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PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: Two Sussex Police officers were found not guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in the case of a 92-year-old disabled man who was pepper-sprayed, hit with a baton, and tasered at an English nursing home.
👥 Who’s Involved: Police Constable (PC) Stephen Smith, PC Rachel Comotto, Donald Burgess (now-deceased 92-year-old amputee and dementia patient), care home staff, and Burgess’s family.
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📍 Where & When: Park Beck care home, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, England, June 2022.
💬 Key Quote: “The reason for his behaviour that day, we now know, is that he was delirious as a result of a urinary tract infection,” Judge Christopher Hehir explained to jurors.
⚠️ Impact: Burgess died three weeks after the incident, having contracted an illness in the hospital. Sussex Police referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and the incident led to public outcry.
IN FULL:
Two police officers from Sussex, England, have been cleared of assault charges following an incident involving a 92-year-old man at a nursing home in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex. Police Constable (PC) Stephen Smith and PC Rachel Comotto were found not guilty at Southwark Crown Court of assault occasioning actual bodily harm after using force on Donald Burgess, a dementia patient and amputee.
The incident occurred in June 2022 after police responded to an emergency call reporting that Burgess, a one-legged man confined to a wheelchair, had brandished a butter knife and threatened nursing home staff. According to court testimony, Burgess was pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton, and tasered during the encounter, which the officers escalated within moments of their arrival. He was sent to the hospital and passed away three weeks later after contracting an illness there.
NEW: Bodycam footage released shows UK police tasering Donald Burgess, a 92-year-old man with one leg, after pepper-spraying him in the face.
Infuriating.
To make matters worse, Burgess was hospitalized because of the incident where he contracted Covid and sadly passed 22… pic.twitter.com/mntRF2OuEO
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 21, 2025
The court heard that Burgess’s actions were “out of character” and later attributed to delirium caused by a urinary tract infection. Deputy nursing home manager Donna Gardner described his movements with the butter knife as “extremely quick.” Judge Christopher Hehir told the jury, “The reason for his behaviour that day, we now know, is that he was delirious as a result of a urinary tract infection.”
Following the incident, Sussex Police referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which led to an investigation and subsequent charges against the officers.
Burgess’s family expressed their shock and horror over his death. A neighbor from his former home in Battle, East Sussex, described him as a “lovely, sociable man” who had faced significant health challenges, including diabetes and the amputation of his leg. After his wife’s passing, Burgess, who suffered from dementia, moved into the nursing home.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced the elimination of Hamas Gaza chief Mohammad Sinwar, the younger brother of the group’s deceased leader Yahya Sinwar.
Speaking at the Knesset, Netanyahu declared, “We have eliminated Mohammed Deif, Yahya Sinwar, and Mohammed Sinwar,” marking another blow to the terrorist organization responsible for the October 7, 2023, massacre.
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The announcement underscores Israel’s relentless campaign to dismantle Hamas, a mission aligned with President Donald J. Trump’s unwavering support for America’s key ally in the Middle East.
Mohammad Sinwar’s killing comes seven months after the death of his brother Yahya, known as the architect of the October 7 attack, who was taken out on October 17, 2024, in Rafah, Gaza.
This story is developing…
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced the elimination of Hamas Gaza chief Mohammad Sinwar, the younger brother of the group’s deceased leader Yahya Sinwar. show more
PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: New analysis suggests only a concerningly small number of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts can actually be reviewed and verified.
👥 Who’s Involved: Elon Musk, DOGE, the Trump administration, critics of DOGE, and Open the Books auditors.
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📍 Where & When: The analysis was published by Open the Books on Tuesday, May 27, 2025.
💬 Key Quote: “DOGE is an advisory group; we are doing the best we can as an advisory group. We do not make the laws, nor do we control the judiciary, nor do we control the Executive Branch.” – Elon Musk.
⚠️ Impact: Transparency concerns persist regarding the verification of claimed savings by DOGE, with taxpayers struggling to confirm many of the savings figures.
IN FULL:
New analysis suggests that many of the claimed cuts to nondiscretionary spending enacted by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cannot be easily reviewed or verified. The external audit of DOGE data is raising concerns about a lack of transparency behind the advisory agency’s methodology and claims, as it appears to be largely winding down its mission ahead of Elon Musk’s possible departure as a special government employee.
The Trump administration has credited DOGE with saving taxpayers $160 billion by targeting wasteful spending through canceled grants, contracts, and other measures. However, critics, including some on the right, dispute the validity of those savings. Open the Books, an independent watchdog, analyzed DOGE’s claims and found that only 42 percent of contracts and 27 percent of grants could be easily verified through public records.
According to Open the Books, the discrepancies largely stem from a lack of real-time transparency in government spending systems, such as USASpending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). For instance, DOGE claimed savings of $32,366 on a State Department grant to a Chilean university, but public records show no corresponding outlay to confirm the figure. Similarly, a Department of Defense grant to the University of Wisconsin showed conflicting values between DOGE’s data and FPDS records.
Other problems faced by those trying to review and understand the DOGE data include federal contracts listed as Indefinite Delivery Vehicles (IDV). According to Open the Books, “This type of contract allows the government to sign a contract for a certain value, but pay for goods or services over time and negotiate those costs separately per instance.”
The watchdog group gives an example of a contract “…between the Department of Energy and Kumono Government Services, LLC [which] is for security and safety trainings at the DOE’s National Training Center in Albuquerque. Both DOGE and the FPDS roughly agree on the contract value. DOGE has it at $179,000,000 even, which FPDS says the total contract value is $179,637,339.14.”
“DOGE says they saved taxpayers $15,652,636.00 on this contract. But the FPDS shows a smaller current contract value of $31,303,271.64. It also reflects a total order value, presumably money already spent, of $117,901,211. Regardless of how one parses those numbers, it’s impossible to verify the $15.6M of savings,” Open the Books explains.
Another area of contention is that many of the recommended DOGE cuts are to non-discretionary spending, which will need to be codified either through rescissions enacted by Congress or through appropriations cuts enacted by lawmakers later this year. While fiscal conservative activists have tried to claim that Congress can enact DOGE cuts in the current reconciliation bill, these claims are actually untrue. Senate rules stipulate that budget reconciliation legislation can only address discretionary spending, of which the bill makes $1.6 trillion in cuts over the 10-year budget window.
Despite the transparency concerns raised by Open the Books, Elon Musk, who has served as the informal chief of the DOGE initiative, still claims that the group has largely accomplished its goals. During an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum, Musk stated: “We do not make the laws, nor do we control the judiciary, nor do we control the Executive Branch. We are simply advisors. In that context, we are doing very well.”
“We cannot take action beyond that because we are not some sort of imperial dictator of the government,” Musk said.
To better open the DOGE cutting process to public scrutiny, Open the Books is advocating that the public be allowed access to a modified version of the Treasury Payment System, which would allow those interested to track spending in real time. This mechanism could also help voters to better influence their elected officials as to what cuts they would want to see prioritized.
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