The attorney general of Missouri is demanding information about the circumstances of a post shared on the X social media platform by the official city of Kansas City account that stated Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker's city of residence.

The post, since deleted, noted the Kansas City suburb where Butker lives, which has a population of more than 100,000. The city's account later posted a message saying, "We apologies (sic) for the previous post. It was shared in error."

Republican Glenn Youngkin also vetoed bills related to maintaining access to contraception, saying they were ‘not ready’

Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin has vetoed two bills that would have stripped tax exemptions for the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization that has opposed the removal of statues of southern state generals during the US civil war and other markers of the southern states’ attempt to secede from the Union in defense of slavery.

The Republican governor vetoed several measures, including those related to maintaining access to contraception, saying in a statement they were “not ready to become law”.

The rejected Confederacy-related bill would have removed tax exemptions for real estate and personal property owned by several Confederacy heritage groups, including United Daughters organisations the Confederate Memorial Literary Society and Stonewall Jackson Memorial.

Mar-Jac Poultry has denied it knowingly hired minors for its Jasper, Alabama, plant, and also argued some workers were doing jobs that are not banned by federal rules.

Four minors as young as 16 were allegedly discovered working overnight at an Alabama slaughterhouse owned by the same firm that was found directly responsible for the death of a 16-year-old Mississippi worker last summer, the U.S. Labor Department said in federal court filings.

The company, Mar-Jac Poultry, has denied that it knowingly hired minors for its Jasper, Alabama, facility, saying the workers had verified IDs that gave ages older than 17, and has also argued that some of the workers were performing jobs that are not prohibited by federal regulations.

The Labor Department is seeking a temporary restraining order against Mar-Jac as part of the ongoing legal dispute. Agency officials declined to comment, citing their investigation.

The Labor Department has said that most slaughterhouse work is too dangerous for minors and is prohibited by federal regulations. Under the Biden administration, the department has taken action against companies for employing minors to clean, use or work near dangerous machinery. A chicken trade group to which Mar-Jac belongs says it has "zero tolerance" for employing minors, and a major meat industry trade group also stated recently that no minors should be working in slaughterhouses.

Police were able to rescue child, who is in hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, before house caught fire with father still in it

A six-month-old baby is currently hospitalized after a man allegedly shot the infant several times during an armed home standoff in Surprise, Arizona, about 30 miles north-west of Phoenix.

At about 3am on Friday, the father of the child allegedly broke into the home where the child and mother lived, according to Surprise police. The child’s father did not live in the house, police said, adding that the man held the mother and child hostage for several hours before the mother managed to escape.

According to police, the mother contacted a construction crew and requested that they call 911. They added that she had minor injuries and it remains unclear how she managed to escape.

PFAS chemicals present in air, rain, atmosphere and water in basin, which holds nearly 95% of US freshwater

Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” are ubiquitous in the Great Lakes basin’s air, rain, atmosphere and water, new peer-reviewed research shows.

The first-of-its-kind, comprehensive picture of PFAS levels for the basin, which holds nearly 95% of the nation’s freshwater, also reveals that precipitation is probably a major contributor to the lakes’ contamination.

“We didn’t think the air and rain were significant sources of PFAS in the Great Lakes’ environment, but it’s not something that has been studied that much,” said Marta Venier, a co-author with Indiana University.

PFAS are a class of 15,000 chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. The chemicals are linked to cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, decreased immunity, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.

Seventy years after the Brown decision, many students are divided by their race and socioeconomic status.

Friday marks the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the “separate but equal” schools for racial minorities were inherently unequal and unconstitutional.

But so many years after the watershed ruling, new research confirms a startling trend: School segregation has been getting steadily worse over the last three decades.

Researchers at Stanford University and the University of Southern California found that racial segregation in the country’s 100 biggest school districts, which serve the most students of color, has increased by 64 percent since 1988. Economic segregation, or the division between students who receive free or reduced lunch and those who do not, increased by 50 percent since 1991. 

The study primarily focused on white-Black segregation, the groups that the Brown decision addressed, but found that white-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation both also more than doubled since the late 1980s in the large school districts.

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The orders had a huge impact, but by the early ’90s, districts were released from the mandates after a series of cases that gave districts local control. 

The new research shows that within five to eight years of districts being released from mandates, segregation increased. Since 1991, about two-thirds of school districts that were required to meet court desegregation mandates were removed from court oversight.

As Donald Trump increasingly infuses his campaign with Christian trappings while coasting to a third Republican presidential nomination, his support is as strong as ever among evangelicals and other conservative Christians.

“Trump supports Jesus, and without Jesus, America will fall,” said Kimberly Vaughn of Florence, Kentucky, as she joined other supporters of the former president entering a campaign rally near Dayton, Ohio.

Many of the T-shirts and hats that were worn and sold at the rally in March proclaimed religious slogans such as “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “God, Guns & Trump.” One man’s shirt declared, “Make America Godly Again,” with the image of a luminous Jesus putting his supportive hands on Trump’s shoulders.

Many attendees said in interviews they believed Trump shared their Christian faith and values. Several cited their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, particularly to transgender expressions.

Nobody voiced concern about Trump’s past conduct or his present indictments on criminal charges, including allegations that he tried to hide hush money payments to a porn actor during his 2016 campaign. Supporters saw Trump as representing a religion of second chances.

In a blow to the conservative legal movement, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is not, in fact, an unconstitutional abomination.

The independent agency — which oversees payday lenders, credit card companies, and student loans — has long been a partisan target. And as it turns out, its funding mechanism is perfectly constitutional, the court ruled Thursday in a 7-2 decision.

Its conclusion was straightforward: When it created the CFPB, Congress passed a law that authorized expenditures from specific sources to fund the agency. This satisfies the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution, the court ruled.

The attack on the CFPB is not the only challenge brought this term by conservative opponents of modern regulatory agencies. In as-yet-undecided cases, the Supreme Court will consider whether to curtail the powers of the Securities Exchange Commission and whether to gut a landmark standard for all regulatory oversight. Challenges to the National Labor Relations Board are working their way through lower courts.

A federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday blocked a new Biden administration rule that would prohibit credit card companies from charging customers late fees higher than $8.

US District Judge Mark T. Pittman, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, granted a preliminary injunction to several business and banking organizations that allege the new rule violates several federal statutes.

These organizations, led by the right-leaning US Chamber of Commerce, sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the rule was finalized in March. The rule, which was set to go into effect Tuesday, would save consumers about $10 billion per year by cutting fees from an average of $32, the CFPB estimated.

He claims leaders and officers in the mountain town of Leadville worked to force him from his job after an independent investigator cleared him of wrongdoing

The Black former police chief of a small Colorado town says he was the victim of racial discrimination and fired after officers and city leaders worked to force him out even though he was cleared of wrongdoing by an independent investigator, according to a federal lawsuit.

Hal Edwards, who sued the city of Leadville, 75 miles southwest of Denver, in U.S. District Court in Denver on April 30, says in the lawsuit that City Administrator Laurie Simonson undermined his decision-making and leadership during his 18 months in the job because he is Black.

“If you talk to any African American person who is in a position of authority over a white work group, our integrity is questioned, our competence is questioned, and we are often undermined by subordinates,” Edwards said in an interview.

The man who attacked the husband of former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

David DePape was convicted of assault and attempted kidnapping of a federal official in November after a week-long trial in San Francisco.

The attack left Paul Pelosi, now 84, in hospital for six days with a fractured skull and other injuries.

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Prosecutors, however, argued that DePape had a "plan of violence", noting that he told investigators he had a "target list" and plan to break Mrs Pelosi's kneecaps if she did not reveal "the truth". At the time of his arrest, DePape had zip ties and duct tape.

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In addition to the federal charges, DePape is facing separate state charges stemming from the attack. They include burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, and attempted murder.

He faces life imprisonment if convicted of those charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Legal experts say its time for the Supreme Court's ethics code to grow some teeth

Legal experts are lamenting the lack of an enforceable judicial ethics code, with some calling for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's recusal, following a New York Times report that a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement to reject the 2020 election was flown outside Alito’s home in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Ten leading legal experts told Salon Friday that the conduct — the flying of an upside-down flag, a known symbol of the movement to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, at a justice's home — appears to violate the Supreme Court's own ethics code, adopted last last year, by creating an appearance of bias.

Those experts said it’s far past time for the nine justices who enjoy lifetime appointments to hold themselves to the highest ethical standards. But, they noted, the Supreme Court has shown itself reluctant to do so.

"The situation is out of control," Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush who worked with Justice Alito on his 2006 Senate confirmation, told Salon. "This is after the insurrection, so it's really him weighing in, getting involved publicly in a dispute over the insurrection."

Four New Hampshire daycare employees allegedly spiked children’s food with the sleep supplement melatonin and were arrested on Thursday.

After a six-month investigation, police discovered that children had been furtively dosed with melatonin. Officers arrested the daycare owner, 52-year-old Sally Dreckmann, along with three of her employees: Traci Innie, 51; Kaitlin Filardo and Jessica Foster, who are both 23.

Melatonin is a sleep aid supplement that is sold over the counter. But the long-term impacts of melatonin on children are not widely known.

Furthermore, there have been several reports of children being overdosed with melatonin in recent years. About 7% of emergency department visits between 2012 and 2021 were for children who had accidentally ingested melatonin, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine issued a health warning for melatonin use around kids and adolescents, warning against the lack of US Food and Drug Administration oversight for the sleep aid.

A longshot Missouri gubernatorial candidat e with ties to the Ku Klux Klan will stay on the Republican ticket, a judge ruled Friday.

Cole County Circuit Court Judge Cotton Walker denied a request by the Missouri GOP to kick Darrell McClanahan out of the August Republican primary.

McClanahan is running against Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, state Sen. Bill Eigel and others for the GOP nomination to replace Gov. Mike Parson, who is barred by term limits from seeking reelection.

McClanahan’s lawyer, Dave Roland, said the ruling ensures that party leaders do not have “almost unlimited discretion to choose who’s going to be allowed on a primary ballot.”

Some of Donald Trump's allies are assembling proposals to curtail the Justice Department's independence and turn the nation's top law enforcement body into an attack dog for conservative causes, nine people involved in the effort told Reuters.

If successful, the overhaul could represent one of the most consequential actions of a second Trump presidency given the Justice Department's role in protecting democratic institutions and upholding the rule of law.

The plan is essentially twofold, according to the nine people interviewed by Reuters, some of whom requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

First: flood the Justice Department with stalwart conservatives unlikely to say "no" to controversial orders from the White House. Second: restructure the department so key decisions are concentrated in the hands of administration loyalists rather than career bureaucrats.