Sextans A

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the attention, flaunting young, bright, blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along graceful, symmetric spiral arms. But small galaxies form stars too, like irregular dwarf galaxy Sextans A. Its young star clusters and star forming regions are gathered into a gumdrop-shaped region a mere 5,000 light-years across. Seen toward the navigational constellation Sextans, the small galaxy lies some 4.5 million light-years distant. That puts it near the outskirts of the local group of galaxies, that includes the large, massive spirals Andromeda and our own Milky Way. Brighter Milky Way foreground stars appear spiky and yellowish in this colorful telescopic view of Sextans A.

U.S. court blocked many sweeping tariffs.........

Nvidia leads Wall Street higher after a US court blocks many of Trump's tariffs

By STAN CHOE

A big rally for stocks that began in Asia on Thursday is easing off the accelerator amid uncertainty about what will happen next after a U.S. court blocked many of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

The S&P 500 was 0.4% higher in morning trading after giving up more than half of an earlier gain. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 74 points, or 0.2%, as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher.

It's a downshift after stocks initially leaped nearly 2% in Tokyo and Seoul, where markets had the first chance to react to the ruling late Wednesday by the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York. It said that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act that Trump cited for ordering massive increases in taxes on imports worldwide does not authorize the use of tariffs.

The ruling raised hopes in financial markets that a hamstrung Trump would not be able to drive the economy into a recession with his tariffs, which had threatened to grind down on global trade and raise prices for consumers already tired of high inflation. Trump has said he wants to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, and he warned the process could cause some pain for U.S. households.

But the White House filed notice of appeal, and the long-term outcome of legal disputes over tariffs remains uncertain. The court’s ruling also affects only some of Trump’s tariffs, not those on foreign steel, aluminum and autos, which were invoked under a different law.

Trump “is still able to impose significant and wide-ranging tariffs over the longer-term through other means,” according to Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, chief investment officer of global equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.

Such uncertainty helped dampen the excitement in financial markets as trading headed through Europe into the United States, where the gains were much more modest than in Asia. The U.S. court's move was nevertheless seen as a positive for financial markets.

“The bar is raised for President Trump to resurrect his tariffs,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.

“Markets are pricing that this is a better type of uncertainty than what we’ve had since Liberation Day,” which is what Trump called his April 2 announcement of a worldwide set of sweeping tariffs.

The S&P 500 has pulled within 3.8% of its all-time high set earlier this year after earlier dropping roughly 20% below.

On Wall Street, tech stocks led the way after Nvidia once again topped analysts’ expectations for profit and revenue in the latest quarter.

The chip company has grown into one of the U.S. stock market’s largest and most influential stocks because of the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, and its 4.3% rise was the strongest force by far lifting the S&P 500.

C3ai, an AI application software company, jumped 29.4% after it reported stronger profit than analysts expected for its latest quarter. It also said the U.S. Air Force increased the maximum possible value for its contract by $350 million to $450 million. The company's revenue last quarter totaled $108.7 million.

E.l.f. Beauty was another big winner and rose 24.2% after the cosmetics company delivered a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also said it agreed to buy Hailey Bieber’s Rhode skincare brand in a $1 billion deal. Rhode had $212 million in net sales in the 12 months through March.

Bieber, a model and the wife of singer Justin Bieber, will be Rhode’s chief creative officer and head of innovation and also a strategic advisor to the combined companies.

They helped offset a drop for Best Buy, which fell 8.5% even though it reported a stronger profit than expected. Its revenue fell short of analysts’ forecasts.

The electronics retailer also cut its forecasted ranges for revenue and profit over the full year on the assumption that “tariffs stay at the current levels for the rest of the year, and there is no material change in consumer behavior from the trends we have seen in recent quarters,” Chief Financial Officer Matt Bilunas said.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased a bit following some mixed reports on the economy. One said that the U.S. economy likely shrunk by less in the first three months of the year than earlier estimated. Another said slightly more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.45% from 4.47% late Wednesday. The two-year Treasury yield, which moves more closely with expectations for where the Federal Reserve will take overnight interest rates, edged down to 3.95% from 3.96%.

In stock markets abroad, Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.9% to help lead Asian markets higher, while stocks rose 1.4 in Hong Kong and 0.7% in Shanghai.

South Korea's Kospi rallied 1.9% after the Bank of Korea cut its key interest rate to ease pressure on the economy.

The moves for European stocks were much more muted. France’s CAC 40 rose 0.1%, and Germany’s DAX swung from an early gain to a dip of 0.4%.

Oooops........

'Unimaginable sorrow': California dad dies during driving lesson with his daughter

By Madilynne Medina

A California father died in a crash on Memorial Day while he was teaching his 15-year-old how to drive in Orange County, police said. 

The father, identified as 64-year-old James Politoski, was being driven by his daughter, who has a driver’s permit, Lt. Jesse Schmidt with the Laguna Beach Police Department told SFGATE. 

In a social media post, Laguna Beach police said the driver crashed through a fence from the parking lot of Gelson’s Market in Dana Point. The car then plummeted down an embankment on Coast Highway between Wesley Drive and Montage Resort Drive. The preliminary cause of the crash appears to be confusion between the brake pedal and gas pedal, Schmidt said.

Laguna Beach police arrived at the crash at around 2:45 p.m., and the father was pronounced dead at the scene. The daughter was transported to Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo with significant injuries, police said. 

As of Wednesday morning, the teenager was in stable condition at the hospital and expected to survive, Schmidt said. 

“It is always difficult when an accident leads to the loss of life—especially under circumstances where a parent was simply trying to do the right thing by teaching their child a valuable life skill,” Schmidt said in a statement. “What began as an act of care and guidance ended in unimaginable sorrow.”

The Laguna Beach Police Department is investigating the crash.

$532M bill for dam removal

PG&E customers face $532M bill for dam removal some don't want

'The true costs of decommissioning will be far greater,' one critic said

By Matt LaFever

Six years after first announcing plans to walk away from the Potter Valley Project, Pacific Gas and Electric Company has finally revealed the staggering price tag for dismantling the century-old hydroelectric facility: $532 million. That’s the estimated cost PG&E submitted to state regulators on May 15, a half-billion-dollar teardown that will be funded by PG&E customers, many of whom also risk losing the year-round water supply the system delivers to 600,000 people across Northern California.

Tony Gigliotti, PG&E’s senior licensing project manager, told SFGATE the half-billion-dollar figure is still a “very high-level estimate,” but it’s meant to reflect the full scope of the task ahead. “We did the best we could with the information we have today,” he said. “We don’t have engineering completed at this point, but that estimate is meant to be all-inclusive.”

“It includes the cost of engineering, permitting, the physical construction — or deconstruction — and then also the restoration and environmental measures that we’ll have to put in place,” Gigliotti explained. “We’ll continue to refine it as we move along in the process.”

The Potter Valley Project, built in 1908, radically altered Northern California’s water system by diverting Eel River flows to the Russian River through a milelong tunnel. Anchored by Cape Horn Dam and Scott Dam (which created Lake Pillsbury), the project has long been considered a lifeline by farmers and ranchers in Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties. Even though the powerhouse shut down in 2021, the system still delivers water year-round.

Now, with the Potter Valley Project slated for removal, a replacement is already on the drawing board. The New Eel-Russian Facility, led by the Eel-Russian Project Authority, commonly referred to as ERPA, would be built near Cape Horn Dam to keep water flowing while restoring the Eel River’s natural processes. The proposal includes upgraded infrastructure and modern fish passages to serve both ecological and human needs, according to ERPA.

But that vision comes with a price tag of its own. Stuart Tiffen, a spokesperson for the Sonoma County Water Agency, told SFGATE in an email that the current construction estimate for the New Eel-Russian Facility is around $50 million. That number comes from a 2024 engineering report, but with designs only 30% to 60% complete, the final cost could rise.

As for how the project will be funded, ERPA is considering a mix of state and federal grants, local agency contributions and, critically, cost-sharing among what Tiffen called “project beneficiaries.” When SFGATE asked specifically if that would include Russian River water users, Tiffen acknowledged that it would, meaning the 600,000 people who rely on these diversions for drinking water and agriculture could end up footing part of the bill.

Unlike the consistent diversions from the Potter Valley Project that have fueled the Russian River’s agriculture for more than a century, the New Eel-Russian Facility would halt transfers from mid-spring through summer when the Eel River’s water levels are too low. A draft memo warns that this could mean sharp cutbacks for downstream users, which would likely jeopardize crops, ranching and everyday faucets.

Carol Cinquini, the vice president of the Lake Pillsbury Alliance, which represents homeowners along the reservoir and advocates for retaining the Potter Valley Project, called PG&E’s cost estimate “only the beginning.”

“The true costs of decommissioning will be far greater than PG&E’s estimated half a billion plus to remove the Eel River dams,” Cinquini told SFGATE via email. “There will be substantial costs to construct new water infrastructure and new water storage to meet the needs of the 650,000 downstream water dependents, and millions in annual costs for continued water diversions and restoration. The cumulative costs are likely to exceed $2 billion ... and the taxpayers and PG&E ratepayers will be on the hook for it.”

PG&E insists that tearing down the Potter Valley Project is still the cheaper option. “The decommissioning of the project at the end of the day still costs our customers less than to continue to own and operate the project,” said Janet Walther, the utility’s director of licensing and compliance. When SFGATE asked whether the public perception that customers will foot the bill was accurate, Walther said “yes,” explaining that the decommissioning costs were included in the utility’s General Rate Case. 

Additionally, PG&E is asking regulators for permission to dip into its hydroelectric decommissioning fund, a pool of ratepayer money the utility sets aside specifically for retiring hydroelectric projects, to help cover the $532 million price tag. The idea, as Walther put it, is “so that the customers who had the benefit of the generation and the hydro facility at the time are also the same customers that are, in the long term, paying for a potential future decommissioning.”

When SFGATE asked to see the financial analysis that led PG&E to conclude it was cheaper to tear down the Potter Valley Project than continue its operation, Walther said, “That level of economic analysis is not something that we put out in the public.”

Despite public outcry, Walther said PG&E didn’t simply walk away from the Potter Valley Project. After announcing in 2019 that it would not pursue a new license for the facility with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, PG&E tried to sell it.

“We tried to divest it on the open market,” Walther said. “Nobody stepped forward.”

With no buyer, the commission ordered PG&E to develop a formal surrender plan, a draft of which was released Jan. 31, 2025. The final plan is expected to be submitted this July.

PG&E admits tearing down the Potter Valley Project could rattle the Russian River watershed. In its draft plan, the utility warns of “unavoidable adverse impacts” to water reliability, farming and recreation once diversions stop flowing into the east branch.

Dave Canny, PG&E’s North Coast vice president, told SFGATE the company is working with the Eel-Russian Project Authority to soften the blow of decommissioning. That includes repurposing parts of the existing system and taking a gradual approach to dismantling. “We want to do right by the people delivering water downstream,” he said, emphasizing PG&E’s careful coordination with local agencies.

Regardless of PG&E’s slow march toward dismantlement, Cinquini believes the battle isn’t over. The utility may have filed its surrender, but she sees room for resistance and a better future. “With political will,” she said, “the question of ownership could be figured out.”

Deport Mahmoud Khalil is likely unconstitutional

Trump administration’s bid to deport Mahmoud Khalil is likely unconstitutional, judge rules

For now, the pro-Palestinian activist who organized protests at Columbia will remain in jail.

By Erica Orden

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration’s effort to deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is likely unconstitutional, but the judge stopped short of freeing him from jail.

Instead, Khalil must present further legal arguments for why he should be released, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz wrote in a 106-page decision.

Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and recent Columbia University graduate student, has not been charged with any crime. But he has been detained in Louisiana since March, after authorities arrested him in the lobby of his university residence and put him into deportation proceedings.

Khalil was the first of a group of foreign-born pro-Palestinian academics who were swept up by the Trump administration even though they had green cards or valid student visas. Judges have ordered several of the other academics released from jail, but Khalil has remained locked up while fighting his deportation on two parallel tracks: Farbiarz’s courtroom in New Jersey and a separate immigration court proceeding in Louisiana.

During Khalil’s time in jail, his wife gave birth to their first child.

In seeking to remove Khalil from the country, the Trump administration invoked a rarely used provision of federal law that allows the deportation of any noncitizen if the secretary of State determined the person’s “presence or activities” in the U.S. “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

Farbiarz, a Biden appointee, ruled Wednesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio likely acted unconstitutionally when he used that provision to target Khalil.

Rubio, the judge wrote, never explained whether Khalil’s activities “affected U.S. relations with any other country,” and as a result, his use of the provision was likely “unconstitutionally vague.”

“An ordinary person would have had no real inkling that a Section 1227 removal could go forward in this way,” the judge continued, referring to the section of federal law that contains the deportation provision.

But that does not mean Khalil should automatically be released, Farbiarz wrote. The judge said he wants additional briefing on other issues, including the government’s claim that Khalil omitted relevant information, including his membership in several organizations, when he applied for his green card.

Khalil and his lawyers have argued that the administration is illegally retaliating against him for his role in organizing campus protests of the Israel-Hamas war.

“The district court held what we already knew: Secretary Rubio’s weaponization of immigration law to punish Mahmoud and others like him is likely unconstitutional,” Khalil’s lawyers said Wednesday in response to Farbiarz’s ruling. “We will work as quickly as possible to provide the court the additional information it requested supporting our effort to free Mahmoud or otherwise return him to his wife and newborn son.”

While Khalil’s case has been pending before Farbiarz, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Khalil can be deported as a national security risk. Immigration judges are employees of the Justice Department and ordinarily do not grapple with constitutional questions as extensively as U.S. district judges.

Khalil is expected to appeal the immigration judge’s ruling. He cannot be deported immediately because Farbiarz previously barred the government from removing him from the country while his legal challenge is pending.

Needs a bullet sendoff...

After four months of disruption, Elon Musk signals he’s leaving government

The DOGE leader said his “scheduled time” as a special employee is up.

By Irie Sentner

Elon Musk is saying goodbye to DOGE.

The billionaire adviser to President Donald Trump, whose government-slashing initiative reshaped Washington over a whirlwind four months, on Wednesday confirmed his time as a “special government employee” was concluding soon.

“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President [Trump] for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk said on X. “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

Musk and Trump have signaled for weeks that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency chief would soon take a step back from the White House. Musk committed last month to drop his DOGE duties significantly and focus on his companies amid tumbling Tesla sales and stock prices.

“Special government employees” — Musk’s executive branch designation — are only allowed to work up to 130 days per year, a deadline that comes Friday, assuming Musk worked every day since Inauguration Day. Musk did not specify an exact end date, and a DOGE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk’s apparent departure comes a day after the billionaire criticized Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill,” slamming Trump’s landmark legislation for undermining DOGE’s spending cuts.

His secretive team’s unorthodox slash-and-burn tactics have sowed chaos across Washington and touched nearly every corner of the federal government. Although Trump has remained a fierce advocate of Musk, the Tesla CEO has clashed in recent months with several top administration officials.

Canada

Canada rethinks military spending as Trump turns up the pressure

“We need to build new defense systems,” Canada’s finance minister tells POLITICO as NATO spending targets rise.

By Mike Blanchfield

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is signaling a bold shift in Canadian defense spending — one where the military is a national priority.

“We need to rebuild our armed forces. We need to rebuild infrastructure. We need to build new defense systems, but we need to do that where we support Canadian industry, Canadian workers and Canadian autonomy,” Champagne told POLITICO in a wide-ranging interview in his 18th-floor corner office.

Canada is nowhere near the NATO spending target of 2 percent of GDP. A report from the alliance pegs it at 1.37 percent, making it one of the worst offenders in the alliance. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once privately advised NATO officials that Canada would never meet the target, according to documents leaked from the Pentagon two years ago.

Now, Secretary-General Mark Rutte says that target is likely to rise to 5 percent at next month’s NATO summit in The Hague.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, have implored Canada to pony up on defense. It’s the same message American administrations have been sending to Canada for decades, including from Barack Obama’s Democrats.

Champagne has served in numerous senior Cabinet portfolios: international trade, foreign affairs, industry and now as Carney’s right hand at finance.

“We want to do big things. We want to do them fast,” he said.

Here is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

You met King Charles. How’d that go?

Today was a day that will go down in history. I love it when he said, “the true north, strong and free.” I think it resonated in the minds of Canadians and in the hearts of Canadians.

How’s that going to resonate in Washington?

They’ll see that Canada has its own distinct institutions, that indeed we are a great nation, that we have an ambitious agenda for Canada of the 21st century. And that although we will always be friends, we will find our way like we did. When I look at 2025, it reminds me of 1945, where C.D. Howe kind of reinvented modern industrial Canada. It’s one of these moments in history where we’re really rebuilding the nation. And I think we’re fit for purpose. We will be the supplier of choice to the world.

What message did you take away from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last week at the G7 finance ministers meeting in Banff?

The desire to work collaboratively with colleagues to tackle the big issues. We talked about over capacity, non-market practices. We talked also about going after money laundering, the call to action on financial crimes.

The communique had some strong language on Ukraine. It called it a brutal war. It blamed the fighting on Russia. How hard was it to get the U.S. to agree to that language on Ukraine? Did you sense the Americans growing frustrated with Russia? We’ve since seen what Trump has said.

Without going into the detail of the discussion, there was really a sense of unity, understanding that Ukraine is fighting for democracy for all of us. And that it is incumbent upon us to look at every possible way where we can support Ukraine in this existential fight. And the message to the world is that we stand shoulder to shoulder, we’re going to hold Russia to account.

And very important in the communique is the statement that Secretary Bessent made whilst we were last in Washington that all the colleagues stood behind, which is the fact that anyone who supported directly, indirectly, the Russian war machine against Ukraine will not be able to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine. That statement in the communique embodies the unity of the G7, and our resolve to support Ukraine.

What’s Canada going to bring to the Ukraine reconstruction conference?

We will need to partner with the private sector. I see a big role for Canada when it comes to energy, conventional energy, when it comes to nuclear energy, when it comes to engineering firms. Canadian firms are very present. Fairfax is the largest insurer in Ukraine. There is a moral imperative to support Ukraine in its reconstruction, but there’s also a lot of opportunities for Canadian companies.

You see a role for Canada and getting behind insuring risk? You mentioned Fairfax.

There’s discussion being led by the U.K. and Norway about making sure that there would be an insurance and a reinsurance market for people who want to operate in Ukraine. I know there’s discussion with EDC [Export Development Canada] with respect to that, and the fact that Fairfax is the largest insurer in Ukraine, we have a great positioning.

Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been targeted heavily.

When we say Canada wants to be an energy superpower, people have talked a lot about conventional energy. But if you look in the nuclear field, Canada is one of the few countries in the world which can offer, basically, training for the people who build reactors.

We provide the fuel, and we can also do the decommissioning. So you could almost sell energy as a service with these firms.

Today, energy security is key to providing stability and prosperity to people. It’s true when it comes to Ukraine, it’s true when it comes to Eastern Europe. It’s true when it comes to both South Korea and Japan.

The Americans want to partner on nuclear too, right? It’s part of their energy plan.

Nuclear power is going to be part of the energy mix. When you look at the remanufacturing that is happening in a lot of Western countries, and if you add to that the digital economy around quantum and AI, you cannot talk today about quantum or AI without talking about energy.

Your previous ministers had these various tax credits for clean energy. Are these credits going to stay? Are you going to streamline them, to become an energy superpower?

What I like about a lot of these tax credits, they were based on production. We were smart when we did that. For example, in the EV sector, and when we attracted these investments, the great thing in that is that we had a strategic and prudent approach with respect to fiscal policy.

These credits have been very helpful for Canada to attract significant investment.

Will they stay in place, or will they change?

We want to build the strongest economy of the G7.

We need to have one Canadian economy, not 13. We need to give preferential treatment to Canadian companies when it comes to public procurement so that they can build a country together.

We’re going to fight the U.S. tariffs because they are certainly harmful to the Canadian economy, and I would even add also make North America less competitive. At the same time, we’re going to protect our workers and our industry and we’re going to build this country. That’s what you heard today, very much in the throne speech. This is about a vision for Canada. This is about a strong and confident Canada.

You’ve held virtually every major portfolio in Canada. How are you going to leverage all of that here?

I know the machinery of government. I know how Ottawa works, and I have the relationships to make things happen. Because when you are here sitting at the finance department, you have kind of this oversight in terms of what’s going on in government to support the prime minister.

Your predecessors in this job have been really good at saying no to defense spending. Things have changed. And Mark Rutte said today: 5 percent. What do you think?

The outcome we want to achieve is to protect Canada, protect Canadian sovereignty. The world has changed significantly. I was at the G7 finance ministers. Clearly, there’s a lot of discussion around defense spending that’s going to be needed to collectively ensure the defense of our respective countries. But on the other end, it’s smart investments, because we need to make sure what we’re going to invest is going to serve to protect our sovereignty, build our armed forces, but at the same time, rebuild our industrial base in the country. Because we need to have a stronger defense industrial base here.

You need to do smart procurement, smart investment and a smart approach to defense spending. We need to rebuild our armed forces, we need to rebuild infrastructure. We need to build new defense systems, but we need to do that where we support Canadian industry, Canadian workers and Canadian autonomy.

Is that how we’re going to get to 5 percent?

The discussion now is how we’re going to get to 2 percent.

But things could change in a month?

That goes back to why I think it was wise, prudent for me and the prime minister, to decide that we would have a budget in early fall. I want to bring stability and predictability. With the NATO defense summit coming in June, with the trade dispute we have with the United States, things could shift. Obviously, we have a big exercise around government efficiency.

If you look at the big buckets on my radar screen: How can I support the minister of defense to protect Canada, protect our sovereignty and build our industrial defense base and our industrial defense industry? The second bucket is around government efficiencies and how we make a government more efficient, working with the minister of AI.

Speaking of the prime minister, how would you describe your working relationship with him?

We come from similar backgrounds. In a sense, we’ve been evolving in different international circles. We know some of the same people. We have this vision about an ambitious, strong and confident Canada. We both come with our experience, our expertise, and a common desire to bring Canada to be the best country and the best economy of the G7. This is no small endeavor. We’re very complementary and that’s why we get along. I think we will, together with our colleagues at Cabinet, be able to achieve big things.

You guys are doing so much stuff so fast. There was a bit of confusion around when there would be a budget. How did that happen?

Listen, we came to the conclusion it would be in the best interest of Canada … to bring a serious budget in early fall, once we have more clarity around defense, around the trade war that is happening now in the world, and certainly when we have also initial feedback from our initiatives on government efficiency. For me, this is about responsible government.

Reality TV stars, just like him... You know, Fake shit you see on TV........

Trump pardons former New York congressmember and Connecticut governor

The president has been on a pardon spree.

By Gregory Svirnovskiy

President Donald Trump issued pardons Wednesday to a former New York congressman and a three-term Connecticut governor — part of a recent clemency spree that has also included reality TV stars and a Virginia sheriff.

Trump used his presidential discretion to grant clemency to former New York Rep. Michael Grimm, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion, and former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, a once rising star in Republican politics brought down in a corruption scandal.

Grimm served in Congress from 2011 to 2015, where he developed a reputation for his brash treatment of the media. The Republican’s political career came to a halt when he pleaded guilty to aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false tax return and concealing more than $900,000 in gross income.

He spent seven months in prison and attempted a political comeback in 2018, losing in a GOP primary battle for his former New York City district.

Rowland, the governor of Connecticut from 1995 to 2004, was convicted in two separate federal criminal cases. The first spurred his resignation from the governor’s mansion. In the second, he was sentenced to a 30-month prison term in 2015 for his illegal involvement in two congressional campaigns.

The pardons coincide with the installation of Ed Martin as the Justice Department’s new pardon attorney. Trump had nominated him to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, but pulled the nomination in the face of Senate opposition to his confirmation.

Rapper Kentrell Gaulden, who goes by the moniker NBA YoungBoy, announced on social media that he was also pardoned by Trump on Wednesday.

“I want to thank President Trump for granting me a pardon and giving me the opportunity to keep building — as a man, as a father, and as an artist,” Gaulden wrote. The rapper was sentenced to 23 months in prison on gun-related charges in December 2024.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The White House on Tuesday announced Trump was planning to pardon Todd and Julie Chrisley, who starred in a TV show that ran for ten seasons on USA Network before their convictions on fraud charges. Trump on Wednesday said he is also considering pardons for the people involved in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

At what point do they wake up?

House tax plan now costs $4T, budget forecasters say

A more generous state and local tax deduction added by GOP lawmakers drove an increase in the megabill’s cost, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

By Brian Faler

House Republicans’ tax package is now expected to cost nearly $4 trillion, government forecasters said Wednesday, thanks in part to a last-minute deal to further increase a cap on state and local tax deductions.

The legislation approved last week by the House is now anticipated to cost $3.94 trillion over the next decade, the official Joint Committee on Taxation said.

That’s up from the $3.8 trillion price tag before lawmakers made a number of late changes to the plan.

An agreement with a number of blue-state Republican holdouts to hike the SALT cap to $40,000, from a planned $30,000, would cost an additional $129 billion. The cap is currently $10,000.

At the same time, lawmakers wrung more savings out of a clean energy investment credit that’s now expected to generate $172 billion, up from $155 billion.

Lawmakers approved the legislation shortly before leaving for their Memorial Day recess, but the legislation will be center-stage in the Senate when Congress returns to work next week. Lawmakers there are promising additional changes.

While the $4 trillion price tag means the plan is within House Republicans’ budget, the Senate has not yet settled on how much it intends to spend on tax cuts, and the package could still grow.

TACO