DOJ loses Illinois Voter Data Access Challenge

🚨BREAKING: Federal Court DISMISSES Department of Justice lawsuit to compel Illinois to provide its complete statewide voter registration database. Another big victory for Elias Law Group and its clients.

DOJ is now 0-19 in these cases. ELG remains undefeated. www.democracydocket.com/cases/illino…

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— Marc Elias (@marcelias.bsky.social) 1. august 2026 kl. 00.27

This is great news. Once again an attempt to attack democracy by the Trump administration has been defeated.

As Democracy Docket explains in the linked page:

This marks the latest escalation in the DOJ’s efforts to obtain sensitive voter registration data from states across the country. In recent months, the DOJ has intensified its demands for voter information as part of a broader, politically charged push aimed at pressuring states to remove voters from the rolls and advancing the Trump administration’s unfounded claims of widespread illegal voting. The DOJ has now sued 30 states, plus Washington, D.C. — California, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Massachusetts, Georgia, Illinois, Wisconsin, Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, Arizona, Virginia, Idaho and Washington — all of which have refused to hand over unredacted voter files containing highly sensitive personal information.

USA – 250 years later

Today is Independence Day in USA – the 250th since the original one in 1776.

In 1776, Independence Day was about the USA becoming independent from the UK, and no longer be under the rule of the British King. Reading American history books, this is when Democracy was introduced in the US, often ignoring the fact that slavery was still ongoing, and that generally only property-owning/tax-paying white men could vote (for a more nuanced look, see the timeline of voting in the US).

Since the bírth of USA, a lot of things have happened – there was a large land purchase, a civil war, another large land purchase, an invasion, an annexation (later abandoned), numerous wars, Civil Rights Acts increasing democracy, and a number of other things. Looking at the situation 20 years ago, most would say that the US was a robust democratic country with some glaring flaws, especially related to race – but even in this area, the country was improving.

There were some democratic problems like the lack of voting for congress for Washington DC and Porto Rico and for convicted felons, even after they had served their time.

But all in all things looked good, and we expected it to improve.

That was twenty years ago though. Now, the situation is much different.

Trump, the GOP and the current US Supreme Court has dismantled the railguards of democracy, nearly killed the Civil Right Acts, removing bodily autonomy from women, and making partisan decision allowing the GOP to gerrymander and disfranchise people. Now, I can best describe the US as a near-totalitarian kleptographykleptocracy where one party is enriching itself, and trying to keep in power by all means. And this doesn’t even begin to address how the rampant bigotry and oppression of marginalized groups.

I hope the midway election can change this, but in order for this to happen, the voters must vote out the GOP every way the can, in every position – the GOP has shown that they can use every position available to create mayhem, oppress people and disrupt democracy.

Lazy linking

A bunch of links to interesting content that I have come across on the internet

Public Health professor’s ‘Coverage Denied’ book dives into health insurance quagmire

Unlike most of us who stress out over and decry the ever-escalating cost and complexities of health insurance coverage, Pitt’s Miranda Yaver did something about it. She wrote a book.

Rather than a hollow rant on over-familiar complaints, however, “Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States,” points to possible paths forward. Published by Cambridge University Press and released on April 23, “Coverage Denied” — loaded with data as well as patient and physician narratives culled from 111 interviews — lays out a number of coverage-reform proposals.

US health care and health coverage is unfortunately still an incredibly important subject. The steep increase in health care costs for many Americans certainly hasn’t made the subject any less relevant.

The Age of No Innocence

What if all you knew was extremist politics? Welcome to being young in America.

Fascinating article about how the young people in USA has never known a time without extremist politics. Those of us, who are older, can remember a time before regular school shootings, Trump and far-right talking points being pushed by main-stream right-winged media, but this has been part of the whole life of young people – the first president they remember is Trump.

Why you should keep getting mRNA vaccines

The COVID pandemic ushered mRNA vaccines into the spotlight, and the technology has even greater potential. Here’s what to know about the way that they work, their safety, and more.

The article is very US-centric, focusing on US politics and US numbers (the cite a study showing that mRNA covid vaccines prevented 8 million infection in the first six months, without mentioned that this was in the US alone – worldwide numbers were much higher). Even so, the fundamental message is still worth spreading – mRNA is a safe type of vaccines, and we should use this technology in the future.

Selma Rejects Jim Crow 2.0

Half of the population in Dallas County, Alabama, where Selma is located, was African American in 1965. But less than 2% of the county’s registered voters were Black. That wasn’t for lack of trying. They were excluded by systematic racism. Leaders like John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. understood that being denied rights was intolerable, and that nothing would change until Black Americans had the same ability to exercise the right to vote that white citizens did.

Alabama newspapers largely ignored events leading up to Bloody Sunday in Montgomery. As marchers approached the state capitol, the local press spilled more ink over what Governor Wallace was eating for lunch as the marchers approached the city (“Roast beef, green beans, corn muffins, sliced peaches, plastic-wrapped chocolate cakes, buttermilk and iced tea,”) than they did on the march itself.

It was national media coverage that drew the public’s attention to what was happening. On March 7, 1965, when a then-25-year-old John Lewis led over 600 peaceful marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma and was met with brutality from state troopers, it was the footage shown on network news that night that shocked the nation’s conscience into finally doing something. By Sunday, March 21, 1965, with the country’s attention focused on them and joined by Dr. King, the original 600 protesters swelled to close to 8,000 people and the march from Selma to Montgomery began. A federal judge, Frank Johnson, ordered the troopers who had attacked them previously to protect them. By the end of the year, the Voting Rights Act was passed and signed into law.

Protest is brewing again in Selma. In the wake of Callais, and the overt gerrymandering and dilution of the Black vote that the Supreme Court now says is legal, protestors marched today.

Once again Selma is at the front of the fight for civil rights, and once again they are largely ignored by national newspapers and other media.

Turkeys Circling A Dead Cat Are Probably Wary, Not Working Dark Magic

I think I will let the headline speak for itself, except that I will link a bluesky post that includes a gif of the video that the article mentions, since it is no longer on twitter – and since you shouldn’t give twitter traffic

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— grooveholmes.bsky.social (@grooveholmes.bsky.social) 15. maj 2026 kl. 04.08

If the embedded post doesn’t show, you can go to it here.

You Can’t Build Useful Alliances With Fascists, Dumbass

I hope we all now understand that forging strategic policy partnerships with fascists is like trying to develop an intimate relationship with a running chainsaw.

Great piece by Karl Bode

USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths

The dismantling of USAID, according to models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children,” Gawande wrote. He noted that the toll will continue to grow and may go unseen because it can take months or years for people to die from lack of treatments or vaccine-preventable illnesses—and because deaths are scattered.

“We are now witnessing what the historian Richard Rhodes termed ‘public man-made death,’” Gawande wrote.

This was back in November. Think of how many hundred of thousands of deaths the decision has caused since then.

Looking at the same model as the article is referring to, the impact after a year is 262,915 adult deaths and 518,428 child deaths, so 781,343 total deaths.

For some reason the impactcounter has been retired, but we can assume that the impact after the first year will be similar to the impact afterwards. This means that Trump, Musk and the Doge team have the blood of millions on their hands.

 

 

 

In spite of Trump, wind energy is spreading

Among the many bad and evil things that Trump did when he got into office for the second time, was to make an executive order targeting wind and solar subsidies. This not only had the effect of blocking money to new projects, but also to cancel subsidies already granted.

This led Revolution Wind, a 50/50 joint venture between Global Infrastructure Partners’ Skyborn Renewables and Ørsted A/S, and Sunrise Wind LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ørsted A/S, to sue the US Administration, with predictable results. Ørsted A/S is a Danish company.

Sunrise Wind resumes construction, fifth ruling overturned

A federal judge for D.C. District Court has allowed Sunrise Wind to resume work after granting a preliminary injunction against the administration’s lease suspension and construction pause issued December 22, 2025. 

D.C District Judge Lamberth ordered the action to be “arbitrary and capricious” after having reviewed classified information and agreed that irreparable harm standards were met given the loss of specialized vessels that would cause a “cascade of delays” preventing the project from meeting its obligations. 

Previously, Judge Lamberth ruled in favor of Revolution Wind’s construction resumption twice, most recently under the same lease suspension and stop construction order affecting Sunrise Wind, and again in September 2025 when the federal administration issued a stop work order directly for Revolution Wind. The administration referenced undisclosed “national security concerns” that arose from a recent classified Department of War study alleging that turbine structures cause interference with military radar systems.  

…

Sunrise Wind is 45% complete and set to provide 924 MW of power generation to New York. The project’s supply chain stretches across 34 states and has driven more than $1.9 billion worth of investments while supporting more than 4,290 American jobs across the construction, operations, shipbuilding, and manufacturing sectors. Ten shipyards in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas built or retrofitted the more than 16 vessels operating at the site. Most notably, the first U.S.-built subsea rock installation vessel was constructed at Hanwha Philly Shipyard.

The above article mentions that the Judge had previously ruled in favor of Revolution Wind. 

Ørsted A/S put out a press release a couple of weeks ago, stating Revolution Wind begins delivering power to New England

Revolution Wind, LLC, a 50/50 joint venture between Global Infrastructure Partners’ Skyborn Renewables and Ørsted, announced today that the Revolution Wind project has started delivering power to New England’s electric grid, strengthening the region’s power supply and helping reduce costs for consumers.

Revolution Wind, a 704 MW offshore wind energy project, is expected to supply enough electricity to power more than 350,000 homes and businesses. The project will deliver power under fixed-price, 20-year agreements with energy utilities in Rhode Island and Connecticut, providing price certainty and stability for consumers.

So in spite of the best effort of the Trump administration, US households are starting to get wind energy, with more to come as other projects finishes.

It is escalating

First the arrested and charged Democratic politicians like Rep .LaMonica McIver and Senator Alex Padilla and now they are killing them.

Horrifying news out of Minnesota

Melissa Hortman, the top Democratic lawmaker in the Minnesota House, was shot and killed in a suspected politically-motivated assassination along with her husband early Saturday.

The suspect in the attack at Hortman’s home in Brooklyn Park is impersonating a police officer and remains at large, according to authorities.

Minnesota Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were also shot multiple times at their home in Champlin, but are expected to survive, according to Gov. Tim Walz.

PZ has more

This is clearly not just about political differences, if anyone still believed that. Now one group is trying to suppress the rest of the country through threats, the use of force, and outright murder.

Looking for news sources

It has long been know that a number of news sources in the US is completely unreliable, and work to present a far-right viewpoint as standard, and recirculates right-winged talking points disguised as news. During the last election, we also observed that old established news sources, such as New York Times and Washington Post where completely craven, and could not be trusted to accurately report the news.

So, where should one look for reliable news sources? Well, it is hard to fine, but it turns out that you have to look outside traditional news sources, to magazines that still maintain some standards – such unlikely magazines as Teen Vogue and Wired. And now Eater.

What Should You Do if ICE Comes to Your Restaurant?

In an interview on CNN, border czar Tom Homan bemoaned that immigrants in the U.S. were too informed. “Sanctuary citizens are making it very difficult to arrest the criminals,” he said, apparently annoyed that immigrants would be aware of basic rights they are owed by the government he works for. “For instance, Chicago, very well-educated. They’ve been educated how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE.”

The ICE raids that the Trump administration has ordered across the country rely on fear, and there’s no shortage of that. Farm workers aren’t showing up to pick fruit, and street vendors aren’t showing up to run their businesses. They’re keeping their children home from school. “People in the neighborhood are talking about it. Agents are coming around, and people are scared to go to work,” a restaurateur in Queens told GrubStreet.

According to the American Immigration Council, immigrants of all statuses make up 22 percent of the food service industry, and ICE agents are sweeping up everyone in their raids on businesses, even U.S. citizens. “ICE is quite emboldened with the new administration, and they are not respecting people’s rights,” says Jessie Hahn, senior counsel for labor and employment policy at the National Immigration Law Center. “It just creates a lot of chaos, and they need to be held accountable.” And how an ICE raid may play out in a business is different from what it could look like on the street or in an individual home, which is why it’s important for all restaurant and food industry workers to know what to do if ICE shows up at work. We spoke to Hahn, and consulted other experts, about how restaurant workers and owners can work together to keep everyone safe.

Shellshocked

Sorry for the quiet here, but I have been shellshocked since the US election.

As most people who follow US politics, I knew that it wouldn’t be an easy win for the Democrats, but given the candidate and campaign, I had expected that Harris would win the election. What I had to not taken into account, is the misogyny and racism of the US. White people, especially men, in the US turned up for Trump, just like they did during the 2020 election, but across all demographics, there were a move from Democratic to GOP – a lot of this was because more people from the Democratic voting block stayed home this time. This makes absolutely no sense, when you look at what was at stake – Trump in 2024 was arguably more dangerous than Trump in 2020, where he had not yet gotten immunity from the SCOTUS , and where Project 2025 didn’t exist yet.

Let’s not mince words, Trump is the worst presidential candidate ever to run. He has been this every time he has run – somehow getting worse every time. He was the worst the first time he ran, the first time he won, the time he lost his position, and now when he won again.

Even though he is a rapist, a racist, and a monster at every level, people voted for him. Not only did they vote for him, they made sure to give him near-unlimited power by also giving the GOP the Senate and the House.

At this point, our only hope is the incompetence and infighting of the GOP – unfortunately their game plan has been made by the Federalist Society which have clearly shown that they can take advantage of these situations – just look at the current Supreme Court of the United States.

 

The Onion buys Infowars

This sounds like a parody article from the Onion, but it is true: The Onion wins auction for Alex Jones’ media company

Alex Jones’ media empire has been sold at auction, and the winner is The Onion. No Joke.

The satirical news outlet bought Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, backed by a group of Connecticut families. Jones said on today’s show that security has notified him he needs to vacate the premises this morning.

Proceeds of the sale will go to paying down Jones’ nearly $1.5 billion debt to families of Sandy Hook victims who won two defamation suits against him for spreading false conspiracy theories about the 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., which Jones said never happened. He accused the families of being actors, faking the killing of 20 children and 6 educators, in an effort to drum up support for gun control, and Jones supporters who believed the lies threatened and harassed the families for years.

It is no secret that Alex Jones was hoping for some of this allies to buy Infowars and let him keep the brand. Alas, for him, this was not to be. And he is not taking it well:

“We’re going out like vikings with swords in our arms,” he said. He’s accusing the auction house of rigging rules against him to benefit the families.

“At the last minute, the rules of the auction changed,” he alleged yesterday. “What was going to be an open auction where you […] could offer more money and top [previous] bids, but now they’ve decided that it’ll just be sealed and there’s one bid and whoever’s the highest gets it.”

For a tough guy, he whines a lot, doesn’t he?

As to why the Onion, or rather its parent company, bought Infowars, I think I will let the explain themselves

Here’s Why I Decided To Buy ‘InfoWars’

Today we celebrate a new addition to the Global Tetrahedron LLC family of brands. And let me say, I really do see it as a family. Much like family members, our brands are abstract nodes of wealth, interchangeable assets for their patriarch to absorb and discard according to the opaque whims of the market. And just like family members, our brands regard one another with mutual suspicion and malice.

All told, the decision to acquire InfoWars was an easy one for the Global Tetrahedron executive board.

Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.

Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.

No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.

Make no mistake: This is a coup for our company and a well-deserved victory for multinational elites the world over.

What’s next for InfoWars remains a live issue. The excess funds initially allocated for the purchase will be reinvested into our philanthropic efforts that include business school scholarships for promising cult leaders, a charity that donates elections to at-risk third world dictators, and a new pro bono program pairing orphans with stable factory jobs at no cost to the factories.

As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.

All will be revealed in due time. For now, let’s enjoy this win and toast to the continued consolidation of power and capital.

Infinite Growth Forever,

Bryce P. Tetraeder, Global Tetrahedron CEO

Sweet justice with a twist of satire. What more could we want?

It is always a white man

One of the many Twitter accounts spewing conspiracies and lies is Black Insurrectionist, who, to no ones surprise, turns out to be a white man.

The ‘Black Insurrectionist’ was actually white. The deception did not stop there

“Black Insurrectionist,” the anonymous social media persona behind some of the most widely circulated conspiracy theories about the 2024 election, can be traced to a man from upstate New York.

He’s also white.

With a profile photo of a Black soldier and the tagline “I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS,” the account on the platform X amassed more than 300,000 followers while posting dubious claims about Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Some were amplified by former President Donald Trump, his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and their Republican allies in Congress. The most salacious claims have come in the closing weeks of the campaign.

Last month, the account posted what Black Insurrectionist claimed was an affidavit from an ABC News employee, alleging Harris was given questions in advance of the network’s debate with Trump — which ABC News vigorously disputed. Trump approved, though, declaring, “I love the person.” More recently, Black Insurrectionist posted a baseless claim alleging inappropriate behavior between Walz and a student decades ago, a falsehood that U.S. intelligence officials said sprang from a Russian disinformation campaign.

Unsurprising he has defrauded people and owes millions in back taxes.