Over the past several years, federal law enforcement agencies have gotten increasingly creative in their surveillance techniques, hiding cameras in, among other things, streetlights, traffic cones, toolboxes and vacuum cleaners.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has been especially forward-thinking in its placement of high-tech but unseen monitoring devices. In 2018, the DEA quietly installed automatic license plate readers in an unknown number of the ubiquitous radar speed signs that show approaching drivers how fast they’re going. It has only grown in the years since.

Now, according to federal procurement data reviewed by The Independent, the DEA – which has recently diverted agents from their usual drug-fighting mandate to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts – is outfitting agents, presumably undercover, with audio-video recorders camouflaged to look like everyday credit cards.

A stopgap spending bill that would avert an Oct. 1 government shutdown fell short in the U.S. Senate on Friday, as Democrats withheld support for the legislation while demanding higher spending for healthcare.

The 44-48 vote, coming on the eve of a week-long congressional recess, raises the chances that federal agencies will shut down if a deal between Republicans and Democrats cannot be struck before current funding expires at midnight on Sept. 30.

What Senate Republicans did is they changed the rules so that they could pass nominees in large groups. Until now, they needed the approval of everyone in the chamber to be able to do that.

Now, that may not sound like a big deal, but it is a very big deal when you have 1,300 filled — positions that need to be filled by the Trump administration. And Senate Democrats have done something unique this time around. They have slow-rolled every single one of those nominations. So it has really bogged down the Senate.

President Trump has made threats about other ways he would try to get his nominations through. Senator Thune, the lead Republican, didn't want to go that way. So they decided to change the rules here, which also has its partisan risks with it.

Authorities in Mississippi said Thursday that autopsy results confirmed a Black student who was found hanging from a tree on the campus of Delta State University died by suicide.

"On September 17, 2025, the Mississippi State Medical Examiner's Office conducted an autopsy. Findings were consistent with the initial investigation, determining the cause of death to be hanging and the manner of death as suicide," the Cleveland Police Department said in a statement. "Final toxicology results are pending and may take two to four weeks to complete."

Demartravion "Trey" Reed, 21, was found near the pickleball courts on campus Monday, sparking fear and concern among the student body.

Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump said Wednesday he has been retained by Reed’s family, writing on social media, “Trey was a young man full of promise and warmth, deeply loved and respected by all who knew him. His family and the campus community deserve a full, independent investigation to uncover the truth about what happened.”

At a news conference held Wednesday, university officials said a preliminary report by the local coroner did not indicate foul play.

https://www.scrippsnews.com/us-news/human-rights/hanging-deaths-lead-to-speculation-about-possible-lynchings

Republicans’ outlook on the direction of the country has soured dramatically, according to a new AP-NORC poll that was conducted shortly after last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The share of Republicans who see the country headed in the right direction has fallen sharply in recent months, according to the September survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Today, only about half in the GOP see the nation on the right course, down from 70% in June. The shift is even more glaring among Republican women and the party’s under-45 crowd.

Overall, about one-quarter of Americans say things in the country are headed in the right direction, down from about 4 in 10 in June. Democrats and independents didn’t shift meaningfully.

A federal judge in Florida on Friday tossed President Donald Trump’s $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.

The lawsuit named a book and an article written by Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig that focuses on Trump’s finances and his pre-presidency starring role in television’s “The Apprentice.”

Trump said in the lawsuit that they “maliciously peddled the fact-free narrative” that television producer Mark Burnett turned Trump into a celebrity — “even though at and prior to the time of publications defendants knew that President Trump was already a mega-celebrity and an enormous success in business.”

Is it:

“Mmm no very unwise”

or

“Mmm very wise”