States outlawed the games because of their associations with gambling, including South Carolina, which banned the game for minors in 1959.

The new version of pinball with flippers grew in popularity throughout the 1960s and ’70s, even with bans in place. A 1974 California Supreme Court decision classified the game as one of skill and not chance, which led to states removing pinball prohibitions.

South Carolina was the holdout.

Playing pinball remained illegal for anyone under the age of 18, in the same category of offenses as running away, “loitering in a billiard room” or “gaining admission to a theater by false identification.”

Legislation to remove pinball from that list has been proposed repeatedly since 2015, with no luck — until this session.

Hussein said he was in disbelief that he was told to convert or leave — for the first time in his life — at a Republican convention with the tagline, “Unity drives victory.”

That slogan, touted by the governor on press releases, placards, lanyards and even the elephant he procured to march through the convention hall, became a rallying cry for the state’s leaders and party nominees heading into November. If fractured, they warned, the party could lose the state to Democrats and their U.S. Senate nominee, Austin state Rep. James Talarico.

But in spite of that warning, members were willing to lose the support of Muslim conservatives.

...

Hussein attended a panel from the Judeo-Christian Caucus moderated by Dr. Rick Scarborough, a former Southern Baptist pastor and the president of Recover America, an organization to engage ministers and pastors in politics.

Speakers told the audience that immigrants who don’t believe in Judeo-Christian values will erode those values and create problems for America. Scarborough accused Muslims of lying to win political power.

“You’re going to find Muslims that aren’t being antagonistic or mean, at least not publicly. But I’ll guarantee, if they get power, they’ll cut your head off as believers of Christ,” he said.

In his first interview since being kicked out of the US, FIFA referee Omar Artan tells’s the NYT’s Matt Bigg that the biggest dream of his professional life has been shattered. The World Cup ref was questioned for 11 hours, held in a cell and then dumped on a plane.

One member of Congress alone has limited power in an emergency at the scale of the screwworm outbreak, and federal and state officials are mobilizing resources. And there are plenty of powerful members from West and South Texas who are engaged and able to ask questions directly to federal personnel.

But given the high-profile federal response and importance of the cattle industry to the district’s economy, the lack of a representative could hamper constituents’ ability to get information or be heard.

Absent a representative, both candidates to replace Gonzales are trying to convene ranchers, get information from the federal government and get information to people in the district — without the title of “Representative” next to their names that affords more information access.

When he was in office, Gonzales led the introduction of a House bill, cosponsored by the majority of the Texas delegation and included members of both parties, to establish a facility to grow sterile New World screwworm flies in areas at risk of infection — though the bill never received a vote.

Gonzales also launched a screwworm working group with federal personnel, state stakeholders and ranchers, and was on site when Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a plan to eliminate New World screwworm last June.

USDA did break ground on a sterile fly facility in Edinburg in April, flanked by Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Republican U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, but the facility is not yet operational, though Rollins has pledged to fasttrack its opening.

“I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital, and they have been sick, but they recovered,” McAfee acknowledged before my visit. “But here’s the thing: I’m a pioneer. And I’m going against the grain here. I’m climbing a mountain they say you can’t climb.”

...

“We catch these things and divert the milk immediately,” McAfee said of the pathogens.

I assumed that after diverting batches, the farm discarded them.

Later that day, I learned otherwise.

“We have a red-flag system here, where if there’s anything that gets really out of whack, they can immediately tag the milk, and it doesn’t go to anything but cheese,” McAfee told me. “Because, you know, cheese is resistant to pathogens.”

Research has shown that raw cheese is not, in fact, resistant to pathogens; while aging can mitigate some risk, harmful bacteria can still survive the usual 60-day maturation process.

According to the initiative, students would have several options to confirm their sex: a visual genital exam, a lab test to determine their genetic makeup, or an analysis of testosterone levels in the blood. The genital exam, which a medical professional can conduct without touching the child, would likely be the most accessible option for most kids.

...

Conservative hedge fund manager Brian Heywood and his political action committee Let’s Go Washington are backing the measure.

...

Heywood said he didn’t believe his initiative would add anything new to existing medical requirements for student athletes, a position he also stated to KUOW in September 2025, shortly after launching the measure.

https://fixupx.com/Illusory_Ace/status/2058868392874938719

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, hired by the Israeli government to push pro-Israel views on a major conservative media network, has directed $13 million from Israel to several Republican digital strategy firms and allies, according to a previously unreported document filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Parscale was hired in part to influence major right-wing Christian media company Salem Media Group, where he is also an executive. His firm spent hundreds of thousands on ads with a Salem subsidiary. As part of the contract, Parscale’s firm also sent millions to other firms run by some of his closest political allies.

In an effort to mitigate logistical issues that accompany large-scale combat operations, the U.S. Army is working to better integrate veterinarians into combat care.

To better prepare for the possibility of a large injury rate in a future Indo-Pacific fight, combat medical teams are working on ways to utilize human and animal health at the same time, given the similar anatomies between humans and canines, as demonstrated by the 18th Theater Medical Command at the 2026 Land Forces of the Pacific Symposium and Exposition in Hawaii.

In February, Trump administration officials waived over two dozen environmental laws to clear the way for a 150-mile-long border barrier through West Texas, including Big Bend National Park.

Then in early April, an interactive map on the CBP website showed the agency planned to instead install “virtual wall” technology in the region that would alert Border Patrol agents when people cross the border. CBP officials took down the map in late April, and it is not currently available on the agency’s website.

Opponents of the wall being built in Big Bend have expressed skepticism that federal officials’ will make good on their statements about withdrawing from construction in the region, and point to the repeated altering and subsequent removal of the online map. Local residents near Big Bend sued the Trump administration in mid-April, arguing that federal officials waived the regulations illegally in pursuit of the construction project.

Funds acquired through the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” President Donald Trump’s key spending package, direct CBP to construct a multifaceted barrier system, or a “Smart Wall,” across the southern border with Mexico. The proposed barriers would include bollard walls and patrol roads, as well as surveillance technology and floating buoys placed in the Rio Grande.

The Border Patrol’s 517-mile Big Bend Sector has historically been the least busy of the nine sectors, with agency apprehensions in the region accounting for 1.3% of more than 237,000 across the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025.

Under the contract, awarded by the Bureau of Prisons to LEO Technologies, the company will use artificial intelligence to translate, transcribe and monitor prison phone calls. Broidy lists himself as the founder and CEO of LEO.

...

The company has previously won awards in state and local prison systems, but the new contract with the Bureau of Prisons marks the first time it is doing business with the federal government. On its website, the Texas-based company says that prisoners’ phone calls “represent the world’s largest concentration of criminally-minded activity – all on recorded lines, all legally accessible”.

Broidy is a longtime businessman, Republican backer and pro-Israel philanthropist. His 2020 guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, for secretly lobbying Trump’s White House on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests, came 11 years after a separate New York state criminal conviction for paying off state officials to get business for his investment company.

...

Broidy has been the subject of a dizzying series of colorful headlines over the years. In 2009, he pleaded guilty in a fraud case after prosecutors said Broidy paid almost $1m to New York state officials to secure business with the state’s pension fund. The payoffs included taking officials on luxury trips to Israel and Italy, and a secret $300,000 investment in a low-budget movie called Chooch.

In 2012, a judge reduced Broidy’s felony conviction to a misdemeanor of attempting to reward official misconduct.

Broidy soon emerged as a major Trump supporter and was named national deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee in 2017.

In 2018, Broidy, who was married, stepped down from his official fundraising role when news broke that he had agreed to pay $1.6m to a former Playboy model who became pregnant during an affair with him and who had then had an abortion. In a statement he issued at the time, he wrote: “She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period. We have not spoken since that time.”

The council was created as part of a 2023 compromise that also set a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. It has the power to set standards on wages, health, safety and working conditions — and to raise the minimum wage annually for hundreds of thousands of fast food workers at chains with 60 or more locations nationwide.

The council — composed of four members representing the businesses, four members representing labor and a chairperson who’s an “unaffiliated” member of the public — must, under state law, hold at least two meetings a year, though the law does not specify who should enforce this provision.

The council only held those meetings in 2024; last year it held two subcommittee meetings, the latest in February 2025. Shortly after, the council’s chairperson, Nick Hardeman, resigned when Newsom appointed him to a different state position. When reached by CalMatters, Hardeman said he did not want to speak on the record about a council he has not chaired in a while.