Mar-a-Lago search put FBI on high alert for pro-Trump protest violence
Federal law enforcement officers scoured social media to identify threats to FBI buildings and agents and issued internal warnings about possibly armed protests in the days after the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, according to emails and other records obtained by Bloomberg.
Intelligence officers at the Federal Protective Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that protects federal buildings, called for increased patrols and security around government properties and instructed law enforcement officers to remain in a “heightened state of vigilance at this time.”
“An attack on a federal facility can occur in a variety of ways and is only limited to the imagination of the individual(s) who are planning, coordinating and executing the attack,” the FPS said in an Aug. 10 information bulletin sent to its officers in the Great Lakes region.
Two days earlier, a team of FBI agents searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, seizing some two dozen boxes of documents Trump had not returned to the National Archives and Records Administration after months of negotiations. Those boxes contained highly classified material, including some marked with the highest rating, TS/SCI, or “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.”
—Bloomberg News
Mark Cuban slams Sen. Elizabeth Warren over proposals to tax billionaires
DALLAS — Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire Mark Cuban lashed out against Sen. Elizabeth Warren for her proposals to increase taxes on the ultra-rich. Speaking at a Vox Media conference in Los Angeles this week, Cuban described paying taxes as an act of patriotism.
“The most patriotic thing you can do, after military service, is pay your taxes, because that’s what allows everybody to live and to prosper,” Cuban said, according to a clip posted by Mediaite.
“But yeah, the idea of ‘soak the rich,’ billionaire tears that fill that cup — screw you, Elizabeth Warren,” he said. “You’re everything that’s wrong with politics.”
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has long argued that billionaires do not pay their fair share of taxes. This is not the first time she and Cuban, whose net worth is estimated around $4.5 billion, have clashed.
—The Dallas Morning News
Kentucky issues advisory to limit local fish consumption over potential cancer-causing chemicals
LEXINGTON, Ky. — State regulators have issued an advisory for people to consider limiting how much fish they eat from lakes and rivers in Kentucky because of contamination by chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems.
The state has had advisories for some time on limiting fish consumption because of mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), but the new advisory is the first covering per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
Tests on fish tissue from several waterways in the state found they contained PFAS chemicals, according to a release.
The EPA has not set advisory limits on eating fish as a result of PFAS contamination, but some states have had them in place for years, including Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine and New York.
—Lexington Herald-Leader
Ukraine army’s breakthrough in north threatens Russian grip
A Ukrainian counteroffensive appears to be progressing in the north, but less so in the southern Kherson region that has attracted greater attention and Russian reinforcements.
Ukrainian officials and Russian military bloggers alike on Thursday described a counteroffensive in the north that has surprised in its speed, the first time since the war began that Ukrainian forces have been able to push past Russian defenses on a more than tactical level.
The limited breakthrough comes as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin ratchets up pressure on European energy markets. That has officials in Kyiv racing to show allies the war can be won.
In the few days since the offensive began with an assault on the town of Balakliya, about 90 km (56 miles) south east of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, units have advanced 50 km into Russian-held territory, taking 20 settlements, according to Oleksiy Hromov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces.
—Bloomberg News
