfair to Canadian buyers like myself. I primarily stick to lego trains, so now if I want to do any more custom builds, I need to search harder to get what I used to on PAB. Glad I got my last order in before this happened, it sucks that there's no Canadian warehouses,” said another.

The de minimis rule officially ended Friday, and we’re only just beginning to understand the ripple effects that change will have on the American economy. The only thing that is certain is that everything is getting more expensive and complicated. Some national mail carriers have stopped shipping to the U.S. entirely. Companies that move electronics, board games, and other small items on eBay are worried about the future.

The de minimis rule waived fees on more than 4 million packages every year, some of those were small amounts of plastic LEGO pieces. For now, LEGO fans in the US will have to find workarounds.

LEGO did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.

Pick a Brick: Standard bricks service halted in North America

Changes to American tariffs imposed by the Trump administration appear to have forced The LEGO Group to stop shipping loose bricks to North America

^{www.newelementary.com}

404 Media

2025-08-06 15:04:26

Constitution Sections on Due Process and Foreign Gifts Just Vanished from Congress' Website

Congress’ website for the U.S. Constitution was changed to delete the last two sections of Article I, which include provisions such as habeas corpus, forbidding the naming of titles of nobility, and forbidding foreign emoluments for U.S. officials.

The last full version of the webpage, archived by the Internet Archive on July 17, still included the now-deleted sections. Parts of Section 8 of Article I, as well as all of Sections 9 and 10 of Article I are now gone from the live site. The deletions, as of August 6, are also archived here. The change was spotted by users on Lemmy, an open-source aggregation platform and forum.

This webpage, maintained by the U.S. government, hasn’t changed significantly in the entire time it’s been saved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine—since 2019. The page for the Constitution on the National Archives website remains unchanged, and shows the entire document.

The removed portion begins halfway through Section 8. It includes:

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;–And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Section 9

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Section 10

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

As people in the Lemmy forum conversation note, this could be a glitch, or some kind of error with the site. But considering the page doesn’t include many dynamic elements, and is mainly a text reprinting of the Constitution, a nearly 240-year-old document that hasn’t changed since the addition of the 27th Amendment in 1992—and that the page itself has barely changed at all in the six years it’s been archived—it’s a noteworthy and sudden move.

The Trump administration does not have any control over Congressional websites, but the sudden disappearance of important parts of the Constitution is happening in the context of a broader government war on information.

Since the Trump administration took office, official federal government websites with public information have come under attack, being taken offline entirely or altered to reflect this administration’s values. This has included critical information promoting vaccines, HIV care, reproductive health options including abortion, and trans and gender confirmation healthcare being purged from the CDC’s live website, thousands of datasets disappearing from Data.gov, and the scrubbing of various documents, employee handbooks, Slack bots, and job listings across government agencies. Some deleted pages across the government were restored following a court order, but the administration then added a note rejecting “gender ideology” to some of them.

Habeas corpus, which is among the now-deleted provisions on the Constitution webpage, allows people to challenge their imprisonment before a judge. In May, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said before a congressional committee that Trump can remove the Constitutional provision of habeas corpus, calling it “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their rights.” Trump has said he’s considering suspending habeas corpus for people detained by ICE.

“That’s incorrect,” Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan replied to Noem, calling habeas corpus “the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.”

Trump Admin Adds Note Rejecting ‘Gender Ideology’ on Sites Court Ordered Them to Restore

FDA and HHS sites now note that “The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children.”

^{Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)}