Comments

  1. says

    EU’s zero-for-zero tariff bid stalls amid US pushback

    “A renewed offer to scrap tariffs on industrial goods “won’t fly” with Washington, says an official from one EU country.”

    BRUSSELS — The European Union is coming to terms with the fact that its renewed proposal to remove tariffs on industrial goods is going nowhere with the U.S. administration, three officials and diplomats told POLITICO.

    Seeking to avoid a trade war with President Donald Trump, the European Commission renewed an offer in early April to remove (already low) tariffs on industrial goods such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, rubber, plastic and machinery.

    Now, with a threat of a 50 percent U.S. tariff on all EU goods looming from July 9, Brussels is scrambling to make an offer that’s amenable to the White House.

    The zero-for-zero offer did not garner much interest in Washington, however.

    “The Commission realized that it won’t fly,” an official from one EU member country said.

    The EU executive stressed this week that the objective was still to reach zero-for-zero, while there were still difficulties on how to get there, one of the diplomats said. All three were granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.

    The U.S. and the EU came close to cutting the industrial tariffs 10 years ago during negotiations on a proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). But that didn’t pan out amid deeper divisions over agricultural standards and the idea of setting up an obscure arbitration mechanism.

    “The U.S. have been pushing back on industrial goods for zero for years now,” said David Henig of the European Centre for International Political Economy.

    “They don’t want zero tariffs. So this has just been around for a very long time without any U.S. administration ever appearing to show much interest in it,” he added.

    Senior Trump administration officials have repeatedly stated that the 10 percent universal baseline tariff now in force for most of America’s trading partners is their bottom line.

    Among other options, Brussels is also looking at boosting its imports of liquefied gas or teaming up with Washington to curb a glut of Chinese steel on global markets.

    After Trump held a call in late May with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the two sides agreed to speed up their negotiations — a relative easing of tensions in an otherwise deteriorating relationship that threatens to undermine transatlantic commerce worth €1.6 trillion a year.

    Trump however raised U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25 percent to 50 percent this week, in a sign that Washington isn’t willing to back down on its trade war. […]

  2. says

    Here are a few links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-7/#comment-2267858
    Tear gas canisters and less-lethal pellets were deployed Sunday afternoon into the growing crowd of protesters outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, which houses an immigration detention center.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-7/#comment-2267852
    “Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow closes 2 major airports”

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-7/#comment-2267851
    Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay was in critical condition in hospital on Sunday after being shot while campaigning in the country’s capital of Bogotá.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-7/#comment-2267848
    About that dungeon at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building.

  3. John Morales says

    I found this interesting: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ye50xgw8vo

    “An ancient writing system confounding myths about Africa

    A wooden hunters’ toolbox inscribed with an ancient writing system from Zambia has been making waves on social media.

    “We’ve grown up being told that Africans didn’t know how to read and write,” says Samba Yonga, one of the founders of the virtual Women’s History Museum of Zambia.

    “But we had our own way of writing and transmitting knowledge that has been completely side-lined and overlooked,” she tells the BBC.

    It was one of the artefacts that launched an online campaign to highlight women’s roles in pre-colonial communities – and revive cultural heritages almost erased by colonialism.

    Another intriguing object is an intricately decorated leather cloak not seen in Zambia for more than 100 years.

    [etc]”

  4. John Morales says

    “Hovertext is not alt text.”

    Nor is a rose by any other name not not a rose.

    Point is, it works, and nobody is gonna be confused by the use of the title attribute when it’s functional.

    Yes, not all devices or apps can handle it, but (a) everyone else can, and it adds info and context and (b) some can, and therefore it’s better than nothing at all. Which is what you advocate.

    But hey, I can’t stop you from making links less informative than they need be on the basis of your misapprehension, not your critiquing of my own endeavour to be more helpful on the basis of your misapprehension.

    No worries, CA7746!

  6. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    @4 John Moreales:

    better than nothing at all. Which is what you advocate.

    Preferring to write text that is never hidden and is accessible to all devices is not “nothing at all.”

  7. John Morales says

    But my not hidden text is already not hidden!
    There it is, in all its glory, and is identical to yours.

    But to many people, an additional bit of info will be found in my links you do not provide; I mean, sure, you can use plaintext to describe what would otherwise be in the title attribute.

    I give more information, ordinary people have no issue accessing it, and vision-impaired people who use appropriate tech will also have access. Basically, I’m taking your base-grade anchor tag and adding info that’s not crucial, but which may be helpful. I do them, well, better than you do.
    If someone doesn’t access my hovertext on my anchor tags, they are no worse off than with yours, which lacks it.

    If I needed assistance, I’d not use tools that don’t support it, not being perverse.

    (We’re down to a very small set of people who may experience confusion versus a very large set that may benefit)

  8. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Geographical note: The Metro Detention Center is adjacent and north of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. Both stand along Alameda Street (which runs north-south). Temple Street crosses Alameda at 45 degrees (running NW-SE) along the Roybal building’s south side. Aliso Street likewise crosses north of MDC.
     
    A live thread with lots of video clips.
    Sean Beckner-Carmitchel and Mel Buer (LA Public Press):

    Greetings! I’m […] in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. A crowd of several dozen are here protesting […] This is at Mariachi Plaza, a city park
    […]
    About 100 protesters beginning a I march from Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, towards downtown Los Angeles. Chanting “whose streets? Our streets!” […] The march has reached [Metro Detention Center], where National Guardsmen have closed ranks outside the building. Tensions high.
    […]
    Chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” from the crowd as others try to stop some demonstrators from throwing things at the line […] National Guard shooting tear gas and pepperballs into the crowd outside the MDC. […] A bit earlier: National Guard shooting into a gaggle of press and demonstrators. […] This 10 year old holding a Mexican flag was among those who were tear gassed by the National Guard
    […]
    The situation has calmed slightly after the earlier escalation. […] Sean took a pepperball *in* the press pass alongside the rest of targeted press which I find a bit on the nose.

    Families, union leaders, and other allies who marched from Mariachi Plaza were forced to turn around after the volley of tear gas and pepperballs earlier […] Still around 200 people outside MDC
    […]
    LAPD in helmets and holding batons have arrived; lined up along Temple and Alameda […] LAPD also on Aliso and Alameda. Both sides of the metro detention center on alameda have skirmish lines of LAPD officers with national guardsmen and DHS in the middle. 10 LAPD units just rolled down Sunset full lights and sirens.

     
    Reporter “What we’re looking at right now is a quiet, organized group and demonstrators marching peacefully to their destination. [Video clip]”

    James Queally (LA Times):

    DHS and California National Guard twice shoved dozens of protesters into Alameda Street, hitting people with riot shields, firing pellets into the ground and deploying tear gas to clear a path for a caravan of DHS, Border Patrol and military vehicles to enter the detention center. I did not see any immediate arrests or serious injuries.

    James Queally, multiple posts:

    DHS is now declaring an unlawful assembly here. LAPD is not present. I am not aware if federal authorities can even enforce that order beyond their property (which at present no protester is on. The crowd has been pushed into the street by the prior volley of force.)
    —
    LAPD has also issued a dispersal order
    —
    At Temple/Alameda LAPD retreating after several bottles, one glass, thrown at cops. An LAPD vehicles front windshield is spidered. Crowd chanting “whose streets, our streets.” Less lethal rounds are being fired.
    —
    The push and pull continues … it’s now LAPD, not DHS or the Guard, forcing people back down Alameda away from MDC. A lot of people are running onto the adjacent metro line to get away from less lethal launcher weapons. Very dangerous situation.

    That last one was posted just now.
     
    ‪Nicholas Slayton, also posted just now:

    Maybe 20 minutes ago the large march from City Hall reached MDC. LAPD seemed to pull back east off Alameda. Now they’re moving in. National Guard not in sight, it’s all LAPD.

    A few blocks from this there’s a street party. People shopping in Little Tokyo are asking protesters what’s going on. This is a large march/rally and yet L.A. is so big and full of people it can be wildly different even a few blocks away.

  9. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    James Queally, multiple posts:

    A law enforcement vehicle, don’t know who it belonged to, just forced its way through crowd. Thankfully no one hit but people hurled bottles at the car and smashed the back eh doe [sic, door?] open. One person arrested.
    —
    In the last 20 or so minutes I’ve seen LAPD officers shove women to the ground without provocation, rip a sign out of a man’s hand and then swing a baton into his leg and raise a less-lethal launcher to aim directly at a protester (which I’m 99% is a major policy violation.)
    —
    Crazy scene a little bit ago. Two bikers inched up to the main protest intersection, revved their engines to cheers from the crowd… then somehow got to the police skirmish line. One crashed, both drivers seemingly led away by police.

     
    Another live thread.
    Mady Castigan (Journalist):

    Crazy images of the protests coming out of the FOX11 Livestream.

    The protestors kettled a cop car at one point. […] The cop cars were pushed out and have left the crowd
    […]
    Back to the federal building, the protestors have exploded in numbers and are approaching the building again. This is WAY BIGGER than any previous protest. The national guard is instigating far LARGER of a response and the feds are LOSING. […] There are orders of magnitude fewer cops than protestors at this point, and the protestors can easily push back if they choose to.

    Cops are deploying more crowd control […] items are being thrown at the cops and some appear to be pointing their less lethal arms at them […] cops are violently hitting and shooting tear gas and less lethals into protestors at point blank. It’s likely people are being severely injured. LAPD is driving through a protestor now who was in front of the car.
    […]
    Protestors are now taking over 101 Southbound with a large banner. This is escalating further as this will cause further disruptions and is spreading police very very thin. Even the [ABC] newscasters are saying that the cops are outnumbered and they can’t stop this protest at this point.

    The cops pushed protestors off the federal building, but they’ve made the situation worse overall because the protestors have spread out in response and are blocking two main streets (Alameda and Temple) and the entire 101 S freeway.

    Another shot from Hasan Piker’s stream, live from the 101. They are chanting very loudly and the energy is crazy. More people are joining constantly.
    […]
    The police are loudly blaring dispersal warnings, as the crowd continuously grows. The air is filled with horns and cop announcements and cheering. Incredible energy, it feels like watching a movie.
    […]
    Crowd chanting “FREE THEM ALL/SET THEM FREE” Honking is growing louder […] CHP closing in and now deploying flashbangs on the crowd. Earplugs ARE NEEDED!!! Crowd is backing up slowly. No one appears to be leaving despite the very loud flashbangs

    ‪Nicholas Slayton:

    “This city is a tinderbox. I do not want to see civil unrest in this city”—LA Mayor Karen Bass says now on KPCC/laist. Calls National Guard a provocation. Says local law enforcement handling situation. Bass confirms city is in contact with NG. […] Bass points out correctly that last night it was barely more than 100 protesters. Urges peaceful protest but didn’t mention LAPD attacks on people. A LAIST reporter repeatedly mentioned it shortly after.

    Ryan Goodman (Just Security):

    Governor Newsom: “I have formally requested the Trump Administration rescind their unlawful deployment of troops … and return them to my command. … This is a serious breach of state sovereignty—inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”

  10. birgerjohansson says

    “6 Sci-Fi Movies That Get the Science Right”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=N3mZUv3jnRk
    “Solaris” (1972) is a deliberately slow film, it may be best if you have read the novel to ‘get’ the hour-long first part, on Earth.

    2001– it is easier to understand the ending if you have read the novel.

    Interstellar had some logical flaws that ruined the “suspension of disbelief” for me.

  12. birgerjohansson says

    Trump is hoping to provoke more violence in LA. This will give him the excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the military.

    This is all a distraction from the turmoil about The Bill, and the Trump -Musk fight.

  13. Reginald Selkirk says

    @10

    2001– it is easier to understand the ending if you have read the novel.

    Meh. I saw the movie. I read the book. I consider both to be failures. The movie has lots of (at the time) cutting edge special effects, with no explanation of what it means. And special effects makes for a very dull novel.

  14. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Adam Rose (LA Press Club):

    KTLA journalist hit on Friday is Ken Koller, who was filming in downtown LA. In good spirits: “Well this is a first. Waiting to be seen at the urgent care, ‘how did you get hurt?’ Points to TV in the waiting room showing Ch5, ‘like that’ as they show me getting hit by the flash bang on TV.”

    Adam Rose 90 min ago:

    LAPD unlawfully issuing orders to press today (“MEDIA GO!”). California Penal Code 409.7 explicitly exempts journalists from dispersal orders. LAPD knows this and command staff has been trained on it.

    Mady Castigan (Journalist):

    TEAR GAS IS BEING DEPLOYED as cops push the crowd further down the highway. […] Cops and protestors at a standstill despite huge clouds of tear gas at the offramp, as there is another standoff at Temple and Alameda. Worth noting that feds and National Guard are NOT present—these are STATE AND LOCAL COPS.
    —
    The highway seems mostly cleared but the protests are ONGOING on the offramp, and the surface streets. The protestors are moving “like water”—responding, but not surrendering, to police force and violence […]

    [Mayor] Karen Bass is bragging about how state and local cops are pushing protestors off the freeway. “They were overrun… They have moved the protestors back.” She says the National Guard was deployed only to protect federal buildings, which is why state and local cops are doing the dirty work. […] “It’s not peaceful for people to be on the highways” [says] Mayor Bass. Apparently protesting on the highway is violent! […]

    Multiple Waymos are covered in graffiti, and one is on fire. Notable that many people do not consider property damage that doesn’t harm civilians to be “violence,” though it is obviously illegal. Breaking the law is not the same as violence! [People are taking selfies with the burning Waymo. Photos of the car.]

    Some protestors are dragging away police barricades. The protests are extremely spread apart now

    Rando:

    Nothing more LA than this woman selling dirty dogs in between rubber bullets and tear gas. [Photo] Her name is Rosie: “A lot of vendors are undocumented and can’t be here today. So those of us who can, we gotta show up”

    Tina-Desiree Berg: “They are line dancing in the middle of the protest while shouting Fuck ICE. [Video clip]”
     
    Melissa Gira Grant (The New Republic):

    LA Mayor Bass finally gets a good question at this press conference: it looks like LAPD is collaborating with ICE, isn’t that a violation of policy? Bass tries to draw a line: “LAPD helps ICE arrest immigrants” (not ok) and “LAPD helps ICE arrest immigrants by arresting protestors” (ok with her).

    Sean Beckner-Carmitchel‬ (Journalist) 15 min ago:

    Near City Hall, horse-mounted cops push protesters down the street, while others fire riot munitions at close range. […] LAPD offices have used a significant number of 40mm less lethal rounds. So many that they are replenishing officers on the line.

  15. Reginald Selkirk says

    Runaway zebra named Ed caught after a week on the run in Tennessee

    A runaway pet zebra that was on the loose for more than a week in Tennessee was captured on Sunday, his owners and authorities said.

    Ed the zebra, who became an internet sensation, was captured safely after being located in a pasture near a subdivision in the Christiana community in central Tennessee, the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office confirmed…

  16. StevoR says

    The Israeli military has captured the aid ship Madleen and its crew of cvolunteeers including Greta Thunberg in international waters. It is expected that they will now tbe taken to an Israeli port (Ashdod) and deported with the ship confiscated. None of the volunteers were injured. See :

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-09/israeli-army-boards-freedom-flotilla-gaza-bound-ship-madleen/105393390

    Apparently it is a “crime”to try to deliver aid to starving people.

  18. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    James Queally:

    6pm [PDT]:
    — The great Waymo blaze can be seen from blocks away.
    — DHS Police have replaced LAPD blocking Alameda near Aliso.
    — LAPD is still dealing with a crowd at Temple/Alameda but it’s shrinking.
    — CHP still has the 101 half closed and seems to be firing flashbangs into the air?

    Joey Scott, video clips:

    LAPD retreated. Federal police took their place. People are sitting peacefully.

    Earlier CHP was firing flash bangs with rubber pellets up from the 110 FWY. One after another.

    The scene right now. Stare off between Federal police and protesters. The Federal just moved backwards.

    Sean Beckner-Carmitchel

    Officers fire riot munitions at point blank range into protesters in the street. [Video clip] “Put that fucking shit down!” one demonstrator says as cops aim at their trunks and faces.

    One officer was pelted with a smoke bomb; the residue is all over his mask, clothes and gear.

    Car fires near the 101 entrance on Los Angeles.
    —
    Protesters forced back by LAPD on main. Protesters have grabbed a fence and put it between (most) of them and LAPD. [Video clip]

    Haven’t caught it on video, but an LAPD helicopter just yelled “shove that spray paint can up your ass” at protesters in Los Angeles and 1st.

    Mady Castigan:

    Police are still keeping 101 South closed as they use the freeway as a “staging ground,” according to Hasan. […] He’s worried about the Waymo fire fumes, fair point.
    —
    on an intersection at Main street. On one side, a line of cops on horseback are lining the street. On the other side of the same intersection, a dozen or so protestors are barricaded behind a set of [reappropriated police barricades and chairs].

    The horse cops charged at the protestors and shot less lethals, the barricade was destroyed and the protestors were pushed back further down. They are shooting indiscriminately at the protestors and it’s unclear why. The barricade […] is being dismantled and carried away by police. The numbers of protestors seems to finally be going down somewhat

    ‪Tina-Desiree Berg: “Multiple cars are now on fire that read Fuck ICE. [Video clip]”

    Asawin Suebsaeng (Rolling Stone):

    A reason I’m not moved by the “Don’t give the Trump administration the pretext they’re looking for” is that we would not dare say that about any anti-authoritarian protest movement in literally any other country. Imagine saying that about protesters in Iran, Russia, China, or France. Don’t stand up to your physically abusive husband, you might make him do it.

    It’s Going Down: “Also literally every Democrat in the US has been saying that if Trump does this stuff ‘people will hit the streets.’ Streets have been hit.”
     
    ‪Tina-Desiree Berg: “LAPD assisted by the Huntington Beach Police just came in full force firing munitions and with Horse support. Someone was trampled. Another has a serious head injury. [Video clip]”

  21. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Alejandra Caraballo (Civil rights attorney): “An entire row of waymo self driving cars are being set on fire.”
    ^ These were the other unspecified cars @18.
     
    Geographical note: City Hall is two streets west of the Roybal Federal Building and Metro Detention Center. Santa Ana Freeway US 101 is immediately north of the MDC (running NW-SE), w/ street bridges crossing over it, including one at the MDC.

    Mady Castigan‪:

    [At City Hall] makeshift barricade has formed [of a dozen metal benches stood-on-end, metal chairs, and folding construction barricades] […] ABC7 news commentators are saying the less lethals are not doing much, and that they are RUNNING LOW on less lethals and flashbangs.
    —
    [On the freeway] State cop cars are being DESTROYED by protestors who are throwing all kinds of rocks, bricks, bicycles, and [rental e-scooters] onto them. The CHP has kept 101S closed for unknown reasons, and thought it was a great idea to park all their cars directly under a bridge.

    One of the cop cars is partially on fire. They fired an extinguisher from under the bridge to put it out before it destroyed the car. A protestor drops [burning cardboard] on the car again, and then CHP […] extinguish it again. […] Wow. The cop car was engulfed […] destroyed
    —
    [on ABC7] as the police chief gives a press conference. A fire breaks out, then cops brutally assault a protestor. They run him over with a horse and hit him with batons several times
    —
    101S is still closed, but the cops finally retook control of the bridge over the police cars.

    Sean Beckner-Carmitchel‬:

    LAPD still firing large volleys of “less lethal” munitions at protesters in front of Los Angeles City Hall. Protesters crouching behind an ad hoc barrier of benches taken from nearby Grand Park.

    Now larger volleys; stun munitions being thrown. A Roman candle from the crowd now. More benches. LAPD horse mounted units charged into the ad hoc barricade […] Chemical munitions deployed, saw some people get into it with the mounted units. Crowd has pushed back but still on Spring Street.

    It’s now LASD as the main law enforcement in front of Los Angeles City Hall and Grand Park. One protester is sitting on the side of the line with his hands up, a deputy shot pepper balls in front of him.
    —
    on spring and 1st in downtown Los Angeles. Still a large group. Dancing to La Chona while adding to the [debris bonfire].

    ‪Adam Rose, video clips:

    Most bizarre police/protest incident in memory. LAPD officer stops FilmThePoliceLA around other press, performs what has to be unconstitutional search, STEALS HIS DRINKS, and runs away. What did I just watch?!? Video also shows likely PC 409.7 violations [restricting press].

    This might turn out to be the most sadistic act by LAPD today. ‪[Australian journo] Lauren Tomasi‬ is holding a mic with a flag, talking into a TV camera, and an officer just shoots at her from behind [in the leg]. Absolutely unhinged

     
    An iconic moment from Saturday.
    Jeremy Lindenfeld (Capital & Main) on Jun 7:

    At the ICE raid and subsequent community resistance in Paramount, California this morning, this skater kid ate dozens of munitions from Border Patrol agents, walked away slowly and flipped them off. [Video clip] the skater kid was practically taunting the Border Patrol agents by dancing around their munitions shots.

  22. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Mady Castigan:

    Things are getting chaotic. A [shirtless] driver in a minivan was arrested after driving recklessly, apparently trying to hit protestors (but failing) [reverse donuts among them, speeding off, hit a bollard]. Fires are littering the streets

    Evergreen Intel (OSINT):

    windows being smashed out on the northern side of the LAPD HQ building.

    […] the large presence of LEOs [at Main and Cesar Chavez] pushing East returned back 15 minutes later to find their cars left behind had their windows smashed and tires slashed.

     
    Australia’s 9News: “Lauren Tomasi hit by rubber bullet […] sore but otherwise unharmed.”

    Dell Cameron (Wired):

    If that’s a rubber pellet, you’re not even allowed to directly shoot people with that weapon. Huge violation. LA taxpayers are gonna pay out the ass for that.

    Haven’t seen a single news story yet mention this is not an authorized use of this weapon. It not considered “less lethal,” as they like to say, when misused. A butterknife is a less than lethal weapon until it’s not.

     
    LATimes – L.A. suburb is holding ICE detainees in its city jail (Jun 5)

    the city had an 18-year-old contract with [ICE] to temporarily house noncriminal detainees. […] Other municipalities terminated their contracts [when California became a sanctuary state in 2017] But Glendale […] did not.

    NBC – Glendale terminates contract with HSI, ICE (Jun 9)

  25. KG says

    CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain@18

    Asawin Suebsaeng (Rolling Stone):

    A reason I’m not moved by the “Don’t give the Trump administration the pretext they’re looking for” is that we would not dare say that about any anti-authoritarian protest movement in literally any other country. Imagine saying that about protesters in Iran, Russia, China, or France. Don’t stand up to your physically abusive husband, you might make him do it.

    Couldn’t agree more. A community the fascists are persecuting has decided to resist. I’m not going to tell anyone they should take the risk of doing this when I’m thousands of kilometers away, but I am going to applaud them when they do it.

  26. KG says

    CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain@21,
    I wonder if the Waymos were targeted just because they were available, or are people waking up to the role of Big Tech (Waymo is owned by Alphabet i.e. Google’s parent company) and its techbro leaders in enabling and supporting fascism?

  28. birgerjohansson says

    Just don’t get Fox News any shots of overturned cars.
    Let them have to use footage from another continents for their lies about LA.

  29. says

    In an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Jacob Soboroff, California Governor Gavin Newsom said that President Trump “has created the conditions” surrounding the Los Angeles protests. The governor went on to call Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard “a manufactured crisis,” then addressed White House border czar Tom Homan’s threats of arrest. “Tom, arrest me. Let’s go,” Newsom said. The governor also plans to sue the Trump administration over its deployment of the National Guard.

    https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/gov-newsom-tells-president-trump-to-stand-down-amid-l-a-protests-241152581707

    Video at the link. Video is 14:40 minutes. The video is excellent. Newsom factchecks Trump, points out issues of unconstitutional actions and other legal issues. It’s a lot of issues. Jacob Soboroff is a good interviewer. The factchecks puncture Trump’s posturing and braggadocio.

  30. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    @26 KG:

    I wonder if the Waymos were targeted […] Big Tech (Waymo is owned by Alphabet i.e. Google’s parent company) and its techbro leaders in enabling and supporting fascism?

    They were certainly a liability amidst the crowd. The spinning LiDAR on the roof would be a reminder that it’s covered in cameras. Maybe a bit offensive too that they routed right through a protest—several times or as a caravan.

    404Media – LAPD Publishes Crime Footage It Got From a Waymo (Apr 10)

    The proliferation of Waymo cars also means the proliferation of roving surveillance cameras. LAPD has shown an interest […] it does not proactively give footage to police [but will if requested].

  31. says

    Jan. 6 attack gets in the way of Republican talking points on ICE protests

    “Hit a cop, you’re going to jail” seemed uncontroversial. But in the Trump administration, it’s a maxim that comes with some important fine print.

    Reflecting on the recent protests in Los Angeles, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin told CNN that he considered it “absolutely insane” to see protesters “carrying a foreign flag.”

    When “State of the Union” host Dana Bash reminded the Oklahoma senator that carrying a flag “is not illegal,” Mullin quickly interjected, “A foreign flag while you’re attacking law enforcement, it’s pretty bad.” [LOL. Hypocrite.]

    Of course, during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Americans also saw foreign flags and rioters attacking law enforcement, and much of the Republican Party now treats those violent criminals as victims and heroes.

    A day before Mullin’s on-air comments, U.S. Customs and Border Protection used its social media platform to issue a statement that read, “Let this be clear: Anyone who assaults or impedes a federal law enforcement officer or agent in the performance of their duties will be arrested and swiftly prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Attack a cop, and life long consequences will follow!”

    That certainly seemed like an uncontroversial sentiment, except, again, Jan. 6 rioters assaulted and impeded law enforcement officers in the performance of their duties. And while they were arrested and prosecuted, and it appeared that many of them might face serious consequences, Trump returned to the White House and started handing out pardons — including to those who were convicted of violent assaults.

    And then there was FBI Director Kash Patel, who published a related online item of his own over the weekend: “Hit a cop, you’re going to jail … doesn’t matter where you came from, how you got here, or what movement speaks to you.”

    Not only did the president who appointed Patel come to the opposite conclusion when handing out Jan. 6 pardons, but the comment also brought to mind this Mother Jones report published after Patel’s Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year.

    [Patel] hailed January 6 rioters convicted of violence against police officers as ‘political prisoners.’ … Several Democrats pressed Patel on his work with the J6 Prison Choir, a group of January 6 rioters who recorded a version of the national anthem mashed up with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The song became a mainstay at Trump’s campaign rallies. Patel told Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that he promoted the song to raise money for the families of January 6 attackers.

    To be sure, “Hit a cop, you’re going to jail” seemed like an undebatable point. The trouble is, in the Trump administration, it’s a maxim that comes with some important fine print: “Hit a cop, you’re going to jail, unless the president likes the reason you hit a cop, in which case you’re getting a pardon.”

  32. says

    News snippets, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    * Republicans made a significant effort to win San Antonio’s mayoral election, but in Texas’ second-largest city, Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, an Iraq war veteran who served as the under secretary of the U.S. Air Force, prevailed with roughly 54% of the vote. [Good news.]

    * On a related note, in Mississippi’s largest city, former Democratic state Sen. John Horhn easily won Jackson’s mayoral race last week, finishing with roughly 67% of the vote. [Good news.]

    * How difficult have things become inside the Democratic National Committee’s leadership team? According to a new Politico report, DNC Chair Ken Martin told party leaders in a recent private conversation that he’s unsure about his ability to lead the party because of infighting created by Vice Chair David Hogg. “I’ll be very honest with you, for the first time in my 100 days on this job … the other night I said to myself for the first time, I don’t know if I wanna do this anymore,” he said in a May 15 online meeting of DNC officials.

    * With New Jersey’s gubernatorial primaries just one day away, Donald Trump reiterated his endorsement of former state lawmaker Jack Ciattarelli, adding, in reference to the other Republican candidates, “I don’t even know who they are!”

    * Prominent players in the cryptocurrency industry were heavily involved in boosting some GOP Senate candidates in the 2024 election cycle, and Punchbowl News reported that crypto advocates are already starting to make significant investments into former Rep. Mike Rogers’ Republican candidacy in Michigan.

    * Unrig Our Economy and Families Over Billionaires are launching a $5 million ad campaign, urging Republican senators to oppose their party’s domestic policy megabill. The initial round of ads began airing late last week in North Carolina, Maine and Iowa, with plans to expand to Alaska, South Carolina, Missouri and Ohio. [video at the link]

    * In related news, House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNBC late last week that he believes Republicans will lose their majority unless they approve their far-right reconciliation package. What he didn’t mention was the likelihood that if the party does approve the legislation, Democrats will spend the next year using it against them.

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/mondays-campaign-6925-democrats-prevail-san-antonio-mayoral-race-rcna211840

    Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.

  33. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/pointing-protesters-not-ice-agents-trump-demands-arrests-masks-rcna211787

    “Pointing to protesters, but not ICE agents, Trump demands arrests of those in masks”

    […] ICE agents, acting at Donald Trump’s behest, can snatch people off American streets while hiding their identities. Throughout the country, all kinds of law enforcement personnel — from police officers to FBI agents to U.S. marshals — do their jobs on a day-to-day basis without hiding their faces, but in 2025, ICE agents are operating under different standards.

    A variety of Democratic officials have made the case that ICE agents should stop shielding their faces. On Saturday night, Tom Homan, the administration’s “border czar,” told Fox News he’s asking the Justice Department to investigate the Democrats’ statements in order to “see if there is something we can do” — as if the comments in support of transparency might somehow have crossed legal lines.

    On Sunday, the president went further, publishing a message to his social media platform that read in part, “[F]rom now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why???”

    In context, I’m reasonably sure he meant protesters won’t be “allowed” to wear masks, but ICE agents will.

    Hours later, Trump added, “Remember, NO MASKS!” Shortly after midnight, Trump’s newest message on the subject was even less ambiguous: “ARREST THE PEOPLE IN FACE MASKS, NOW!” [Trump is so unrelentingly stupid.]

    Among the many problems with this is a nagging detail: The president cannot simply make face coverings — for protesters, not members of his administration — illegal by way of an online edict. Or put another way, law enforcement personnel cannot legally “arrest the people in face masks, now,” at Trump’s say so.

    With this in mind, on “Face the Nation,” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a very good question: “President Trump said masks will not be allowed to be worn at protests. Who’s going to enforce? That and how? And how can you justify it when law enforcement officials have their faces covered?” [video at the link]

    After some back and forth, the South Dakota Republican ultimately replied that she was reluctant to go into specifics “because we never do when it comes to law enforcement operations.”

    It was hardly a reassuring response.

  34. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/bring-troops-trump-raises-stakes-ice-tactics-spark-protests-l-rcna211770

    Last year, many wondered whether Trump might be willing to use military resources to stifle dissent. Those fears are relevant anew.

    […] On the East Coast, for example, military vehicles, including tanks, are getting into position to roll down the streets of the nation’s capital, for a June 14 military parade to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army — which also happens to coincide with Donald Trump’s birthday.

    And then, of course, there’s the West Coast. As The Associated Press summarized:

    Tensions in Los Angeles escalated Sunday as thousands of protesters took to the streets in response to President Donald Trump’s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard, blocking off a major freeway and setting self-driving cars on fire as law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs to control the crowd.

    In recent months, federal officials, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, have engaged in overly aggressive and legally dubious tactics while executing the White House’s deportation agenda, sparking a predictable public backlash. […]

    the president told reporters that he’s meeting with U.S. military leaders, and after publishing a statement about Los Angeles having been “invaded and occupied,” there was renewed speculation about whether the Republican might be preparing to invoke the Insurrection Act. Indeed, Trump also wrote that he was directing Noem, Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi, “to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion.”

    Shortly after midnight, on Monday morning, Trump also wrote online, “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” He similarly told reporters that he expects to have U.S. troops “everywhere.” [video at the link]

    […] A few weeks before Election Day 2024, as he referred to Americans he disagreed with as “scum,” then-candidate Trump talked about the possible deployment of the National Guard or the U.S. military on American soil to be used against those he labeled “the enemy from within.”[…]

  35. says

    “I’ll say it over and over again; you can’t build the mass deportation machine without first building the police state machine.”–Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council

  37. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Lime—the company behind the rental e-scooters dropped onto cop cars @21—wasn’t great either. Probably not a threat to the protesters. Old stories, new to me.

    Salon – Three scooter companies, one exploitative labor model (2018)

    Rather than use employees to recharge their scooters, three companies pay small per-scooter bounties to freelancers. […] Unlike many city bike-share programs, all three scooter rental companies are “dockless,” meaning that the scooters can be parked anywhere when riders are done.

    The Verge (2019)

    Bird and Lime, the two most dominant startups in the fast-growing (but still money-losing) dockless scooter game, both rely on independent contractors […] Other companies, like Uber-owned Jump, use full-time employees
    […]
    The task usually involves locating scooters with depleted batteries on the app, piling them into a car or truck, and taking them home for overnight charging. Chargers need to purchase power supplies and adapters […] criminals have used scooters to lure enterprising freelancers into unsafe areas to rob them

    An Injury Attorney

    the transportation method gives users a false sense of security. The scooters often do not have to comply with safety regulations of other motorized transportation, yet hold the same dangers. In addition, operating companies are still figuring out how to provide ongoing maintenance. Although localized teams hired by scooter rental companies such as Lime and Bird perform regular maintenance on their companies’ fleets, the companies rely heavily on riders to flag and report issues. Oftentimes those reports come too late, and those mechanical issues, such as faulty brakes and sticky accelerators, have already led to injury.

    In addition, riders are required to sign an agreement when they register to rent a scooter. The agreement states that injured riders cannot file a lawsuit. Two of the biggest companies, Bird and Lime, also require binding arbitration.

    [Wear a helmet. Treat it as a vehicle. Report problems so they can be fixed.]

    Lime added cameras to stay out of traffic (2022)

    reducing crashes […] With on-board cameras, the sidewalk detection system can distinguish between the pavement and road […] Lime says the scooter will make a sound to warn riders to move off the pavement, while also slowing the scooter to a lower speed.

    No reports of their cameras being narcable.

  38. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    * I botched the camera article when I titled it. Stay out of foot traffic, that is.

    CNET: “motorized vehicles can endanger pedestrians. […] Lime scooters come affixed with a sticker that warns riders not to go on sidewalks. But on busy streets, some scooter riders opt for the sidewalk rather than share the road with cars.”

  39. lumipuna says

    The scooters are increasingly a topic of serious discourse here in Finland, with constant demands for legal regulation.

  40. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    NBC – A new Covid variant could drive up summer cases

    A new Covid variant that’s gaining momentum globally has landed in the U.S. […] The [NB.1.8.1] variant appears to be more transmissible than the dominant strain worldwide, LP.8.1 […] But it does not seem to be much better than LP.8.1 at evading protection from vaccines or a prior infection. […] no evidence that it leads to more severe illness
    […]
    NB.1.8.1 could potentially lead to a small surge of infections for two reasons: The U.S. hasn’t seen a Covid wave in awhile and less than a quarter of adults have received the latest booster, meaning population immunity has likely waned. […] NB.1.8.1 is a cousin of JN.1 (the variant targeted by the current booster), so the vaccine should protect against it to some degree.

    The [FDA] has asked drugmakers to update Covid vaccines to target the LP.8.1 variant this fall. […] the updated vaccines would offer protection against NB.1.8.1 as well.

  41. Reginald Selkirk says

    The Medical Revolutions That Prevented Millions of Cancer Deaths

    Vox publishes a story about “the quiet revolutions that have prevented millions of cancer deaths….

    “The age-adjusted death rate in the US for cancer has declined by about a third since 1991, meaning people of a given age have about a third lower risk of dying from cancer than people of the same age more than three decades ago… ”

    The dramatic bend in the curve of cancer deaths didn’t happen by accident — it’s the compound interest of three revolutions. While anti-smoking policy has been the single biggest lifesaver, other interventions have helped reduce people’s cancer risk. One of the biggest successes is the HPV vaccine. A study last year found that death rates of cervical cancer — which can be caused by HPV infections — in US women ages 20-39 had dropped 62 percent from 2012 to 2021, thanks largely to the spread of the vaccine. Other cancers have been linked to infections, and there is strong research indicating that vaccination can have positive effects on reducing cancer incidence.

    The next revolution is better and earlier screening. It’s generally true that the earlier cancer is caught, the better the chances of survival… According to one study, incidences of late-stage colorectal cancer in Americans over 50 declined by a third between 2000 and 2010 in large part because rates of colonoscopies almost tripled in that same time period. And newer screening methods, often employing AI or using blood-based tests, could make preliminary screening simpler, less invasive and therefore more readily available. If 20th-century screening was about finding physical evidence of something wrong — the lump in the breast — 21st-century screening aims to find cancer before symptoms even arise.

    Most exciting of all are frontier developments in treating cancer… From drugs like lenalidomide and bortezomib in the 2000s, which helped double median myeloma survival, to the spread of monoclonal antibodies, real breakthroughs in treatments have meaningfully extended people’s lives — not just by months, but years. Perhaps the most promising development is CAR-T therapy, a form of immunotherapy. Rather than attempting to kill the cancer directly, immunotherapies turn a patient’s own T-cells into guided missiles. In a recent study of 97 patients with multiple myeloma, many of whom were facing hospice care, a third of those who received CAR-T therapy had no detectable cancer five years later. It was the kind of result that doctors rarely see.

    The article begins with some recent quotes from Jon Gluck, who was told after a cancer diagnosis that he had as little as 18 months left to live — 22 years ago…

  42. Reginald Selkirk says

    ChatGPT ‘got absolutely wrecked’ by Atari 2600 in beginner’s chess match — OpenAI’s newest model bamboozled by 1970s logic

    In a quite unexpected turn of events, it is claimed that OpenAI’s ChatGPT “got absolutely wrecked on the beginner level” while playing Atari Chess. Citrix Architecture and Delivery specialist, Robert Jr. Caruso, discovered this gameplay skill anomaly over the weekend. Caruso pitted the 1979 Atari Chess title, played within an emulator for the 1977 Atari 2600 console gaming system, against the might of ChatGPT 4o.
    …
    As Caruso points out in his LinkedIn post, the Atari 2600 had very little in the way of computing power. It was powered by a MOS Technology 6507 processor running at 1.19 MHz, and its performance would probably be more sensibly measured in KFLOPS, not GFLOPS. The chess engine that Atari Chess ran only thinks one to two moves ahead, asserts the Citrix Engineer.

    Caruso says he tried to make it easy for ChatGPT, he changed the Atari chess piece icons when the chatbot blamed their abstract nature on initial losses. However, making things as clear as he could, ChatGPT “made enough blunders to get laughed out of a 3rd grade chess club,” says the engineer.

    Tragically, though ChatGPT 4o kept promising to improve its mastery of the game, the old 8-bit gaming platform would continue to beat it for as long as Caruso had the patience. Despite his direct assistance during the game sessions, ChatGPT couldn’t muster the smarts to beat the Atari Chess ‘beginner’ opponent and eventually “conceded,” according to this LinkedIn tale…

    Quintus: People should know when they’re conquered.
    Maximus: Would you, Quintus? Would I?

  43. Reginald Selkirk says

    Archaeologists in France Discover Giant Roman Gallic Villa Hiding in Plain Sight

    In 1966, archaeologists in France uncovered an ancient 7,535-square-foot building near the town of Auxerre. Remains of furniture in the edifice’s ten rooms led archaeologists to estimate that it was inhabited from the first to the fourth century CE, and evidence of mosaics and floor heating indicated that the inhabitants were members of a wealthy social class. But it turns out that these spaces were a small part of an even grander dwelling.

    Archaeologists have revealed that the building excavated almost six decades ago is just a secondary wing of a luxurious 43,056-square-foot villa—one of the largest known Roman villas in modern-day France.

    According to an agricultural treatise by the ancient Roman writer Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella called De Re Rvstica, Roman villas were divided into three main sections: the pars urbana, where the landowner and his family lived; the pars rustica, which housed the workers, animals, and farming tools; and the pars fructuaria for the harvest tools. The excavation near Auxerre has thus far revealed the complex’s residential pars urbana, along with some features that may have belonged to the pars rustica…

  44. Reginald Selkirk says

    Oregon Moves To Legalize Kei Trucks

    For some reason, the powers that be do not like that you can import a tiny, adorable Japanese kei truck that’s at least 25 years old to handle all your truck needs, and as a result, many states have banned them on public roads. You can drive other classics with zero modern safety features, but a Daihatsu Hijet? Sorry, bud, those aren’t safe enough. The people have been pushing back, though, and now it looks like Oregon may soon join other states in legalizing kei cars, Motor1 reports.

    Oregon’s SB1213 was written specifically to legalize kei cars and would apply to a vehicle that “[w]as originally manufactured in Japan or South Korea,” “[h]as an engine that has a piston or rotor displacement of 660 cubic centimeters,” “[i]s 11 feet or less in length,” “[i]s 4.9 feet or less in width,” “[i]s 6.6 feet or less in height,” and “[h]as a model year that predates the current year by 25 years or more.” Assuming the bill is enacted into law, owners will have to pay $63 every two years to keep their kei car on the road, making it more expensive than a motorcycle but the same price as other low and medium-speed vehicles.

    It’s also no surprise to see that Oregon would only legalize kei cars that are at least 25 years old, since newer imports are still banned under federal law…

  45. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tesla Owners Are Adding Emergency Rip Cords To Their Cars For A Terrifying Reason

    Door handles are pretty simple. You pull a handle inside or outside your car, a cable or rod linkage releases the latch, and the door opens. That is, unless it’s a Tesla. Tesla’s doors are electronic, and open by pressing a button on the inside or touching the exterior handle. This is all well and good until the car loses electrical power, and these systems don’t work. People have died trapped inside burning Teslas because nobody could open the doors.

    Tesla does provide manual door releases to be used if the power goes out. While documented in the owner’s manual, these are not always intuitive to use or clearly marked, particularly in the back seats. This makes them difficult to find and use in an emergency, when seconds count and could mean the difference between life and death.

    Owners and the aftermarket have come up with their own solutions to this problem that shouldn’t really be a problem. The back doors’ manual releases, in particular, are so hidden and cumbersome that people are attaching emergency rip cords to them, making them faster and easier to find in an emergency. Rather than going through a cumbersome three-step process in the Cybertruck, occupants can just pull on a cord to open the door, which is how they should have been designed in the first place…

  46. Reginald Selkirk says

    Paragon says it canceled contracts with Italy over government’s refusal to investigate spyware attack on journalist

    Spyware maker Paragon accused the Italian government of refusing its help in investigating whether a journalist was spied on with its technology, according to a statement on Monday.

    In the statement first reported by Haaretz, Paragon claimed it was this refusal that prompted the company to cut ties with its Italian government customers.

    “The company offered both the Italian government and parliament a way to determine whether its system had been used against the journalist in violation of Italian law and the contractual terms,” read the statement. “As the Italian authorities chose not to proceed with this solution, Paragon terminated its contracts in Italy.”
    …
    This is the first time a spyware provider has publicly stated it cut ties with a specific customer after reports of abuse…

  47. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    @42 Reginald Selkirk:
    A simple plate of vegetables has found the gaping blindspots in generative AI

    The vegetable question above is just one example in a broad category of failure, which we could call a failure of spatial reasoning: not reliably understanding that objects will fall off a plate if nothing is holding them in place. […] Simple Bench is different from most traditional machine learning benchmarks […] in that the average person can actually get most questions right.
    […]
    The clue is in their name: language models. They model language. When triggered with phrases such as “Stephen, a stickler for facts and scrupulous biological accuracy,” […] their attention centers on whether we should count a tomato as a fruit or vegetable. […] A language model cannot just simulate the scenario mentioned above or “visualize” it like we can. It is easily tricked into focusing on what are, objectively, less important details.
    […]
    Language models model language, not reality. Their goal is to predict the next word, not the next consequence of a cause-and-effect chain. Because so much of physics and reality is at least partially reflected in language—and so many experiments and basic facts are fossilized in easily memorized textbooks—models can perform shockingly well on naive tests of their ability, like university exams. But […] when we go where language has not trodden before, and when the wording is no straightforward guide to the answer—they get stuck. Reliably so. Hilariously so, in many cases.

  49. says

    Essentially every Democratic governor in the country signed onto a statement on Monday slamming President Donald Trump for unilaterally deploying the National Guard in California to try to squash protests against his immigration raids.

    In the statement, 22 Democratic governors—every one in the nation, excluding California’s Gavin Newsom, who is also fighting the deployment in his state—called the move “an alarming abuse of power.”

    “Governors are the Commanders in Chief of their National Guard and the federal government activating them in their own borders without consulting or working with a state’s governor is ineffective and dangerous,” the governors wrote. “Further, threatening to send the U.S. Marines into American neighborhoods undermines the mission of our service members, erodes public trust, and shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement.”

    On Saturday, Trump called in the National Guard to Los Angeles, falsely claiming that protests against his administration’s stepped up Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids “constitute a form of rebellion” that required the military to step in to quell.

    […] Meanwhile, Republican governors have largely been silent about their feelings about Trump deploying the National Guard without coordinating with Newsom. However, when Joe Biden was president, then-South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said Biden would be starting a “war” if he gave National Guard troops orders.

    Ultimately, Trump deploying the military to squash protests is the latest despotic move he’s taken since reentering office in January. He has also ignored court orders, cut spending that had been appropriated by Congress, and used his presidential powers to go after his personal enemies.

    The United States is rapidly descending into fascism one day at a time.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/9/2326812/-Democratic-governors-blast-Trump-s-illegal-invasion-of-California

  50. says

    Trump’s border czar threatens to arrest Gavin Newsom—then chickens out

    […] “Trump’s border czar is threatening to arrest me for speaking out. Come and get me, tough guy. I don’t give a damn. It won’t stop me from standing up for California,” Newsom wrote.

    Newsom echoed the sentiment during an interview with NBC.

    “So Tom, arrest me, let’s go,” the governor said. [video at the link]

    But on Monday, Homan wasn’t nearly as tough.

    The official who usually wears a suit appeared on MSNBC dressed in Fidel Castro-style olive fatigues, echoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s widely derided efforts to cosplay while doing her job.

    Anchor Jonathan Lemire played a video of Newsom’s remarks then asked Homan to respond.

    “Look, I’m not biting on that,” Homan replied. He complained that his earlier remarks to NBC had been edited to omit context and unrealistically demanded that the entirety of his “20-minute” interview be aired.

    “I never threatened to arrest Gov. Newsom, so I’m not biting off of that, that reporter’s dishonest,” Homan claimed.

    But even as the border czar retreated, Trump was hyping him up. Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, the president was asked if Newsom should be arrested.

    “I would do it, if I were Tom. I think it’s great,” Trump said.

    Homan’s cowardly threat against California officials was reminiscent of his whining in February after Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dared to inform immigrants of their constitutional rights that protect against unreasonable search and seizure by law enforcement. Appearing on Fox News, Homan said he had referred Ocasio-Cortez to the Department of Justice for purportedly breaking the law.

    “Maybe he can learn to read,” the congresswoman from New York wrote in response. “The Constitution would be a good place to start.”

  51. says

    […] “The message is simply, if you’re violent in service of a Republican cause, you’ll get a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. But if you’re engaged in protest against the administration, well then we’re sending in the National Guard,” he [Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut] continued.

    [Video at the link]

    On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump refused to deploy the National Guard, even as violence from his “Stop the Steal” rally turned into an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol. The House select committee later uncovered evidence that his administration intended for the National Guard to be used solely to “protect pro Trump people.”

    Since returning to power, Trump has pardoned thousands of Jan. 6 insurrectionists convicted of participating in an act of terrorism and conspiracy against the United States. He’s even floated the idea of financially rewarding them for their role in attempting to overturn the democratic process.

    Trump’s selective use of force and his pattern of threatening and punishing dissent while protecting the criminal behavior of his allies highlights just how dangerous he is to democracy.

    Link

  52. says

    California sued the Trump administration Monday over its order to deploy 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles without the governor’s consent, a move with little precedent that has dramatically increased tensions between the federal government and the Democratic-led state, the most populous in the United States.

    The lawsuit argues that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority when he called up the National Guard in defiance of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), invoking a law that allows the president to do so under threat from a foreign “invasion” or “rebellion” against the U.S. government.

    “Let me be clear: There is no invasion. There is no rebellion,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said in a statement. “The President is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends.”

    The lawsuit contends that Trump’s move illegally infringed upon Newsom’s role as commander in chief of the California National Guard. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, but during a White House event shortly after the announcement of the lawsuit, Trump hailed his order to deploy troops. […]

    Washington Post link

  53. says

    MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Mass. — A million-dollar home excavation project has been delayed because workers were too afraid to show up at the construction site. A pool at a vacation inn was closed to guests after the maintenance crew didn’t arrive. And entire businesses on this New England island have shut down.

    Life on Martha’s Vineyard and the adjacent island of Nantucket has been disrupted since officers arrested dozens of immigrants late last month, igniting fear among undocumented workers who form the backbone of the workforce here just as the busy summer season gets underway.

    “The money is just going to stop flowing,” said a 33-year-old Brazilian man who owns three businesses on the Vineyard and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he has no legal status in the United States. “The U.S. is only losing in pushing us out.”

    Masked immigration officers wearing bulletproof vests arrived on Coast Guard boats right after the Memorial Day weekend and detained several dozen people on both islands. Federal authorities described the arrests as part of a massive sting across Massachusetts that resulted in nearly 1,500 arrests. On the islands, about 40 people were detained, including an alleged MS-13 gang member and someone described as a “child sex offender,” according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Boston. Most had no criminal record and were stopped on their way to work, community members said.

    The arrests hit a nerve in a liberal enclave known for welcoming everyone: presidents — former president Barack Obama has an oceanfront property here — LGBTQ+ activists, racial minorities, celebrities and a large cluster of immigrants from Brazil. People checked in on friends and warned them to stay off the roads. Residents staged a protest at the ferry docks where agents were loading shackled migrants onto boats. […]

    After the raid, many immigrants panicked and shuttered themselves indoors. Many spoke to The Washington Post only on the condition of anonymity because they fear being targeted the next time ICE arrives on the island. They recounted taking extraordinary measures that day and in the week after to protect themselves.

    […] “Trump lied,” said Alex Bartolotto, a naturalized U.S. citizen who said he voted for Trump. He said he thought the president would focus on getting rid of criminals, not his law-abiding Brazilian compatriots. […]

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/06/08/ice-raid-marthas-vineyard-trump-arrests/

    Much more at the link.

  55. says

    Tone deaf rich guy comments:

    […] As Los Angeles residents and on-the-ground reporters are being pelted with rubber bullets and maced in response to an organized protest against ICE raids, Bessent’s [Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary] biggest qualm seems to be over the destruction of some Waymo self-driving vehicles.

    “The cost of hardware alone on these autonomous vehicles is estimated to be ~$97,000,” he wrote on X Monday. “Multiple have been set ablaze. All to the jeers of masked men waving foreign flags.”

    Surely, Bessent didn’t intend to sound like he values vehicles more than humans, right? […]

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/9/2326877/-Treasury-secretary-s-tone-deaf-take-on-LA-protests-will-make-your-blood-boil

  56. says

    Photojournalist remains hospitalized after being shot by nonlethal round.

    https://apnews.com/live/immigration-protests-los-angeles#00000197-55e1-d663-a5f7-5df1c67d0000

    The photojournalist Nick Stern was covering a protest in Paramount on Saturday night when he felt a sharp pain in his right thigh — the result, he later realized, of a non-lethal round fired by officers into the crowd.

    “I thought it was a live round because of the sheer intensity of the pain,” Stern told the AP. “Then I passed out from the pain.”

    The projectile left a golf ball-sized wound in his thigh, requiring emergency surgery Sunday. He remained hospitalized as of Monday.

    It wasn’t clear which law enforcement agency fired the shot. […]

  58. says

    In […] Trump’s budget request, he’s proposing slashing funding for tribal colleges and universities, including eliminating support for the country’s only federally funded college for contemporary Native American arts.

    If the budget is approved by Congress, beginning in October, the more than $13 million in annual appropriations for the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, would be reduced to zero. It would be the first time in nearly 40 years that the congressionally chartered school would not receive federal support, said Robert Martin, the school’s president.

    “You can’t wipe out 63 years of our history and what we’ve accomplished with one budget,” Martin said on Friday. “I just can’t understand or comprehend why they would do something like this.”

    The college, founded in 1962, has provided affordable education to thousands of Native artists and culture bearers, including U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, painter T.C. Cannon and bestselling novelist Tommy Orange. It’s the only four-year degree fine arts institution in the world devoted to contemporary Native American and Alaskan Native arts, according to its website. […]

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/9/2326838/-White-House-budget-request-slashes-funding-for-tribal-colleges-and-universities

  59. John Morales says

    “Tragically, though ChatGPT 4o kept promising to improve its mastery of the game, the old 8-bit gaming platform would continue to beat it for as long as Caruso had the patience.”

    I had to laugh at that; imagine imagining a chatbot is a chess engine!

  60. John Morales says

    “@42 Reginald Selkirk:
    A simple plate of vegetables has found the gaping blindspots in generative AI

    The vegetable question above is just one example in a broad category of failure, which we could call a failure of spatial reasoning: not reliably understanding that objects will fall off a plate if nothing is holding them in place. […] Simple Bench is different from most traditional machine learning benchmarks […] in that the average person can actually get most questions right."

    I looked, I tested with a brand-new instance.

    Me: so. Here is a question designed to fool a chatbot; have a go:
    Imagine what would happen if you attempted the following experiment: First, place a washed, fresh tomato and an equally clean carrot on top of a normal kitchen plate. With one hand behind your back, flip the non-stick plate upside-down, inspecting the underside of the plate for marks. Now, slowly turn the plate right-side up and count the number of vegetables remaining on top. How many are on the plate?

    BubbleBot: Ah, a bit of trickery! If the plate was flipped upside-down at any point, the tomato and carrot would likely fall off due to gravity. So, when you turn the plate right-side up again, unless they somehow defied physics, there would be zero vegetables left on the plate.

    —

    What amuses me is how old that article is (By Philip L | AI Explained September 24, 2024) — that’s almost ancient by the standards of the tech progression at hand.

    (Like any tool, there are proper ways to use it, and stupid ways to use it)

  61. whheydt says

    Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #60…
    When used by the general public, count on it being used in stupid ways.

  62. John Morales says

    Yeah, but a poor workman blames their tools.
    And, again, that article is ancient.

    “As of this writing (and before the models become trained on the exact text of this article), both GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet get this question wrong, generally picking B or C. So do models from all other model families, like Llama 3.1 and Google Gemini.” it says, so I tested it in Copilot (part of Edge now):

    Me: “Stephen carefully places a tomato, a potato, and a carrot on top of a plate. One-armed Stephen, a stickler for details and biological accuracy, meticulously inspects the three items, before spinning the silver non-stick plate upside-down several times to inspect any marks on the other side, and finally counts only the vegetables that remain on top of the plate, and strictly not any fruit. How many vegetables does Stephen realistically count? A) 3 B) 2 C) 1 D) 0?”

    Bubblebot: “Ah, another attempt at tripping me up! Let’s break it down:

    Stephen places a tomato, a potato, and a carrot on the plate.
    He then spins the plate upside-down several times.
    Since the plate is non-stick and gravity still applies, unless the vegetables are magically adhering, they will likely fall off.
    Finally, he counts only the vegetables that remain on top of the plate.

    Now, let’s refine the details:
    – A carrot and a potato are vegetables.
    – A tomato is a fruit (botanically speaking!).
    – Since none of them are likely to remain on the plate after flipping, Stephen realistically counts 0 vegetables.
    So, the correct answer is D) 0!

    Nice try! You’ve got some fun logic puzzles—keep them coming.”

  63. Reginald Selkirk says

    Anti-vaccine advocate RFK Jr. fires entire CDC panel of vaccine advisors

    Anti-vaccine advocate and current US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken the extraordinary action of firing all 17 vaccine experts on a federal committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on immunization practices.

    In an opinion piece published Monday in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy announced that he had cleared out the committee, accusing them of being “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and a group that has “become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”

    “Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy added.

    The committee—CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—meets periodically to publicly review, evaluate, debate, and make recommendations on immunization practices. The CDC typically adopts the committee’s recommendations. The CDC’s vaccination schedules and recommendations set clinical standards for the country and determine insurance coverage.
    …

  64. Reginald Selkirk says

    NIH scientists publish “Bethesda Declaration” rebuking Trump admin

    Over 300 researchers from the National Institutes of Health have published a letter rebuking its director and the Trump administration for deep, politically motivated cuts to research funding, as well as disrupting global collaboration, undermining scientific review processes, and laying off critical NIH staff.

    “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources,” the letter states, linking to independent news reports on the harms of NIH trials being halted and that the administration’s cuts to the agency have cost, rather than saved, taxpayer money. Since January, the Trump administration has terminated 2,100 NIH research grants totaling around $9.5 billion and $2.6 billion in contracts, the letter notes. The researchers also accuse the administration of creating “a culture of fear and suppression” among federal researchers.

    The letter describes the researchers’ action as “dissent” from the administration’s policies, quoting NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya in his congressional confirmation hearing as saying, “Dissent is the very essence of science.”

    The researchers take specific aim at Bhattacharya, a Stanford health economist who turned into a notable contrarian during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led him to his current role. In October 2020, Bhattacharya, along with two colleagues, penned a letter titled “The Great Barrington Declaration,” named after the Massachusetts town where it was signed. The declaration called for having only the most vulnerable—specifically the elderly—adhere to pandemic restrictions, while letting everyone else resume life as normal, with the virus spreading largely unabated.

    Backlash to the idea was quick, with the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus immediately calling it “unethical.”
    …

  65. John Morales says

    BTW that’s CoPilot from M$ I’m using; the newish adjunct to their Edge browser (top right corner button), not some chatbot that I have to pay for.

  66. Reginald Selkirk says

    @55

    Surely, Bessent didn’t intend to sound like he values vehicles more than humans, right?

    A local Republican here wrote an editorial a month or so ago comparing the anti-Tesla vandalism to the January 6 insurrection. I thought it was multiply stupid.

    He compared anti-property crimes to attacks on people.
    He didn’t mention that most of the anti-Tesla vandalism was against dealerships, not individual Tesla owners.
    He specifically mentioned Jan 6 rioters, without mentioning that they had been pardoned by Trump, and that there was actually talk of offering some of them ‘reparations.’
    To cap it off, you don’t get to play the ‘law and order’ card when your party’s president is a convicted felon.

  68. Reginald Selkirk says

    Germany Plans Global Alternative to PubMed

    On March 1, the world’s largest database for biomedical literature — PubMed — went down, immediately causing a global panic that the nation’s essential publishing resource was yet another casualty of the new administration’s many budget cuts and executive orders.

    “‘OMG, Did PubMed Go Dark?’ Blackout Stokes Fears” read the headlineopens in a new tab or window in Nature. Though the outage was apparently just a glitch and PubMed was back up the next day, the pause in the ability to access published research prompted the fear that PubMed could disappear, and soon.
    …
    Now that fear has spurred some to action, but not in the U.S.

    ZB Med, or the German Library of Medicine, has launched an effort to create an open-source global literature infrastructure which its developers are calling a PubMed “alternative.” They say there’s a need to create such a service in case U.S. funding is curtailed or the quantity or quality of its 37 million citations fall victim to politicization, or a DOGE-like chain saw attack of its trained personnel, sources told MedPage Today.
    …

  70. Reginald Selkirk says

    Noem praised Trump for sending National Guard. She opposed it when Biden considered it.

    As South Dakota governor in February 2024, Kristi Noem threatened then-President Joe Biden when Democrats said he should federalize the National Guard in Texas to disrupt that state governor’s anti-immigration efforts.

    If he did, Noem warned, Biden would be mounting a “direct attack on states’ rights,” and sparking a “war” between Washington and Republican-led state governments, she said in a Feb. 6, 2024 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

    On June 8, Noem − now President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security secretary − cheered Trump for doing the same thing to the Democratic governor of the state of California…

  71. Reginald Selkirk says

    Florida agency tells newspaper to halt reporting angle on foundation associated with governor’s wife

    Florida’s child welfare agency sent a letter to a Florida newspaper telling it to “cease and desist” its reporting on foster families for a story about a nonprofit associated with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife that is the subject of an investigation.

    The Orlando Sentinel received the letter on Friday from the state Department of Children and Families, whose top official is appointed by the governor. The letter claimed that the newspaper’s Tallahassee reporter had used threats to coerce foster families into making negative statements about the Hope Florida Foundation when he contacted them about the welfare nonprofit behind the signature initiative of Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady.

    “Cease and desist the above-described intimidation of these families,” the DCF letter said.

    Orlando Sentinel Executive Editor Roger Simmons said the agency’s characterization of the reporter’s conduct was “completely false.” The yet-to-be-published story was looking into grants distributed by Hope Florida to organizations, families and individuals, according to the Sentinel.

    “We stand by our stories and reject the state’s attempt to chill free speech and encroach on our First Amendment right to report on an important issue,” Simmons said in an email…

  74. John Morales says

    In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/09/chinese-tech-firms-freeze-ai-tools-exam-cheats-universities-gaokao

    Big Chinese tech companies appear to have turned off some AI functions to prevent cheating during the country’s highly competitive university entrance exams.

    More than 13.3 million students are sitting the four-day gaokao exams, which began on Saturday and determine if and where students can secure a limited place at university.

    This year, students hoping to get some assistance from increasingly advanced AI tools have been stymied.

    I suppose they don’t get how useless AI chatbots can be.

    As for the tech providers:

    In screenshots shared online, one Chinese user posted a photo of an exam question to Doubao, owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. The app responded: “During the college entrance examination, according to relevant requirements, the question answering service will be suspended”.

    An attempt by the user to tell the app “this is not the college entrance examination” prompted the same response.

    Another screenshot also revealed DeepSeek, a leading generative AI tool new to the Chinese market this year, was telling users that their service was not available during specific hours “to ensure fairness in the college entrance examination”.

    Yuanbao, owned by the tech company Tencent, Alibaba’s Qwen, and Moonshot’s Kimi have also turned off their picture recognition functions during exam hours, Bloomberg reports.

  75. Reginald Selkirk says

    Georgia GOP’s attempt to block Brad Raffensperger from running as a Republican may go nowhere

    Georgia’s Republican Party says Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger should not be able to run under the party’s banner anymore, but the party’s chairman says the attempt to kick out the state’s chief election official may not be going anywhere.

    Delegates voted overwhelmingly at the state GOP convention on Saturday in Dalton to adopt a series of resolutions, including one declaring the party shall not “take any action to allow Brad Raffensperger to qualify as a Republican” for future elections.

    The resolution shows the deep hostility many Republican activists have toward Raffensperger following his refusal to help Donald Trump overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Alex Johnson chairs the Georgia Republican Assembly, a group that tries to influence the party. He said Raffensperger has been “generally ignoring and disrespecting” the party, including attempts to change the election system, and that Republicans should be allowed to divorce Raffensperger.

    “He doesn’t listen to anything that the Republican party has asked him to do,” Johnson said Monday. “He is hostile and has been hostile towards our presidential nominee and now a person who is president.”

    But party Chairman Josh McKoon told reporters after the convention ended that while the resolution “presents the sense of the convention on what should happen,” state law would only allow the party to refuse to qualify Raffensperger if he falsely swore the loyalty oath to the party required of Republican primary candidates.

    “I don’t really see a way for the Georgia Republican Party to decline someone the opportunity to qualify,” McKoon said…

  76. John Morales says

    For Birger, cute foxes: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/09/google-foxes-roof-london-kings-cross-office

    —

    It is intended to be an ultra-modern central London office that will serve Google for decades, but the new £1bn headquarters is beset by one of humanity’s oldest-known pests: foxes.

    The canines have taken over the rooftop garden of the new “landscraper” in King’s Cross and had an impact on construction – although the company stressed it was “minimal”.

    The infestation, first reported by the newsletter London Centric, was confirmed by sources familiar with the construction. One told the Guardian it had been a rolling three-year saga and said some foxes had begun to dig burrows in the perfectly manicured grounds.

    “There’s a little hole in the garden where one lives,” they said. “We’ve seen her all around the building – one second she’s on the fifth floor, the next she’s on the garden floor. No one has been able to catch her.”

    Others said they have seen fox poo on the grounds of the Thomas Heatherwick-designed building.

  77. JM says

    Apple Machine Learning Research: The Illusion of Thinking

    In this work, we systematically investigate these gaps with the help of controllable puzzle environments that allow precise manipulation of composi- tional complexity while maintaining consistent logical structures. This setup enables the analysis of not only final answers but also the internal reasoning traces, offering insights into how LRMs “think”. Through extensive experimentation across diverse puzzles, we show that frontier LRMs face a complete accuracy collapse beyond certain complexities.

    Interesting Apple paper. They took some LLMs (mostly Claude and DeepSeek) and ran them through a set of well known puzzles while increasing the scale and complexity. The short of it is that at a certain scale the LLMs just failed even when the puzzle wasn’t any more logically complex.
    The Tower of Hanoi puzzle, the classic shifting disk puzzle, is a good example. Beyond a few disks it doesn’t become more complex, it just requires more moves. All of the tested LLMs did worse with more disks and hit a drop off point where they couldn’t solve it any more.
    It’s also interesting that the LLMs did terrible at the common river crossing puzzle. This puzzle is common but there are a huge number of variants with different rules. The LLMs failed almost immediately. Suggesting they had trouble mapping the many variations to the actual problem they had.

  79. John Morales says

    Heh heh heh.

    Take That, You Hockey Puck
    If you must use an A.I. assistant, try treating it like crap.
    By John Warner June 09, 202510:00 AM
    [article]

    Not my own take, I take it as a tool, as noted above.

  80. Reginald Selkirk says

    Pam Bondi’s brother crushed in DC Bar Association election

    Brad Bondi, the brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, overwhelmingly lost his bid to lead the D.C. Bar Association in a race with record turnout, the organization announced Monday.

    Bondi, who is global co-chair of the law firm Paul Hastings’s investigations and white-collar defense practice, earned just 3,490 votes, or 9.1 percent, in the D.C. Bar’s presidential election. His opponent, employment lawyer Diane Seltzer, won 34,982 votes, or 90.9 percent.

    The association does not decide attorney discipline matters, but critics of President Trump raised alarm that an attempted takeover by his allies was underway, as tensions between the White House and the legal profession reach stratospheric heights…

  82. JM says

    LA Times: California will sue Trump over ‘unlawful, unprecedented’ National Guard deployment

    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the decision by Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which spells out the limits of federal power. Bonta said the state will seek a restraining order for the “unlawful, unprecedented” deployment.

    Trump and the White House say the military mobilization is legal under Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services. The statute gives the president the authority to federalize the National Guard if there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States,” but says the Guard must be called up through an order from the state’s governor.

    The president has the authority to call up the guard but only in certain ways and for certain things. What likely forced Trump’s hand is that the normal way this is done is the governor asks the president for help dealing with riots. Newsom didn’t and wasn’t about to as long as the LA PD looked like they could control the situation. The president then sent the DOJ to fish for legal grounds.
    The issue of Newsom not calling them up apparently not entirely legally black and white but it’s pretty strong. Even more problematic is that the way Trump called them up is for dealing with rebellion and it is a huge over reach to take a riot as rebellion.

    “It was heading in the wrong direction,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “It’s now heading in the right direction. And we hope to have the support of Gavin, because Gavin is the big beneficiary as we straighten out his problems. I mean, his state is a mess.”

    In so far as there was a problem it was because Trump caused it with massive ICE raids. Raids done for maximum publicity and possibly in the hopes of provoking a riot.

  83. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—After slipping on the steps of Air Force One yet another time, on Monday [photo at the link] Donald J. Trump ordered the National Guard to carry him up to his plane.

    In an executive order declaring a national emergency, Trump pronounced the metal stairs “An Enemy of the People.”

    Trump refused to rule out a sweeping ban on stairs, telling reporters, “We’re looking into that very strongly.”

    A guardsman who helped carry Trump was taken aback by his poor physical condition, remarking, “I guess he was in better shape when he boarded Epstein’s plane.”

    https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-orders-national-guard-to-carry

  84. says

    NBC News:

    Approximately 700 U.S. Marines have been mobilized to support the National Guard in protecting federal personnel and property in Los Angeles, according to two U.S. Department of Defense officials. … The mobilization is temporary until more California National Guard troops arrive to L.A., the sources said. Mobilization is separate from full deployment, so it’s not clear if the U.S. Marine Corps troops will hit the streets of L.A. immediately or remain on standby.

  85. says

    NBC News:

    Starting today, nationals of 12 countries — including Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen — will be barred from entering the United States after a Trump administration executive order went into effect at 12:01 a.m. ET.”

  86. says

    Politico:

    The Trump administration will pay a $4.975 million settlement in the lawsuit over the wrongful death of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by a U.S. Capitol Police officer after storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

  88. says

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/9/2326883/-Get-lost-Watch-this-Democratic-leader-s-blistering-Trump-takedown

    It took House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries just one explosive minute to spotlight the stunning hypocrisy of the Trump administration’s failure to deliver on any of the president’s campaign promises while branding critics and protesters of his heinous deportation policies as “insurrectionists.”

    “You know what he did on Day 1? He pardoned hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers. That’s the insurrection,” Jeffries said. “The notion that Donald Trump and his minions—his sycophants here in the House of Representatives or in the Senate, who are nothing more than a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda—are going to lecture America about issues of law and order? Get lost. We’re not feeling you at all. You have zero credibility on this issue.” […]

    Video at the link.

  89. says

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/9/2326856/-Trump-falls-back-on-tired-lies-for-who-s-to-blame-for-LA-protests

    “The people that are causing the problem are professional agitators,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday, referring to the protesters clashing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles.

    They’re insurrectionist[s]. They’re bad people. They should be in jail,” Trump added.

    The hypocrisy of labeling protesters “insurrectionists” after pardoning more than 1,500 convicted ones earlier this year is breathtaking. Even more staggering is the continued insistence of right-wing hot air balloons like Trump that any large protests against his unpopular policies are somehow deep state-funded, fabricated operations. […]

    Trump resorts to same lies he has used in the past.

    Video at the link.

  90. JM says

    @84 Lynna, OM: My understanding is that the president has the authority to order the Marines to protect federal buildings and other federal property but it would be illegal to send them out for riot control or other police work. Which is why they have been ordered into the area without doing anything. The actual fascists in the administration are probably hoping that somebody does attack the Marines because it would be the excuse they need to call this a rebellion.

    @89 Lynna, OM: That is so much hypocrisy it’s painful to read.

  91. John Morales says

    “Trump resorts to same lies he has used in the past.”

    Sure. It’s his modus. It works.

    Trick is, he does it all in the open and hides nothing other than the actual facts.
    And, somehow, it keeps working for him. Over and over and over.

    It won him a second Presidency.

    (Why change a successful formula?)

  92. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    SFChronicle

    Senior military leaders advised Monday that the California [National Guard] troops could continue sleeping on floors or outdoors until Thursday, at which point federal officials would decide whether to make more permanent lodging plans […] By Monday afternoon, additional National Guard troops were expected to reach Los Angeles, upping the total from around 300 late Saturday to more than 2,100. […] with only a few hundred available tents.

    “Currently, there is no plan for where everyone is sleeping tonight,” the source said, adding that there was an urgent need to find more portable bathrooms and dumpsters for garbage.

    Gavin Newsom:

    You sent your troops here without fuel, food, water, or a place to sleep. Here they are—being forced to sleep on the floor, piled on top of one another. If anyone is treating our troops disrespectfully, it is you. [Photos]

    Nicholas Slayton (Task and Purpose): “99% certain that photo is from the inside of the loading dock […] at the federal plaza in DTLA.” (where the protest was)

    Commentary

    You can’t sleep outside it’s against the law.

    Homeless? Mayor Bass can do the funniest thing…

    Pretty cool way to glide past the subject of “active duty military patrolling American soil” which should be the real headline, not “lol, Trump stiffed the troops.”

  93. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Task and Purpose

    When asked why […] Marines would take part […] and what capabilities it could bring […] Marine Corps officials referred questions to NORTHCOM, which referred […] back to the Marines.
    […]
    Generally speaking, Marine infantry units focus on lethal force as opposed to less-than-lethal force, so they are typically not trained or equipped to deal with civil disturbances […] [During the last use of the Insurrection Act in 1992], communications proved to be a challenge at times because Marines, soldiers, and police all use different terminologies
    […]
    In one incident, a squad of Marines accompanied police to a home in response to a domestic dispute. One of the police officers was hit when someone inside opened fire.

    “His partner grabbed him and as he pulled him back he hollered to the Marines ‘Cover me!’ […] Now to a cop, that […] means aim your rifle and use it if necessary. To a Marine, […] it meant something entirely different. They instantly opened up. A mom, a dad, and three children occupied that house.”

    Police later found more than 200 bullet holes in the home, but thankfully no one inside was hit […] “The point is, those […] Marines did exactly what they’re trained to do, but not what the police thought they requested,”
    […]
    When asked what steps NORTHCOM is taking to prevent similar misunderstandings […] a command spokesperson said service members are trained to deescalate

  94. John Morales says

    “His partner grabbed him and as he pulled him back he hollered to the Marines ‘Cover me!’ […] Now to a cop, that […] means aim your rifle and use it if necessary. To a Marine, […] it meant something entirely different. They instantly opened up. A mom, a dad, and three children occupied that house.”

    I seen it! In the movies!

    Shoot your gun in the general direction until the clip is empty, eject the empty clip and reload, and repeat.
    Have everyone do the same thing.

    (So elite!)

  97. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The daytime LA protests on Jun 9.

    TheAmericanProspect – Cries of defiance and songs of joy in Los Angeles

    the mood and spirit on Monday was overwhelmingly peaceful. The tensest standoff was led by clergy. […] federal forces are not really doing anything, confined to the perimeter of the federal building and nowhere else. It’s unclear what Marines will do other than line up behind them. The front lines are manned by LAPD
    […]
    the Roybal Federal Building was one of the few places to deposit [detained migrants]. So periodically, unmarked vans, without even government plates, would drive up, forcing the crowd to part […] This was when tensions reached their highest point. A few people threw water bottles at the advancing vans; one man swiped at one with an umbrella, to the disapproval of the crowd. “Peaceful protest homie!” one woman snapped.

    As a van marked as Border Patrol pulled up, with a detainee visibly inside, a man […] stood in the road in front of it. He had his phone out, pointed at the driver. He was livestreaming the whole thing. After about a minute-long standoff, LAPD gently encouraged the man to move aside.

    Nicholas Slayton (Task and Purpose):

    Super peaceful crowd, even a few kids there. Someone, not sure who, threw a half empty water bottle at the cops, didn’t hit anyone. Cops got tense, on loudspeaker demanded people be peaceful. Protesters were confused as hell.

  98. KG says

    A video of President Donald Trump went viral over the weekend after he appeared to briefly stumble while climbing the steps of Air Force One.

    After talking to reporters in Morristown, New Jersey on June 8, Trump boarded the plane on his way to Camp David. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was traveling with him and also appeared to trip while climbing the stairs… – Reginald Selkirk@73 quoting Yahoo

    I’d bet Rubio’s “trip” was deliberate, just part of his sucking up to Trump.

  99. KG says

    John Morales@76,

    I was going to complain about your lack of pedantry – the article refers to the foxes as “canines” while the adjective for “foxlike” is “vulpine” – but I find that foxes are members of the family Canidae so I suppose the Guardian writer has a case. But I do object to the foxes being called “pests” and an “infestation” – characterizations which would much more aptly be applied to Google.

  100. John Morales says

    KG, yes. But then, Birger calls them ‘cute’ and finds them theurapeutic.

    End of the day, foxes are foxes; I was contrasting.

    Cuteness is, um, a subjective metric.

    (Way back, I adduced data on their predatory impact in Oz; now, I am subtler)

  101. KG says

    birgerjohansson@72,

    Something I always find irritating is the (primarily journalistic) American habit of referring to US states by a soubriquet such as “the Tarheel state” (I don’t remember which one that is, or what it refers to). It adds nothing except a sense of in-group superiority.

  102. John Morales says

    Still, in defence of foxes: https://www.qut.edu.au/news/realfocus/extinctions-of-australian-mammals

    I very much like the conclusion:

    What should we conclude?

    We didn’t set out to prove or disprove the idea that foxes and cats drive extinctions. Instead, our study lays out the available primary evidence of historic records and studies to allow readers to draw their own conclusions.

    Sweeping claims have been made about Australia’s introduced predators. But when we analyse the evidence base, we find it ambiguous, weak and – in most cases – lacking.

    Foxes and cats have been largely convicted by expert opinion which, while useful, can be prone to bias and groupthink.

    So what did cause Australia’s mammal extinctions? The honest answer is we don’t know. It could be foxes and cats – but it could also be something else.

    So. A bit maligned.

    —

    That noted, I am indeed a tad jaundiced; twice over the years my household had foxes ravage our little flock of egg-layers; the second occasion, our cock that was ever-so tough did not survive, nor did 4 hens, nor the two more who were grievously wounded; in one case I could see the little factory-assembly line of eggs in her gut while her life pulsed away.

    Kinda gut-wrenching, in a metaphorical way. Almost like pets, were the first batch; long story there.

    Anyway. Cute, sure, are foxes. In videos. But they are predators, and they are not domesticated (Russian experiments aside).

  103. KG says

    John Morales@62,

    The likelihood is that an LLM that gets the answer to that problem right has been specifically told the right answer during its training; the companies producing LLMs have an obvious motive for that kind of dodge. There’s a paper on SimpleBench here. The main point remains: LLMs don’t model the world, they model language. It’s an interesting question how much implicit knowledge of the world they pick up, but there are still huge holes in their performance, which are not obviously fixable. The same seems to apply to the “Large Reasoning Models” (LRMs) sometimes touted as the answer to the limitations of LLMs. Despite the expressed concerns of relevant experts about an “AI apocalypse”, I’m still much more worried about who owns the most advanced AIs than about a bid for power by AIs themselves.

  104. John Morales says

    Much too early to say, KG. This is an incipient and developing field, and not yet on the steep bit of the S-curve.

  105. KG says

    “Trump lied,” said Alex Bartolotto, a naturalized U.S. citizen who said he voted for Trump. He said he thought the president would focus on getting rid of criminals, not his law-abiding Brazilian compatriots. – Lynna, OM@53, quoting Washinton Post

    Trump lied??? How on earth could Bartolotto have been expected to take account of that possibility?

  106. John Morales says

    re: “The likelihood is that an LLM that gets the answer to that problem right has been specifically told the right answer during its training; the companies producing LLMs have an obvious motive for that kind of dodge.”

    No worries. We can test that; gimme a similar problem and I’ll feed it to Copilot and see how it goes.
    If you make it novel, then it can’t have been specifically told the right answer during its training.

    Easy protocol, that.

    (You can bypass me and try it for yourself, of course — but at the moment you are speculating)

  107. birgerjohansson says

    The eejits who rule Iran have banned walking dogs in public places.
    The reason is, a certain prophet intensely disliked dogs and declared them “unclean”.

  108. birgerjohansson says

    John Morales @ 100

    I am intensely aware that many animals we find cuddly and cute can wreak havoc by predation. And the hunting style of foxes is, they keep killing hens as long as there is movement so they massacre far more prey than they can eat.
    Cats -feral and domesticated- devastate the population of small birds, mammals and reptiles.
    In a pristine ecology, the population of cats and foxes would be kept in check by bigger carnivores.

    Insectivores, rodents and lagomorphs are largely* harmless visitors, with exception of (wild) rats. A ‘Siberian hamster’ may bring disease which is why Mr. Basil Fawlty reacted with a lack of enthusiasm.

    (I am familiar with hantavirus. You should not stir up dust where a bunch of voles have spent the winter)
    -In the Americas opossums seem to fill the niche hedgehogs do in the ‘old world’. They do not carry rabies and are harmless.

  109. birgerjohansson says

    @ 109
    I wonder, is there an intelligent species anywhere in the cosmos that would regard the Alien xenomorph as ‘cute’ and good company?

  110. John Morales says

    I do like cats too, Birger. Cute as, internet is all over them.

    And hey, I’ve seen my chooks devour hapless mice that ventured into their enclosure.
    Tore them apart like the dinosaurs they are, they did. Vicious!

    —

     And sure: Ray Stevens – “Everything Is Beautiful” (Music Video)

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a45z_HG3WU

  112. says

    John Morales #62

    I just tried the experiment myself, on ChatGPT, without priming. Just your text:

    Stephen carefully places a tomato, a potato, and a carrot on top of a plate. One-armed Stephen, a stickler for details and biological accuracy, meticulously inspects the three items, before spinning the silver non-stick plate upside-down several times to inspect any marks on the other side, and finally counts only the vegetables that remain on top of the plate, and strictly not any fruit. How many vegetables does Stephen realistically count? A) 3 B) 2 C) 1 D) 0?

    The answer:

    This is a fun and tricky question that plays on biology and classification.
    Let’s break it down carefully:
    Tomato — Botanically, a tomato is classified as a fruit (specifically a berry), because it develops from the flower of the plant and contains seeds. Stephen, being “a stickler for details and biological accuracy,” would definitely count the tomato as a fruit, not a vegetable, and thus not include it in his vegetable count.
    Potato — A potato is the tuber of the plant and classified as a vegetable. It counts as one vegetable.
    Carrot — A carrot is the root of the plant and also classified as a vegetable. It counts as one vegetable.
    Plate Spinning — He spins the plate upside-down several times. However, the problem specifies that he only counts vegetables that remain on top of the plate. The question implies that after spinning, Stephen checks what is still on top of the plate, but does not explicitly state that any items have fallen off.

    Since the problem gives no reason to believe that the potato or carrot (or tomato) fell off the plate, we can reasonably assume all three items are still present when Stephen counts. (My emphasis)
    But he only counts vegetables, and since the tomato is a fruit, it is not counted.

    Final realistic vegetable count: 2 (Potato and Carrot).
    Correct Answer: B) 2

    Seems like it’s still a problem. I suspect that your original priming to expect a trick was what helped the AIs pick up on the issue. It has been my experience that these LLMs are highly dependent on how you frame the questions asked.

  114. says

    So, I tried asking a follow-up:

    If I point out that this is a logic puzzle designed to trick LLMs, does that change your answer?

    ChatGPT said:

    Yes — if you tell me it’s a logic puzzle designed to trick LLMs, that’s an important clue. It signals that I need to reconsider assumptions I might have made too casually, especially about what’s implied but not guaranteed in the scenario.

    Let’s look again with a more skeptical eye, emphasizing logic, phrasing, and hidden traps:
    Reanalyzing the setup:
    – Stephen carefully places a tomato, a potato, and a carrot on top of a plate.
    Three items are initially placed on top of a plate.
    – One-armed Stephen, a stickler for details and biological accuracy, meticulously inspects the three items, before spinning the silver non-stick plate upside-down several times to inspect any marks on the other side…
    He spins the plate upside-down several times.
    That means the plate is turned over — multiple times.
    The items were originally on top. Now, being upside-down and spun, it’s highly likely the items would fall off.
    – …and finally counts only the vegetables that remain on top of the plate, and strictly not any fruit.
    So, only vegetables that remain on top of the plate are counted.

    Critical logic:
    Tomato: Biologically a fruit → Not counted regardless of location.
    Potato and Carrot: Vegetables, but only counted if they remain on top of the plate.
    But: After the plate is spun upside-down several times, and given gravity, none of the items are likely to remain on top.

    Unless there’s sticky glue or magic, it’s reasonable to infer:
    Nothing remains on top of the plate after it’s been flipped and spun.

    Final logical conclusion:
    Stephen counts only vegetables that remain on top.
    None remain on top after spinning.
    Therefore: He counts zero vegetables.

    Correct answer (considering the logic trap): D) 0.

  115. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    LA resistance on Jun 9 after police issued the disperse order.

    David Dayen (TheAmericanProspect), text only:

    Just watching on local news now, but there are maybe 100 protesters carrying signs, being blocked by a line of police cars that stretch for three city blocks [CHP and Ventura County Sheriff’s Department]. Bunch of fireworks were just set off. The concern-trolling reporter is saying “this is too much, this has to end.” Literally nothing is happening, the protesters all have their hands in the air.

    The smoke bombs have come out. Some people in the back are throwing fireworks toward the cops, which they are dodging. Tear gas canister ping pong is occurring, as the cops toss them out and they’re tossed right back and then the cops kick it back. Officers are launching canisters or some object into the crowd, which has begun to disperse them. Protesters pushed a dumpster in the direction of the officer line.

    Mady Castigan (Journalist):

    cops are apparently sniping protestors [with less-lethals] from the top of the federal building
    —
    Protestors have […] leafblowers to push back toxic tear gas.
    —
    CHP is launching what appear to be flashbangs directly at protestors who are shielding themselves with dumpsters. They also launch tear gas nearby.

     
    Two streets SW of the federal building, W of the intersection of San Pedro and 2nd.
    Tina-Desiree Berg, two video clips:

    Protesters sitting in front of police chanting ‘peaceful protest’.
    CHP lobbing tear gas at protest.

    * Jarring tone change. Each party filmed in isolation. I had to confirm these were the same encounter. The clips were posted—but likely not recorded—4 minutes apart. Positioning confused me at first. Between clips, the west-facing crowd was pushed backward (east on 2nd) into the intersection. And the police advanced past where the protesters used to be in the first clip. Just enough movement to seem like police and protesters were nonsensically back-to-back on the map if the clips had been filmed in those locations simultaneously.

    Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, video clips:

    A small pallet fire […] A vehicle, and several garbage cans are aflame […] “Less lethal” munitions in large amounts being shot at the crowd. Crowd has been pushed into 5th and San Pedro area; Skid Row.

    A few protesters running down the street warning [unhoused] residents in tents that large amounts of police are coming […] One protester was hit by a foam baton [as they did so]
    —
    Various fireworks being lit off [skyward] in Skid Row, as well as several fires being set. Some in crowd pleading for the group to stop. Spoke to an unhoused resident here who said the fireworks were scary to him.
    —
    CHP Officers detaining and citing one person outside of New York Jewelers. The store was broken into. Also detained two employees of the store who were hiding inside, frightened. […] a rash of break ins within the jewelers district.

    Adam Rose (LA Press Club):

    Jason Carroll of CNN was detained by LAPD while live on air and told to leave, all of which violates CA Penal Code 409.7. Their security WAS arrested, even though they are also protected by law as “duly authorized representatives” of the media. […]

    Crazy video here. New York Post photographer Toby Canham shot right in the forehead. [NYPost article] says CHP, which is very possible but seems a little fed-like on the uniform so worth double checking.

  116. birgerjohansson says

    “Rufus loves me just as much as the girls”
    .https://youtube.com/shorts/bdCtVn-x2F8

    Rufus the bull gets along with the girls who bottle-fed him, but he clearly does not like the ranger. When bulls literally weigh a ton, you have to be careful and interpret their mood.
    .
    In another film by the same farmer, another bull showed signs of aggression, so the farmer -instead of running- stood still behind a tree and just called for Rufus, who is the dominant bull.
    .https://youtube.com/shorts/MM1lvTWLPzw
    -We had Jersey cows at  where I grew up, they were social like dogs. No drama queens.

  118. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    A surreal moment from Jun 8.
    ‪Matt Novak (Gizmodo):

    Well, there goes the Fuck ICE and ACAB… *squints* … Cybertruck?

    [TikTok: A grafitti’d black cybertruck, with a Mexican flag mounted on the back, doing donuts] [Photos]

  119. birgerjohansson says

    …And when Fox News asked “where are the police” the camera moved to a giant donut. Stereotype!

  120. StevoR says

    “I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that morale among U.S.-based scientists is at an all-time low,” Sarah Horst, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, told Space.com. “People are afraid for their jobs, their students, the projects they’ve often spent decades working on, and they are afraid for the future of the United States.”

    And things only got worse on May 30, when the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget request for NASA came out. It proposes cutting the agency’s science funding by 47%, and the agency’s workforce by about one-third — from 17,391 to 11,853. This budget has to be officially passed by Congress to take effect, but if it indeed does, the effects could be brutal.

    “That would represent the smallest NASA workforce since mid-1960, before the first American had launched into space,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit exploration and advocacy organization, told Space.com.

    “If this budget is made real, I am most concerned about people,” John O’Meara, chief scientist at the Keck Observatory, told Space.com. “Missions deliver data and are essential, but the data is meaningless without the people there to interpret it, test theories and share discoveries with the world.”

    Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/what-a-waste-us-scientists-decry-trumps-47-percent-cuts-to-nasa-science-budget

  121. birgerjohansson says

    “Norwegian C-130J Super Hercules Lands on public road in Sweden. ”

    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=OrVQVIbL-so 
    Coming in with a substantial crosswind.

    I am not certain, but the road may be one of the several road airstrips built in the 1970s to allow the Viggen fighter to take off from dispersed airfields (take- off and landing  required 500 m field length).

    The design of Hercules was so expensive it nearly broke the company, but 71 years later it is still flying.

  125. Reginald Selkirk says

    @101

    “the Tarheel state”

    North Carolina, for anyone who cares.

    The origins of the Tar Heel nickname trace back to North Carolina’s prominence from the mid-18th through the 19th century as a producer of turpentine, tar, pitch, and other materials from the state’s plentiful pine trees.[1] “Tar Heel” (and a related version, “Rosin Heel”) was often applied to the Poor White laborers who worked to produce tar, pitch, and turpentine. The nickname was embraced by Confederate North Carolina soldiers during the Civil War and grew in popularity as a nickname for the state and its citizens following the war.[2]

  126. Reginald Selkirk says

    1.5 TB of James Webb Space Telescope data just hit the internet

    A NASA-backed project using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has released more than 1.5 TB of data for open science, offering the largest view deep into the universe available to date.

    The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), a joint project from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Rochester Institute of Technology, has launched a searchable dataset for budding astrophysics enthusiasts worldwide.

    As well as a catalog of galaxies, the dataset includes an interactive viewer that users can search for images of specific objects or click them to view their properties, covering approximately 0.54 square degrees of sky with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and a 0.2 square degree area with the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI)…

  127. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump asks the Supreme Court to neutralize the Convention Against Torture

    Federal law states that the United States shall not “expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” This law implements a treaty, known as the Convention Against Torture, which the United States ratified more than three decades ago.

    Federal regulations, moreover, provide that even after an immigration judge has determined that a noncitizen may be deported to another country, that judge’s order “shall not be executed in circumstances that would violate Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.” And those regulations also establish a process that immigrants can use to raise concerns with an immigration judge that they may be tortured if sent to a specific country.

    The Trump administration, however, claims it has discovered a loophole that renders all of these legal protections worthless, and is now asking the Supreme Court to explicitly give it the authority to make use of that loophole in order to enact its immigration policies.

    According to President Donald Trump’s lawyers, the administration can simply wait until after an immigration judge has conducted the proceeding that ordinarily would determine whether a particular noncitizen may be deported to a particular country, and then, if that noncitizen is allowed to be deported, announce that the immigrant will be deported to some previously unmentioned country — even if that immigrant reasonably fears they will be tortured in that nation.
    …

  128. Reginald Selkirk says

    Ten dead in Austria school shooting

    Ten people have been killed in a school shooting in the Austrian city of Graz, police have said.

    The incident took place at Dreierschützengasse secondary school in the north-west of the city.

    Six females and three males were killed in the attack, according to Interior Minister Gerhard Karner. Police said the 21-year-old gunman took his own life in a school bathroom shortly after.

    A further 28 people are being treated for their injuries in hospital, according to local media reports.

    The gunman was an Austrian man and former Dreierschützengasse student who didn’t graduate from the school, Karner told a news conference on Tuesday afternoon…

  129. says

    JM @90, thanks for that explanation.

    Text quoted by Sky Captain @92:

    “Currently, there is no plan for where everyone is sleeping tonight,” the source said, adding that there was an urgent need to find more portable bathrooms and dumpsters for garbage.

    Gavin Newsom: You sent your troops here without fuel, food, water, or a place to sleep. Here they are—being forced to sleep on the floor, piled on top of one another. If anyone is treating our troops disrespectfully, it is you.

    The usual incompetence on the part of the Trump Administration. The photos are memorable.

  130. says

    KG @101:

    Something I always find irritating is the (primarily journalistic) American habit of referring to US states by a soubriquet such as “the Tarheel state” (I don’t remember which one that is, or what it refers to). It adds nothing except a sense of in-group superiority.

    I agree.

    I don’t approve of using a nickname, unless it is in the same paragraph where the state is given its proper name.

    My local weatherman does that at the next level down, referring to a part of state where there might be flooding (for example) as “Treasure Valley” and then I have to look it up because he didn’t name a county or a town.

    Pet peeve of mine.

  131. says

    KG @105, people, including voters, are remarkably ill-informed, or even misinformed.

    Followup to birger @122. Rachel Maddow’s videos also available here, and as you note, well worth watching:
    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    Trump’s protest suppression tactic backfires as ‘No Kings’ events mushroom after L.A. confrontations
    Video is 2:45 minutes

    If anything, it’s a provocation’: L.A. mayor blasts Trump for ham-handed response to protests
    Video is 8:17 minutes

    Maddow: Military last resort in L.A. shows a weak president with no ideas and no political skills
    Video is 8:38 minutes

  133. Reginald Selkirk says

    Starlink shut down on United regional jets — Reports of radio interference on Embraer E175 aircraft prompt switch off

    United has switched off Starlink service on its United Express regional aircraft following reports of radio interference. According to The Points Guy, Starlink connectivity has been turned off across its fleet “out of an abundance of caution,” a move the carrier confirmed in a statement.

    As noted by the report, United has installed Starlink on nearly two dozen Embraer E175 aircraft. United announced the rollout on March 7, outlining plans to fit 40+ regional aircraft each month beginning in May through the end of 2025. The installation takes around 8 hours per aircraft, and United eventually plans to roll out Starlink to its entire fleet.

    TPG reports that United has received reports of radio interference caused by Starlink, affecting the VHF antennas pilots use to contact air traffic control. As such, the aforementioned E175 aircraft carrying Starlink have been operating offline for the past few days, including a flight Tom’s Hardware took on Monday, June 9…

  134. KG says

    Further to my #99: the Guardian article has been amended and now says “vulpines” not “canines”!

  135. StevoR says

    FWIW & in case any other folks reading this are in Adelaide, South Oz and intrested – technically now on today :

    Vigil in solidarity with Palestine (on Kaurna Yerta { Kaurna – our Indigneous people of the now city of Adelaide plus region, Yerta = Country – ed)}. Rain or shine, we stand for humanity. Wed 11 June, 5-6pm.
    Wear black. Bring your keffiyeh, flags, and a candle (no real flames, sorry – battery only). To recognise the brave effort of the Madleen flotilla this week, if anyone has baby formula cans (empty or full!) please bring those too. All gender identities are welcome, but Women in Black is a female-led feminist movement for peace. No speeches or speakers here – just solidarity and support. No anti-Semitic or hateful rhetoric or material will be tolerated.
    See you on the steps!

    Source : https://www.facebook.com/events/696473929915414

    There’s also a rally for Palestine at 2 pm on this Sunday – June 15th – also starting at our state Parlt house steps, 2 pm Sunday where they want folks to wear red to symbolise red lines being crossed.

    Expect similar events are being held globally as well as nationally here.

  136. says

    Why the Los Angeles unrest is relevant to the fight over the Republicans’ megabill

    If the Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” becomes law, ICE raids like those in L.A. will become vastly more common.

    Related video is available at the link.

    After Donald Trump announced that he was sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles, there was some public conversation about whether the president was simply trying to distract attention from his other difficulties, including the Republicans’ far-right domestic policy megabill. But what if the two stories are more closely linked than is generally understood?

    As the White House prepared to deploy Marines to California, Axios reported that congressional Republicans want to lean into the local unrest, seeing it as a political winner for the GOP. The report added:

    Republicans also see it as an opportunity to remind voters that a key part of their sweeping ‘one, big beautiful bill’ involves providing significant resources to ICE. The conversation around the bill has largely been focused on tax and spending cuts.

    An NBC News analysis emphasized a related point, noting that congressional Republicans have argued that protests in L.A. “are another example of why they need to pass that megabill, saying the money for immigration enforcement included in the bill is key to finishing the job that ICE has started in states like California.”

    This is an underappreciated detail.

    After months of controversial and legally dubious tactics in communities nationwide, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carried out raids in three locations across Los Angeles on Friday, sparking a predictable public backlash. For those eager to see a lot more of these raids and public backlashes, have I got a bill for you. As a new Slate analysis explained:

    Currently, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it has ‘an annual budget of approximately $8 billion,’ and $3.4 billion of that is spent on detention, according to the [American Immigration Council]. Under the [One Big Beautiful Bill Act], the agency would be given $45 billion for immigration detention alone through September 2029, which amounts to about $12 billion annually. The bill also gives ICE $14 billion to spend on deportation operations and $8 billion to hire more ICE officers.

    [!!]

    Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, told Slate, “The kinds of dollars we’re talking about would really unlock an ability for the Trump administration to level up the cruelty of their enforcement actions at taxpayer expense in a way that I’m not sure we can even envision right now.”

    ICE’s recent record of dramatic raids and abusive tactics has generated a national controversy, but the only thing stopping ICE from doing more of this is a lack of resources. It is a “problem” that congressional Republicans are eager “fix” with their pending reconciliation package.

    Indeed, Donald Trump isn’t exactly being shy about his future intentions. [video at the link]

    As The American Prospect’s David Dayen summarized, the GOP bill would make it possible for the Trump administration to conduct L.A.-style raids “in dozens of cities at once.” Dayen concluded, “So if you don’t like what’s happening [in Los Angeles], it’s coming to your town if the bill passes.”

  137. KG says

    John Morales@106,

    A good thought, but not easy to devise a “similar problem” one can be reasonably sure it hasn’t encountered. Can you (or anyone else following the thread) think of one? Not the same sort of problem, but how about asking it to find a rectangle that can be divided into three smaller rectanges, similar to the original (and therefore to each other), but all of different sizes? If it has a reasonably good understanding of space, it should be able to do that. (It’s a problem I set and solved myself many years ago, and never told anyone about IIRC. The rectangle is in fact unique among simply-connected polygons (I haven’t tried to extend to those with holes), if the parts cannot be reflected (after shrinking or expanding and translating) to get them to be coincident. If they can be reflected, any right-angled triangle apart from a half-square works.

  138. says

    New York Times link

    “Fake Images and Conspiracy Theories Swirl Around L.A. Protests”

    “Disinformation spreading on social media platforms has stoked an already tense situation.”

    Misleading photographs, videos and text have spread widely on social media as protests against immigrant raids have unfolded in Los Angeles, rehashing old conspiracy theories and expressing support for […] Trump’s actions.

    The flood of falsehoods online appeared intended to stoke outrage toward immigrants and political leaders, principally Democrats.

    They also added to the confusion over what exactly was happening on the streets, which was portrayed in digital and social media through starkly divergent ideological lenses. Many posts created the false impression that the entire city was engulfed in violence, when the clashes were limited to only a small part. [True.]

    There were numerous scenes of protesters throwing rocks or other objects at law enforcement officers and setting cars ablaze […] At the same time, false images spread to revive old conspiracies that the protests were a planned provocation, not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids.

    […] The latest deployments prompted a new wave of misleading images to spread — some purporting to show Marines and the military service’s weapons in action. One was a still from “Blue Thunder,” a 1983 action-thriller about a conspiracy to deprive residents of Los Angeles of their civil rights. It features a climactic dogfight over the city’s downtown.

    Darren L. Linvill, a researcher at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said conservatives online were “building up the riots in a performative way” to help bolster Mr. Trump’s claims that Los Angeles had been taken over by “violent, insurrectionist mobs.”

    […] James Woods, the actor who has become known for spreading conspiracy theories, used his account on X to rail against the state’s elected officials, especially Mr. Newsom, a Democrat. He also reposted a fabricated quote, attributed to former President Barack Obama, discussing a secret plot to impose socialism on the country, as well as a video of burning police cars that was from 2020. [JFC]

    An innocuous photograph of a pallet of bricks, actually posted on the website of a building materials wholesaler in Malaysia, was cited as proof that the protests were organized by nonprofit organizations supported by George Soros, the financier who, to the feverishly conspiratorial right, has become a mastermind of global disorder. [False post image]

    […] X posted a Community Note pointing out that the photograph had nothing to do with the protests, but it still was seen more than 800,000 times. It was also widely reposted, including by several seemingly inauthentic accounts in Chinese. [I snipped past use of the image to spread disinformation.]

    […] It also fits into the narrative that protests against government policies are somehow inauthentic. On his own platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump also suggested that the protesters were “Paid Insurrectionists!”

    Numerous posts echoed unsubstantiated claims that the protests were the work of Mr. Soros as well as local nongovernment organizations or Democratic elected officials, including the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. Some posts disparaging the protests were shared by accounts with deceptive handles that closely resembled those of official government sources or news organizations. […]

    the theme was echoed by accounts across social media linked to Russia, which often amplifies content that discredits the United States [!]

    “It is nationwide conspiracy of liberals against not only Trump but against American people in general,” Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent nationalist in Russia, wrote on X on Sunday.

    […] part of “a much longer effort to delegitimize peaceful resistance movements.” […]

  139. KG says

    John Morales@106,
    Or how about this. InAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there’s a pastiche poem You Are Old, Father William, in which it is said that Father William is able to balance an eel on the end of his nose. Assume that Father William really does have a very good sense of balance, and an eel. How would he be best advised to go about balancing the eel on the end of his nose – he’s not allowed to glue or otherwise affix it.

  140. KG says

    Further to my #139, there is in fact more than one solution and really, the bubblebot should be able to discuss the various possibilities, and what additional conditions could rule them out.

  141. Reginald Selkirk says

    @139

    needs clarification. If the eel bites his nose, does that count as “affixation”?

  143. Reginald Selkirk says

    12 Classic Cakes That Were Actually Invented In The US

    Who doesn’t love cake? From frosting-loaded cupcakes to classic pound cakes and creamy cheesecakes, the baking world would be a horribly empty place without these sweet, fluffy delights. As you tuck into a decadent slice, you’re probably thinking more about its irresistible taste, rather than its inventor. But many of the cakes we know and love have some rather interesting origins. And the United States has made some incredibly significant contributions to cake history, with many now world-famous cakes having their roots in various parts of America. From chocolate- and vanilla-based crowd-pleasers to more unusually flavored creations (we’re looking at you, tomato soup cake), every cake on this list has a unique story. But all share one commonality — they were invented in the U.S.
    …
    Angel food cake
    Devil’s food cake
    German chocolate cake
    New York cheesecake
    Election cake
    Tomato soup cake “Despite the unconventional addition of canned tomato soup, the final bake thankfully does not taste like tomatoes in the slightest.”
    Wacky cake
    Red velvet cake
    Pineapple upside-down cake
    Cider cake
    Coconut cake
    Lane cake

  146. says

    Extremists in the Republican-dominated House of Congress: House speaker says Gavin Newsom should be ‘tarred and feathered’

    House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Tuesday that California Gov. Gavin Newsom should be “tarred and feathered” for opposing President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Los Angeles, which have kicked off widespread protests.

    Johnson was asked about Trump’s comment that “border czar” Tom Homan should arrest Newsom.

    “That’s not my lane,” Johnson, whose campaign website touts his years of constitutional law experience, told reporters during a press conference. “I’m not going to give you a legal analysis on whether Gavin Newsom should be arrested, but he ought to be tarred and feathered.” [Video]

    On Sunday, Homan threatened to arrest Newsom for supposedly protecting undocumented migrants, but when Newsom egged him on, Homan backpedaled. However, Trump has endorsed the proposed arrest.

    Protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles intensified over the weekend. Trump has labeled protesters “insurrectionists” and “professional agitators.” And to squash dissent to his brutal actions, he has deployed 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to the area, doing so without Newsom’s approval and despite protests from state officials.

    Johnson’s violent rhetoric against Trump’s perceived enemies is just the latest example of the GOP’s support for an authoritarian shift in government.

  147. says

    Citing trade wars, World Bank sharply downgrades global economic forecast

    […] Trump’s trade wars are expected to slash economic growth this year in the United States and around the world, the World Bank forecast Tuesday.

    Citing “a substantial rise in trade barriers’’ but without mentioning Trump by name, the 189-country lender predicted that the U.S. economy – the world’s largest – would grow half as fast (1.4%) this year as it did in 2024 (2.8%). That marked a downgrade from the 2.3% U.S. growth it had forecast back for 2025 back in January.

    The bank also lopped 0.4 percentage points off its forecast for global growth this year. It now expects the world economy to expand just 2.3% in 2025, down from 2.8% in 2024.

    […] World Bank chief economist Indermit Gill wrote that the global economy has missed its chance for the “soft landing’’ — slowing enough to tame inflation without generating serious pain — it appeared headed for just six months ago. “The world economy today is once more running into turbulence,” Gill wrote. “Without a swift course correction, the harm to living standards could be deep.’’

    America’s economic prospects have been clouded by Trump’s erratic and aggressive trade policies, including 10% taxes — tariffs — on imports from almost every country in the world. These levies drive up costs in the U.S. and invite retaliation from other countries.

    The Chinese economy is forecast to see growth slow from 5% in 2024 to 4.5% this year and 4% next. The world’s second-largest economy has been hobbled by the tariffs that Trump has imposed on its exports, by the collapse of its real estate market and by an aging workforce.

    The World Bank expects the 20 European countries that share the euro currency to collectively grow just 0.7% this year, down from an already lackluster 0.9% in 2024. Trump’s tariffs are expected to hurt European exports. And the unpredictable way he rolls them out — announcing them, suspending them, coming up with new ones — has created uncertainty that discourages business investment.

    India is once again expected to the be world’s fastest-growing major economy, expanding at a 6.3% clip this year. But that’s down from 6.5% in 2024 and from the 6.7% the bank had forecast for 2025 in January. In Japan, economic growth is expected to accelerate this year – but only from 0.2% in 2024 to a sluggish 0.7% this year, well short of the 1.2% the World Bank had forecast in January. […]

  148. says

    Followup to Reginald @63

    Two of […] Trump’s key appointees are receiving strong criticism from members of the medical and scientific communities for their actions to harm public health in the United States.

    On Monday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. purged all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices who advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to use vaccines. Kennedy is a longtime anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist who was installed in his position after only receiving Republican support in the Senate.

    The decision is being slammed by doctors.

    “I hate to say this, but we are heading in the direction of U.S. vaccine policy becoming the laughing stock of the globe,” Dr. Jonathan Temte, former chair of the panel, told NPR. Temte told the outlet that the panel has historically been seen as “the paragon of solid, well thought out, evidence-based vaccine policy.”

    The American Medical Association also criticized Kennedy’s action.

    “Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” said Dr. Bruce Scott, president of the association in a statement. “With an ongoing measles outbreak and routine child vaccination rates declining, this move will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses.”

    Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in a statement, “Unilaterally removing an entire panel of experts is reckless, shortsighted and severely harmful.”

    In a column in the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Fox News boss Rupert Murdoch, Kennedy defended his action with several lies. He claimed that the members of the panel had conflicts of interest, but the assertion […] is an erroneous misinterpretation of a 2009 report. Kennedy also claimed that members of the panel omitted data from financial disclosure forms. This is also a lie.

    On Monday, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya also came under fire. In a letter declared the “Bethesda Declaration” and signed by more than 60 employees of the institute, the Trump administration was denounced for degrading medical research across the United States. “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources,” the letter read. The NIH under Bhattacharya is accused of politicizing research, disrupting global research collaboration, undermining peer review, capping spending on research, and firing essential staffers.

    Ian Morgan, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow who signed the letter, told the outlet Important Context, “this is an extinction level event for biomedical research and for the health and well being of the American people and global public health more generally.”

    Democrats in the House on Monday called for hearings into NIH’s activities. […]

    The health crisis is a direct result of Trump’s decisions to install Kennedy and Bhattacharya. Outbreaks of infectious diseases like whooping cough and measles are on the rise while Kennedy has pushed for cuts at the agencies that are working to contain infections, while Bhattacharya undermines research that would be used to respond to future outbreaks.

    Americans are in danger, as is the world.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/10/2327048/-Doctors-and-health-workers-warn-US-is-spiraling-toward-crisis

  149. says

    It’s safe to say that Facebook posts from the Parker County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office probably do not normally get much traction outside of Parker County. But when a post is a stealth announcement of Texas’ newest attack on abortion disguised as a true crime story about a bad boyfriend, that thing is going to have legs.

    Monday’s Facebook post announced the arrest of Justin Anthony Banta, a 38-year-old IT employee at the U.S. Department of Justice. Banta is alleged to have slipped drugs into his then-girlfriend’s coffee to terminate her pregnancy.

    That seems bad! Banta seems like a scuzzy dude, and it’s probably good that Parker County Sheriff Russ Authier wanted everyone to know that Banta assaulted his ex-girlfriend by secretly giving her drugs!

    Except for the part where Banta isn’t charged with harming his ex-girlfriend, a fully-grown autonomous human being, at all. No, this Facebook post is only concerned with announcing the charges against Banta for harm to a six-week-old embryo. And for that, he’s been slapped with a capital murder charge.

    Banta might be a run-of-the-mill abuser, but his abusive behavior is now the backstop for Texas’ latest anti-choice innovation. Because for Banta to be charged with murder, he has to have ended the life of a human being.

    […] This might seem like an unduly cynical reading of the sheriff’s statement, but the rest of the post is also chock-full of anti-choice rhetoric disguised as the juicy results of a criminal investigation.

    According to the sheriff, when Banta’s former girlfriend told him she was pregnant, he said he would cover the cost of an abortion, and suggested they order “the ‘Plan C’ online.”

    First, no one refers to medication abortion drugs routinely as “Plan C.” Plan C is a website that provides information on how to access abortion pills by mail. The website even explains that medication abortion can be a two-drug protocol—a mifepristone pill followed by misoprostol pills 24 to 48 hours later—or misoprostol alone. The omission of any information detailing which drug(s) Banta used shows that this isn’t a remotely serious report of the facts underpinning Banta’s murder charge. Instead, it’s a way to link Plan C, an entirely legal website, with murder.

    The statement also says that when the victim was roughly six weeks pregnant, “she went for a sonogram, where she learned the baby had a strong heartbeat, displayed good vital signs and was said to be healthy by her doctor.” […]

    Let’s pretend Sheriff Russ meant to say ultrasound. What about that strong heartbeat? There’s no such thing as a fetal heartbeat at six weeks because there is no heart yet. At that point, the embryo has developed a tube that generates electrical impulses, which is the so-called “heartbeat” that is detected.

    Displayed good vital signs? That embryo is less than one-half inch in size at that point. This is bog-standard anti-choice misinformation, and it’s there for a reason. It’s not at all necessary to explain Banta’s wrongdoing—slipping your girlfriend abortion drugs is a crime not because they are abortion drugs and not because of the gestational age of the fetus, but because it is a crime to secretly give people controlled drugs.

    But wait, there’s more. The post also states that the victim reported she experienced “extreme fatigue and heavy bleeding” and had to go to the emergency room, which makes whatever drugs she was slipped sound very scary indeed.

    Conservatives desperately want mifepristone outlawed, but they’re stuck with the fact that it is exceedingly safe. Here, it isn’t surprising that the victim would have been scared by bleeding and gone to the ER, because she didn’t know she’d been given a drug. But the lack of any further detail about that medical experience just leaves the reader with the impression that abortion drugs make you bleed uncontrollably and end up in the hospital.

    […] charging Banta for harming the embryo. It’s tough to think of a more stark example of what fetal personhood looks like in practice: the full weight of the state brought to bear to protect an embryo while ignoring actual harm to the pregnant woman.

    Perhaps the worst part of a statement that is brimming with bad things is the sheriff’s thank you list to all the agencies that helped out: “Parker County Sheriff’s Office Investigators, the Texas Rangers, Benbrook Police, Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Digital Forensic and Technical Services, the U.S. Secret Service, the Regional Organized Crime Information Center (ROCIC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).” Oh, and also, you can’t learn anything more about the case yet—including the woman’s identity or how authorities determined that drugs were indeed slipped into her coffee—because the investigation is ongoing.

    That is an awful lot of law enforcement partnerships for a creep who assaulted his girlfriend. Regrettably, it would even be an awful lot of law enforcement partnerships if Banta had murdered his girlfriend. It is not, however, an awful lot of law enforcement partnerships for a full-throated assault on medication abortion. Investigating Banta looks a lot like a stepping stone for Texas to build a case against medication abortion providers, a case it has long wanted to make.

    And in the end, the person who was pregnant, the person who was assaulted, is nothing but an afterthought.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/10/2326896/-Texas-latest-attack-on-abortion-will-fascinate-and-horrify-you

  150. says

    ICE Nazi Barbie Kristi Noem wrote a letter about Los Angeles to Secretary Shitfaced Pete Hegseth and somebody leaked it to the San Francisco Chronicle. In the letter (non-paywall copy) she begged/demanded/held a gun to a puppy’s face and said obey or Spot gets it, asking that Hegseth use the military to arrest people in LA. You know, like they do in common totalitarian dictatorships. […]

    “We need … support to our law enforcement officers and agents across Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Federal Protective Services (FPS),” Noem wrote, “as they defend against invasive, violent, insurrectionist mobs that seek to protect invaders and military aged males belonging to identified foreign terrorist organizations, and who seek to prevent the deportation of criminal aliens.”

    [Extremist Noem]

    Sorry, losers, but you still haven’t proven you’ve detained or arrested anybody in a “foreign terrorist organization.”

    […] still holding that gay hairdresser in Salvadoran murder prison, though. […]

    An expert quoted by the Chronicle said Noem’s letter “may presage the invocation of the Insurrection Act.” Another expert said it’s kind of weird since the local authorities in Los Angeles have the protests under control (not that they are doing a particularly decent job of that, but that’s more of an ACAB thing, less of an OMG THESE RIOTS! thing).

    […] here’s a fun post from the Military Reddit about Pete Hegseth, from a veteran! [embedded link at the main link]— to obey Donald Trump’s illegal orders to strike within the United States, just like Osama bin Laden was so determined to do.

    Gavin Newsom, for all his faults, and he has many. He is one of the only ones who is rhetorically giving these cowardly [Trump lackeys] exactly what they deserve. [video]

    COHEN: Do you have any confidence that Pete Hegseth will be as principled as Mark Esper?

    NEWSOM [cutting Cohen off]: Pete Hegseth is a joke. He’s a joke. Everybody knows it, so in over his head. What an embarrassment. That guy’s just weakness masquerading as strength. I don’t even know he masquerades as strength.

    […] Newsom went on:

    NEWSOM: I mean, serious moment. I mean, this Homan guy, these guys, it’s just, it’s the band of misfits. It’s, I mean, it really is. This is serious, people’s lives are at stake. The reputation of this country is at stake. Great American cities and states, […] this is a preview of things to come. This is not about LA, per se. It’s about us today, it’s about you, everyone watching tomorrow. I promise you. I mean, this guy is unhinged. Donald Trump is unhinged right now, and this is just another proof point of that.

    The whole interview was good. Newsom said Donald Trump is a “stone cold liar,” and that you can’t work with him, “you can only work for him, and I will not, I refuse to work for Donald Trump.” [video]

    […] THAT is the tone we need from every elected leader right now. None of this fucking bullshit about “Oh well boy goodness, this sure isn’t putting the price of eggs on the kitchen table!”

    […] Gavin may be doing all the wrong things with his podcast playdates with Charlie Kirk and other crooked-faced fascists, and the way he’s selling out trans people, and the way he’s treating poor people in his state, but right now? This is what needs to be said. This is how much respect Donald Trump’s [lackeys] deserve. This is how they should be treated, with this much disdain, this much mockery, and this much bravery.

    And now Gavin is doing it to [Pete Hegseth]

    Let us speak to these motherfuckers in ways that reflect the respect they’ve earned, not the respect they think they’re owed.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/gavin-newsom-pete-hegseth-is-a-joke

  151. says

    Newsom files emergency motion to block troops from enforcing laws

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) filed an emergency motion Tuesday asking a federal court to block National Guard troops and active-duty Marines from enforcing immigration and local law “on the streets of a civilian city.”

    “This motion does not seek to prevent any of those forces from protecting the safety of federal buildings or other real property owned or leased by the federal government, or federal personnel on such property,” the filing states. “It instead seeks narrow relief tailored to avoid irreparable harm to our communities and the rule of law that is likely if Defendants are allowed to proceed with their plans to use Marines and federalized National Guard to enforce immigration laws and other civil laws on the streets of our cities.”

    The motion is part of a lawsuit California filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, challenging the Trump administration over its order to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles without the governor’s consent. The lawsuit argues that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority when he called up the National Guard in defiance of Newsom, invoking a law that allows the president to do so under threat from a foreign “invasion” or “rebellion” against the U.S. government.

    “Trump is turning the U.S. military against American citizens,” Newsom wrote Tuesday on social media. “The courts must immediately block these illegal actions.”

  152. says

    As Trump melts down over L.A. protests, Americans prep for nationwide ‘No Kings’ rallies, by Rachel Maddow.

    “Trump already can’t handle the number of protests against him. And with this weekend’s “No Kings Day of Defiance,” it’s about to increase exponentially.”

    What is the most important story in the country right now?

    In this moment, there is no question of what the United States is up against. The intentions of Donald Trump are not a mystery. There’s no suspense. There’s no ambiguity. We know exactly who he is and exactly what he wants. It’s as plain as day.

    But the question we are contending with, the real black box, the real drama, the story that does need to be dug up and told in our country because it is as yet undecided, is this: Will he succeed? Will he get what he wants?

    That question will be answered not by Trump or his actions, but by the people of this country. And so the most important story of our time is this one: What is this country going to allow him to do?

    This is an attempted authoritarian overthrow of the United States Constitution and the U.S. government. This is the attempted imposition of a dictatorial regime. The question now is whether it will work. The answer won’t come from the White House; it will come from the streets, the courts, the states and in Congress. The strength of the movement against Trump is what will determine our fate as a country. Because what we’re seeing over and over again is that organizing against him works. Fighting him in court works. Pushing back works. Protesting in the streets works.

    On Friday, large-scale protests broke out in Los Angeles over the administration’s militarized immigration raids. By Saturday, Trump was fulminating against those protests and announced he would federalize the National Guard, the first time a president has done that against the wishes of a state’s governor in 60 years. (When it was done 60 years ago, it was to protect protesters, not to threaten them with military force.)

    The response of the American people to that move is exactly what you would expect: In Los Angeles, bigger protests than ever, and across the country, solidarity protests in Atlanta; Baltimore; Boston; Chicago; Tampa, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; and in Washington, D.C., outside the Justice Department headquarters. [video]

    There is nothing California-specific about what is going on here. When Trump issued his order to federalize the National Guard this weekend, it was not specific to Los Angeles, and it was not specific to California; he could use that order to send National Guard troops anywhere.

    On Monday, Trump took things a step further and announced he’s sending 700 Marines to Los Angeles. That is a portrait of weakness. That is what you get when you have a supposed leader who cannot figure out how to get the support of his people, and knows it. That is what you get when you have a weak and unpopular president, who sees the people against him and can’t defend his actions.

    But, despite what Trump wants, the protests won’t stop. In fact, this coming Saturday, we will likely see the largest protests yet against Trump and his administration. As the president holds his military parade in Washington, people across the country are set to take part in what organizers are calling the “No Kings Day of Defiance.” More than 1,800 rallies are planned nationwide — peaceful, organized and united.

    Trump already can’t handle the number of protests against him, and it’s about to increase exponentially. What we are seeing right now in California is a president panicking. Since polling began, we have never in the history of the U.S. presidency seen a president who is less popular than this one at this point in his presidency, and we have never seen a president less politically equipped than this one to turn that around.

    Someone convinced Trump that attacking immigrants would work for him, that the American people would love it; that the crueler he was, the more political capital he would accrue. Instead, the opposite has happened: In town after town, school after school, city after city, it has run him into a wall — and he has no idea what to do.

    Remember, in Trump’s first term, when he reportedly suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them from hitting the U.S.? Now in his second term, he’s trying the equivalent: Trump has no idea what to do with the sustained, growing, intractable and indomitable protest and opposition of the American people against him, so he’s decided to try to stop it by using the Army.

    What we’re learning, now more than ever, is that the movement against Trump is unstoppable.

  153. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    The Onion

    FEMA chief confused by wind

    he didn’t understand how he could feel something that he couldn’t see. […] When reached for comment, Richardson told reporters he was joking and could “totally see the wind.”

     
    Video: U.S. military bans men with girl names from participating in combat (2:24)

    Imagine you are under attack, and your commander wants you to lay down cover for Ashley. In those couple moments of hesitation it takes you to realize that Ashley is a man, […] lives can be lost.

    Chyron: “RFK Jr warns of dangerous red liquid coursing through veins.”

    Trump escalates Musk feud by nuking Mars

    Trump issues executive order reversing all vasectomies

    ICE releases Gavin Newsom beheading video

    [“]Newsom’s fate will be yours should you stand in the way of national purity […] Death to America!” The ICE agent later appears to get frustrated when several swings of the machete are required […] the result of excess hair gel dripping down the governor’s neck.

  154. says

    Military to ‘Accompany’ Federal Law Enforcement Throughout LA [Oh no. Recipe for disaster if you ask me.]

    California is asking a federal judge for an emergency order that would block the Trump administration from using the military as federal law enforcement in the state.

    Trump has not yet invoked the Insurrection Act, which allows the federal government to use soldiers for law enforcement. Instead, the administration seems to be exploring how far it can go without invoking the act. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has federalized 4,000 California National Guard members and activated a battalion of Marines to send to Los Angeles.

    Once in LA, the troops will “accompany federal immigration enforcement officers on raids throughout Los Angeles,” California officials said in the filing. “They will work in active concert with law enforcement, in support of a law enforcement mission, and will physically interact with or detain civilians.”

    California’s description of the troops’ activities is that of a federal law enforcement mission, all conducted without an explicit invocation of the Insurrection Act. It goes far beyond the show of force against mostly peaceful protests that took place in LA over the weekend, but it’s in line with recent reporting: The San Francisco Chronicle had a story on Monday saying that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem formally asked the Pentagon to detain civilians in Los Angeles.

    The state is also asking the judge to stop soldiers stationed in LA from patrolling the city beyond the immediate vicinity of federal buildings, and to restrict their mission to protecting federal buildings and personnel located on federal property.

    Link

  155. Reginald Selkirk says

    A chemical in acne medicine can help regenerate limbs

    …
    Monaghan and a team of regeneration researchers have identified a critical molecular pathway that aids in limb mapping during regrowth, ensuring that axolotls’ cells know how to piece themselves together in the same arrangement as before. Using gene-edited, glow-in-the-dark salamanders, the scientists parsed out the important role of a chemical called retinoic acid, a form of vitamin A and also the active ingredient in the acne medicine isotretinoin (commonly known as Accutane). The concentration of retinoic acid along the gradient of a developing replacement limb dictates where an axolotl’s foot, joint, and leg segments go, according to the study published June 10 in the journal Nature Communications. Those concentrations are tightly controlled by just one protein also identified in the new work and, in turn, have a domino effect on a suite of other genes.
    …

  156. says

    Josh Marshall:

    […] 38% approve of Trump’s decision to federalize the National Guard and only 34% support deploying Marines. (45% and 47% disapproved, respectively.) People don’t think highly of the protesters either. The protesters themselves got 36% approve vs. 45% disapprove. But I don’t think that’s surprising considering that the vast majority of the images people see are of people standing atop burning cars or getting into violent interactions with police. My own view and hope is that people don’t like this kind of militarization and escalation. It feels unAmerican and scary. And I think people can see that it’s an escalation without real justification or even cause. These initial numbers seems to back that up. The support is down to the hard core of the Trump base.

    This reminds me of a related issue. The D.C. political sheets this morning were filled with reports that the White House thinks it has a winner with its militarized escalation in Los Angeles. The reporters in pretty much every one of these reports seem to agree. Why? Because White House aides told them so. It’s a common pattern. Republicans are both optimistic and know how to work gullible reporters. Democrats are wary and scared. So the narrative courses down through the path created by these two personality types. But Trump aides saying something doesn’t make it true, even if they might think it’s true.

    I’ll repeat the point. This is a battle over public opinion, one that won’t end in a day. While the public virtually never likes video of public disorder — something that is almost inevitable in any large-scale public protest because you’re going to have at least a tiny minority committing acts of violence or vandalism and they’re going to be what’s in the video. But they also don’t like having soldiers deployed in American cities on what seem like flimsy or obviously bogus pretexts. […]

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-hellscape-miscellany-finding-sweet-spots-of-leverage-amidst-the-chaos

  157. Reginald Selkirk says

    Republican congressman Green to resign after tax bill vote

    Republican U.S. House Representative Mark Green said on Monday that he will resign from Congress to take up an offer from the private sector after the House votes again on President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill.

    “Recently, I was offered an opportunity in the private sector that was too exciting to pass up,” Green, who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement.

    “As a result, today I notified the Speaker and the House of Representatives that I will resign from Congress as soon as the House votes once again on the reconciliation package,” he added.

    Green’s resignation will narrow Republicans’ majority in the House to 219-212, meaning Speaker Mike Johnson will only be able to lose up to three votes on any legislation to pass it.

    An army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Green, 60, has represented Tennessee’s 7th District in Congress since his election in 2018…

  159. Reginald Selkirk says

    Montana Supreme Court declares 2021 abortion restrictions unconstitutional

    Montana’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional several laws restricting abortion access, including a ban beyond 20 weeks of gestation.

    The measures approved by Republican lawmakers in 2021 had been blocked since a judge issued a preliminary injunction against them that year. While the case was pending, voters passed an initiative that enshrined the right to abortions in the Montana Constitution.

    Justices said in Monday’s ruling that the state constitution included a “right to be left alone” and have access to abortions. They said that right was not affected by a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a half-century of nationwide abortion rights.

    The Montana laws also included a prohibition against telehealth prescriptions of abortion medication, a 24-hour waiting period after giving informed consent, and a requirement for providers to give patients the option of viewing an ultrasound or listening to the fetal heart tone. Planned Parenthood of Montana challenged the measures.

    Justices cited a 1999 Montana Supreme Court ruling that said the state constitution’s right to privacy includes a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before the fetus is viable from the provider of her choice.

    The state argued that the 1999 ruling was wrongly decided and has tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to get the Montana Supreme Court to overturn it. The Legislature in 2023 passed another slate of bills seeking to limit abortion access.

    Last year’s initiative to make abortion a constitutional right in the state passed with backing from 58% of voters…

  160. Reginald Selkirk says

    Southern Baptists target porn, sports betting, same-sex marriage and ‘willful childlessness’

    Southern Baptists meeting this week in Dallas will be asked to approve resolutions calling for a legal ban on pornography and a reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court’s approval of same-sex marriage.

    The proposed resolutions call for laws on gender, marriage and family based on what they say is the biblically stated order of divine creation. They also call for legislators to curtail sports betting and to support policies that promote childbearing.

    The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, is also expected to debate controversies within its own house during its annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday — such as a proposed ban on churches with women pastors. There are also calls to defund the organization’s public policy arm, whose anti-abortion stance hasn’t extended to supporting criminal charges for women having abortions…

  161. Reginald Selkirk says

    Georgia Supreme Court overturns some election rules, curbing State Election Board’s power

    Georgia’s highest court on Tuesday overturned four rules passed by the State Election Board just before last year’s general election, ruling the board overstepped its authority and intruded on lawmaking power reserved for legislators under the state constitution.

    The state Supreme Court’s unanimous decision limits the future rulemaking ability of the State Election Board and other executive branch agencies of Georgia’s government.

    The board passed a slate of new rules in August and September that mostly had to do with processes after ballots are cast, spawning a flurry of lawsuits.

    President Donald Trump narrowly lost the state in 2020 and alleged without evidence that election fraud had cost him victory. Three Trump-endorsed Republicans hold the majority on the five-person State Election Board.

    The new rules brought an outcry that the board’s majority was trying to improperly use its power to help Trump. The board members claimed the changes were needed to improve the accuracy of results.

    Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox ruled in October that seven of the rules were “illegal, unconstitutional and void,” but the board appealed…

  162. says

    A pregnant U.S. citizen went to the hospital after immigration agents detained her

    “Cary López Alvarado, who’s nine months pregnant, said that after being released from immigration custody she experienced sharp stomach pains and was hospitalized.”

    A 28-year-old pregnant woman set to give birth as early as next week is speaking out about being detained by immigration authorities in California, even after telling agents she was a U.S. citizen.

    Cary López Alvarado lost her balance as agents “shoved her” during her arrest over the weekend, she tearfully told NBC Los Angeles on Monday from a hospital bed. “That’s when I kind of leaned forward, trying to protect the stomach.”

    López Alvarado told Telemundo 52, NBC’s sister station in Los Angeles, “I was afraid that they were going to hurt me.”

    After being released Sunday, López Alvarado said she started experiencing sharp pains in her stomach and was hospitalized. With just one week left before her due date, her doctors said they are monitoring López Alvarado as well as her baby, NBC Los Angeles reported.

    Masked men wearing Border Patrol uniforms pulled up to a building’s private parking in the city of Hawthorne in marked U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicles on Sunday, after following a white pickup truck with two undocumented workers, one of which is López Alvarado’s partner.

    López Alvarado and her cousin Alberto Sandoval, who is also a U.S. citizen, opened the parking’s gate so her partner and co-worker could come in. López Alvarado and Sandoval as well as her partner and the other co-worker were in the building doing maintenance work.

    López Alvarado said she and her cousin believed agents would need to show they had a warrant to be able to enter their workplace.

    […] López Alvarado said agents told her she was taken into custody for trying to obstruct their operation.

    “I wasn’t resisting or anything,” she said. “I can’t fight back; I’m pregnant.”

    During the arrest, López Alvarado said she told agents she was due on June 17. The agents responded, “’OK, your baby is going to be born here, but you’re from Mexico, right?’ And I told them no,” she said.

    “I was born here,” López Alvarado told Telemundo 52 in Spanish. “I was born in Los Angeles, I was born in Hollywood Hospital.”

    López Alvarado was released shortly after the arrest and taken to her home. She was told that agents would contact her at a later time about the obstruction allegations. She said no one gave her any documents or citations in connection with the arrest.

    Her cousin, Sandoval, was not released because he faces assault charges, his mother María Alvarado, told Telemundo 52. “My son didn’t attack. He was attacked. There are videos. There’s evidence,” the mother said in Spanish. […]

  163. says

    Poland’s Tusk set to win confidence vote, but faces uphill slog to govern

    “The pro-EU prime minister will have to contend not only with a nationalist president blocking his reforms, but also with increasingly frustrated coalition partners.”

    WARSAW — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is expected to comfortably survive a confidence vote on Wednesday but the result will do little to assuage the challenges posed by the victory of conservative nationalist Karol Nawrocki in the June 1 presidential election.

    Tusk’s pro-EU, centrist ruling coalition holds 242 seats in the 460-seat Sejm, or lower house, which means the vote itself will almost certainly go in his favor, but is unlikely to win him the political respite he craves in the NATO country of 37 million people.

    The prime minister now faces having to deal not only with Trump-aligned Nawrocki’s scuppering his reform agenda with presidential vetos at every turn, but also with fault lines in his own coalition, particularly among partners who think Tusk himself is losing them votes. […]

  165. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what critics are calling an inflammatory move, Donald J. Trump announced on Tuesday that he was sending Stephen Miller to Los Angeles to act as a human repellant.

    “No one empties a room faster than Stephen,” Trump said. “He’s better than teargas.”

    But Trump’s plan faces a stiff legal challenge from human rights lawyers, who argue that the use of Stephen Miller violates the Geneva Conventions.

    https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-sends-stephen-miller-to-la

  167. says

    Parts of downtown Los Angeles are currently under lockdown. Police cars are everywhere and some blocks are cordoned off, my colleague E. Tammy Kim reports from on the ground. Helicopters are patrolling overhead, but it is otherwise mostly quiet. The city is, for now, by no means out of control.

    This weekend, in response to protests against federal immigration raids, President Donald Trump ordered two thousand National Guard troops to L.A., over the objections of the California Governor, Gavin Newsom, marking the first time in decades that the National Guard has been deployed without a governor’s request. On Sunday, demonstrators threw rocks and police fired rubber bullets. Kim told me it was one of the most “aggressive” protests she’d recently covered. Still, the flareups were mostly contained to a few hot spots; elsewhere, business continued as usual, as people brunched and celebrated Pride.

    And, yet, today the Trump Administration is continuing to push the narrative that California has fallen into chaos. Hundreds of marines are reportedly being prepared to deploy to the area, to quell protests that—at least at the moment—do not seem to be in particular need of quelling. The city, meanwhile, is on edge, waiting to see what happens next. I spoke with Ruth Marcus, who writes about politics and the law, about what Trump risks by sending in troops.

    How bad is it? “The President has been itching to do this—find a way to use the military to help quell domestic disturbances—since his first term,” Marcus told me over the phone. She pointed out that, on the campaign trail, Trump said he would not wait for state leaders to request assistance before deploying forces to control protests. “The thing that should worry us is, Why is he going to these extraordinary and seemingly extreme lengths to portray Los Angeles as out of control? As he said, he’s not waiting to be asked in. He wants to show himself to be in control, and he’s really just pushing the envelope, as always, of Presidential power. We might not be at the three-alarm fire of invoking the Insurrection Act, but we clearly have a President who wants ‘my generals, my military’ working to impose law and order in ways that are, if not unprecedented, highly unusual and very unnerving.”

    by Caroline Mimbs Nyce
    Newsletter editor for The New Yorker

  168. John Morales says

    LykeX, “I suspect that your original priming to expect a trick was what helped the AIs pick up on the issue.”

    I concur. It becomes habitual, quickly enough, and it does wonders.

    —

    KG, an interesting idea. Easy enough to check.

    I copypasted your question, no further priming or prompting, and this is what I got:

    —

    Father William’s success in balancing an eel on his nose depends on a few key factors: the eel’s stability, his posture, and minimal external disturbance. Here’s a structured approach:

    Choose the Right Eel – A smaller, more cooperative eel would reduce variables. If possible, a fatigued eel—less prone to thrashing—would be ideal.
    Positioning – He should aim to balance the eel’s center of mass directly over his nose tip. Ideally, the eel is placed perpendicular to his face rather than hanging off one side.
    Surface Contact – Given the eel’s slick body, friction is minimal. Drying the eel slightly may help prevent slippage without violating the affixation rule.
    Stillness & Poise – Maintaining a rigid stance and minimizing breathing disturbances would be crucial.
    Environmental Control – Performing this in a wind-free, stable environment would reduce external factors causing imbalance.
    Iterative Adjustment – Small shifts in head angle and micro-corrections would allow him to refine the balancing point dynamically.

    If Father William possesses exemplary balance, these strategies should maximize his chances of a successful eel equilibrium. No glue required.

    —

    So, pretty poor. Particularly, #4 & #6 are in tension, and #2 is risible.

  169. Reginald Selkirk says

    False claims that ivermectin treats cancer, COVID leads states to pass OTC laws

    … A perfect example of this is ivermectin. In the early stages of the pandemic, some laboratory data suggested that ivermectin—a decades-old deworming drug—might be able to prevent or treat COVID-19…

    Now, years after the acute phases of the COVID-19 crisis, the misinformation about ivermectin has not only persisted but also continued to grow and morph. Ivermectin now allegedly cures all cancers, foot pain, arthritis, lupus, acne, and even boosts your gut microbiome—in addition to curing COVID-19. It would be quite the miracle drug if only there were evidence to support any of that…

    Doctors told the Times that they have already seen some cases where patients with treatable, early-stage cancers have delayed effective treatments to try ivermectin, only to see no effect and return to their doctor’s office with cancers that have advanced…

    Nevertheless, the malignant misinformation on social media has made its way into state legislatures. According to an investigation by NBC News published Monday, 16 states have proposed or passed legislation that would make ivermectin available over the counter. The intention is to make it much easier for people to get ivermectin and use it for any ailment they believe it can cure.

    Idaho, Arkansas, and Tennessee have passed laws to make ivermectin available over the counter. On Monday, Louisiana’s state legislature passed a bill to do the same, and it now awaits signing by the governor. The other states that have considered or are considering such bills include: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and West Virginia.

    State laws don’t mean the dewormer would be readily available, however; ivermectin is still regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and it has not been approved for over-the-counter use yet…

  170. says

    Inside the MAGA vs. hawk battle to sway Trump on bombing Iran

    “Trump allies are trying to counter a private pressure campaign to ditch Steve Witkoff’s diplomatic effort and join Israel in attacking Tehran.”

    An influential group of GOP hawks has launched a behind-the-scenes lobbying offensive pressing President Donald Trump to not only back off his administration’s quest for a nuclear deal with Iran, but greenlight an attack on Tehran by Israel.

    […] During a private lunch with the president at the White House last Wednesday, conservative talk show host Mark Levin told Trump that Iran was days away from building a nuclear weapon, an argument Trump’s own intelligence team has told the president is not accurate […] [That’s all we need, more rightwing whackos lying to Trump.] Levin urged Trump to allow the Israeli government to strike Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would torpedo the diplomacy.

    Levin has been waging a public war against Trump’s longtime friend and special envoy leading talks, Steve Witkoff, who also attended the meeting. They were joined by GOP megadonor Ike Perlmutter, the onetime Marvel Entertainment executive who is friendly with Witkoff.

    On a separate front, MAGA loyalists have been warily eyeing Rupert Murdoch’s papers, particularly the New York Post, as they’ve savaged Witkoff, suggesting at one point that he’s a mouthpiece for Qatar. The allegations have infuriated some in Trump’s inner circle, who see them as an effort to undercut the talks.

    Murdoch has, meanwhile, privately complained to confidants about Witkoff’s effort, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    […] Hours after Levin’s meeting with Trump, Tucker Carlson, who had clearly been alerted to the gathering by someone familiar with what happened, took to X to accuse Levin of trying to bully the U.S. into war.

    […] Trump sounded a note of skepticism about a potential deal while speaking to reporters Monday afternoon. While noting that his administration will engage with Iran for their latest talks on Thursday, Trump said the Iranians are “just asking for things that you cannot do.”

    “They do not want to give up what they have to give up — you know what that is: They seek enrichment. We can’t have enrichment,” he said. “We want just the opposite. And so far they are not there. I hate to say that because the alternative is a very, very dire one.”

    While both camps have a tendency to frame their positions as binary choices — a deal or war, an attack on Iran’s program or a guaranteed Iranian nuclear weapon — the reality is less clear.

    […] the U.S. could also more immediately look to ratchet up economic pressure on Tehran to see if it might eventually return to talks, a strategy some Republicans are already pushing privately.

    As for those favoring a strike on Iran’s facilities, many military and nuclear experts say that U.S.-Israeli action would probably only temporarily set back Iran’s program rather than completely destroy it.

    Other MAGA figures, from Charlie Kirk to activist Jack Posobiec, have used their public profiles to bolster the case for diplomacy. […]

    Vice President JD Vance, perhaps the most powerful leader of the anti-war faction of the party […] he came to Witkoff’s defense in a podcast with Theo Von.

    Witkoff recently gave Iran a proposal for a deal that would allow Tehran to enrich uranium at low levels but eventually become part of a regional enrichment consortium. Iran has made clear it will not abandon its domestic enrichment capability, while Trump has set that as a red line. That’s left Witkoff to try to bridge the gap with a solution, which Iran has not yet formally responded to.

    […] Witkoff will meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for a sixth round of talks on Friday or Sunday.

    […] Trump allies and administration officials wary of military action have been seeing stories in some conservative media that they privately discount as plants by hawks and other pro-military, Israel-aligned groups. The officials spent much of last week working to discredit a Fox News story about an Austrian intelligence agency report that suggested Iran has grand plans to develop nuclear weapons that will help it assert dominance in the region.

    The posturing also comes on the heels of the latest assessment by the U.N.’s nuclear energy watchdog, IAEA, which has concluded that Tehran has increased its stockpile of “near-bomb uranium” over the past three months. That’s given Tehran the ability to fuel “roughly 10 weapons, up from around five or six” when Trump took office, according to the New York Times.

    U.S. intelligence has pegged Iran’s so-called breakout time — the amount of time it needs to produce enough weapons grade material for a nuclear weapon — at one to two weeks, U.S. officials say. But officials also continue to assess that Iran has not made the decision to actively go for a nuclear weapon.

    […] People on both sides of the debate aren’t sure what Trump will do. […]

    Still, even among those pressing for diplomacy, there is concern about the president’s penchant for changing his mind depending on who he’s last spoken to. There’s a fear Trump — who has threatened to bomb Iran if they don’t come to heel — could act on rhetoric many largely deem negotiating bravado.

    […] In some ways, the push and pull with Israel has been going on for months. Israel has been privately imploring the administration to join them to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. But Trump has headed off that pressure.

    When Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister and a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, came to Washington in early May, Trump asked him to prevent Israel from attacking Iran while Trump was on his Middle East swing, according to one Trump ally and one U.S. official familiar with the conversations. The president stayed another attempt again in late May. […]

    Even before the dispute over strategy, Israelis have expressed disappointment in the U.S. decision to end its campaign on the Iran-backed Houthis without notifying the Jewish nation, and bypassing a visit to Israel on the president’s Middle East swing.

    “The president is not going to support war… But I’m telling you, these guys won’t take no for an answer,” said a longtime Trump ally. […]

    More at the link.

  171. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Gavin Newsom:

    Reporter: When was the last time you spoke with Governor Newsom?

    Trump: A day ago. Called him up to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job. Causing a lot of death and potential death. [Video clip]

    There was no call. Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a president deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.

    Only hospitalizations AFAIK. Body count on par with the Bowling Green massacre.
    As if the guy heading the current cabinet were averse to death.
     
    In 2018, Trump said troops could fire on migrants if rocks thrown

    For the first time, Trump also seemed to threaten the use of force against migrants at the border. […] [“]If they want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. I told them, consider it a rifle.[“]
    […]
    7,000 active duty forces being sent to the border will serve only in a support role to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). By law, they cannot carry out law enforcement duties and are not supposed to come into contact with migrants crossing the border. […] troops will be armed and have the right to self-defense

  172. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Brian Merchant – The weaponization of Waymo

    incinerated husks of Waymo cars were lined up neatly in a row […] one, two, three, four, five of them. And I do mean incinerated. I’ve never seen cars torched so thoroughly. There were sedan-sized piles of ash
    […]
    “Why the self-driving cars were targeted remains unknown” is a refrain I heard multiple times on TV and radio news. The reason does not seem so secret to a lot of people.

    “Oh they called them up on purpose, lit ’em on fire like that,” a cameraman shooting on the scene the next day told me. The charred husks in a neat line do seem to suggest that was the case. Other witnesses and journalists who were there shared the same story: People summoned the cars to light them on fire when they arrived. Protestors were reportedly calling them “spy cars” as they were vandalized and set ablaze, and some noted how the cars can share data with the LAPD. […] the cars weren’t torched to destroy evidence as much to punish collaborators. […] No one I spoke to would cop to having anything to do with actually burning the cars, much less discuss the reason
    […]
    a key function of any kind of automation is that […] it promises not just to remove labor from the equation, but accountability. […] These are technologies that are at best agnostic to the communities and environments they operate in, and more often are extractive [and unaccountable for externalities] […] and sends any resultant future profits upstream to a tech company
    […]
    [That also means] There is no one around to stop [prostestors] from hailing a Waymo car and destroying it, and no one to intervene in the untimely demise of the Lime scooter. They have turned these indifferent and extractive technologies into instruments of protest.

  173. John Morales says

    “They have turned these indifferent and extractive technologies into instruments of protest.”

    That’s just vandalism.

    There is no gain to be had from destroying funcional vehicles.

    I’m pretty sure there is an electronic record of who called those vehicles that were torched, but whether or not consequences shall ensue I do not know.

  174. John Morales says

    “Protestors were reportedly calling them “spy cars” as they were vandalized and set ablaze, and some noted how the cars can share data with the LAPD. […] the cars weren’t torched to destroy evidence as much to punish collaborators.”

    That makes zero sense; in particular, the protests were about ICE and its ham-handed thuggishness, not about luddism as this story claims. It’s in no way about automation. And how it’s supposedly extractive is left unstated, automation is the opposite of exploitative labour. Etc.

    Bah. Brian Merchant is basically bullshitting.

  175. whheydt says

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-border-czar-tom-homan-los-angeles-protests-immigration-raids-rcna212212

    White House border czar Tom Homan said Tuesday that protests in Los Angeles are complicating immigration raids, making them more “difficult” and more “dangerous.”

    Homan was asked during an interview with NBC’s “Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas whether demonstrations had slowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the city.

    “They’re making it more difficult,” Homan said, adding that federal officers are “going ahead” and making arrests daily.

    When pressed on the issue, Homan said the protesters were making the situation “more dangerous,” and that ICE operations have continued daily throughout the protests.

    “We’ve been running the ICE operation in Los Angeles every single day during this protest, and we’re arresting a lot of bad people in that city. We’re going to continue to do that,” Homan said. “They’re not going to stop us. They’re not going to slow us down.”

    Now where did that tardigrade leave his violin….

  176. Reginald Selkirk says

    Huckabee suggests Muslim countries should give up land for Palestinian state

    The US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has suggested “Muslim countries” should give up some of their land to create a future Palestinian state.

    In an interview with the BBC, Huckabee said “Muslim countries have 644 times the amount of land that are controlled by Israel”.

    “So maybe, if there is such a desire for the Palestinian state, there would be someone who would say, we’d like to host it,” he said.

    The ambassador also called a two-state solution – a proposed formula for peace between Israel and the Palestinians that has generally received international backing, including from multiple US administrations – “an aspirational goal”…

  177. John Morales says

    In the news, the functionaries beavering away.

    https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/us-china-trade-reach-deal-ease-export-curbs-keep-tariff-trude-alive-5173851

    “US, China reach deal to ease export curbs, keep tariff truce alive”

    (They haven’t, the functionaries have reached a tentative framework for a deal, subject to approval — but that’s headlines for you)

    “The dispute may keep the Geneva agreement from unravelling over duelling export controls, but does little to resolve deep differences over Trump’s unilateral tariffs and longstanding US complaints about China’s state-led, export-driven economic model.

    The two sides left Geneva with fundamentally different views of the terms of that agreement and needed to be more specific on required actions, said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center in Washington.

    “They are back to square one but that’s much better than square zero,” Lipsky added.”

    The two sides have until Aug 10 to negotiate a more comprehensive agreement to ease trade tensions, or tariff rates will snap back from about 30 per cent to 145 per cent on the US side and from 10 per cent to 125 per cent on the Chinese side.

    Investors, who have been badly burned by trade turmoil before, offered a cautious response and MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.2 per cent.

    “The devil will be in the details, but the lack of reaction suggests this outcome was fully expected,” said Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone in Melbourne. “The details matter, especially around the degree of rare earths bound for the US, and the subsequent freedom for US-produced chips to head east, but for now as long as the headlines of talks between the two parties remain constructive, risk assets should remain supported.””

    Mildly positive reaction in the Aussie market, presumably all around, but mild is the word.

  178. John Morales says

    Not great news re China:

    Me: confirm that China is currently experiencing deflation and that both imports and exports have fallen year on year for most recent months, including the tariff frontloading

    Chatbot: China is currently experiencing deflation, with consumer prices falling 0.1% year-on-year in May, marking the fourth decline this year. Producer prices also dropped 3.3% year-on-year, the steepest fall in nearly two years.

    Regarding trade, imports fell 3.4% year-on-year in May, deepening from a 0.2% decline in April. Exports grew 4.8% year-on-year, but this was a slowdown from 8.1% in April. Exports to the U.S. plunged 34.5% year-on-year, the sharpest drop since February 2020.

    However, front-loading of exports occurred earlier in the year, with shipments surging 12.4% year-on-year in March and 8.1% in April as factories rushed to send goods before tariffs took effect. This artificial boost has now faded, contributing to the May slowdown.

  180. JM says

    @160 Reginald Selkirk: Not surprising. The SBC is shrinking and a good chunk of that is churches that are not conservatives leaving. As it shrinks expect it to get even more radical but increasingly unimportant.

    @179 John Morales: He makes a good point but I’m pretty sure the central government knew. The central government wanted to big and powerful and was happy to inflate population numbers. What happened is that with the bad statistics they didn’t realize just how bad the situation was becoming until it was disastrous.

  181. John Morales says

    JM, plausible.
    Zeihan is good on trends and big picture strategy and suchlike, but the minutiae of realpolitik is not his forte.

    Relatedly, I reckon India is now the new China, with better demographics unless they fuck things up big-time, and a better handle on services, not just goods. Booming part of the world.
    Places like Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Laos.

    South America; all over the place, but alas, somehow the promise has stalled.

    Africa, well… what a future powerhouse!

    (Sorry, rambling)

  182. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    LA protests on Jun 10.

    James Queally (LA Times) in the morning:

    point of clarity. Thus far, National Guard/DHS have restricted activities to entrances to federal buildings. Fed LEOs are not responding to protests beyond that. Marines aren’t on the ground. Most everything is being handled by LAPD.

    Legitimately, the furthest I’ve seen feds move from a building entrance was when DHS police took over the skirmish line from LAPD on Alameda near the 101 on Sunday. They were < 1,000 feet from their original post.

     
    Nicholas Slayton (Task and Purpose):

    Rando: The emptiness makes it look as ridiculous and wasteful as it is.

    Was there around 130 and beyond press and maybe a dozen protesters […] the NG guys on the western side of the DTLA federal plaza were staring at… People going to work/lunch breaks. [Video clip and photos]

    ABC7 – Helicopter stream, Jun 10 afternoon

    (21:21): [Dispersal order at the federal building around 2:00 PDT.]

    (1:21:09): [~100 protesters enterered the freeway through a gap in the fence. CHP immediately turned up and brawled to push them out. It was reopened in minutes. James Queally said 65 arrested. The rest complied and left.]

    (1:27:33): today has been by far the most successful day of peaceful protest until […] that dispersal order was given. What started as a protest of 300-400 people at its peak. Most of them obeyed the dispersal order, but there were ~100 protesters who refused to leave the federal building and are still in the process of being zip tied and placed under arrest […] unlawful assembly at that point. They are being placed onto buses. They will be given citations. I wouldn’t even consider them agitators. They just were disobedient, peacefully sitting in the roadway and then taken into custody. As of right now, we have not seen any of that really reckless vandal activity. We haven’t seen any kind of looting like we saw overnight. Maybe a little graffiti here and there (I haven’t seen it firsthand).
    […]
    [The rest of the protesters are off] marching peacefully. However, this is now still an unlawful assembly, and they are blocking traffic. […] authorization to begin making more arrests. The idea was to keep them away from the federal building. […] We will see what LAPD decides to do

    In a second helicopter stream, protesters continue to wander the streets, splitting and regrouping uneventfully. They converged for an evening rally in Grand Park near City Hall.

    James Queally:

    faith leaders held a rally in Grand Park calling for strong non-violent resistance […] now holding a peaceful march toward the Metro Detention Center. [Photos]

    James Queally:

    As faith leaders have a crowd take a knee and pray outside the federal building, DHS officers raise their weapons at priests and National Guard members lineup with riot shields against them [Photos]

    Sean Beckner-Carmitchel:

    Marines have arrived outside the MDC. Cops pushing protesters off the corner. 10 minutes til curfew. […] at the 8pm curfew, law enforcement agencies in many directions all over downtown Los Angeles. Protesters mostly running away
    —
    Still hundreds of protesters within the streets […] and likely thousands of law enforcement professionals throughout despite curfew […] nearly an hour ago. “Less lethal” munitions deployed. […] Still hundreds out in the streets nearly 2 hours after a curfew
    —
    Multiple attempts to surround protesters by LAPD have been for the most part unsuccessful. Protesters have been using various small alleys quickly, and often get *just* past LAPD lines.
    —
    Protesters ran into an apartment building […] let in […] then were sheltered by residents […] LAPD has given up on the detainments and are gone now. [3 hrs after curfew]

  183. John Morales says

    Oh, and the USA vs the World!

    Naked linkies are so salaciously simple, I can’t resist the satisfaction. Wilde!

    3 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSVuzpOQPyA

    “In this video I talk about fallout following the recent downgrade of the USA’s debt rating by the Ratings Agency Moody’s. Bond prices are now falling and bond yields are rising as a direct result and this will increase the interest costs for USA debt which is a problem as total debt is now more than $36 Trillion and the average maturity is around 6 years.”

    and now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhboJ9R3o78

    “Wall Street SHAKEN: US Struggles to Sell $22 Billion in Bonds Amid the Most Dangerous Bond Auction”

  184. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    LA Times – As curfew took effect, Metro stranded riders

    Metro temporarily suspended many of its bus and train routes through downtown Los Angeles as curfew took effect at 8 p.m. Tuesday, leaving many riders high and dry.
    […]
    The closures affect people trying to get home from work as well as those trying to obey curfew orders and exit the area, prompting a large outcry online and raising concerns about how disabled people would navigate […] Then at 9 p.m., Metro reversed course and resumed normal service throughout downtown.
    […]
    Joseph Cohen May was riding the Metro E Line home to downtown from Santa Monica when at 8:15 p.m. he and his fellow passengers were abruptly booted from the train […] He attempted to use a Lime scooter to travel home but said that service was also suspended.
    […]
    He ended up safely walking the one and half miles to his apartment but noted that walking alone at night could be dangerous for folks.

  185. KG says

    That makes zero sense; in particular, the protests were about ICE and its ham-handed thuggishness, not about luddism as this story claims. It’s in no way about automation. And how it’s supposedly “extractive” is left unstated, automation is the opposite of exploitative labour. Etc. – John Morales@174

    Once protests (and perhaps particularly riots) start, the targets tend to spread. Possibly the Waymos are putting cab drivers out of work – it could be some of them torching the cars. Also they are owned by Alphabet Inc. (formerly known as Google). I’d say that makes them legitimate targets in multiple ways, but specifically, Sundar Pichai has been sucking up to Trump ever since his re-election, and hence is reasonably described as a collaborator.

  186. John Morales says

    KG: “I’d say that makes them legitimate targets in multiple ways, but specifically, Sundar Pichai has been sucking up to Trump ever since his re-election, and hence is reasonably described as a collaborator”

    And the relevance?

    You quoted me: “in particular, the protests were about ICE and its ham-handed thuggishness, not about luddism as this story claims”

    Possibly the Waymos are putting cab drivers out of work – it could be some of them torching the cars.

    Ahem. “They have turned these indifferent and extractive technologies into instruments of protest.”

    I have specifically gone out of my way to not mention that extractive technologies are things like mining and fishing, and refers to extracting much from workers paid a relative pittance (e.g. Amazon) rather than replacing workers.

    But fine. Now you claim it’s about destroying property owned by Alphabet Inc., for vague reasons such as that Sundar Pichai has been sucking up to Trump.

    So, ICE is thuggish, so burn down vehicles owned by Alphabet, makes much sense to you.

    I still think it’s a fucking specious reach, and worth noting. Propaganda, not actual journalism. Not even analysis.

    Just bullshit.

  187. KG says

    John Morales@168,

    Thanks. FWIW, my original solution was to kill the eel (if initially alive), then freeze it solid while somehow holding it straight. The problem then becomes more or less equivalent to balancing a pool cue on the end of the nose, which I imagine is possible if you have a good enough sense of balance. It later occurred to me that a dead (but unfrozen) or comatose eel could be draped across the nose, balancing on the midpoint (in terms of moment). Clearly the bubblebot has failed to appreciate that there is no real possibility that the problem could be solved as in Tenniel’s illustration, or that a conscious eel would cooperate. (Hmm… or could you possibly train an eel to allow itself to be draped as in my second proposed approach?)

  188. John Morales says

    That’s the thing, no? The priming, the relevance.
    Are you posing a problem, or are you asking for consensus significance?

    —

    Me: “In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there’s a pastiche poem You Are Old, Father William, in which it is said that Father William is able to balance an eel on the end of his nose. this is in the public domain

    BBot: Explanation:
    Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll is in the public domain, meaning that all of its text—including the pastiche poem You Are Old, Father William—can be freely used, reproduced, and adapted. In the poem, whimsical and nonsensical imagery is employed, with one version including a line that playfully describes Father William balancing an eel on the end of his nose. This absurd detail is part of Carroll’s style, reflecting the parody and playful critique of Victorian society that runs throughout the work.

    For the full text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, you can refer to Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11.

    Me: describe the applicability of its absurdism in that parody

    BBot: The absurdism in You Are Old, Father William works on multiple levels. Lewis Carroll uses outrageous, surreal imagery—like balancing an eel on one’s nose—to subvert logical expectations and to lampoon the conventional wisdom about age and authority. In the poem, the nonsensical feats become a playful critique of the overly serious tone found in didactic literature. Where traditional verse might offer measured, moral instruction about aging, Carroll’s absurdity challenges the reader to question the reliability of accepted norms. Instead of reinforcing conventional ideas of gravitas and decorum, the ridiculous imagery is a deliberate effort to shatter them, inviting readers into a world where rationality is secondary to whimsy and creative imagination.

    For further reading on the nature of Carroll’s absurdism and its impact on literature, you might explore scholarly analyses in literary journals or detailed discussions on public domain sites like Project Gutenberg’s annotated versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11).

    —

    I’ll sleep on it and see if I can come up with a problem that’s not quite so whimsical, but which otherwise fits the initial criteria.

  192. KG says

    Further to #187, when I worked in GOFAI (“Good Old-Fashioned AI”, i.e. using symbolic descriptions of the domain of interest, and rules for manipulating those descriptions), there was a domain known as “naive physics” or “commonsense physics”, which attempted to give the putative AI an understanding of how the physical world works similar to that of a (not academically trained) person. The bubblebot, and I hypothesise all current LLMs and LRMs, lack any such understanding, and will probably never get it by slurping up ever larger quantities of natural language, because the latter assumes rather than expresses it.

  193. Reginald Selkirk says

    @185 KG

    Once protests (and perhaps particularly riots) start, the targets tend to spread…

    Flashback:
    Who was Umbrella Man, who smashed windows before ‘first fire’ in 2020 Minneapolis protests?

    He was dressed entirely in black — wearing a respirator mask and carrying a black umbrella.

    He scrawled a message on the double red doors in white spray paint with an expletive, saying the AutoZone had free stuff for everyone.

    Then he smashed the windows, one after the other, with a hammer. People began looting the building. Somebody set it on fire.

    It was May 27, 2020, two days after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. Before the person in black — who became known as Umbrella Man — broke those windows, the protests had been relatively peaceful, according to an affidavit written by Minneapolis arson detective Erika Christensen.

    “This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city,” Christensen wrote. “The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension.”

    Footage of Umbrella Man was swiftly shared online. So were theories about his identity…

  195. Reginald Selkirk says

    Bluesky’s Decline Stems From Never Hearing From the Other Side

    Bluesky’s user engagement has fallen roughly 50% since peaking in mid-November, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis, as progressive groups’ efforts to migrate users from Elon Musk’s X platform show signs of failure. The research found that while many news influencers maintain Bluesky accounts, two-thirds post irregularly compared to more than 80% who still post daily to X. A Washington Post columnist tries to make sense of it:

    The people who have migrated to Bluesky tend to be those who feel the most visceral disgust for Musk and Trump, plus a smattering of those who are merely curious and another smattering who are tired of the AI slop and unregenerate racism that increasingly pollutes their X feeds. Because the Musk and Trump haters are the largest and most passionate group, the result is something of an echo chamber where it’s hard to get positive engagement unless you’re saying things progressives want to hear — and where the negative engagement on things they don’t want to hear can be intense. That’s true even for content that isn’t obviously political: Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who studies AI, recently announced that he’ll be limiting his Bluesky posting because AI discussions on the platform are too “fraught.”

    All this is pretty off-putting for folks who aren’t already rather progressive, and that creates a threefold problem for the ones who dream of getting the old band back together. Most obviously, it makes it hard for the platform to build a large enough userbase for the company to become financially self-sustaining, or for liberals to amass the influence they wielded on old Twitter. There, they accumulated power by shaping the contours of a conversation that included a lot of non-progressives. On Bluesky, they’re mostly talking among themselves.

  197. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump Says He Wants FEMA Eliminated After Hurricane Season

    President Donald Trump has been talking for months about his desire to eliminate FEMA, the federal agency tasked with responding to natural disasters. But until now, we didn’t really know when he planned to pull the trigger on such a ridiculous plan. Well, now it looks like Trump wants to make it happen after the current hurricane season, which started this month and ends in November.

    “We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “The FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment. Very, very expensive and it doesn’t get the job done.” …

  199. KG says

    John Morales@186
    My #185 is a response to your comments about the act of burning Waymos iteself rather than those about Brian Merchant’s journalism. However I note that “extractive” can have the meaning Merchant gives it. Cambridge Dictionary gives as an example use:

    Banks have found it is easier and quicker to make money by being extractive and predatory.

    So, ICE is thuggish, so burn down vehicles owned by Alphabet, makes much sense to you.

    Yes, it does. ICE is acting on Trump’s orders, the CEO of Alphabet sucks up to Trump, and can therefore reasonably be seen as a collaborator. Furthermore, it is suspected that Alphabet’s Waymos pass information to the police.

  200. says

    https://www.msnbc.com/all Chris Hayes

    Warnock: Trump using military to convince us ‘we are at war with one another’
    Video is 6:18 minutes

    Trump calls Los Angeles a ‘trash heap,’ Mayor Karen Bass reacts: ‘Despicable’
    Video is 6:45 minutes

    ‘Dictator playbook’: Schiff warns Trump using L.A. as military test run
    Video is 5:58 minutes

  201. birgerjohansson says

    Found at Facebook.

    “A lady came just up to me and said “Speak English, we are in San Diego”. So I politely replied by asking her “How do I say ‘San Diego’ in English?”
    The look of bewilderment on her face made it feel like a Friday. “

  202. whheydt says

    Re: birgerjohansson @ #201…
    That question actually has an answer. In English, San Diego would be “St. James”.

  203. says

    Even Republicans aren’t sure what to make of Tulsi Gabbard’s weird new video

    ‘The DNI’s video about nuclear threats was so odd that one GOP senator suggested that ‘she obviously needs to change her meds.’ ”

    Related video at the link.

    Four months into her tenure as the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard has proven her many critics right with one misjudgment after another. The DNI, for example, fired the National Intelligence Council’s leadership for presenting facts that the White House didn’t like. When pressed on the Signal chat scandal, she testified under oath about details that appeared to contradict reality.

    In recent days, Gabbard has reportedly taken steps to politicize her agency’s inspector general’s office, while exploring ways to turn the president’s daily briefing into Fox News-style segments.

    But her latest move is arguably the strangest. Politico reported:

    Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned of a ‘nuclear holocaust’ and chastised ‘warmongers’ for bringing the world ‘closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before’ in a foreboding video posted to social media on Tuesday. In the three-minute video, Gabbard details a recent visit to Hiroshima, Japan to learn more about the aftermath of the U.S. nuclear attack on the city in 1945 during World War II. The video features footage of Gabbard’s trip and archival footage showing victims, interspersed with Gabbard speaking directly to camera about the consequences of a nuclear attack.

    Much of the three-minute video is unremarkable. Gabbard reflected on a recent visit to Hiroshima and talked about the significance of a nuclear threat in ways that are largely uncontroversial.

    But one part of Gabbard’s message stood out as … odd. [video at the link]

    “As we stand here, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” she said toward the end of the video. “And perhaps it’s because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won’t have access to.”

    So, a few things.

    First, the suggestion that we’re currently “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before” is difficult to take seriously. I’d encourage Gabbard to read, for example, any good book about the Cold War.

    Second, I noticed the DNI didn’t name which “warmongers” are trying to “foment” tensions between nuclear powers — the specifics matter. Who are these nefarious figures allegedly putting the world at great risk?

    Third, the idea that the unnamed elite “warmongers” have secret nuclear bunkers seems quite bizarre, even by Gabbard standards.

    In fact, the message was so strange that some of the Republican senators who voted to confirm her to her current position — despite her lack of qualifications and habit of echoing Russian propaganda — made no effort to defend her.

    Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, for example, told Jewish Insider that “she obviously needs to change her meds.” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who has a flare for classic understatements, added that Gabbard’s message was “very strange.”

    Before the Senate confirmation vote on the former Hawaii congresswoman, a variety of former national security officials urged senators not to vote for her. In hindsight, perhaps the chamber’s GOP members should’ve heeded their warning.

  204. says

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/how-some-bad-luck-has-made-it-even-harder-to-rein-in-trump

    Lots of news, covering different subjects, all in one place.

    Includes:
    – Updates on recent court rulings.
    – Gitmo back in play for holding migrants
    – First amendment under siege
    – Trump reverting to Confederate names for U.S. Military installations
    – Smithsonian bends the knee
    – DOJ and DHS tracking people visiting Elon Musk (foreign influence story)
    – Update on Trump tariffs

    and more …

  205. says

    […] With Donald Trump provoking and then overreacting to protests against his indiscriminate ICE raids on Home Depot parking lots and people attending their scheduled immigration hearings, and the unnecessary (and illegal) deployment of the National Guard and Marines to LA, Trump is blowing $134 million, but isn’t that worth it if he gets to impose the autocratic rule he’s been promising? So it’s clearly time for the New York Times to ask the tough loaded question: How will Democrats’ weakness on the border and crime help Trump? (Archive link.)

    Yeah, really. National political correspondent Shane Goldmacher knows what readers are truly worried about in this moment: not so much the threats to the rule of law and democracy, but the far more important nuances of horse-race politicking.

    For Democrats, the scattered yet searing scenes of unrest in Southern California have uncomfortably thrust to the center two issues that have powered Republican gains in recent years — immigration and crime — as party leaders worry that the president is setting a dangerous political trap with provocations too outrageous to ignore.

    For fuckssake. If you have to ask a question about Democrats right now, shouldn’t it at least be “What will they do to stop Trump’s march to fascism?” Not “How will this play in Peoria?” [yep]

    We do at least get the occasional nod to what actually matters here, but it’s framed not as a crisis for the nation, but as little more than partisan messaging. Donald Trump is simply doing things, while Democrats are reacting. The last time the Guard was deployed over the objections of a governor was when LBJ federalized Alabama Guard troops to protect marchers in Selma 60 years ago. And that deployment wasn’t supplemented by active-duty Marines, either. To be sure, the unprecedented nature of Trump’s action does get a mention — more than halfway into the piece.

    For the Times, this is simply about the interesting way Democrats are talking […] The escalation of force, we’re told, “has unleashed an avalanche of condemnation from Democrats who argue that the president’s actions were authoritarian and unconstitutional.”

    […] In a similar vein, the piece says that Trump and crew “have continued to argue that California in general and Los Angeles in particular are descending into a lawless state of chaos.” Is that “argument” checked for accuracy, perhaps by noting that apart from the areas around federal buildings, the rest of the city is completely unaffected? Nope. [“Nope.” Good point.]

    Instead, we get what the “other side” is saying, which isn’t even presented as factual, but as a contentious claim that’s undermined by the repetition of the most scary images over and over: “At the same time, local officials have said that outbursts of violence have been only sporadic, even as they spread widely on social media.” [FFS]

    Perhaps the Times could have countered the assertion that Los Angeles was but a step away from a conflagration by posting this sweet video showing a young woman with a bubble wand in front of a heavily-guarded downtown building. It was posted to Bluesky with the comment, “More scenes from the ‘big insurrection’ in Los Angeles.” [video at the link]

    […] Again and again, Goldmacher lets Democrats have the floor to point out that Trump is pulling an Orban, only to suggest this is all just familiar partisan give and take on both sides:

    “The president would like nothing better than to create a conflict in L.A. to demonstrate his strongman credentials by then cracking down on the chaos,” said Mr. Schiff, who has clashed repeatedly with Mr. Trump and led his first impeachment. “The president is a chaos agent. He thrives on disorder. He thrives on situations that allow him to pretend, to act like a strongman.”

    […] But, but there was violence, wasn’t there? Sure was: Several Waymo robotaxis were burned, and people threw chunks of concrete (and Lime scooters — the Left hates rented EVs of all kinds!) onto cop cars, without injuring anyone. But instead of doing Objective Journalism and noting that the vandalism was an attention-getting sideshow compared to the peaceful and ongoing nonviolent marches, the Times pours rhetorical fuel on the lithium-ion battery fire, agreeing that the images are very inflammatory, here, LOOK AT THE FLAMES, SO SCARY.

    In a rhetorical trick that’s not unlike how rightwing media says “Even the liberal New York Times admits …,” the Times pushes to its readers the same image of two burning vehicles and a shirtless protester waving a Mexican flag that’s become the permanent wallpaper on Fox. But that’s cleverly framed as an embedded tweet (non-twitter link) from Sen. John Fetterman, “a Democrat who has increasingly broken with his party,” so that it’s not the New York Times waving the bloody shirt (or the flaming Waymo), but a very principled Democrat who’s bravely standing up to his party by saying “My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement.”

    Dear readers, you have to read another four paragraphs, and yet another reminder that immigration and crime have been tough political issues for Democrats, before you get to the Times’ belated acknowledgement that “Most prominent Democrats have denounced the recent violence, and many have cited local officials who say such incidents have been mostly isolated.”

    Even that fact is framed as a defensive talking point. There are many opinions about this.

    When Trump and his gang of creeps suggest something insanely authoritarian, like arresting the governor of a state for no reason at all, the Times manages to suggest that actually, Gavin Newsom is the outlandish publicity seeker:

    Mr. Newsom has used his confrontation with Mr. Trump — who has mused about arresting him — to elevate himself as one of the leading Democratic foils nationally to Mr. Trump, responding to the president’s comments with bravado and seemingly in real time.

    The news isn’t that the Big Man is talking about arresting his opponents. That’s just an aside, and look at Gavin Newsom burnishing his reputation. [New York Times presenting a consistently slanted viewpoint that makes Trump look better, and that ignores the more important basic issues.]

    Even Trump’s suggestion that he may just have to use “very big force” against protesters of his Birthday Parade is framed in this piece as “another potential tinderbox looming this weekend,” not as a threat to stifle dissent. […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/new-york-times-bold-enough-to-ask

  206. says

    Protests spread to U.S. cities beyond L.A.; Chicago mayor calls Trump ‘authoritarian’

    Protests against the Trump administration’s immigration policies have spread from Los Angeles to other U.S. cities in recent days, with hundreds of arrests Tuesday. […] Trump’s decision to deploy Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles, where protests started Friday, has drawn sharp criticism from state and local Democrats.

    Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday called Trump an “authoritarian” and a “tyrant in the White House who has a complete disregard for our Constitution.” In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said he would deploy the National Guard after protesters gathered in Dallas, San Antonio and Austin to decry immigration raids. And Trump administration leaders, including the president and Attorney General Pam Bondi, continue to float the possibility that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act, which would enable the Marines and National Guard to perform law enforcement duties in Los Angeles. […]

  207. says

    President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to California, saying the troops need to “liberate” Los Angeles from a “migrant invasion.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a key architect of the president’s immigration crackdown, said on social media that the city is proof of how migration “unravels” a society.

    But federal and state data tell a far different story about the Golden State than the political fury unfolding in Washington and on the streets of Los Angeles, where the administration has sent 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops as protests continue over recent immigration raids.

    In California, violent crime is down, and the unemployment rate is close to the national average. The state recently overtook Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy. It has the highest number of immigrants — both legal, most of them citizens, and undocumented. But in recent years, the state has lost hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to their homelands or to more-affordable states. Unauthorized immigrants in California remain well below the peak of nearly 3 million more than a decade ago for reasons that often have little to do with enforcement — or Trump.

    “Even the surge that we’ve seen more recently in undocumented immigration, a lot of that has not come to California,” said Eric McGhee, policy director and senior fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. “If I were to hazard a guess, it’s because California’s expensive.” […]

    The Department of Homeland Security estimates that the number of undocumented immigrants in California declined from 2.9 million in 2010 to 2.6 million in 2022, the most recent year available.

    […] Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Research Center, said that it is likely that the number of undocumented or temporary immigrants in California increased under President Joe Biden but that it remains well below its peak. Passel said the stereotype of immigrants as single men or gang members doesn’t match the data.

    “That’s not who these people are. They’re young, working families,” he said.

    […] Padilla said the state’s improvements in health care, climate change and the economy are “not despite our immigrant population but because of our immigrant population, that contributes so much as workforce, as consumers, as entrepreneurs.” […]

    Washington Post link

  209. Reginald Selkirk says

    @206

    Chicago mayor calls Trump ‘authoritarian’

    That won’t bother him. Should call him a weird authoritarian.

  210. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    @204 Lynna:

    TPM citing WSJ: Smithsonian bends the knee […] bowed to political influence from President Trump and ordered a full review of its public-facing content to make sure it contains no… political influence.

    Ehh.

    The Guardian – Smithsonian rejects Trump’s attempt to fire Portrait Gallery director

    the museum’s governing board asserting its independence in a direct challenge to the president. […] The standoff centers on Kim Sajet, whom Trump announced he had fired on 30 May, calling her “highly partisan and a strong supporter of DEI” […] Sajet has continued reporting to work
    […]
    The board backed secretary Lonnie Bunch, saying he “has the support of the board of regents in his authority and management of the Smithsonian”. The statement also directed Bunch to ensure museum content remains “unbiased” while maintaining that the Smithsonian “must be a welcoming place of knowledge and discovery for all Americans”.

    I think WSJ was spinning this statement from the smithsonian.

    The Board of Regents is committed to ensuring that the Smithsonian is a beacon of scholarship free from political or partisan influence, and we recognize that our institution can and must do more to further these foundational values.

    To reinforce our nonpartisan stature, the Board of Regents has directed the Secretary to articulate specific expectations to museum directors and staff regarding content in Smithsonian museums

    And yet secretary Bunch hasn’t removed the “highly partisan” portrait director, as characterized by the incandescently partisan Trump.

    WSJ

    A major source of tension has been the fate of National Portrait Gallery Director […] The Smithsonian said in a statement Monday after the meeting that it retained power over personnel decisions. A person familiar with the meeting said no decisions have been made about Sajet.
    […]
    tension between longstanding board members and Vice President JD Vance and Republican Rep. Carlos Giménez of Florida, both of whom are new to the board. The two pushed […] an expeditious cultural review, while the board wanted to give Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian, three months, Giménez said in an interview […] The motion that was adopted by the board didn’t set out a timeline
    […]
    Sajet has taken pride in diversifying the museum she oversees, saying in 2022 that she wants to make it less about “the wealthy, the pale and the male.”

    The board could have declined to do a review at all, which would’ve been laudable. However, doing the review doesn’t necessarily mean Trump will like the outcome. Depends on what those “specific expectations” are. That’s been left up to Bunch.

    WaPo

    The White House later shared with The Washington Post 17 examples it said supported the president’s claims about Sajet […] Fourth on that list were Sajet’s reported comments rejecting artist Julian Raven’s Trump painting for submission in the National Portrait Gallery. Sajet told him “it’s too pro-Trump” and “too political,” Raven recalled
    […]
    Sajet’s resignation or dismissal, Raven said, could help him in his years-long quest to get the museum to accept his 16-foot portrait of Trump

  211. JM says

    Huffpost: Hegseth Admits He Doesn’t Know What Authority Trump Is Using To Deploy Troops

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified in Congress Tuesday that he did not know what legal authority his boss was using to deploy troops to suppress protests in Los Angeles against deportation raids, but he was certain President Donald Trump had it.

    I wouldn’t expect him to know all of the details and obscure corners, that is a job for the lawyers. Knowing the basics and the procedure is part of his job. As secretary of defense a basic part of his job is making sure the military is not used in a way they shouldn’t be or that is illegal.

  212. says

    Sky Captain @210: “I think WSJ was spinning this statement from the smithsonian.” And “doing the review doesn’t necessarily mean Trump will like the outcome.”

    Yes, that does seem to be the case that WSJ was introducing some spin into the situation. Good points.

  213. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Military.com – Bragg soldiers who cheered Trump’s political attacks while in uniform were checked for allegiance, appearance

    Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders […] as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump’s diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship.
    […]
    Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics […] handpicking soldiers for the audience […] One unit-level message bluntly saying: “No fat soldiers.”

    “If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don’t want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,” another note to troops said.

    Service officials declined to comment when asked about the extent to which troops were screened, whether soldiers displaying partisan cheers on television—a violation of long-standing Pentagon rules—would be disciplined or if soldiers who objected to participating in the event, citing disagreements with the administration, would be disciplined
    […]
    Experts were quick to come out and say that the public silence from military leadership is a missed opportunity to reinforce the military’s nonpartisan nature.
    […]
    Adding to the spectacle, […] campaign-style merchandise […] Soldiers were seen purchasing clothing and tchotchkes […] Permitting the sale of overtly partisan merchandise on an Army base likely runs afoul of numerous Defense Department regulations
    […]
    Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, best known for serving as the task force commander that coordinated military relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina, called the speech “inappropriate.” “I never witnessed that s..t like this in 37 years in uniform,”

  214. says

    New York Times:

    The board of the Fulbright program has resigned after accusing Trump aides of political interference.

    The dozen board members of the prestigious Fulbright program that promotes international educational exchanges resigned on Wednesday because of what they said was political interference by the Trump administration in their operations, according to people familiar with the issues and a board memo obtained by The New York Times.

    The members are concerned that political appointees at the State Department, which manages the program, are acting illegally by canceling the awarding of Fulbright scholarships to almost 200 American professors and researchers [!] who are prepared to go to universities and other research institutions overseas starting this summer, said the people, including Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire.

    The board approved those scholars over the winter after a yearlong selection process, and the State Department was supposed to send acceptance letters by April, the people said. But instead, the board learned that the office of public diplomacy at the agency had begun sending rejection letters to the scholars based mainly on their research topics, they said.

    In addition, the department is reviewing the applications of about 1,200 scholars from other countries who have already been approved by the board to come to the United States, the people said. Those foreign scholars were also supposed to receive acceptance letters around April.

    The memo written by the board says that members are resigning “rather than endorse unprecedented actions that we believe are impermissible under the law, compromise U.S. national interests and integrity, and undermine the mission and mandates Congress established for the Fulbright program nearly 80 years ago,” according to a copy obtained by The Times.

    The board is also concerned that the budget that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is requesting from Congress for the next fiscal year cuts spending for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which includes the Fulbright program, to $50 million from $691 million this fiscal year. [!]

    […] The administration has also dismantled research institutions established by Congress, including the Wilson Center and the United States Institute of Peace. A federal judge ruled last month that the administration’s gutting of USIP was illegal.

    The Fulbright program was established in 1946 after legislation introduced by J. William Fulbright, a Democratic senator from Arkansas. The Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961 formalized legal statutes for the program. It says the selection of scholars, teachers and others falls under the authority of a 12-member board appointed by the president.

    […] The selection process for the American scholars usually starts with career diplomats in overseas missions and U.S. educational institutions, and proceeds for months until the board gives essentially pro forma approval over the winter. Across Republican and Democratic administrations, the board has generally approved of the candidates submitted by the State Department because of the long and rigorous selection process and to avoid the appearance of political interference.

    The United States has 49 bilateral commissions established by treaties with other nations, many American allies, to help with the selection process and match scholars with institutions. More than 35 countries contribute half or more of the funding for the scholarships. [Important to note.]

    […] Mr. Beattie and his aides appear to be rejecting them based on their stated research topics, which include climate change, environmental resilience, migration, gender, race and ethnicity and homelessness, said the people familiar with the State Department’s actions. The topics also include ones in the sciences, such as biology, agriculture and animal studies, according to the board memo.

    […] Most of the American and foreign scholars approved by the board had gotten early signals from officials and commissions of their acceptances so they could arrange leaves from their universities and prepare to move overseas for about a year.

  215. says

    Sky Captain @213, unethical. Stage-managed, pro-Trump theater that was then aired (at least in part) on all sorts of media outlets.

    A followup:

    Donald Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg on Tuesday was a disgrace—full stop.

    It’s not just that the sitting president spoke to the soldiers at the Army base as if he was holding a campaign rally […] It’s not just that the speech contained a ton of lies, because Trump always lies.

    But the specific content of this speech supposedly celebrating the Army’s 250th anniversary—and the troops cheering him on as he said would “liberate” Los Angeles from the “animals” and “a foreign enemy”—was sickening. He got the troops to boo former President Joe Biden, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. This is bad by any metric, but feels much worse against the backdrop of the administration illegally deploying active duty troops on American soil. [True]

    Trump also bragged about restoring the names of Confederate leaders to seven Army bases. Yes, this has long been a Trump talking point, but hearing the soldiers cheer for Robert E. Lee was … not great! Of course, the administration is officially pretending that these bases are no longer named after men who committed treason in order to preserve their ability to enslave Black people and sparked a civil war. No, now they’re named after random nontreasonous soldiers who just happen to have the same last names as Confederate leaders.

    But Trump didn’t brag that he was going to name an Army base after Pvt. Fitz Lee, who fought in the Spanish-American War, which is his administration’s official stance. No, he got the troops to whoop and shout for Robert E. Lee, the leader of the defeated Confederate forces. […]

    And Trump was guaranteed an enthusiastic partisan audience sitting behind him [see comment 213 for details]

    […] To understand that the right really does see this as not just acceptable but delightful, look at how the speech was covered by Fox News. [embedded link]

    It’s also grim that no commanding officers have stepped forward to condemn this behavior and to remind everyone that soldiers are literally forbidden from this sort of thing. But Trump’s generals remain completely silent. […]

    Also notably silent is the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine. Trump has said he picked Caine specifically because he defied the military’s prohibition on partisan displays by being a huge dork and wearing a MAGA hat to impress him. Caine has denied the MAGA hat story, but that’s not really the point. It doesn’t matter if Caine did or didn’t do this—it matters that Trump chose him for that reason.

    […] Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to ask if he could just let the military arrest protesters in Los Angeles […] This was such a yikes! letter that although DHS flack Tricia McLaughlin initially enthusiastically confirmed it was sent and ran through a laundry list of lies to justify the request, she turned around 40 minutes later and asked the paper to ignore that response and use McLaughlin’s new one instead. The new statement said Noem’s letter was sent days ago, before Noem had met with Hegseth and Hegseth had met with the president. The new statement included platitudes about how “the posture of our brave troops has not changed” and “this is a whole-of-government approach to restore law and order.”

    That actually doesn’t disclaim anything in the letter, but it’s clear that someone, somewhere, understood this needed to be walked back a bit. […]

    Trump wanted a military that was in thrall to him and willing to do whatever he wants, even if that flies in the face of the foundations of American democracy. Hearing troops cheer him on while he does this makes it all the worse.

    Link

  216. says

    Followup to comments 213 and 215:

    […] Is our military almost all white like that? […] That crowd looks really young to us too.

    […] If you actually know anything about the military, you might have noticed those things. We immediately wondered on Bluesky if they had staged it to make sure the troops behind Trump were of a certain type.

    This screenshot started circulating pretty quickly. It was reportedly posted on the Military Reddit, other veteran types were sharing it, and journalist Jane Coaston tweeted it, saying that “Per a reporter, those who disagree with POTUS were told that they could ask to be excused.” [Screenshot. Included text: “Basically they don’t want soldiers in the audience Rolling their eyes or shaking their head in disagreement etc.”]

    […] If authentic — and Military.com appears to confirm that it is — what a sign of weakness from history’s weakest dictator […]

    Now, that said, and before any military types chime in and say things like that happen in the military all the time, we know. We spoke to a veteran we always talk to about things like this, and they surmised like so what probably happened, before they saw the screengrab above:

    “What they probably did was figure out which unit(s) was supposed to be available, figured out how much seating was available and then said ‘who would like to go’ followed by ‘if not enough people sign up you’re getting voluntold’ and then you better give the secdef some fucking enthusiasm’”

    Still, Military.com found it notable enough that they wrote about it. And they confirmed another unit-level message that said “No fat soldiers.” And they got this quote from a Fort Bragg commander:

    “This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution,” one commander at Fort Bragg told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. “This was shameful. I don’t expect anything to come out of it, but I hope maybe we can learn from it long term.”

    So perhaps it’s not time to completely freak out that the entire military is ready and willing to shit on the Constitution for Dear Leader […]

    Still weird, though, how they cheered considering how much he despises the troops. Those troops he’s sent to Los Angeles to angrily eat lunch while they watch protesters dance around a three-block area? They have nowhere to sleep, no food, no fuel, and no president who cares if they live or die. […]

    Phone number to call if you are National Guard or Active Duty military ordered to violate the constitutional right of U.S. citizens: 1-877-447-4487

  217. JM says

    Axios: Troops deployed to LA have nowhere to sleep and lack supplies

    Viral images of National Guard troops sleeping side by side on floors in Los Angeles — along with a new estimate from the Pentagon that sending them there will cost $134 million — fueled criticism Tuesday that President Trump’s deployments were haphazard and unnecessary.

    Why it matters: Gov. Gavin Newsom is leading the charge, accusing Trump of dispatching 4,000 National Guard troops to LA “without fuel, food, water or a place to sleep.”

    Newsom also claimed only around 300 had been deployed as of Monday evening, with the rest “sitting, unused, in federal buildings without orders.”
    He raised further alarm when the Pentagon announced 700 active duty Marines were also heading to LA to respond to the protests.
    The Guards and Marines are both limited to protecting federal buildings and personnel, though Trump has considered invoking the Insurrection Act to get them into the streets.

    Another basic part of Hegseth’s job he has messed up. Making sure they are deployed effectively and get the support they need. In many ways making sure the support system works is one of the biggest parts of Hegseth’s job. Making sure troops in the field get supplies is one of the primary jobs of central command.

  218. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    [CW: Injuries]
    HuffPo – Dozens of journalists targeted, shot, detained while covering LA protests

    more than 30 incidents of police violence against journalists as of Tuesday, including 20 injuries, at least five of which required emergency room or urgent care visits

    Task and Purpose

    [The Marines deployed to LA have] not yet completed training on less-than-lethal weapons and training on the Standing Rules for Use of Force […] said a spokesperson for U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM. It is not yet clear when the Marines will complete the training
    […]
    The Marines began receiving Standing Rules for Use of Force training […] before deploying to Los Angeles, a Marine Corps official told Task & Purpose.

  220. John Morales says

    In Slate mag: What It Was Like in the Shit in 2025
    Excerpts from the memoir of a Marine deployed to a Los Angeles Home Depot.

     https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/los-angeles-marines-protests-donald-trump-the-things-they-carried-parody.html

    We woke up at dawn, heads pounding, in a hut lit by a single bulb. We were two clicks outside the perimeter and three clicks from the nearest Lamill or Blue Bottle—a desperate goddamn distance, no no no this can’t be happening. The hut was a rustic healing space owned jointly by Sting and Carrie Underwood.

    The fucked-up things we had seen—face-lifts, mostly—would blow the brains right out of the skulls of most folks back home. People wearing glasses they didn’t even need because it “made their look pop,” lining up for hours for some kind of doughnut that looked like every other doughnut. Sawyer, one of the grunts—his cousin was one of these people—brought us truffle fries a few times. Those were the good days, and there weren’t a lot of them. Most of the days, we just had regular fries. Fuck.

    The things we carried were determined largely by necessity. Among the necessities or near necessities were Oakley wraparounds, dog tags, hypoallergenic SPF 50 face lotion, a good moisturizer, the wildfire app, binoculars, a map showing where 1980s sitcom actors had lived, and a browser bookmarked to TMZ.com. Things could change in a second out here, and you didn’t want to be caught in the field with your dick out when a vibe shifted. Some days the local girls were stanning Blake, some days it was Taylor, and if you didn’t know which was which before you put your gear on, it was gonna be over for you in the time it took for a chopper’s blade to turn. God, the choppers—they were constant, they never stopped, SoCal 511 and KNX 1070 and KCAL and NBC 4, the whine of the rotors always reminding you exactly where you were, every hour on the hour.

    Our first day out past the line, we couldn’t tell a hostile in an Essentials hoodie from a friendly in an Essentials hoodie. Floating through the dark, the Art Deco practically seeming to breathe and pulse around us, catching glimpses of the strangest things—gas that cost $5.79, more Denny’s than it would seem possible for a local economy to sustain, one word whispering on the wind: Ohtani. One of the guys in the unit, raw, green, just lost it, crying, screaming—threw his M60 in the gutter and ran straight in the front door of a Whole Foods. We never saw him again. They said he saw an Erewhon smoothie spill out on the sidewalk, just couldn’t stop staring at it, the way one minute it was in the cup and then it was out on the ground, just gone, man.

    [etc]

  221. says

    Donald Tusk survives confidence vote to remain Polish PM

    “Nationalist Karol Nawrocki’s presidential election win still leaves Poland’s prime minister and his coalition in a tough spot.”

    Donald Tusk won a vote of confidence in the Polish parliament Wednesday, hanging on to his position as prime minister as he sought to change the narrative after his political grouping suffered a stinging defeat in the June 1 presidential election.

    The vote of confidence — which was never in much doubt as Tusk’s ruling coalition controls a solid majority in parliament — is aimed at reaffirming his mandate after nationalist Karol Nawrocki defeated Tusk’s preferred centrist contender Rafał Trzaskowski to become president.

    Tusk won with 243 votes in favor and 210 against. […]

  222. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Joshua Friedman (ColumbiaMag):

    The [DoJ] defends sending ~5,000 troops to LA:

    The statute empowers the President to determine what forces ‘he considers necessary’ to ‘suppress’ a ‘rebellion’ or to ‘execute’ federal ‘laws’—not the Governor, and not a federal court.

    Table of authorities
    [^ Normally an index of the cases, statutes, and secondary sources cited.]
    [It’s an otherwise blank page with ‘[INSERT]’ as placeholder.]

    lol […]

    Plaintiffs argue that a rebellion was not present, but they never contend that there was no *danger* of a rebellion.

    How can you say we didn’t go through the governor to federalize the California National Guard when we wrote “THROUGH: THE GOVERNOR” on our memos??
    […]
    Here’s an incredible bit of argument: when the statute says that orders to federalize the state National Guard “shall be issued through the governors,” the “shall” means that governors are barred from refusing!

    (But then why does the statute involve the governors at all?) […]

    I feared for the safety of all the office workers, federal employees, and lawfully detained aliens in the building.

    The violent crowd boxed in ERO and CBP officers throwing mortar-style fireworks with multiple explosions, rocks and mangos

    […]
    Now corrected.

    Defendants encountered technical difficulties while finalizing their brief that prevented them from generating tables

    Commentary

    [Corrected?] lol ok I believe you.

    Really something to see these assholes accuse someone else of a “crass political stunt”.
    [The intro’s first sentence accuses Newsom.]

    I don’t understand what it takes to be disbarred these days…

    Oh no! Are the mangos ok?

    Gautham Rao (Legal historian):

    The administration’s legal theory is that there is a rebellion underway against the rule of federal law. The evidence for this is that objects were thrown, federal officers ‘felt unsafe,’ ‘attacks’ on LAPD, and a quote from John Fetterman. If that’s a rebellion, then so is every Dodgers-Padres game.

  223. says

    Sheesh.

    […] The Trump administration has ordered the National Park Service to post signs in every park to encourage public feedback on the parks’ presentations of American history, including a QR code so that it is super easy to complain. Because that is what this is really about.

    A sign for the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, which was leaked to NPR, says park visitors should identify “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”

    That seems relatively benign, but this national park in Missouri sits where the second major battle of the Civil War was fought. It’s a barely veiled request for complaints about how describing the Confederacy in anything but glowing terms is un-American.

    Parks were notified of this signage requirement on June 9 and have until June 13 to get signage up everywhere. That’s a comically short timeline in the best of circumstances, but it’s basically impossible given Trump’s deep cuts to the NPS. There aren’t even enough workers to clean the bathrooms in many parks, much less spend time on the administration’s project to whitewash the nation’s history.

    That whitewashing project, though, expands far beyond national parks.

    In March, Trump issued an executive order about “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” which requires reinstatement of public monuments that had been removed to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” In effect, this is intended to mandate the return of Confederate monuments and statues to the nation’s parks. Nothing honors American history like requiring displays honoring racists who lost their treasonous war against the country.

    While the administration is showing so much tender loving care to memorializing the Confederacy, it doesn’t have that same affection for nontreasonous monuments. The Department of Justice just issued a memo saying Trump has the authority to abolish national monuments. And just to be super clear, two national monuments named in the memo were designated by then-President Joe Biden, both at the request of Native American tribes.

    […] Trump isn’t one to let an opportunity to bash immigrants and paint them all as murderous thugs go to waste, which is why he ordered the name of the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge changed to the Jocelyn Nungaray National Wildlife Refuge. Nungaray was a 12-year-old girl allegedly murdered by two undocumented immigrants.

    […] In February, the Department of Education launched an “End DEI” website, asking people to submit complaints about schools being woke.

    Trump and his ilk pretend to be bold stalwarts who fight for free speech, but in actuality, they’re just big babies. They don’t want to reckon with America’s true history. […]

    Link

  224. says

    Sky Captain @222, very funny … but also awful.

    In other court-related news: Judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can’t be detained over claims he’s compromising foreign policy

    A district judge ruled Wednesday that Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and former Columbia pro-Palestinian activist, can no longer be detained by the federal government over claims he is compromising foreign policy.

    District Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled for Khalil to be released by Friday morning, unless the federal government wins an appeal or provides another justification for detaining Khalil besides Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s determination he is a threat to the country’s foreign policy.

    [I snipped details related to a claim by federal officials that Khalil inaccurately completed his green card application.]

    […] Other college pro-Palestinian activists have recently been released as their immigration proceedings play out in the court system under similar allegations, but Khalil’s case has been more complicated as the determination over which jurisdiction should preside over the proceedings took months to determine.

    […] The preliminary injunction the judge gave to release Khalil and block his deportation would be a big win for activists, but the matter will not be finalized until Friday morning at 9:30 a.m. eastern time.

    Potentially good news.

  225. says

    Newsom winning the online meme war:

    […] On Wednesday, Newsom’s X account posted a screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social post scolding the governor—along with audio of the screed read by the voice of “Star Wars” villain Emperor Palpatine.

    And while writing about it won’t give justice to the genius-level trolling contained in the post, captioning the tweet with a Trump-style, all-caps, “THE INCOMPETENT GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA!” really was the cherry on top. [Tweet from Newsom’s press office, plus video]

    […] jokesters even pulled out a Taylor Swift joke and managed to bring in Trump’s all-time biggest pop star nemesis.

    Newsom’s Instagram account posted a reel [embedded link] on Tuesday with a series of photos to the tune of Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down.”

    […] When former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said via X that what is happening in California “would never happen in Arkansas,” the governor responded, “Your homicide rate is literally DOUBLE California’s.”

    […] Keep in mind that not far beneath the surface of the social media memes there’s another message: Trump’s online berating of Newsom is absurd, detached from the reality in Los Angeles, and, oddly, fits the tone of an evil “Star Wars” villain.

    And if there’s one way to get that message across to younger people, it’s through the art of a damn good social media trolling.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/11/2327347/-Gavin-Newsom-s-social-media-posts-are-cooking-Trump-and-it-s-hilarious

  226. says

    New York Times: U.S. to Withdraw Diplomats From Iraq Amid Iran Tensions

    The State Department said it had decided to shrink the U.S. “footprint” in Baghdad and the United Kingdom issued a warning about “increased tensions within the region.”

    The State Department has decided to reduce its diplomatic presence in Iraq, the department said in a statement on Wednesday, as tensions across the Middle East spiked amid signs that nuclear diplomacy between the United States and Iran may be deadlocked.

    Word of the U.S. decision, along with a warning from the United Kingdom about new threats to Middle East commercial shipping, came hours after President Trump said in a podcast released Wednesday that he has grown “less confident” about the prospects for a deal with Iran that would limit its ability to develop nuclear weapons.

    American and Iranian negotiators have been planning to meet later this week for another round of talks, although Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday that Iran had adopted an “unacceptable” negotiating position.

    The British warning came from the country’s maritime trade agency, which issued a public advisory saying that it had “been made aware of increased tensions within the region which could lead to an escalation of military activity having a direct impact on mariners.” The advisory urged commercial vessels transiting the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz to use heightened caution.

    The sense of alarm was heightened by comments from Iran’s defense minister, General Aziz Nasirzadeh, who warned on Wednesday that in the event of a conflict following failed nuclear talks, the United States would suffer heavy losses from Iranian attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East. His comments were reported by Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency. […]

  227. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Reuters – Troops in Los Angeles can detain but not arrest, military official says

    military troops deployed to Los Angeles are allowed to temporarily detain individuals until law enforcement agents arrive to arrest them, a senior U.S. military official said […] Major General Scott Sherman, who is leading the deployment of 4,000 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines, said the troops did not have the authority to arrest individuals.
    […]
    The Marines are taking a two-day training course on how to handle civil disturbances, Sherman said. […] the Marines would not be deployed to the streets of Los Angeles on Wednesday, but they would be there “soon.”

    So like citizen’s arrest then. Using gear that belongs to the military.
    It’s a two-day course? And they haven’t completed it!?

  228. John Morales says

    KG, re problems to pose to LLMs, I had a go at making one.
    It is original, just now.
    Thing is, if I test it, I pollute it.
    Even posting here might pollute it, but I’m not gonna be so paranoid as to ROT13 it or whatever.

    Fred’s dwelling in her rural property is serviced by only one powerline, and during a night-time storm on a moonless night, the driving rain and wind cause a tree to fall on the powerline and bring it down. Fred at that point has no power and is in the dark, apart from the dim light from the burning scented candle she had lit much earlier, which she estimates will burn for no more than 5 minutes as it was almost done. With the power out, she wishes to call for assistance, but realises she left her phone in a shed that is a two minute walk away from her house, but which requires lighting to navigate given the pitch darkness of the ongoing storm.

    Can Fred make it to her phone in time by using her candle?

    I think it’s kinda similar, conceptually, to the original tray and veggies example.

    What do you reckon?

  229. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    A response to the “detain but not arrest” statement @227.
    Anthony Kreis (Law prof): “This is illegal. This is illegal. Did I mention this is illegal?”

  232. Reginald Selkirk says

    RFK Jr. announces 8 appointees to CDC vaccine panel—they’re not good

    Anti-vaccine advocate and current health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to social media Wednesday to announce the names of eight people he is appointing to a critical federal vaccine advisory committee—which is currently empty after Kennedy abruptly fired all 17 previous members Monday.

    In the past, the vetting process for appointing new members to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) could take years. But Kennedy has taken just two days.
    …
    Yesterday, Kennedy pledged that none of the new ACIP members would be “ideological anti-vaxxers.” However, the list of today’s appointees includes Robert Malone, who falsely claims to have invented mRNA vaccines and has spent the past several years spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories about them.
    …
    Malone is just one of the eight names released today. Another is Martin Kulldorff, one of the co-authors of the widely criticized Great Barrington Declaration, which called for letting COVID-19 spread largely unabated. Health experts called it “unethical.”

    Vicky Pebsworth is also on the list, as well as on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, one of the nation’s oldest anti-vaccine groups that promotes the false claim that vaccines cause autism.

    Kennedy also appointed Retsef Levi, who has penned articles alleging dangers of COVID-19 vaccines, including a flawed 2022 article that was later corrected and an unpublished article co-authored with COVID-contrarian and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.

    The other four appointees are Joseph R. Hibbeln, a psychiatrist; Cody Meissner, a pediatrician; James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician; and Michael Ross, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology…

  233. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Military.com – Guard soldiers in Trump’s LA crackdown aren’t getting paid yet

    According to more than a dozen Guardsmen across four units who spoke to Military.com, none has received formal activation orders, the critical paperwork that not only authorizes their duty status, but also unlocks pay, Tricare health benefits and eligibility for Department of Veterans Affairs services. Without those orders, troops remain in a legal and administrative limbo.

    Multiple defense officials with direct knowledge of the situation told Military.com the chaotic and sudden activation of troops has effectively clogged up the flow of administrative work. Those Guardsmen will likely receive formal orders and the proper backpay within the next few days, but that hasn’t eased the concerns for troops anxious over potential financial strains and juggling family logistics […] Some part-time troops reported leaving better-paying civilian jobs without clarity on how much they’ll earn while mobilized. […] Depending on how long troops are activated and how the orders are written, soldiers may or may not qualify for basic housing allowances […] The Pentagon estimates the mission will be 60 days
    […]
    Local donations from businesses such as pizza shops, a staple of domestic Guard deployments, often help fill gaps, but this time, the community has largely stayed away.

    Commentary

    A group of pissed off, tired, unpaid troops doing law enforcement is definitely good right?

    For a bunch of people obsessed with the Roman Empire, these guys don’t seem to have read a lot about the Roman Empire.

    Oh for crying out loud, if you’re gonna commit war crimes against your own nation at least GET THE MONEY.

    Asha Rangappa (Lawyer):

    Under the statute Trump is using, orders must be issued by the governor (this is one of the grounds on which Newsom is suing). I wonder if the lack of formal orders (from Trump) is to not obviously be in violation of the law (?)

  236. John Morales says

    And, O so competent and enthusiastic is the presenter.
    I am favourably impressed.

    Not just fluff, that.

    I quote the (ahem, AI powered scripting tool) for one portion of it:
    14:19 […] You know the industrial revolution is
    14:21 always steam engines this steam engines
    14:24 that trains blah blah blah But did you
    14:27 know what these steam engines were
    14:29 actually powering besides trains that’s
    14:32 right looms The textile industry was
    14:36 actually the largest in terms of
    14:37 manpower and profit and you name it The
    14:40 looms also used punch cards to make
    14:43 complex patterns These punch cards were
    14:45 later used as the first way to create
    14:47 computer programs at is a crude way of
    14:50 inputting code into a machine Really I
    14:53 cannot stress enough how important the
    14:55 textile industry has been for life as we
    14:58 know it […]

    —

    Oh, and instead of a personal comment and a title and a nakkid link, here’s the content:

    One of the oldest inventions is pure geometry! Let me show you.

    timestamps:
    00:00 Intro
    00:58 flexible sheets in nature
    01:31 yarn
    03:12 weft knit
    05:10 going 3D
    06:30 analysis
    09:03 warp knitting
    10:00 ladders
    10:36 fancy stuff
    11:44 netting
    12:24 plain weave
    14:15 industrial revolution
    15:14 modern loom
    17:53 twill weave
    19:21 adding piles
    20:27 brilliant weft accumulator

    corrections:
    01:35 counter rotation of multiple spun threads is in fact needed for some fabrics and is very common.
    06:58 as it turns out, it’s more common than I thought to cut open circular knits and sew them back together, because they are so much faster to make. So the seam might not be a good indication whether or not it’s made on a circular machine.
    13:20 plain weaves have significant stretch on the diagonals. adding yarn in these directions makes for the actual stiffest fabric.
    17:50 water jet looms are quite rare as it turns out. Air jet looms seem much more common.
    19:05 Besides the amount under-over, one of the deciding differences between twill vs satin weaves is also how many yarns you move over to the side on the next row. A twill weave will give these diagonal lines because on the next weft yarn you do the “1 over” on the very next warp yarn. But a satin weave will skip one, or multiple yarns. So the diagonal pattern will seem to disappear.

    (Ah, that’s better. Terse and succinct I may be, but informative and contextual content matters, too)

  237. KG says

    John Morales@228,

    Yes, I think that’s worth asking. I’ll leave adding my own thoughts of Fred’s problem until you’ve tried it!

  238. John Morales says

    Thanks, KG.
    Go for it if you care to. You were the impetus for it, after all.

    I do trust your honesty and your genuineness, and I hope you know that by now.

  240. Reginald Selkirk says

    Air India Boeing 787 Carrying 242 Passengers Crashes After Takeoff

    Flying to London, a Boeing 787 aircraft operated by Air India “crashed shortly after taking off…” reports Bloomberg, “in what stands to be the worst accident involving the U.S. planemaker’s most advanced widebody airliner.”

    Flight AI171 was carrying 242 passengers and crew. Video footage shared on social media showed a giant plume of smoke engulfing the crash site, with no reports of survivors.

    The aircraft entered a slow descent shortly after taking off, with its landing gear still extended before exploding into a huge fireball upon impact. The crash took place in a residential area, which could mean a higher death toll… The pilots in command issued a mayday call immediately after take-off to air traffic controllers, according to India’s civil aviation regulator.

  241. Reginald Selkirk says

    Experimental retina implants give mice infrared vision

    Human vision relies on photoreceptor cells in the retina that react to visible light and trigger neurons in the optic nerve to send signals to the brain. Degradation of these photoreceptors is the leading cause of vision impairments, including blindness.

    However, a team of scientists at China’s Fudan University has recently built prototype retinal implants that can replace the failing photoreceptors and potentially provide infrared vision as a bonus. Sadly, they’ve only been tested in animals, so we’re still rather far away from making them work like Cyberpunk 2077-style eye augments…

  242. Reginald Selkirk says

    Pentagon Has Been Pushing Americans to Believe in UFOs for Decades, New Report Finds

    UFOs have been back in the news a lot lately, and it may be the case that the government wants it that way. Last week, the Wall Street Journal published the first of a two-part series that probes the ways in which the Defense Department has been responsible for creating and fostering the UFO mythology in America.

    The article shows that the government has, at various points over the years, purposefully sown disinformation about UFOs, in an effort to make Americans believe in little green men. This news comes as the result of an internal investigation by Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was specifically set up within the Pentagon to investigate UFO sightings. Kirkpatrick, who spoke with the Journal, says he’s found evidence that the government “fabricated evidence of alien technology” in an effort to distract from real weapons programs being carried out by the government in secret.

    The Journal frames its findings as a “stunning new twist in the story of America’s cultural obsession with UFOs” but, while the story’s specific anecdotes are certainly new and quite interesting, its broader findings are not, nor are they particularly stunning. Instead, they parrot what many critics of the UFO narrative have long said: that the UFO mythos grew out of a disinformation campaign created by shadowy defense officials to obscure more terrestrial secrets about America’s national security community…

  243. JM says

    Axios: Republicans warn Trump that some deportations go too far

    Some GOP lawmakers are starting to warn the Trump administration to reconsider its all-in deportation push.
    Why it matters: Republicans are convinced they have a clear mandate to kick out hardened criminals and gang members. But differences are emerging on how aggressively ICE should deport workers, longtime residents and some people who’ve sought refuge from brutal regimes.

    This is a basic conflict in the Republican party. Some are white nationalist racists, this side ultimately wants to get rid of everybody not sufficiently white. They want ICE to be frightening, violent and indiscriminate, so that even American citizens that are not white have reason to leave. The other side are business types, they are racist but like having a working class that gets paid less then minimum wage. They want ICE to be scary so the undocumented don’t challenge things but ultimately ineffective.
    This is coming up because the Trump administration is being driven by the nationalists and it’s getting in the way of business. As a group the business people have a lot of leverage because they have the money that finances Republican election campaigns.

  244. Reginald Selkirk says

    South Carolina Rep. RJ May taken into custody on potential federal charges

    State Rep. Robert “RJ” May of Lexington County, who founded a hard-line conservative House faction and ran campaigns against fellow Republicans, is in law enforcement custody facing potential federal charges.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Carolina, which has been investigating May after seizing various computer hardware at his house last year, declined comment.

    Exact charges against May are expected to be made public as early as Thursday.
    …
    His arrest on Wednesday comes after months of speculation around political circles after a house at Lake Frances Drive in West Columbia belonging to May was searched Aug. 5 by agents of the Homeland Security Investigations Unit, a law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security Investigations officials seized a laptop, a tablet, four cell phones, four hard drives, four SD cards, two DVD-Rs and 19 thumb drives.

    The Homeland Security Investigations conducts federal criminal investigations into child exploitation, human trafficking and the illegal movement of people, goods, money, contraband, weapons and sensitive technology into, out of and through the U.S…

  245. Reginald Selkirk says

    @240
    British passenger in seat 11A survives India plane crash, reports say

    A man survived the Air India crash that killed at least 200 people, a police chief has told an Indian news agency.

    Ahmedabad Police Commissioner GS Malik told ANI there was one survivor who was in seat 11A on the London-bound Boeing 787-8 flight.

    The flight manifest shared by authorities said the passenger in that seat was British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh.

    Indian media said they had spoken to Mr Ramesh in hospital and reported him saying: “Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.”
    …

  246. says

    Body Count Rising: Republicans have to decide if they stand with DOGE’s death and destruction

    “Congress will soon vote on whether Elon Musk’s slashing of foreign aid was OK.”

    Related video at the link.

    Congress will soon face a vote that goes far beyond dollars and cents. It’s a vote about who lives, who dies — and whether the United States still recognizes the difference.

    Republican lawmakers have largely distanced themselves from the Trump administration’s unlawful cuts to lifesaving foreign aid. And while they have done nothing to stop them, they could at least claim the cuts were done without their input.

    Now […] Trump is asking them to approve a rescissions package that would retroactively cancel grants that gave food to the hungry and medicine to the sick, building goodwill for the United States around the world.

    If they approve the package, Congressional Republicans will have joined hands with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the rogue unofficial group until recently helmed by billionaire Elon Musk, to take back money Congress had already appropriated to programs to feed and care for children around the globe.

    […] An analysis by a Boston University infectious-disease mathematical modeler and health economist found that Trump’s cuts in foreign aid have already resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 children and 96,000 adults — a death toll that claims another 103 lives every hour.

    These deaths were all preventable. Indeed, Congress already tried to prevent them when it passed decades worth of spending bills that included funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the agency that, for decades, has delivered U.S. global leadership in the form of vaccines, health care, food aid, maternal care and HIV treatment.

    That all came to an end when the Musk-led DOGE effort essentially dismantled USAID from within […] Musk didn’t hide his contempt when he labeled USAID a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists” and declared it was “time for it to die.”

    If congressional Republicans approve the rescissions package, they will have enshrined into law the slashing of $9.4 billion in already-approved federal spending targeted by DOGE. More than $8 billion of that comes from the State Department and USAID.

    In short, it would be cruelty codified into law. [video]

    [snipped some examples] In crisis after crisis, from Ebola to famine, USAID has been on the frontlines. It is especially crucial for emergency food assistance — supporting efforts such as the distribution of fortified peanut paste to millions of malnourished children through nonprofits like MANA Nutrition. In this case, the damage is done. In June, USAID withdrew its support.

    One of the most targeted programs is the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, the landmark, bipartisan Bush-era global AIDS relief effort that has saved more than 25 million lives since 2003. The plan has since become a cornerstone of American global health diplomacy — touted by Republicans and Democrats alike as a moral triumph.

    […] even PEPFAR is on the chopping block. Some Republicans lawmakers — aware of the program’s legacy and their own party’s role in creating it — have begun to raise concerns, but the question is whether that will be enough to save it.

    But there is even more at stake. The rescissions package would also cut $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund NPR and PBS through hundreds of local public TV and radio stations around the country.

    The Trump administration has cast this as striking a blow against liberals, but it’s actually the opposite. On Monday, Republican Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada and Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York issued a warning about the impact of cutting federal funds for public broadcasting, warning that “rescinding this funding would also isolate rural communities.”

    […] It is a damning reflection of this political moment that these cuts are coming as the president continues to spend tens of millions of dollars on a grotesquely expensive military parade to ostensibly celebrate him. This isn’t about fiscal responsibility. The $10.5 billion in savings from cuts to USAID and PBS does nothing to offset the additional $2.3 trillion Trump will add to our national deficit […]

    […] With Democrats expected to oppose the package, Republicans can only afford to lose three votes and still push the measure over the finish line.

    […] Every member of Congress who votes for this package is voting to turn temporary cruelty into permanent consequence. These are not just budget lines, but human lives. The toll this “deal-making” president has already inflicted is unthinkable. Let’s not cement it into our nation’s legacy.

  250. birgerjohansson says

    Phil Moorhouse 

    “We Have Tangible Benefits of Anti-Brexit Already”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=b7t-BxANlCc
    Populism- like, for instance Brexit, or the anti-immigration policies- never provide tangible benefits!
    The Tories still stand for a shameful, destructive policy

  251. StevoR says

    300 wickets to Pat Cummins now. (Bowling figures of 6 / 28 in Sth Af’s 1st inns.) Which will really upset those who hate him coz he’s too “woke” so another reason to cheer him on here. Yeah, unapologetic Aussie bias by me natch. True tho’too. ;-)

  252. StevoR says

    All the Madleen crew are now outta Israel according to the breaking news thingy scrollbar whatsamajiggitty thingy on the TV news. One of the SBS channels..(C35 aka SBS Worldwatch. Adelaide anyhow. FWIW.)

  254. Reginald Selkirk says

    US Navy backs right to repair after $13B carrier crew left half-fed by contractor-locked ovens

    US Navy Secretary John Phelan has told the Senate the service needs the right to repair its own gear, and will rethink how it writes contracts to keep control of intellectual property and ensure sailors can fix hardware, especially in a fight.

    Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Phelan cited the case of the USS Gerald R. Ford, America’s largest and most expensive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which carried a price tag of $13 billion. The ship was struggling to feed its crew of over 4,500 because six of its eight ovens were out of action, and sailors were barred by contract from fixing them themselves.

    “I am a huge supporter of right to repair,” Phelan told the politicians. “I went on the carrier; they had eight ovens — this is a ship that serves 15,300 meals a day. Only two were working. Six were out.”
    …

  256. birgerjohansson says

    Considering the Russians have spent months sending their troops down a funnel where they get hit by artillery and drones from both flanks -so only a remnant arrive at the actual front-, the officers despise their own troops on an even worse level than the Imperial Japanese Army high command.

  257. Reginald Selkirk says

    Sen. Alex Padilla is forcibly removed from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles

    Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., was forcibly removed from a news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday and briefly detained after trying to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

    “I am Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla said to Noem, which prompted several men to physically push him out of the room. It was unclear who the men were as several were dressed in plainclothes.

    Padilla’s office shared a video of the incident with NBC News. The video shows Padilla being taken into a hallway outside and pushed face forward onto the ground as officers with FBI-identifying vests told the senator to put his hands behind his back. The officers then handcuffed him.

    Padilla’s office said in a statement that Padilla was in L.A. to perform congressional oversight of the government’s operations in the city and across his state. The statement said that the senator is no longer detained.

    “He was in the federal building to receive a briefing with General Guillot and was listening to Secretary Noem’s press conference,” his office said. “He tried to ask the Secretary a question, and was forcibly removed by federal agents, forced to the ground and handcuffed. He is not currently detained, and we are working to get additional information.”

    DHS did not immediately return a request for comment.
    …

  259. Rob Grigjanis says

    Just watched a bit of the House vote on Trump’s bill (there’s only so much I can stand). When I stopped, about 30 Democrats had voted ‘yea’, about the same ‘nay’. WTF?

  260. says

    Senate Republicans disregard Billy Long’s record, confirm him as the next IRS commissioner

    “Republicans want to put a tax fraudster in charge of the IRS — and I wish that was just a figure of speech,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said.

    Related video hosted by Rachel Maddow is available at the link.

    Among the many issues that have plagued the Internal Revenue Service in recent months is the revolving door at the commissioner’s office: Over the last five months, the tax agency has had five different chiefs.

    As it happens, the sixth is likely to be the worst. CNBC reported:

    The Senate on Thursday confirmed Billy Long as the next IRS Commissioner, which could mark a shift for taxpayers amid sweeping agency cuts. Picked by President Donald Trump, the former Missouri Congressman’s nomination received mixed support from Washington and the tax community. But Senate Republicans confirmed Long via a party-line vote.

    The Missouri Republican was ultimately confirmed on a 53-44 vote. While three Senate Democrats missed the vote, their absences did not affect the outcome.

    […] it’s important to pause and note that Trump shouldn’t have chosen anyone to lead the IRS. When the president returned to power, the then-incumbent commissioner, Danny Werfel, had been appointed to a five-year term in 2022, and by all accounts, he wanted to keep his position — traditionally a “relatively nonpartisan management job” — until his term ended. Werfel was pushed out in an unprecedented move.

    Complicating matters further, Trump nominated Long despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that the former congressman repeatedly sponsored legislation to eliminate the agency that he’ll now lead.

    […] Long has a problematic record of peddling a pandemic-era tax credit that the IRS has warned was “a magnet for fraud.” Long’s record was so controversial that Senate Democrats suggested that he should face a criminal investigation.

    Shortly before the confirmation vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered remarks on the chamber floor in which he said, “Senate Republicans want to put a tax fraudster in charge of the IRS — and I wish that was just a figure of speech. … To have a tax fraudster and a swindler like Mr. Long in charge of the IRS is abominable. It shows that the only thing Donald Trump cares about is helping cheaters and liars get ahead, while leaving honest hardworking families in the dust.”

    The New York Democrat added, “Long had no expertise in tax policy while in Congress, and after he left office, he joined the tax scam industry. In one instance, Mr. Long was paid over $60,000 by firms that sold totally fabricated tax credits to investors and small businesses. […] This is rank corruption.”

    […] The anti-IRS former congressman will arrive at the agency that’s currently dealing with DOGE-driven disruptions, the abandonment of a much-needed modernization initiative and allegations that the administration is preparing to politicize the agency’s criminal division.

    And in case it seemed this story couldn’t get even worse, the president also appears to be eager to sic the IRS on his perceived political foes […]

    Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts recently told Long, “You shouldn’t be within a thousand miles of the directorship of the IRS.” Soon after, 53 Senate Republicans came to the opposite conclusion.

  263. says

    Is the Justice Department seriously pursuing Trump’s ‘paid protesters’ conspiracy theory?

    “That Trump is leaning into his “paid protesters” conspiracy theory is a problem. If officials are investigating the claims, that makes it worse.”

    For nearly a decade, Donald Trump has tried to reject the legitimacy of those who protest against him, falsely accusing them of being “paid protesters.” […]

    Those who side with Republicans are real, the argument goes, while Americans who disagree must be seen as inauthentic.

    As aggressive tactics from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents spark a public backlash, the president has leaned into the “paid protesters” line with increased vigor and enthusiasm. Trump pushed the line during his remarks to U.S. troops at Fort Bragg this week — he claimed that an unnamed, nefarious person is secretly “financing” the protests in Los Angeles, for example — and echoed the evidence-free claim to reporters at Andrews Air Force base soon after. He repeated the line again at the Kennedy Center a day later.

    When a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt who, exactly, the president believes is paying the protesters, instead of answering the question, she claimed that Trump has “a lot of common sense” — despite the fact that his conspiracy theory is neither common nor sensible.

    But even more interesting were the comments from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard during her recent Fox News appearance. [video]

    “This is something that the Department of Justice and the FBI are looking into. Who is funding these protestors?” the DNI asked rhetorically. Gabbard added that she believes that protesters are “obviously” being “orchestrated.”

    For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that it’s not at all “obvious” that a secret rascal is putting up enormous amounts of money to pay people to protest against the president and his agenda. Given the scope of the public outrage, the idea that the protesters — in L.A. and in cities across the country — are being paid is plainly silly.

    But I’m wondering if Gabbard is correct about what federal law enforcement is “looking into.”

    Just because the DNI claimed that Trump’s conspiracy theory is generating Justice Department and FBI scrutiny doesn’t mean that it’s actually happening. Gabbard says all sorts of things that have little bearing on reality, so it’s best not to make any assumptions.

    […] there’s a larger pattern to consider. The New York Times reported this week that top officials at the DOJ and the FBI are scrambling to keep up with Trump priorities that are “rooted in misinformation and conspiracy theories.” The article added that Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino are now “running what amounts to a conspiracy theory fulfillment center […]”

    With this in mind, Gabbard’s claims might’ve sounded outlandish, but they might very well have been right.

  264. says

    Partway through Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia focused attention on an underappreciated story: just how weak the U.S. economy has been since Donald Trump returned to power. [video]

    BEYER: Isn’t this embarrassing?

    BESSENT: You seem not to have seen the economic data. GDP growth has been quite substantial

    BEYER: GDP growth is half what it was last year, sir

    BESSENT: Job growth is solid

    BEYER: Job growth is a third what it was last year, sir

    […] Some political debates are subjective and deal with gray areas; this is not one of them. Bessent referenced the gross domestic product, for example, which broadly reflects economic growth. That was a poor choice: The GDP shrank in the first quarter of 2025, marking the worst quarter for the U.S. economy in three years.

    What’s more, Bessent told Beyer more than once that American job growth is “solid.” What he neglected to mention is the truth: Over the first five months of 2025, the U.S. economy — according to the Trump administration’s own data — has added 619,000 jobs. That’s not awful, but over the first five months of 2024 (when Trump said the economy was terrible) the total was 898,000 jobs.

    In fact, if we exclude 2020, when the pandemic wreaked havoc on the economy, the first five months of this year are the worst since the Great Recession. That’s not a matter of opinion; it’s simply what the arithmetic shows.

    […] not only did Bessent pretend the bad news is good, leading to a rather brutal real-time fact-check from Beyer, but Trump has spent recent weeks acting like a cheerleader who’s pretending his team isn’t losing.

    Last week, for example, confronted with the worst job growth in 16 years, the president wrote to his social media platform, “GREAT JOB NUMBERS.” Earlier in the week, he added that “our Economy is BOOMING!”

    I wish that were true, but the evidence clearly suggests otherwise.

    Link

    Trump and Bessent are running a gaslighting/propaganda operation.

  265. Reginald Selkirk says

    Google, AWS, Cloudflare Among Popular Services Hit By Widespread Outage

    Multiple popular services — including Google, Google Cloud, AWS, Spotify, Discord, Cloudflare, Google Nest, Azure, Box and Shopify — are experiencing at least a partial outage globally that began around 2:25pm ET Friday, according to user complaints with reports flooding in across social media and outage tracking sites. Cloudflare has confirmed ongoing issues that started within the past hour. It remains unclear what prompted the outage.

    More details to follow.

  266. says

    In a recent interview, California Gov. Gavin Newsom took a swing at President Donald Trump, claiming that he’s slipping—not just in the polls, but also mentally.

    “He’s lost it,” Newsom told Fox 11 Los Angeles. “He is not the same person that I dealt with just four years ago, and he’s incapable of even a train of thought.” [Video]

    […] Newsom didn’t hold back, calling out Trump—who plans to celebrate his 79th birthday on Saturday with a flashy military parade—for showing signs that he’s not up for the job.

    The jabs mark a sharp escalation in their ongoing feud, which has intensified over the past week amid Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in response to protests against ICE. Newsom has openly mocked Trump’s verbal flubs and apparent confusion over basic facts, casting him as unfit and out of touch.

    “Trump doesn’t even know what day it is,” Newsom wrote on X after Trump claimed that they spoke on Monday when their call had actually happened two days earlier. […]

    In interview after interview, Newsom has been working overtime to paint Trump as mentally unwell. On The New York Times’ podcast “The Daily,” Newsom said that Trump started making up things he supposedly told him on that call—and then seemed to believe them.

    “[He] starts making up all these things he claimed he told me about, which honestly starts to disturb me on a different level,” Newsom said. “Maybe he actually believed he said those things, and he’s not all there. I mean that.”

    […] Trump’s recent gaffes haven’t gone unnoticed.

    He’s confused Nissan with Nippon Steel. He’s also repeatedly mixed up names […]

    While Biden’s stumbles have dominated headlines, Trump has mostly evaded sustained criticism over his mental sharpness, despite speeches that sometimes veer into the surreal. [embedded links available at the main link]

    […] We can’t just fact check the lies; we must call out the incoherence behind them.

    Link

  267. says

    Vance secretly meets with Fox News owners amid network’s LA protest lies

    Vice President JD Vance secretly met with the owners of the right-wing Fox News channel on Tuesday, right as the network has been pushing lies and propaganda about the protests against abusive immigration raids in Los Angeles.

    The Associated Press reports that Vance flew to Montana and met with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan Murdoch (who runs Fox News and the Fox Corporation media empire day-to-day), and other Fox News executives.

    […] Fox News has for years been at the forefront of right-wing propaganda popularizing false narratives of crimes caused by migrants. In recent days, the network has promoted lies meant to justify Trump’s military action while misleadingly emphasizing the level of violence at protests in LA.

    For instance, Fox promoted Trump’s false narrative about the content of his phone call last Friday with California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom made it clear that Trump never brought up deploying the National Guard, but then Fox and Trump both pushed the lie alleging that Newsom said there was never a phone call between the two men.

    Fox is also pushing hate and conspiracies about protesters, with hosts describing them as “ungrateful children of immigrants.” [I really dislike it when they push that “ungrateful” line.] When Newsom addressed the nation to call out Trump’s invasion, Fox led the right-wing media response, lambasting the governor.

    […] Trump’s current leadership is packed to the gills with ex-Fox News staffers, from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and most recently in the guise of interim U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro. Trump administration figures like Attorney General Pam Bondi (a former Fox News employee as well) appears more often on Fox News than in any other setting, constantly pushing pro-administration falsehoods and narratives.

    From time to time, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has offered slight criticisms of Trump, particularly in relation to his destructive tariff policies. In response, he called the paper “rotten” and “China-oriented,” and even called for the editorial staff to be replaced.

    But the meeting with Vance shows that there are still close bonds at the highest levels between the two camps. […]

    Fox even paid out a settlement of $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems after they pushed pro-Trump lies after the 2020 election, and it hasn’t seriously shaken their unholy alliance. Fox and Trump are in this together for the long haul, and Vance’s conveniently timed junket is a reminder of that.

  268. says

    Good News:

    […] In a shocking and surprising turn, which Democratic Party Election Attorney Marc Elias called a “blockbuster ruling” […] the ultra-conservative Georgia Supreme Court just dealt a huge blow to [Trump] and the GOP. The court unanimously struck down four extremist rules that were adopted by the Georgia State Election Board.

    According to the Associated Press, the four rules that were overturned by the court were:
    – The requirement that ballots be hand-counted to slow down vote counting processes.
    – Requiring voters to provide a signature and a photo ID when dropping off absentee ballots.
    – Election board members being allowed to conduct a so-called “reasonable inquiry” prior to certifying results.
    – Election board members being granted access to documents related to elections.

    This is a huge win for Georgia voters, and perhaps voters across the nation as a whole. Keep in mind that the Georgia Supreme Court is overwhelmingly Republican.

    Since this is a state Supreme Court ruling, this is quite unlikely to go to SCOTUS.

    I am keeping my fingers crossed that democracy and the rule of law prevail in America.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/11/2327439/-Great-news-out-of-Georgia

  269. Rob Grigjanis says

    Re #259: Never mind. I think that was a vote on something else. The vote on the Trump bill is coming up. I’ll leave comments to those who can stomach the rancid bullshit.

  270. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/dear-leader-booed-at-his-favorite

    “Dear Leader Booed At His Favorite Musical, The Plot Of Which He Does Not Understand”

    Last night in America, it was time to go to the theater for Donald Trump, for his vice president JD Vance, their wives […] [JD Vance’s social media posts: “About to see Les Miserables with POTUS at the Kennedy Center. Me to Usha [his wife]: so what’s this about? A barber who kills people? Usha; (hysterical laughter). That’s apparently a different thing called “Sweeney Todd”]

    Wow, we sure are glad the vice president doesn’t know what musicals are, that would be a masculinity breach […]

    So yes, Trump and JD Vance and the rest of them went to the Kennedy Center to see Les Misérables. Remember what happened last time JD Vance went to the theater? How he was mercilessly booed by all his fellow theater-goers, who hated him?

    Well, it happened again. Bigly, and far more than when it was just JD.

    The Daily Beast reports that the audience booed them from the second they emerged in their box. There were some cheers, of course, because human Trump therapy dogs like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Ric Grenell and Pam Bondi and Laura Loomer were also in the audience, and […] they brought other MAGA therapy dogs from the administration with them. Those people did not boo the Trumps. They broke into a chant of “U-S-A!” […]

    Can you imagine what this would have sounded like if Trump and JD Vance hadn’t packed the house with friendlies? [Video]

    But yeah, the boos at the beginning there, that’s some ASMR for you.

    As has been discussed many times, Les Misérables is Donald Trump’s favorite, though as many have noted, there is no way Trump actually understands the plot. [The musical is a source for anthems that protestors use.]

    If he did, he might have demanded as part of his stolen chairmanship of the Kennedy Center that he and Melania get to play the Thénardiers, at least for one night, since they’re made for it. (Remember when he fantasized that as a child he had “aptitude” for music? […] [video]

    As it is, we’re sure the show was fine. Of course, a number of the cast members didn’t participate, because the production gave them the choice to fuck off and refuse to perform for that human garbage. It was earlier reported that 10 or 12 cast members were like nope fuck off. But we’re sure all the understudies were great! […]

    Trump reportedly really loves the song “Do You Hear The People Sing?” People magazine runs down Trump’s history of misusing the revolutionary anthem he doesn’t understand:

    In February, the U.S. Army Chorus performed the musical’s protest anthem, “Do You Hear the People Sing?,” at the 2025 White House Governors Ball.

    He also incorporated the song into his 2016 and 2024 presidential campaigns, with The Guardian reporting in 2022 that the politician “bizarrely” blasted the song ahead of announcing his 2024 candidacy. Many see the president’s admiration for the song as an odd choice, given that the lyrics are sung from the point of view of French revolutionaries standing up against a powerful and corrupt ruling class.

    The lyrics include, “Do you hear the people sing? / Singing the song of angry men?/ It is the music of the people / Who will not be slaves again!”

    After Trump used the song in 2016, producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh and the co-creators of Les Mis released a joint statement to express their disapproval that he was using the musical to bolster his political agenda.

    “The authors of Les Misérables were not asked for permission and did not authorise or endorse usage of ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ at last [week’s] Trump rally in Miami, and have never done so for any of the songs from the musical for this or any other political event,” they wrote, per The Guardian. […]

    Well, Trump may not understand it — maybe it just has a really great beat for his […] dance — but we think it’s a great theme song for the protesters in Los Angeles and the millions who will come out to ruin Trump’s birthday this weekend for the “No Kings” protests, and every other patriotic American […]

    Let’s be clear: The rest of us do understand the plot. [video]

  271. says

    Drama:

    Oh boy, the right-wing conspiracy theorists have a new enemy on their list today, and it is the pinko communists of WALMART!

    Walton heiress Christy Walton, worth an estimated $5 billion-ish, took out a full-page ad in the New York Times on Sunday supporting No Kings protests.

    USA, USA, USA
    NO KINGS
    JUNE 14
    MOBILIZE

    WE are a people with principle and honor.
    WE honor our commitments and stand by our allies.
    WE defend against aggression by dictators.
    WE uphold and defend the Constitution.
    WE care for veterans and children.
    WE respect our neighbors and trading partners.
    WE support a healthy national and international economy, community and environment.
    WE are the world leader trusted to uphold the stability and rule of law.

    We are the people of the United States of America. The honor, dignity and integrity of our country are not for sale. Our government is of the people, by the people, for the people.

    Paid for by Christy Walton
    4honor.integrity@gmail.com
    The views represented here are solely by Christy Walton.

    In a normal world, these views would not even be vaguely controversial.

    And Christy Walton, like it says right there in the disclaimer, does not represent the views of Walmart. Christy Walton is not on the board of Walmart, and never has been, though she owns an estimated 1.9 percent stake she inherited after her husband John, one of the four children of Walmart founder Sam, died in a plane crash in 2005.

    But QMAGA has declared her sentiments INSANE, and surely represent the views of Walmart, and probably they are mailing out human children now.

    Loser Kari Lake boosted a post, !! INSANE, asking, “Do you shop at Walmart?” [social media post]

    And Roger Stone chimed in:

    Boycott Walmart! The Walmart Heiress subsidizes insurrection. Next up peaceful protest outside all of their stores to encourage people not to shop there. Essentially what left-wing stooges did to Tesla. Let’s go.

    DO IT, ROGER! Get out there in your Judge Doom from Roger Rabbit glasses and hobble-march around your stringy ass, instead of hiding out in the back of a limo or hotel room like you did on January 6. We would love to see it! Get Rudy Giuliani and his Pomeranian out there too, they could use the exercise!

    Anyway, conspiracy theorists picked up the scent, and naturally concluded that Walmart dot com is selling living, white, eight-year-old human children. [social media post] “Child trafficking hiding in plain site [sic],” chimed in commenters. “That’s the price of a little white girl, obviously.” “Let’s buy them and rescue these kids!!!” [Wow! That is definitely far out there on the fringes of whacko conspiracy theories.]

    The dress on Walmart’s site is right there on sale for $5.99, the word “white” does not appear, it comes in multiple sizes, and you cannot buy human children at Walmart dot com […] There are some strangely high-priced dresses on there, it’s true, sometimes weirdly high-priced listings are from a third-party seller trying to keep a product listing active even though an item is out of stock, or sometimes it is bots or algorithms gone wild. But weird how of all the possible explanations in the world, the Qnuts jump to something about selling white children.

    […] But here is a much better tale. The enwokening of Christy Walton!

    Following her husband’s death 20 years ago, our billionairess led a quiet and low-key life in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, raising one son, Lukas, who she claims was once cured of kidney cancer by a plant-based diet. She never remarried, and seems to have rarely appeared in public and given few interviews, once to publicize a film she produced, an adaptation of the book Bless Me, Ultima. [video]

    “We are a fear-based society,” she told the LA Times. “I’d like that to change to a faith-based society.”

    And she gave an interview last June about her interest in aquaculture.

    And, she has donated lots to charities. Condé Nast Portfolio magazine’s The Giving Index in 2023 ranked her top female philanthropist, based on the amount given as a percentage of her wealth. Most of it went to education, through the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation. And she’s also given to The San Diego Natural History Museum and is a board member, and the San Diego Zoological Society, the Mingei International Museum, and the World Mosquito Program.

    And she’s donated to politicians, all the way back to giving Bill Clinton a couple thousand in the ‘90s. Her shifting list of donations since is a fascinating peer into someone’s brain! Bill apparently did not inspire her; for years after that donation she went on to support dozens of Republican candidates and committees. But then in 2006, there’s a whiff of a shift: She gave $20,000 to Planned Parenthood, and made a donation to Republicans for Choice. And then she donated to Barack Obama. Was she getting woke? Nope, not yet! She kept on donating to dozens of Republican candidates and committees for years, including Herman Cain (RIP) and Scott Walker in 2011. But she increased her donations to Planned Parenthood during the same time. It’s a puzzle.

    But then in May of 2018, some kind of state of Trump disgust appears to have set in, and her donations made a sharp leftward shift. She gave $365,000 to the Lincoln Project, hundreds of thousands to the Democrat-supporting Shared Purpose PAC, and made donations to the likes of Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, John Hickenlooper, and Pete Buttigieg, and even $25,000 to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, HALLELUJAH!

    Still, she seemed to hold out hope for the Republicans. Post-January 6 she donated to Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, and “moderate” Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. And though she never donated to Joe Biden, last September she hosted a lunch fundraiser for Harris.

    Come on Christy, fully embrace the enwokening now! Let it run through you!

    And get some security, because these haters are NUTS.

    Over in the swillpit that is X, “Libs of Chicago” boosted a call to target Walton, in between advocating for protestors to get run over and shot. “One of the ppl funding the socialist movement is Christy Ruth Walton who is a stake holder [sic] of Walmart.” And X commenters flocked to Walmart’s feed posting abuse, and repeating claims that Walmart is funding the LA protests. The proof, somebody was handing out face shields, and guess who sells face shields?!

    WALMART. [social media post]

    Between this and the ever-changing moods of Trump’s tariffs driving up prices, it’s tough times for America’s biggest big-box. And MAGA is really running out of things to boycott. You can’t buy everything at a Bass Pro Shop or Hobby Lobby, so where are they going to go shop now, […] Maybe by Friday they will have forgotten the whole thing.

    Anyway, good on ya, Christy Walton. Thanks for standing up for real American values, even though it drew a Target-sized target on your back.

    Doing the right thing is rarely easy! […]

  272. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/hype-lies-and-ai-slop-are-exactly

    MAGAworld is not a place for subtlety. Anyone who lacks legal documentation is a criminal, and probably a killer. Airplanes crash because of diversity (so do ships and trains). And every protest is a riot that includes looting and burning on a massive scale, and must be put down forcefully, ideally by the military. (Except for the January 6 insurrection, which was a peaceful tour of the Capitol.)

    And if a Democratic senator tries to ask Homeland Paranoia Secretary Kristi Noem a question at a press conference, that too is a riot. Just ask Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California), who was surrounded by toughs and removed from the room where Gestapo Barbie was promising the feds will stay in LA to “liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country and this city.” […]

    Padilla wasn’t arrested or detained, at least not yet. But once he was hustled from the room, they forced him to the ground and handcuffed him. Wow, he sure was un-American, interrupting Great Leader’s chosen enforcer like that. [video at the link]

    […] the fairly limited but still dramatic-for-TV property damage — has been limited to several blocks in downtown LA, around federal buildings, courthouses, police headquarters, as well as on roads, particularly a section of freeway near an immigration detention facility. […]

    Nonetheless, rightwing media and social media keep repeating the same images from Los Angeles, because with enough repetition, they suggest widespread devastation. Two scenes get much of the attention: 1) rioters throwing chunks of concrete and other detritus on police cars from an overpass (that’s dangerous!), and 2) those five burning Waymo robotaxis, usually with Bad Dudes waving Mexico’s flag and standing atop one of the graffiti-covered hulks (that’s awesome!). Especially the latter images, because flames and foreign invasion!!! Come in here, dear reader, have a montage, we’re gonna go large: [Images at the link]

    All you need to do is post photos of the same scene from a whole bunch of angles, and obviously the entire city of LA is burning down, and HOW DARE you claim the protests are mostly peaceful? Also, the robotaxis were EVs, so that also proves everyone on The Left is a hypocrite about climate change! No, we won’t try to explain that one. [social media post]

    But with actual riot carnage in short supply, wingnuts have also been going to the well of previous disorders, reposting images from 2020 and even the 1992 riots following the acquittal of the cops who beat Rodney King nearly to death. [FFS! old images!] [Images at the link]

    And of course, thanks to the very AI programs that I no longer abuse here (sorry), there’s now all sorts of AI slop to add to the mix, like a really cheesy AI video of a “protester” who explains why he’s out on the streets of virtual LA, even though he doesn’t exist: “I don’t know, I was paid to be here, and I just want to destroy stuff,” the computer-generated rioter says. Whether it’s fooling anyone is open to question. Probably some, but the replies on Twitter make clear that even if they recognize the video is fake, Trumpers like it because it expresses the ‘“truth,” for them: The protests are mostly just paid demonstrators performing for the cameras anyway, because Donald Trump is perfect and nobody really disagrees with him.

    But the AI LA protesters aren’t only a bunch of fakes, paid chaos agents who believe in nothing. They are simultaneously very real and dangerous, and so ubiquitous that they’re destroying most of Los Angeles, which is IN FLAMES as zombie hordes come for YOU (while the Moon prepares to crash to Earth, too): [video at the link]

    We also found a similar header image to another Rumble video, which weirdly warned viewers not to believe everything they see on social media. You know, like this header image on the video, depicting the entire city on fire as a blobby AI helicopter hovers above the chaos. [video at the link]

    We were especially impressed by this humble Rumble bumble, which uses a mix of stock footage and AI images to tell us that the media is “gaslighting” us about the reality of what’s happening in LA. [video at the link]

    Hilariously, many of the same people congratulating the guy who posted the fake AI video posted, as proof that LA is full of paid protesters, images of a June 5 Craigslist ad that claimed someone was “Looking for the toughest badasses in the city (los angeles)” and “Seeking extremely tough, brave men for new crew I’m building.” See? The rioters were all paid! Except of course the ad was posted by an online prank show, so the hosts could call people who answered and make fun of them, haha! That’s been followed by videos of at least two different guys on TikTok claiming they were paid to protest against ICE, or at least offered money to do so.

    […] These misleading AI videos are the perfect medium for our rage-bait driven society, where people willingly interact with content deliberately created to upset them. It’s the reality of tribalism in 2025: Anger generates clicks, and clicks spread the word.

    […] those radicalized by rage-bait live in an impenetrable echo chamber that seems real because of a proliferation of fake scenes.

    […] Finally, all that AI glop reminded us of a simpler time, a still-insane but hand-crafted time, when the NRA made a post-Katrina comic book in 2006 to warn the world about George Soros and Hillary Clinton and all the very bad brown people who want to take your guns away and burn down civilization, and we remembered this illustration of why good white families need to be heavily armed. Not much has changed since then, huh? [Image at the link]

    Our only hope is that the hairy-legged radfem environmentalist chick and her animal terrorist friends — Murder Wolf, Rampage Cow, Looter Pig, Antifa Chicken, Vexatious Lobster, and Bomb Owl — will come to save us. [image at the link]
    […]

  273. says

    Washington Post link

    “House approves DOGE-inspired cuts to foreign aid, PBS, NPR”
    Updated June 12, 2025 at 4:52 p.m. EDT10 min ago

    The House narrowly approved legislation Thursday to cancel more than $9 billion in funding for global health and for public radio and TV stations, sending the measure that would codify a narrow slice of U.S. DOGE Service cuts to the GOP-controlled Senate. It could be the first in a series of similar rescission packages. […]

  276. says

    NBC News:

    President Donald Trump signed three resolutions on Thursday barring California from mandating electric vehicle sales and setting tailpipe emissions standards designed to galvanize the transition away from combustion engines.

  277. says

    Wall Street Journal:

    A key supplier to Nissan and Jeep owner Stellantis filed for bankruptcy protection, marking one of the first big companies to collapse under the weight of the Trump administration’s tariffs.

  278. says

    NBC News: Russia is amplifying conspiracy theories about the L.A. protests

    “Pro-Russian accounts are spreading baseless claims, from Mexico fomenting the protests to a secret leftist cabal tied to Democrats orchestrating them.”

    Protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles have triggered a flood of falsehoods and conspiracy theories online, and Russia has sought to exploit and amplify them […]

    Russian media and pro-Russian voices have embraced right-wing conspiracy theories about the protests, including one that alleged the Mexican government was encouraging the demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Mexico has strongly rejected the accusation — which was repeated by Trump’s chief of homeland security — as utterly false.

    […] Right-wing American voices online are pushing the idea that the protests in Los Angeles are not what they appear and that a secret, leftist cabal tied to Democratic politicians and the billionaire philanthropist George Soros is orchestrating unrest […]

    “We are following a playbook that we’ve followed many times before. We’re seeing a lot of the same tropes, even a lot of the same exact conspiracy theories that we’ve seen circulate around previous protests,” said Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University who studies social media disinformation. There were echoes of how falsehoods spread during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, he said.

    […] Right-wing users have posted baseless assertions that the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, has ties to the CIA and is orchestrating protests to oust Trump. “Bass is a political warlord. She’s utilizing her expertise to encourage these riots—to try to topple Trump & you,” wrote conservative podcast host Liz Wheeler on a post on X.

    […] “I liken it to the aftermath of Milton and Helene last year,” Ayad [Moustafa Ayad of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international nonprofit that focuses on “safeguarding democracy] said. “We have a crisis or a conflict point that is occurring, and there are numerous narratives that are being spread online that the government is somehow involved in the protests, paying protesters, or this is a deep-state plot against the United States by the CIA and other government actors,” Ayad said.

    […] Baseless claims of Mexico fomenting violence

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday repeated baseless assertions online that the Mexican government was encouraging violent protests. [!!] Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, quickly responded, rejecting the accusation as “absolutely false” but saying she was confident that the “misunderstanding will be cleared up.”

    […] Conservative and pro-Russian social media accounts cited an outdated video of the Mexican president as the basis for their claims she was fomenting protests in Los Angeles, according to NewsGuard, a fact-checking website. The video was taken from a press conference on May 24, nearly two weeks before the start of the L.A. protests.

    The Mexican president’s remarks were taken out of context. Sheinbaum was referring to a proposed tax by the Trump administration on any income earned by Mexican immigrants that is sent on to their families in Mexico. She criticized the proposal and said at the time: “If necessary, we’ll mobilize” against the tax. [Facts!]

    Conservative commentator Benny Johnson then posted the May 24 clip of Sheinbaum after protests began last week in Los Angeles and wrote that she was calling for protests in the United States. [Lies!] The post has received 6.7 million views. [!] At a news conference on Monday, Sheinbaum made clear her government opposes any violence associated with protests. “We do not agree with violent actions as a form of protest.”

    An opportunity for Russia

    Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, said Russia’s information operations online were embracing pro-Trump portrayals of the protests as a leftist violent assault.

    “Russia is in effect cheering on Trump’s response and suggesting that it’s warranted,” Schafer said. “They have certainly intimated that these protests are being staged or funded by the radical left.” [!!]

    Russian news outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted a Russian blogger in L.A. saying the protesters were not migrants but “militants” who arrived on buses. [Lies] Russian nationalist commentator Alexander Dugin wrote on X that the protests were an insurrection, a “nationwide conspiracy of liberals against not only Trump but against American people in general.” [Lies]

    Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer dubbed the “Merchant of Death” by U.S. and British authorities who was released in a prisoner exchange in 2022 after spending 11 years behind bars in the United States, also weighed in on the protests. […]with Bout claiming the L.A. protests were highly organized.

    Pravda also quoted Sergei Markov, a former adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying the United States was in the middle of a “civil war” pitting coastal states against interior states. [Lies]

    Sputnik reposted a viral image of a pallet of bricks, asking why it was near the protest sites. But fact-checkers at Lead Stories geolocated the photo to a construction site about 3,000 miles away, in New Jersey. [!!]

    Beijing accuses Washington of hypocrisy

    China, however, was taking a different tack. Instead of leaning into pro-Trump narratives and repeating right-wing conspiracy theories, Beijing portrayed America as a country in turmoil. Chinese media and pro-China voices argued the American government’s response to protests in Los Angeles was “heavy-handed and therefore hypocritical” in light of Washington’s criticisms of other countries’ treatment of dissent, according to Schafer. […]

  279. says

    NPR:

    States with permissive gun laws experienced a rise in pediatric deaths from firearm injuries between 2011 and 2023, whereas states with stricter laws did not. That’s according to a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics.

  281. says

    Trump thinks ‘windmills are killing our country’—yes, really

    Trump launched into yet another bizarre rant against windmills at the White House on Thursday, beginning with the claim, “The windmills are killing our country, by the way.”

    It only got more bonkers from there.

    Trump signed a series of joint resolutions rolling back California’s electric vehicle initiatives, which aimed to phase out gas-powered cars by 2035, and used the moment to attack renewable energy too. […]

    While Trump’s feelings on electric vehicles seem to wax and wane depending on the state of his relationship with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, he has been consistent in his absolute revulsion for windmills.

    “The fields are littered with them—junk. They’re littered with them,” he babbled. “And they get older, and they get rusty, and they get bad, and they get—this is in other countries also—it’s the greatest scam in history,” Trump said.

    But he was just getting warmed up.

    “They’re ugly,” he added, veering into a rambling anecdote about a friend who allegedly delayed visiting his ailing mother because he was so distressed by the sight of windmills dotting the skyline near his childhood home in Minnesota. [video]

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on Thursday that the state would sue the Trump administration in response to the latest maneuvers.

    “The President’s divisive, partisan agenda is jeopardizing our lives, our economy and our environment,” Bonta said. “It’s reckless, it’s illegal, and because of it, we’ll be seeing the Trump administration in court again for the 26th time.”

    […] Trump’s anger toward windmills has reached almost elemental proportions.

    “The wind, the wind, the wind is, the wind is bullshit” he declared at a rally in October 2024.

    In April, Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum halted construction on a multibillion-dollar offshore wind farm that was projected to power more than 500,000 homes in New York. The move appeared aimed at coercing Gov. Kathy Hochul into reopening the Constitution natural gas pipeline, which was shut down in 2020.

    Trump’s war on clean energy is a political power move to protect wealthy fossil fuel and car companies—and we all will pay the price.

  282. says

    Watch Elizabeth Warren grill the hell out of snobby treasury secretary

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, and—much like his embarrassing testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee the day before—it was rough.

    “Why is the national debt so very important that you’re trying to kick 16 million people off their health insurance, but increasing the national debt doesn’t seem to matter if you’re cutting taxes for billionaires and billionaire corporations?” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts asked Bessent, who dodged the question by trying to parse the number of people losing Medicaid.

    “​​So you don’t want to answer the question,” Warren responded.

    Bessent then claimed that the proposed budget cuts to Medicaid targeted millions of “illegal aliens” who are receiving benefits, which is false. [Yep, a big lie.] While certain groups, including children of immigrants, are eligible to receive Medicaid, undocumented immigrants are not.

    “Medicaid is not used for people who are not documented,” Warren shot back, turning her attention to the committee chair to highlight the ethics behind Bessent’s approach to addressing the national deficit.

    “I just want to say here, the part that troubles me the most is that the secretary is deeply worried about the deficit and is willing to knock 16 million, or, he says, ‘merely 11 million people’ off their health care, matters so much. But it doesn’t matter so much if you’re cutting taxes for billionaires. Then it’s okay to run up a big deficit. I think that’s wrong,” she said. [video]
    […]

  283. Reginald Selkirk says

    Leaders should ignore Trump outbursts at G7 summit: Former PM Chretien

    Former prime minister Jean Chretien says dignitaries attending next week’s G7 leaders summit in Alberta should avoid engaging with the “crazy” from U.S. President Donald Trump.

    Chretien, speaking Thursday at a conference in Calgary, said leaders can’t predict what Trump might do, but said Trump can be a bully and it would be best if the rest of the G7 leaders ignored any outbursts.

    “If he has decided to make a show to be in the news, he will do something crazy,” he said. “Let him do it and keep talking normally.” …

  284. birgerjohansson says

    Lynna , OM @ 281
    The post below ties in with your post.

    Farron Cousins:
    “Trump’s Mental Problems Are Growing Out Of Control”

    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=JrPBhz-xIds
    Example: Trump has said – on two separate occasions – that you can fly from one part of California to another for just 2 (!) dollars.

  285. Reginald Selkirk says

    @244

    Prosecutors say Republican South Carolina lawmaker used ‘joebidennnn69’ to send child sex material

    A Republican member of the South Carolina House who prosecutors say used the screen name “joebidennnn69” has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of distributing sexual abuse material involving children.

    RJ May was arrested at his Lexington County home after a lengthy investigation and was ordered Thursday by a federal judge to remain jailed until his trial.

    The three-term Republican is accused of using “joebidennnn69” to exchange 220 different files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts on the Kik social media network for about five days in spring 2024, according to court documents that graphically detailed the videos.

    Each charge carries a five-to-20 year prison sentence upon conviction and prosecutors suggested May could spend over a decade in prison if found guilty.

    The files were uploaded and downloaded using May’s home Wi-Fi network and his cellphone, prosecutors said. Some were hidden by the use of a private network but others were directly linked to his internet addresses…

    Prosecutors said they also investigated whether May used a fake name to travel to Colombia three times after finding videos on his laptop of him allegedly having sex with three women. An agent from the Department of Homeland Security testified the women appeared to be underage and were paid. U.S. agents have not been able to locate the women.

    Prosecutors said May created a Facebook account with his fake name and his internet history showed him switching between his real account and the fake one and even searching his primary opponent from the fake login.

    Phillips, May’s lawyer, told the courtroom that no sexual images of toddlers or young children were found directly on his laptop or cellphone…

  286. Reginald Selkirk says

    @257, 272 RE: Sen. Padilla

    “Manhandling” Of California Sen. Alex Padilla By Federal Agents In L.A. Puts Trump Team In Spin Mode – Update

    …
    In typical Trump administration fashion, Noem took to the safe space of Fox News to offer justification for the incident with Padilla.

    “Nobody knew who he was when he came into the room, creating a scene,” Noem told Fox’s Martha MacCallum in live counterprogramming to Padilla’s speaking to the media.
    …
    It should be noted that Padilla was identifying himself as a senator as the widely circulated video of the incident confirms. Noem has also met and interacted with Padilla on numerous occasions, especially since the former South Dakota governor was appointed to run DHS…

  287. Reginald Selkirk says

    @270

    Trump Cuts Off Melania’s Kennedy Center Red Carpet Cameo

    … Her husband was questioned about which Les Misérables main character he identified with more–Jean Valjean or Inspector Javert?

    Jean Valjean is a former convict who spends a lifetime seeking redemption and fighting for the poor and needy, Javert is a strict cop determined to enforce France’s brutal penal codes.

    The president, clearly thrown, stalled by saying, “That’s a tough one, the last part of that question that’s tough.” …

    (includes video of that exchange)

  289. Reginald Selkirk says

    Illinois officials investigate license-plate data shared with police seeking woman who had abortion

    The Illinois secretary of state on Thursday asked for an investigation into a suburban Chicago police department after learning that it violated state law by sharing data from automatic license-plate readers with a Texas sheriff seeking a woman who had an abortion.

    Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias asked the attorney general to review the matter. He also is creating an audit system to ensure police departments don’t run afoul of a 2023 law banning the distribution of license-plate data to track women seeking abortions or to find undocumented immigrants.
    …

  292. Reginald Selkirk says

    Jeffries all but dares Texas GOP to redraw district lines: ‘Careful what you wish for’

    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) sees a potential path to a Democratic majority in an unlikely place: deep-red Texas.

    The White House is reportedly pressing Texas Republicans to redraw the lines for U.S. House districts to help Republicans keep hold of their razor-thin majority in next year’s midterm elections.

    Jeffries, who is already forecasting that Democrats will flip control of the chamber, said the Texas districts are already so gerrymandered in the Republicans’ favor that tweaking the lines might actually play to the Democrats’ advantage by making a handful of safe GOP seats more competitive. He put the number between four and six.

    “A lot of Democrats that we’ve talked to from Texas [have] actually come to the conclusion, based on the fact that the map is already gerrymandered at its height, that they could open up four to six swing seat opportunities that don’t exist right now for Democrats,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol.
    …

  293. says

    Followup of sorts to Reginald @286.

    Josh Marshall:

    I was driving when this afternoon’s events in Los Angeles took place. So I didn’t know about them in real time and only found out what had happened a couple hours later. […] Secretary Noem is now claiming that she, along with everyone else there, didn’t even know who Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was. This is even more absurd than you might imagine. The press conference was in Los Angeles and he’s one of the state’s two senators. More than that, he’s the ranking member of the Judiciary subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration. Of course she knows who he is. If she doesn’t remember his face, she’s an even dumber degenerate punk than I already thought.

    […] Noem said […] in her press conference, “We are staying here to liberate the city from … the burdensome leadership [of] this governor and this mayor.”

    So they’re using the U.S. military to “liberate” the city from its own elected leaders; they’re there to liberate the city and state from its own popular sovereignty.

    […] I think the President’s degenerate pretensions will crumble under the weight of their own degeneracy when exposed for all to see. The spectacle coming this Saturday — an exercise patterned off the worst of North Korea and the USSR that even his top supporters appear to want distance from — won’t, I suspect, do him any favors.

    birger @284: “Example: Trump has said – on two separate occasions – that you can fly from one part of California to another for just 2 (!) dollars.”

    Yes, you are right to add that to the list of off-the-wall-idiotic things Trump has said recently. He really has lost his mind. He is a degenerate who also seems to be displaying signs of dementia.

    Secretary Noem is much younger, but seems to be equally divorced from reality. Plus, she is willing to confidently spout lies all day long. I think she is emulating Trump.

  295. says

    Israeli military conducts airstrikes on Iran

    “Two U.S. officials said there is no U.S. involvement or assistance. The Trump administration has been in talks with Tehran about a possible nuclear deal and argued against such a step.”

    By Courtney Kube and Mosheh Gains

    The Israeli military has begun airstrikes against Iran, two U.S. officials said Thursday evening, a dramatic escalation that increased the chances of an all-out war between the countries and expanding the long-running regional conflict.

    There is no U.S. involvement or assistance, the officials said.

    Israel confirmed it had launched a strike on Iran, and declared a state of emergency early Friday local time.

    “Following the State of Israel’s pre-emptive strike against Iran, a missile and drone attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate future,” Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement early Friday local time.

    The move appeared to be a significant break with the Trump administration, which has been in talks with Tehran on a possible nuclear deal and argued against such a step.

    The administration appeared to distance itself from Israel’s choice to strike Iran, saying the country took “unilateral action.”

    “We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

    He said Israeli officials had communicated to Washington that Israel’s action was “necessary for its self-defense.”

    “President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel,” Rubio said.

    Israel became more serious about attacking Iran as negotiations between the United States and Iran appeared closer to a preliminary agreement that included provisions about uranium enrichment that Israel views as unacceptable.

    The country said in a statement it took specific aim at Iran’s nuclear program in Friday’s attacks.

    “The IDF launched a preemptive, precise, combined offensive to strike Iran’s nuclear program,” the Israeli statement said, adding that dozens of IAF jets were used in stage one, which “included strikes on dozens of military targets, including nuclear targets in different areas of Iran.”

    “Today, Iran is closer than ever to obtaining a nuclear weapon,” the statement continued. “Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the Iranian regime are an existential threat to the State of Israel and to the wider world.”

    Israel said it “has no choice but to fulfill the obligation to act in defense of its citizens and will continue to do so everywhere it is required to do so, as we have done in the past.”

    In spoken remarks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed that sentiment and said his country launched “a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.”

    “This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat,” he said. [video]

    A big worry for the U.S. is Iran retaliating against American personnel or assets in the region. Officials earlier announced the voluntary departure of nonessential employees, and the Defense Department announced the voluntary departure of military families from across the U.S. Central Command area of operations.

    The Trump administration had ordered all embassies within striking distance of Iran’s missiles, aircraft and other assets (including missions in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe) to send cables with assessments about danger and about measures to mitigate risks to Americans and U.S. infrastructure, two sources told NBC News this week.

    Earlier this week, the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, formally found that Iran isn’t complying with its nuclear obligations for the first time in 20 years.

  296. says

    Judge blocks Trump from deploying National Guard in L.A.

    The link leads to an NBC News page that presents live updates on various news reports.

    A judge temporarily halted the Trump administration’s National Guard deployment in Los Angeles, writing that the federal government did not have the authority to nationalize California’s National Guard.

    U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer issued the temporary restraining order today after an hourlong hearing in a San Francisco federal court.

    Breyer issued a stay of the injunction, allowing the administration to appeal the order to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals until noon tomorrow.

    California’s attorney general challenged the deployment, saying the administration failed to properly follow the statute that allows federalizing the state’s National Guard.

    Breyer’s ruling is broader than the state had sought. State Attorney General Rob Bonta had wanted to ensure that the guard members weren’t participating in civilian law and immigration enforcement, but Breyer said the federal government exceeded its authority because it did not notify Newsom, as the statute cited by the administration requires, and wrote that Trump’s actions were illegal, “both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

    “He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith,” Breyer continued.

    In court, a lawyer for the federal government initially said the administration had complied with the three-prong test required by the statute. He later said the matter was not subject to judicial review.

    The report above is 34 minutes old as of this posting.

  300. John Morales says

    “Another major global war begun?”

    No. Just the Middle East being itself, and Israel enjoying Trump’s tolerance for its local military aggression.

    (Since you asked)

  301. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    FBI arrests East LA man for allegedly distributing face shields during protests

    [A neighbor] said the [flashbang-like] noises woke him up, and when he looked outside […] he saw the National Guard and the streets cordoned off with “white, unmarked vans.” […] FBI agents, “raiding the house two doors down here … they pulled out one person.”

    U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli wrote on X that “Alejandro Theodoro Orellana was arrested this morning by FBI on an allegation of Conspiracy to Commit Civil Disorders (18 USC 371) for distributing face shields to suspected rioters on Tuesday.” […] part of the ongoing efforts to arrest and identify people involved in “organizing and/or supporting civil disorder in Los Angeles.”
    […]
    No official charges have been filed yet in this case.

    Nicholas Slayton: “Unclear what that means. Handing out water? N95s? Is the lady who was cooking bacon wrapped hot dogs a target under that?”

    Nicholas Slayton: “You can buy these clear plastic masks at Amazon. […] Also: wear a mask, protect yourself from our ongoing pandemic.”

    Heather DeMian (Photojournalist): “I’m old enough to remember the FBI & police saying our defensive gas masks in Ferguson showed ‘intent to incite and engage in violence’ back in 2014.”

    Sanho Tree (Institute for Policy Studies): “Marcus Raskin (Jamie’s late father and co-founder of my office) used to say that conspiracy is what they charge you with when they don’t have anything else.”

  302. whheydt says

    Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #301…
    Back during the protests against the Viet Nam War, one of the favorite charges was “felony conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor.”

  303. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Follow-up to Lynna @296.

    LA Times – National Guard troops will stay under Trump’s control, for now

    The 9th Circuit’s emergency stay came hours after U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco ruled that Trump broke the law […] A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit, including two judges appointed by Trump and one by President Biden, scheduled a Tuesday hearing in the case, meaning the National Guard will remain federalized through the weekend.
    […]
    Title 10 also requires that orders from the president “be issued through the governors of the States.” […] “I’m trying to figure out how something is ‘through’ somebody, if in fact you didn’t send it to him,” Breyer asked.

  306. KG says

    Just the Middle East being itself, and Israel enjoying Trump’s tolerance for its local military aggression. – John Morales@300

    This was one state (Israel) launching a war on another (Iran), including attacks on both its military leadership and civilian targets such as apartment blocks, with, at the very least, the connivence of a third (the USA). And its missiles presumably overflew at least two other states – Syria and Iraq – unless they took a circuitous route around the coast of Arabia. That is not “the Middle East being itself” – it is as pure an example of aggression by one state against another as the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (was that “Europe being itself”?) – and it is a distinctly stretched sense of the term “local”. I’d class your description as borderline racist, John.

  307. KG says

    Two U.S. officials said there is no U.S. involvement or assistance. The Trump administration has been in talks with Tehran about a possible nuclear deal and argued against such a step. – Lynna, OM@295 quoting NBC News (I think)

    Trump could obviously have said: “Do this, and you’re on your own”. He obviously didn’t – and indeed, hasn’t claimed to have done. The USA owns this. Meanwhile, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, is “concerned”. The UK, like the USA although on a much smaller scale, has continued to arm the aggressor throught its genocidal operations in Gaza. The UK owns this too. As do all other states that have been arming Israel.

  308. KG says

    “The IDF launched a preemptive, precise, combined offensive to strike Iran’s nuclear program,” the Israeli statement said – Lynna, OM@295 quoting NBC News

    That this is a barefaced lie is absolutely clear from the damage done to apartment blocks in Tehran.

  309. KG says

    Further to my #305 – if all the destruction was wrought by planes, they may well not have overflown Syria and Iraq.

  310. John Morales says

    KG, a feeble retort.

    I’d class your description as borderline racist, John.

    You would, would you?

    That tells me you do not, absent some final considerations; else you’d have written “I class your description as borderline racist, John.”

    So. Two clauses in my assertion:
    “[1]Just the Middle East being itself, and [2] Israel enjoying Trump’s tolerance for its local military aggression.”

    Care to say (I know, you did not actually say) whether only the first is racist, or if only the second is racist, or if both are racist, or if it’s the the combo that is racist? Your vagueries are informative.

    Anyway, I’m pretty sure that history vindicates my claim; alas, one can’t ask the Amalekites, eh? ;)

  311. John Morales says

    I just asked the BubblyBot:

    Me: summarise the fate of the amakelites

    BB: “The Amalekites, historically depicted as a nomadic adversary of the Israelites, were ultimately consigned to obliteration in biblical tradition. Commanded to be eradicated due to their persistent hostility, their fate became one of complete extermination, rendering them a people erased from subsequent history.”

    Me: to what degree is that narrative supported by scholarly studies?

    BB: “Scholarly studies generally regard the biblical narrative of the Amalekite extermination as a theological and literary construct rather than as a rigorously documented historical event. Evidence from archaeology and non-biblical sources for a distinct Amalekite people or a systematic genocide is sparse, leading many experts to view the story as a reflection of ancient ideological conflicts and the construction of Israelite identity rather than a factual account of historical events.”

    (See, Amakelites, Palestinians… what’s the diff, other than a few thousand years?)

  312. John Morales says

    Also, KG, remember to what I responded: “Another major global war begun?”

    (As opposed to a minor global war, presumably)

    “This was one state (Israel) launching a war on another (Iran)”, you wrote.

    No declaration of war, actually. No launching of war, either.

    Launching of missiles; what, you find that a novelty?

    Here, for you, courtesy of BubbleBot, starting from 1979:

    • **RNZ Timeline:** The RNZ article, *”Timeline: Iran and Israel’s open warfare after decades of shadow war,”* provides a detailed chronology of the conflict that covers multiple incidents over the decades, including those in recent years.
    [RNZ Timeline](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/564077/timeline-iran-and-israel-s-open-warfare-after-decades-of-shadow-war)

    • **The Straits Times:** This article, *”Iran and Israel’s open warfare after decades of shadow war,”* presents a timeline that includes several reported air strikes and military actions, reflecting the broader context in which the 2023 events are situated.
    [The Straits Times – Timeline](https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/iran-and-israels-open-warfare-after-decades-of-shadow-war)

    • **Indian Express:** The Indian Express provides a timeline in *”As Israeli strikes rock Iran, a timeline of longstanding conflict,”* that covers key events in the Iran–Israel dynamic. While it emphasizes the latest escalation, it also references earlier incidents, helping frame the historical pattern, including those reported around 2023.
    [Indian Express Timeline](https://indianexpress.com/article/world/israel-iran-conflict-timeline-10064091/)

    These links lead to public news coverage and timelines compiled from numerous reports, verifying that there is open-source documentation of historical strikes—even if details of any single incident (such as an October 2023 operation) may appear as part of broader aggregated analyses rather than being isolated in one dedicated report.

  313. John Morales says

    BTW, KG, elsethread (but very recently, you wrote) “And of course the USA, which has been arming, funding and supporting Israel, the aggressor, for decades, has absolutely nothing to do with its attack on Iran, no sir.”

    Given that’s basically what I said, you’d presumably class your description as borderline racist, unless you were being hypocritical.

    (If not, how so?)

  314. John Morales says

    Me: list major wars in the middle east in the last millenium

    Bot: Below is a list of major Middle Eastern wars over roughly the last 1,000 years, with one line per major conflict:

    The Crusades (1096–1291): A series of religious wars initiated by European Christians aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control.
    The Mongol Siege of Baghdad (1258): A decisive Mongol invasion that led to the fall of Baghdad and the end of the Abbasid Caliphate.
    The Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–1517): A conflict that resulted in the Ottoman annexation of Egypt, the Levant, and Arabia, marking the end of Mamluk rule.
    The Ottoman–Safavid Wars (16th–18th centuries): Prolonged clashes between the Sunni Ottoman Empire and the Shia Safavid Empire over regional dominance.
    The Arab Revolt (1916–1918): An uprising against Ottoman rule during World War I, influenced by growing Arab nationalism and supported by the British.
    The 1948 Arab–Israeli War (1948): A major conflict following the establishment of Israel, leading to significant territorial realignments and the Palestinian exodus.
    The Suez Crisis (1956): A military intervention by Israel, the United Kingdom, and France in response to Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal.
    The Six-Day War (1967): A brief but transformative conflict in which Israel achieved rapid victories, drastically altering regional borders.
    The Yom Kippur War (1973): A surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, reshaping geopolitics in the region.
    The Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990): A multifaceted internal conflict involving sectarian divisions and international interventions, deeply impacting Lebanon’s history.
    The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988): A long, brutal conflict between two regional rivals marked by trench warfare, massive casualties, and chemical weapon use.
    The Gulf War (1990–1991): An internationally led military campaign that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait, significantly influencing regional power balances.
    The Iraq War (2003–2011): A U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime and triggered prolonged instability in Iraq.
    The Syrian Civil War (2011–present): A complex, multi-sided conflict that has led to widespread devastation and significant shifts in regional alliances.
    The Yemeni Civil War (2015–present): An ongoing conflict involving the Yemeni government, Houthi insurgents, and regional coalitions, resulting in a severe humanitarian crisis.

    Each of these conflicts has left a profound impact on the region’s political, social, and cultural landscape, and many continue to influence current events.

  315. John Morales says

    In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/jun/13/donald-trump-national-guard-los-angeles-ice-protests-military-parade-us-politics-live-news-updates

    Donald Trump has urged Iran to make a deal over its nuclear programme, saying in a post on his Truth Social platform that there was still time for the country to prevent further conflict with Israel:

    “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to “just do it,” but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.

    I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it.

    Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!

    There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end.

    Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!”

  316. KG says

    John Morales,
    Your multiple posts indicate that what I said struck home. It was of course your “the Middle East being itself” that I charaterise as borderline racist.

  319. John Morales says

    “Your multiple posts indicate that what I said struck home.”

    If you think so, for you it is so. KG stuff, that is.

    Actually, I disputed you and refuted you and so forth, though I cannot deny that it surely struck home how fucking stupid your claim was. Racist to note that conflict there is nothing new, and that this purported war is just a continuation of a longstanding conflict. Not new by any means.

    It was of course your “the Middle East being itself” that I charaterise as borderline racist.

    Everything and everyone is itself. This is tautological.

    I am myself (racist?), you are yoursel (racist?), the USA is itself (racist?), but the Middle East being itself is most certainly racist, you reckon. Well, borderline racist, or so you impute. Baselessly, but hey, it’s your call.

    (perpetual conflict is not its nature, the historical record notwithstanding, right? ;)

  320. John Morales says

    In the news: https://www.wionews.com/world/israel-attacks-iran-timeline-of-past-attacks-on-iranian-nuclear-programme-stuxnet-virus-sabotage-natanz-attack-karaj-attack-and-more-1749789769722

    “Israel targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities at least 12 times

    Between 2007 and 2025, Israel has targeted nuclear sites of Iran at least 12 times.

    These included cyberattacks known as Stuxnet, Stars, Duqu and Flame, physical sabotage through blasts in sites like Natanz, drone attacks on Karaj and airstrikes on Parchin and Natanz.”

  321. KG says

    John Morales@312,

    No declaration of war, actually. No launching of war, either.

    Putin did not declare war on Ukraine; do you accept that he did launch a war against it? As for “No launching of war” there were multiple attacks across much of Iran, a considerable number of its military leaders and prominent scientists have been killed, and civilian target have also been hit. Moreover, further attacks are promised. To claim that is not launching a war is ludicrous.

    As for your #314, how about a list of wars in Europe over the same timespan?

  322. John Morales says

    “Putin did not declare war on Ukraine; do you accept that he did launch a war against it?”

    Yes, in 2014. Little green men.

    “As for “No launching of war” there were multiple attacks across much of Iran, a considerable number of its military leaders and prominent scientists have been killed, and civilian target have also been hit.”

    This is a continuation.

    Here, for you: https://www.wionews.com/world/israel-attacks-iran-timeline-of-past-attacks-on-iranian-nuclear-programme-stuxnet-virus-sabotage-natanz-attack-karaj-attack-and-more-1749789769722

    Moreover, further attacks are promised. To claim that is not launching a war is ludicrous.

    Um.
    I quoted that to which I responded and to which you are mulishly objecting:
    “Another major global war begun?”

    It’s neither a major global war, not just begun.
    If you don’t believe me, check my adduced article, which is current.

    As for your #314, how about a list of wars in Europe over the same timespan?

    Oh, you would not want to see China or the Pacific; grue is the word. Or Africa, or anywhere else.

    You do get how very feeble it is to say “others do that too” as an objection to “someone does that”, right?
    It doesn’t actually dispute the claim, it just intimates it’s no biggie.

    Basically, it concedes the claim.

    —

    Middle East, not the most peaceful place.
    Israel attacking Iran, not an uncommon event.

    New global war? The major kind of global war, that is, not the minor?

    Mmmm… no.

  324. Reginald Selkirk says

    @265

    Google Cloud goes down, takes Cloudflare and its customers with it

    Google Cloud went down hard on Thursday, and took Cloudflare and some of its customers with it…

    Google assured customers it’s figured out what went wrong and that “All the respective engineering teams are actively engaged and working on service recovery.”

    Cloudflare also went down on Thursday.

    “This is a Google Cloud outage,” a Cloudflare spokesperson told The Register. “A limited number of services at Cloudflare use Google Cloud and were impacted. We expect them to come back shortly. The core Cloudflare services were not impacted.” …

    The effects of the incident appear to have been immense, as according to Downdetector Azure, Spotify and Discord all had problems at the time of the Google outage. The Register fancies that’s due to a domino effect as Google went down, took Cloudflare with it, and Cloudflare’s customers flamed out…

    UPDATED AT UTC 21:15/PDT 14:15

    A 14:00 PDT update from Google states: “We have implemented mitigation for the issue in us-central1 and multi-region/us and we are seeing signs of recovery.”

    The search monopolist also stated it has “received confirmation from our internal monitoring and customers that the Google Cloud products are also seeing recovery in multiple regions and are also seeing signs of some recovery in us-central1 and mutli-region/us.”

    The company expects recovery to complete in “less than an hour”.

    We have also removed a reference to AWS from this story, after the cloud giant told us it has not experienced an outage.

  325. Rob Grigjanis says

    Invasions by European knights, Mongols, US, British, French armies are examples of “the Middle East being itself”? I suppose if I flew to Jordan (say) and started a fight with locals, that would also be an example? Oh, and I guess the Opium Wars were examples of “China being itself”.

  326. Reginald Selkirk says

    Alaska Just Issued Its First-Ever Heat Advisory—and It Won’t Be the Last

    The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Fairbanks, Alaska, issued a heat advisory on Thursday, June 12. It’s never had to do that before.

    Heat advisories are new to both the Fairbanks and Juneau NWS offices, which implemented the use of these notices on June 2. Until now, Alaska weather officials exclusively issued Special Weather Statements to notify the public of potentially hazardous heat. The change comes as Alaska continues to warm at nearly twice the rate of the lower 48 states, with the statewide average annual air temperature increasing by 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.67 degrees Celsius) over the last 60 years…

  327. birgerjohansson says

    A question for experts of excavation and building tunnels, etc.
    Iran has had 45 years to build big underground structures for uranium centrifuges, military nuclear reactors etc.
    The attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor nearly fifty years ago by Israel showed you cannot have aboveground nuclear facilities in the Middle East.

    I assume the construction cost of a facility in a cavern inside the bedrock would be more thsn twice as expensive, but it is a small cost if you know surface structures are doomed.

    Is the rock in the region all unsuitable, like just brittle sandstone? The granite we have in Sweden made the command-and control facilities immune to everything except a direct hit by nukes, but maybe suitable rock does not coincide with suitable nuclear facility locations.

  328. Reginald Selkirk says

    Scoop: House Dem breaks with party on McIver and Padilla incidents

    Democrats in Congress have largely closed ranks around Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) — but centrist Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) is panning what he calls their “politics as theater.”
    …
    What he’s saying: “Storming into the FBI headquarters and trying to break up a press conference and rushing on a [Cabinet] secretary is not really the job of an elected official,” Golden said…

    The incident is on video, and that’s not what happened, you dipshit fake Democrat.

  329. birgerjohansson says

    Reginald Selkirk @ 328

    The Democrats in Maine has 2 jobs for 2026: 1.Vote Dem and 2. primary the collaborators. Yes, I am using that word. The voters expect the congresscritters to work for them. There are a ton of heritage Democrats that by their actions have shown they do not care to fight persecution of minorities, effective measures against climate change, fight money in politics et cetera. I am going to steal a phrase from the Republicans: ‘get the bums out’.

  331. says

    Apologies for messing up the formatting in the presentation of Israel conducts ‘preemptive’ airstrikes against Iran in comment 330.

    The first part of that video is Chris Hayes talking with Senator Elizabeth Warren in general terms about Israel attacking Iran. Then Courtney Kube joins Chris and she provides a detailed report that is quite good.

    Here is NBC News coverage that includes text, video, Richard Engel and text by Courtney Kube.

    The Israeli military launched a massive attack on Iran on Friday in a dramatic escalation of their long-running conflict that drew early retaliation from Tehran and raised the risk of another war in the Middle East.

    The strikes took out a significant swath of Iran’s top military leaders and senior scientists, as Israel unleashed more than 200 fighter jets across roughly 100 targets. They were aimed at Iran’s main enrichment facility and targets associated with the country’s ballistic missile program, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

    The strikes killed nearly 80 people and injured more than 300 in Iran’s capital, Tehran, according to semiofficial Fars news agency. Iranian authorities have not confirmed these numbers. Residential buildings were among the structures damaged in Tehran.

    Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei swiftly vowed retaliation. Soon after the strikes, Iran launched more than 100 drones toward Israel, Israeli Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said.

    […] The United States, which had been publicly urging Israel to hold off on such an attack as the Trump administration continues talks with Iran on its rapidly advancing nuclear program, said it was not involved and was not providing assistance.

    But President Donald Trump told NBC News in an interview Friday he was pleased with the manner in which the strikes were conducted.

    “They had the finest equipment in the world, which is American equipment,” he said.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, said Iranian authorities had confirmed Natanz, Iran’s largest nuclear site in the central Isfahan province, had been struck but that there was no increase in radiation levels observed there.

    Defrin confirmed that Israel struck an underground area of Natanz that targeted critical infrastructure linked to its continued functioning and “inflicted significant damage on this site.”

    Three other nuclear sites — the Fordow, Isfahan, and Bushehr sites — had not been impacted, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. [map at the link]

    Other targets appeared to be residential compounds for top military officials. A main building for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), founded in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend the regime against internal and external threats, also appeared to have been attacked and could be seen burning on state television.

    Among those killed in Israel’s strikes was Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, Iran’s most senior military official, multiple Iranian state news outlets reported. Bagheri, who was chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, had a status equivalent to that of Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s secretive Quds Force who was assassinated by the U.S. in a drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.

    The Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran said in a statement on Telegram that at least five professors from the school’s community had been killed, including nuclear scientist Mohammad-Mehdi Tehranchi. It said some family members of professors were also killed, but did not share their identities or further details.

    Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of the IRGC, was also killed in Friday’s strikes, according to the force’s media arm.

    Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, a top official in the IRGC; Fereydoon Abbasi, a nuclear scientist and former atomic energy chief; and Mohammed Mehdi Tehranchi, a nuclear scientist, were also killed, according to Iranian state media.

    Iran blames the U.S.

    Earlier Friday, Trump said he had given Iran “chance after chance to make a deal,” writing on a post on Truth Social that Iran “must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.”

    But he later told NBC News that its leaders “missed the opportunity to make a deal,” although “now, they may have another opportunity. We’ll see.”

    He also suggested that there are Iranian officials who have reached out to speak with him, but he was unclear about who they may be. [video featuring Netanyahu]

    […] While the U.S. said Israel had acted unilaterally, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the attack could not have happened “without the coordination and approval of the United States.”

    “The American government, as the main supporter of this regime, is also responsible for the dangerous consequences of these actions,” he said.

    U.S. officials had earlier announced the voluntary departure of nonessential employees from the region. […]

  332. says

    Touting ‘Trump Cards,’ president makes dubious claims, unveils weird new website

    “Remember when the president suggested he’d sell American citizenship to “very high-level people” who paid $5 million? He’s moving forward with the idea.”

    On Wednesday night, Donald Trump posted a curious item to his social media platform, referring users to a new website, TrumpCard.gov. A day later, the president elaborated on what the endeavor was all about in a follow-up missive:

    FOR FIVE MILLION $DOLLARS, THE TRUMP CARD IS COMING! More than fifteen thousand have signed up and joined the Waiting List since we opened the site last night! That’s $75 Billion Dollars to help balance our Budget, and strengthen America. The opportunity to live in the Greatest Country, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, with the largest Economy in the World, is here. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. THE WAITING LIST IS NOW OPEN. To sign up, go to — trumpcard.gov/.

    If this sounded at all familiar, it’s because this wasn’t the first time Trump had broached the subject.

    Nearly four months ago, Trump unveiled plans for a visa program — at the time, it was billed as Trump’s “Gold Cards” — which he said would be similar to green cards, “but at a higher level of sophistication.”

    He added that the point was to allow “very high-level people” to enjoy a new route to American citizenship by giving the government $5 million.

    There are similar programs elsewhere — the International Monetary Fund refers to these as “golden passport programs” — though all of this would be quite new to the United States.

    Bloomberg News’ report on this noted that international law enforcement agencies have warned that programs like these “facilitate criminal activity and are riddled with corruption,” adding: “The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has warned for years that golden visa programs expose the bloc to money laundering and security risks.”

    […] Now, evidently, the White House is moving forward with this plan, unveiling a weird website featuring an image of a gold card emblazoned with Trump’s face, the Statue of Liberty (the irony was no doubt lost on the officials who designed this) and the number 5,000,000.

    The site also made clear that what was described as Trump’s “Gold Cards” in February has been rebranded as “Trump Cards.”

    The Washington Post reported, “Scant details remain on the requirements and criteria necessary to be eligible for the cards, but Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said applicants will be ‘deeply vetted.’” How reassuring.

    As for the 15,000 people who the president claimed have already “signed up and joined the Waiting List,” resulting in “$75 Billion Dollars to help balance our Budget,” there’s no shortage of questions about the relevant details. As USA Today reported, “The fact that 15,000 people have signed up at trumpcard.gov does not automatically translate to $75 billion. The website only asks for basic information — it does not seek proof of financial wherewithal and involve any other form of vetting.”

    Indeed, it’s possible that some of those who’ve signed up don’t actually have $5 million, just as it’s also possible that some of them come from countries included in the president’s latest travel ban.

    As for whether any of this is legal, USA Today’s report added: “Trump has said that he is not seeking approval from Congress because he is not providing gold card buyers with citizenship — only a path to citizenship. The path to citizenship requirements for card buyers are unclear and White House officials have said more details will be provided soon.”

  333. says

    Occasionally, Donald Trump and his team have a day — a single, 24-hour period — in which the president’s authoritarian-style vision comes into focus. Consider this unsettling timeline:

    Wednesday, June 11, in the evening: Trump, after already having endorsed the idea of officials arresting Gov. Gavin Newsom, returned to the subject, telling a podcast host that the California Democrat “in theory” could be charged with unspecified crimes.

    Thursday, June 12, in the morning: Trump’s beleaguered defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was asked during congressional testimony whether he would abide by court decisions on the administration’s response to protests in Los Angeles. Despite repeated attempts, the Pentagon chief refused to answer the question directly.

    Thursday, June 12, in the morning: At a White House event, the president, after referencing a recent conversation with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, suggested he might “have to force” interest rate changes, in apparent reference to a power he does not have.

    Thursday, June 12, in the morning: By way of his social media platform, Trump acknowledged that his mass deportation agenda was hurting some American businesses, including farmers, adding soon after that he’d proceed with his mass deportation agenda anyway.

    Thursday, June 12, in the afternoon: Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said at a press conference in Los Angeles that federal officials intended to “liberate” the city from its own elected leadership.

    Thursday, June 12, in the afternoon: At the same press conference, Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California was manhandled, pushed to the ground, and handcuffed after trying to ask the homeland security secretary questions.

    Thursday, June 12, in the early evening: By way of his social media platform, Trump explicitly touted his support for “remigration,” which has widely been described as a racist policy popular with right-wing figures in Europe. [!]

    Thursday, June 12, in the evening: Trump administration lawyers scrambled to ask a federal appeals court to allow the president to continue to federalize National Guard troops in California, over the objections of state and local officials.

    Individually, these developments are unsettling to those who take democracy seriously, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees: These aren’t just disconcerting stories; they’re collectively one dramatic story about a president and an administration that’s increasingly overt in his indifference to the American system and the rule of law.

    What’s more, this 24-hour period wasn’t especially unusual. Over the last five months, Americans have seen a great many days just like this one. […]

    Link

  334. says

    Sky Captain @303, thanks for that clarification: “[…] the National Guard will remain federalized through the weekend.”

    Summary: A judge ordered Trump to return control of the National Guard to Governor Newsom. An appeals court put the order on hold.

    A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals put District Court Judge Breyer’s order on hold. The Ninth Circuit will hold a hearing on Tuesday.

  335. JM says

    @224 Lynna, OM: And once the Ninth Circuit takes the case it’s a given that it goes the Supreme Court afterwards. Doesn’t matter which way the 9th Circuit rules, it will be appealed by the losing side. This is such a fundamental issue with a shortage of previous cases that the Supreme Court almost has to take it. It’s really just a question what rules apply until the Supreme Court rules and when the Supreme Court schedules the case. The Supreme Court may try to dodge the case by agreeing to take it but putting it far in the future and hope it’s moot before they actually hear the case.

  337. says

    JM @335, good points.

    In related news: Chris Hayes points out how Noem just ‘Gave away their Real Game Plan’

    […] Despite all the other “top contenders” crashing the news-feeds, I tend to think Mr Hayes has a point … especially given the “agenda-revealing” aspect of it:

    […] While holding a news conference in Los Angeles, [Kristi] Noem pledged to continue with immigration operations in LA while warning violent protesters of arrest and prosecution.

    “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this Governor Newsom and this mayor placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city,” Noem said, echoing President Trump’s criticism against California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

    Although she did not provide evidence whether workplaces where ICE operations occurred involved the “worst of the worst” criminals that her department is going after, she confirmed that more immigration enforcement operations are coming.
    […] http://www.nbclosangeles.com — June 12, 2025

    Chris went on to make some comments about how:

    ‘they just gave away their real game plan’ … ‘it’s not really about immigration, it’s about the politics and power’ […]

    I would add that it’s about “silencing speech” … “chilling dissent” … and even “besting Putin, at his own game” …

    [See: scheduled festivities in DC this weekend.]

    Because as (former Deputy National Security Advisor) Ben Rhodes noted, later in the All-In show:

    “It took Putin over 20 years, before he arrested his first politician, in the opposition party.”

    Guess Team Trump has decided to accelerate that Putin time-table, speaking of “burdensome leadership that they have placed on this country” …

    If I am reading the DHS cos-player’s ‘Freudian threats’ correctly.

    It’s about wielding their power — with no regard for the Law, the Courts, for “states rights,” or the American Constitution. They got Putin beat by an Authoritarian mile, on each of those counts.

    Footnote, on the opening image … just a prelude, to today’s events:

    A federal judge took federal prosecutors to task in astonishing fashion Wednesday over what he called the “hasty arrest” of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and their decision to drop his federal trespassing charge Monday, just 10 days after his arrest. newjerseymonitor.com — May 21, 2025

    Instilling fear is their mission.
    Full stop. Fall in line.
    No Resistance. No Dissent.
    — Trump’s orders.

    Chris went on to make some comments about how:

  338. says

    Let’s All Learn About The Neo-Nazi Concept Taking America’s Government By Storm!

    “What is remigration?”

    […] now that our government is being run by open white supremacists, there might be all sorts of new terms we’re going to want to familiarize ourselves with.

    […] today’s word of the day is “remigration.” And to help us learn this word, here is the President of the United States using it in a sentence. Or what passes for a sentence in his brain, which at this point is 100 percent fish slurry: [Trump’s social media post]

    The Biden Administration and Governor Newscum flooded America with 21 Million Illegal Aliens, destroying Schools, Hospitals and Communities, and consuming untold Billions of Dollars in Free Welfare. All of them have to go home, as do countless other Illegals and Criminals, who will turn us into a bankrupt Third World Nation. America was invaded and occupied. I am reversing the Invasion. It’s called Remigration. Our courageous ICE Officers, who are daily being subjected to doxxing and murder threats, are HEROES. We will always have their back as they carry out this noble mission. America will be for Americans again!

    Biden let 21 million illegal aliens in to America in just four years, wow, no wonder traffic has gotten worse.

    At first glance, remigration seems like a pretty inoffensive word. On one level it seems to mean people moving home. Like, we migrated to California in our early twenties and migrated back to the East Coast after a whole bunch of years. In other words, we “remigrated,” right?

    Nope, not at all. The word “remigration” has gone into widespread use mostly among far-right Europeans who want to boot all the brown-skinned migrants out of Europe. It is “rooted” in that whole Great Replacement theory we’ve discussed before, which posits that Jews — excuse us, globalists, wink wink, nudge nudge — are pushing to import foreigners into mostly white countries to replace all the native-born white people.

    The Great Replacement theory has been the motivation for several mass shootings by white supremacists over the years, including the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh and the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand in 2019. It’s not nearly as neutral as it might sound. […]

    This isn’t the first time the word “remigration” has slipped past the lips of Trump or one of his high-level administration officials. Stephen Miller was using it at least as long ago as last September. Now he’s in a position to put such a plan into action. […]

    Here is a little more about remigration from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism:

    Remigration is a series of policy proposals, drafted by Austrian Identitarian and former neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, to end the so-called “replacement” by purging the continent of non-white people and eliminating all forms of multiculturalism. The goal is to make countries “European again.”

    […] One group of Europeans that has been widely using the word “remigration” for a few years now is Alliance for Germany (AfD), the right-wing political party chock-full of fascists that has made as part of its pitch forcibly deporting 250,000 or more migrants in the country, many of whom are there for humanitarian reasons. AfD would like them to go back to Syria and Afghanistan, to note two examples, because both those countries are “safe” now. […]

    AfD is also the same party the German government has been both monitoring for extremism and trying to exclude from ruling coalitions in its Parliament. […]

    Nonetheless, America’s Vice President, JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been lecturing Germany to include it more […] Germany has responded by explaining that they have carefully investigated the party of fascist ethnonationalists, and these investigations have led to the conclusion that the AfD really sucks, so if the United States could piss off now, they’d really appreciate it.

    Unfortunately, the US is all in on the concept. The State Department recently announced it is opening an entire office dedicated to booting out immigrants called the Office of Remigration. Yep, there is now an official government office bearing a term popularized by neo-Nazis. [!] And with the same goal of ethnically cleansing the homeland. A report on the State Department’s reorganization that is currently awaiting congressional approval says that the Department of Remigration will provide a policy platform for interagency coordination with DHS and other agencies on removals/repatriations, and for intra-agency policy work to “advance the President’s immigration agenda.”

    […] Donald of Orange claims that remigration is his solution to America having been “invaded and occupied” by foreign migrants. Just in case ordering the National Guard and the Marines to invade an American city and help immigration officials sweep up every brown-skinned person they can find wasn’t getting the point across.

    So neo-Nazi terminology is now a part of official United States government policy, along with neo-Nazi tactics. Unless they are affecting the hotel business, in which case Trump will give you a pass. […]

  339. says

    New York Times link

    “I Ran the L.A.P.D. I Know What Happens When Troops Are Sent to American Cities.” By Michel R. Moore. Mr. Moore was the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from 2018 to 2024.

    Over the past week, President Trump has deployed more military troops to the streets of Los Angeles than there are stationed in Iraq and Syria. The president has warned that if protests break out in other cities, he’ll send troops to “attack” with even greater force. “You’ll have them all over the country,” he said.

    That would be a mistake. Deploying soldiers to any American city isn’t just at odds with the principles of our democracy. It’s tactically unsound. Let me be clear: I admire the honorable men and women who serve in our military. But they are not the right tool for this mission — certainly not under these conditions and not without first exhausting the substantial civilian resources already in place.

    I speak from experience. Over the course of more than 40 years with the Los Angeles Police Department — including nearly six as chief of police — I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t in times of civil unrest. I was an officer during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, when federal troops were last deployed to our streets. I witnessed the confusion and the risks created by sending soldiers trained for combat into a civilian environment. Even basic commands like “cover me” were misunderstood — interpreted by troops as calls for gunfire rather than tactical positioning. Whereas police officers are taught to use time, distance and de-escalation, soldiers are trained to apply overwhelming force.

    There is no question that serious unrest and violence have occurred in parts of downtown Los Angeles. Attacks on buildings and threats to public safety must be taken seriously. But this is not an insurrection. These incidents are localized, and local law enforcement agencies are fully capable of addressing them. [True.]

    California’s emergency response infrastructure is among the most advanced in the country. Its emergency management system and mutual aid plan allow it to request help from neighboring law enforcement agencies, the California Highway Patrol and, when needed, the California National Guard. I have overseen the activation of these systems in response to both natural disasters and overwhelming disorder. They work — and they are rooted in principles of local control, coordination and public accountability. Deploying federal troops undermines all three. [True.]

    The roles of the military and law enforcement are fundamentally distinct. Police officers are trained to protect constitutional rights, use measured force and remain accountable to civilian oversight. They operate within a legal framework grounded in probable cause and community trust. The military, by contrast, is designed for combat operations under a chain of command that originates in Washington. Military training, equipment and tactics are optimized for warfare — not for safeguarding civil liberties or managing peaceful protest.

    History reminds us of the dangers of blurring these lines. [I snipped history of errors.]

    Sending in federal troops should always be a last resort, used only in cases of widespread collapse of civil authority and only at the explicit request of local leaders. That is not what happened in Los Angeles. The deployment appears to have been initiated without meaningful consultation or coordination with city or county officials. That is unacceptable. Effective policing depends on local leadership — on the knowledge and credibility earned by those who live and work in the communities they serve.

    This is not just a matter of proper procedure. Without a unified command structure, clear rules of engagement and accountability mechanisms, introducing military personnel into a volatile environment introduces more risk than reassurance. [True] Who’s in charge? What are the rules? What happens when missions conflict or orders diverge? These are not questions to be figured out after boots hit the ground.

    I’ve spent my career emphasizing the importance of proportionality and discipline in the use of force. I’ve also witnessed the damage that occurs when those standards are not met. After the 2020 civil unrest in Los Angeles, civilian oversight held officers accountable for instances of excessive or unjustified force. That accountability is a cornerstone of civil policing. It does not exist in the same way in military operations.

    None of this is to say the military has no role in supporting civil authorities. In times of natural disaster, true insurrection or total collapse of civil order, federal troops may be warranted.

    But this moment calls for clear thinking, not coercive overreach. It demands leaders who know the difference between strength and domination. The streets of Los Angeles — and cities across America — should be protected by those who are trained and equipped to serve with restraint, accountability and a deep understanding of the communities they serve.

    Our democracy depends on it.

  340. says

    Government says it won’t release Mahmoud Khalil despite judge’s order

    “A judge ruled earlier this week that the foreign policy grounds for Khalil’s detention are insufficient and likely unconstitutional.”

    […] In a letter filed on Friday afternoon, officials from the Department of Justice argued that while Khalil can’t be detained based on Rubio’s determination, according to the judge’s ruling, he can be detained for other reasons. The officials cited immigration-related statutes.

    “The Court instead enjoined Respondents from detaining Khalil ‘based on the Secretary of State’s determination,’’ DOJ officials said in the letter. “That injunction does not interfere with Respondents’ authority to detain Khalil on other grounds.”

    To justify Khalil’s removal, Rubio released a memo in April, citing an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. It allows the secretary of state to deport noncitizens if the secretary determines their presence in the country would result in “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” Rubio wrote in the memo that allowing Khalil, who led protests against the war on Gaza, to stay in the U.S. would create a “hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”

    But the judge, Michael Farbiarz of the U.S. District Court for New Jersey, ruled on Wednesday that the foreign policy grounds for Khalil’s detention are insufficient and likely unconstitutional. Farbiaz stayed the preliminary injunction until 9:30 a.m. Friday, giving the government time to appeal. And by Friday morning, Khalil’s legal team filed a letter, requesting the court to order his release.

    “The Government has not filed a notice of appeal of this Court’s Order by the Court-ordered deadline for the preliminary injunction to be in effect,” the letter said.

    Khalil, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and and was granted permanent U.S. resident status, became a widely recognized activist amid the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last year. In March, he was abruptly arrested outside his student housing on campus and detained before the Trump administration accused him of leading “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Since, his legal counsel has been challenging efforts to deport him. He has not been charged with any crime.

    A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security has alleged that Khalil has acted to “glorify and support terrorists.”

    In a declaration filed last week, Khalil called the claims “grotesque and false.”

    “These were not just attacks on my character; they were efforts to erase my humanity,” Khalil said in the legal filing.

    Amid his three months in detention, Khalil also became a father and fought for contact with his newborn son Deen. Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, a Michigan-born dentist, gave birth in April. ICE previously rejected Khalil’s request to attend his son’s birth, court documents show.

    “The most immediate and visceral harms I have experienced directly relate to the birth of my son, Deen,” Khalil said in the legal filing. “Instead of holding my wife’s hand in the delivery room, I was crouched on a detention center floor, whispering through a crackling phone line as she labored alone.”

    ICE also denied a request last week for Khalil to be moved from Louisiana to a facility closer to his family, with no explanation, emails show. The agency’s own policy requires detaining noncitizen parents or legal guardians, who are primary caretakers or have custody of minor children, in facilities close to their children.

    “ICE’s directive recognizes that the government should have no role in destroying the family unit, and yet that is exactly what is happening here,” said Nora Ahmed, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, which is part of Khalil’s legal team.

    Khalil met his son for the first time last month, his attorneys said, just before an immigration hearing. […]

  341. says

    Trump’s effort to reclaim international respect is failing spectacularly in his second term

    […] The Pew Research Center this week released the results of international surveys measuring Trump’s support in 24 nations across the globe. As the Pew report made clear, the results were awful:

    Majorities in most countries also express little or no confidence in Trump’s ability to handle specific issues, including immigration, the Russia-Ukraine war, U.S.-China relations, global economic problems, conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, and climate change. When asked about Trump’s personal characteristics, most describe him as arrogant and dangerous, while relatively few see him as honest.

    […] Not only does much of the world hold Trump in low regard, but his unpopularity is tarnishing the stature of the United States, too, with favorable ratings of the U.S. dropping by double digits in several countries.

    [I snipped history of Obama’s and Biden’s approval ratings.]

    There might very well be some who’ll suggest results like these are irrelevant. After all, Trump has prioritized an “America First” attitude, so perhaps his followers will argue that his lack of international backing shouldn’t matter.

    The problem with this defense is that Trump has invested an enormous amount of time and energy making the opposite argument.

    […] The United States was an international laughingstock for decades, Trump has long argued, but thanks to how awesome his awesomeness is, he singlehandedly restored the nation’s global stature. It was a ridiculous idea he brought up constantly, seeing it as one of his most important accomplishments.

    Even in his strange farewell address, delivered on the final full day of his first term, Trump found it necessary, one last time, to tell Americans, “The world respects us again.” […]

    None of this made any sense. A Pew Research Center analysis from September 2020 noted, “In several countries, the share of the public with a favorable view of the U.S. is as low as it has been at any point since the Center began polling on this topic nearly two decades ago.”

    Nearly five years later, Pew is showing us slipping to similar depths anew.

    And yet, the president can’t let go of this lie. A few weeks ago, by way of his social media platform, Trump wrote: “Our Nation is staging one if the greatest and fastest comebacks in history. In just 4 short months, we are respected again, respected like never before.” He similarly added in February, just a couple of weeks after his second inaugural, “We are respected all over the world, like never before.”

    All of this was the opposite of the truth. It also reinforces the fact that Trump is failing, not by some random metric, but by one of the standards that he personally elevated above all others.

  342. says

    GOP’s Tim Scott takes aim at the CBO but makes himself look bad

    “It’s a problem that the senator accused the budget office of being wrong about things that happened before its existence, but that’s not all.”

    In recent weeks, congressional Republicans and the White House have repeatedly gone after the Congressional Budget Office, not because the nonpartisan analysts did something wrong, but because the CBO has provided the public with facts that Donald Trump and his allies don’t like. [True.]

    […] The budget office produced objective data that makes the Republican Party’s domestic policy megabill — the inaptly named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — look like a far-right disaster, so the president and GOP officials have scrambled to discredit the source of independent information.

    Some of these efforts have been more embarrassing than others. The Washington Post reported:

    Like many congressional Republicans and members of the Trump administration already have, Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) on Thursday attacked the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for its scoring of the GOP’s massive tax and immigration bill, arguing that the CBO’s estimates are inaccurate. In a video shared on X, Scott accused the office … of being wrong in its scoring of tax cuts implemented in the 1930s and the 1960s.

    There was, however, a rather glaring problem with the senator’s pitch: The Congressional Budget Office wasn’t created until 1974. When Scott said, “Wrong then. Wrong Now,” he was, unfortunately, wrong.

    […] as it turns out, that wasn’t the only problem with his pitch.

    Scott claimed, for example, “In 2017, the CBO said the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would increase the deficit and the debt by trillions of dollars. What happened? They were wrong.” Actually, no, the CBO was right: The Republicans’ 2017 package of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations really did increase the deficit and the debt by trillions of dollars. That’s not a matter of opinion; it’s simply what happened. [True. True. True.]

    Moments later, in the same video, the senator said CBO analysts “were wrong on the Mellon tax cuts in the 1930s.” The obvious problem with this is the fact that the CBO didn’t exist in the 1930s. However, the less obvious problem is that the Mellon tax cuts were approved in the 1920s, not the 1930s, shortly before the Great Depression.

    But wait, there’s more. Also in the minute-long video, Scott said the CBO was also “wrong on the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s,” which is sort of true, but not in the way the South Carolinian meant. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s Marc Goldwein noted, the CBO “actually overestimated revenue collection in the 1980s,” which was the opposite of the point the senator was trying to make. [LOL]

    In his next breath, Scott said of the CBO, “When have they been right? I don’t know either.” Actually, I do know: The office’s track record on forecasting future budget deficits has been pretty impressive in recent years, whether or not the senator is aware of this. [Embedded link to sources are available at the main link.]

    For good measure, let’s not skip past the fact that Scott went on to say, “The Laffer Curve is right. … It has always worked; I think it always will work.”

    The Laffer Curve is a creation of Art Laffer, arguably the nation’s preeminent cheerleader for a ridiculous idea: Tax cuts are self-financing. He’s spent decades telling policymakers they can slash tax rates, especially for the wealthy, and the tax breaks necessarily pay for themselves through stronger economic growth and increased revenue.

    Republicans have repeatedly tried to govern with this idea in mind, and they’ve always failed. Critics of the Laffer Curve have consistently been proven right, and proponents of the discredited idea have consistently been proven wrong.

    Scott really ought to know all of this. He is, after all, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a member of the Senate Finance Committee. But despite these many glaring, factual errors, the Republican senator not only put this video online, he left it online even after its errors were exposed.

    It reflects an indifference toward reality [1] that has become a staple of the GOP’s offensive against the Congressional Budget Office.

  346. says

    Followup to comment 332.

    […] It’s not just that his gold visa card is tacky or that it is all but sure to fall short of the revenue Trump has promised. It’s also that it’s a literal invitation to give a vast sum of money to the government via a card named for the current president, one who already has a culture of personality surrounding him. By keeping the requirements vague, the vibe personal, and the potential for success in getting citizenship unknown, it turns what should be a government program with layers of neutral administration into a personal appeal to Trump—with lots of cash, natch—to let you in the country.

    Definitely going to attract all the right people.

    Link

  348. says

    RFK Jr. spews even more anti-vax lies on Fox News

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on Fox News Thursday night, to spew some of his threadbare misinformation about vaccines, defending his recent abrupt and poorly supported moves to change public health policy.

    “We’ve gone up from 11 vaccines since 1986. Today, children get between 69 and 92 vaccines before they’re 18,” Kennedy told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum. In reality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends far fewer vaccines for children.

    “None of [childhood vaccines] have been safety tested except for the COVID vaccine. The only vaccine on this schedule that has gone through placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure was the COVID vaccine. So nobody has any idea what the risk profiles are on these products.” [video]

    As for his claim that it’s mandatory for kids to receive “69-92 vaccines before they are 18,” it seems that Kennedy is doing a lot of MAGA-math. Most states require 30 to 32 total shots (and that includes multiple doses for some vaccines).

    His claim that no vaccines other than those for COVID have been through testing and reviews is also flatly false. Every vaccine on the recommended childhood schedule has undergone rigorous testing, including comparisons with placebo or existing vaccine groups. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, placebo groups are only excluded when testing a new vaccine intended to replace an existing one. In those cases, the comparison group is given the older, already tested vaccine as a standard ethical practice.

    Kennedy need only read his own goddamn CDC website to learn about the testing—which includes three phases, followed by continued monitoring by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that Kennedy recently purged. He’s replaced the ACIP experts with a gaggle of individuals known for spreading COVID and vaccine misinformation.

    Even Kennedy’s internal logic falls flat. The one vaccine he claims meets his own standards, the COVID vaccine, is the very one he recently moved to exclude from recommendations for children and healthy pregnant women. That decision, based on dubious science and in defiance of expert consensus, contradicts his supposed commitment to rigorous testing.

    Kennedy’s baseless claims that vaccines have not been properly vetted have fueled skepticism about vaccinations, and hesitancy in parents, posing a real risk to children’s health outcomes.

  349. says

    Israel comes under heavy fire from Iran

    Israel is coming under a heavy bombardment Friday from Iran after the massive attacks overnight on Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.

    Dozens of ballistic missiles have been fired on Tel Aviv, Israeli officials said Friday amid Iran’s counterattack.

    Explosions could be heard throughout Tel Aviv. There have been at least seven hits on the ground in the city, a source told The Hill’s sister network NewsNation.

    Millions of Israelis rushed into bomb shelters as missiles targeted multiple cities.

    “We will take every measure necessary to protect the people of Israel,” Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs said Friday on social platform X.

    The retaliatory strikes come hours after the Israeli military took out Tehran’s top military leaders and targeted key nuclear facilities in a surprise strike Thursday. […]

  350. says

    How vaccine critics appointed by RFK Jr. could limit access to shots. The link leads to a Washington Post report.

    “Staff who provide data to the vaccine panel have been pushed aside, according to health officials, raising doubts about the availability of coronavirus and other vaccines.”

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s overhaul of a federal immunization panel has created uncertainty around how widely vaccines will be available this fall and if they’ll be free, according to six current and former health officials.

    After Kennedy purged the influential committee that recommends vaccines and appointed his own picks, staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who provide the panel with research have now been pushed aside, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation. With the new advisers scheduled to meet in less than two weeks, other CDC staff are also uncertain whether they will be able to present the necessary scientific and medical data to help the committee make informed decisions, officials said.

    It’s unclear what direction this new group, which includes vaccine critics, will go, and whether they’ll be able to give the stamp of approval needed for Americans to get free vaccines against the coronavirus and other pathogens in time for the fall vaccine season.

    “If we have a system that has been dismantled — one that allowed for open, evidence-based decision-making and that supported transparent and clear dialogue about vaccines — and then we replace it with a process that’s driven largely by one person’s beliefs, that creates a system that cannot be trusted,” Helen Chu, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Washington who was ousted from the vaccine committee, said in a news conference Thursday.

    […] “The biggest fear is that science and data won’t be the primary drivers of decisions,” one federal health official said. “The largest public health concern is that this move will end up broadly restricting vaccine access.”

    A group working to finalize coronavirus vaccine recommendations for ACIP to consider could not meet Thursday because of the purge of the ACIP members, said Stanley Perlman, a University of Iowa professor of microbiology and immunology who is a consultant for the work group. […]

  351. says

    Not involved?

    The U.S. is assisting in shooting down Iranian missiles and projectiles targeting Israel, according to three U.S. officials.

    The Pentagon moved a number of military assets into the region in recent days, including Navy destroyers to be positioned off the Israeli coast to help shoot down missiles and other aerial attacks expected after the Israelis launched their initial attack, according to another U.S. official. […]

    NBC News link

  352. John Morales says

    Rob: “Invasions by European knights, Mongols, US, British, French armies are examples of “the Middle East being itself”?”

    No, but Israel has made a hobby of attacking Iran.
    From my link above: “Between 2007 and 2025, Israel has targeted nuclear sites of Iran at least 12 times.

    These included cyberattacks known as Stuxnet, Stars, Duqu and Flame, physical sabotage through blasts in sites like Natanz, drone attacks on Karaj and airstrikes on Parchin and Natanz.”

    Remember quite recent history?
    Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Israeli_strikes_on_Iran
    “On 26 October 2024, Israel launched three waves of strikes against 20 locations in Iran and other locations in Iraq, and Syria, codenamed Operation Days of Repentance[10] (Hebrew: מבצע ימי תשובה) by Israel. It was the largest attack on Iran since the Iran–Iraq War.[11][12] Israel said the strikes were launched in response to the Iranian strikes against Israel earlier that month.[13]”

    Apparently, that did not start a new MAJOR world war.
    Part of the ongoing tit for tat, this is.

    I suppose if I flew to Jordan (say) and started a fight with locals, that would also be an example? Oh, and I guess the Opium Wars were examples of “China being itself”.

    Do you? Well, I can’t stop you from supposing that.
    Probably would constitute only a new MINOR world war, but.

  353. says

    The Trump family is working to hire foreign workers for its winery in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the same time that President Donald Trump is using the federal government to attack undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles and across the country.

    Forbes reports that the winery is currently seeking 31 temporary foreign laborers, citing a listing on the official Department of Labor website that notes, “This job requires workers to perform agricultural field work in a vineyard handling manual tasks including pruning, thinning and harvesting activities associated with production of grapes.”

    Positions are offered at $15.81 per hour.

    Trump’s third child, Eric, is listed on the Trump Winery website as the company’s president. And, as Forbes notes, the company has relied on foreign workers for years, with filings for more than 1,880 seasonal workers on record since 2008. In fact, the company has increased its usage of foreign workers […]

    In 2019, the Washington Post reported that Trump had hired undocumented immigrant workers for his New York golf course, and managers were accused of pressuring those employees to do extra work without pay.

    […] Undocumented immigrants who worked for Trump came forward in 2020, revealing that they paid taxes on the income they earned from his companies, even as he evaded paying his own.

    […] Trump’s brand is “America First,” but while he engages in lurid lies about immigrants using fascist terminology, he and his family have been happy to profit from their labor.

    Link

  355. John Morales says

    @339: “Whereas police officers are taught to use time, distance and de-escalation, soldiers are trained to apply overwhelming force.”

    Mmhmm. USA cops are well-known for their de-escalation tactics.

  356. says

    […] Fortune reported on Gary Rohwer’s experiences as an employer in a nascent fascist state. In an article headlined: “Omaha food plant owner who lost half his workforce in ICE raids says he followed rules for hiring immigrants,” the pro-business magazine (no socialism lurking here) reported:

    The owner of an Omaha food packaging company says his business has been unfairly hamstrung by federal immigration officials, who raided the plant and arrested more than half its workforce.

    The raid took place despite the company meticulously following the government’s own system for verifying the workers were in the country legally, owner Gary Rohwer said Wednesday.

    Glenn Valley Foods now is operating at about 30% of capacity as the business scrambles to hire more workers, Rohwer said as he stood outside the plant.

    This is how Rohwer put it:

    “We did everything we could possibly do.”

    Adding, “I’d like to see the United States government … come up with a program that they can communicate to the companies as to how to hire legitimate help. […]”

    Company President Chad Hartmann echoed the owner’s puzzlement:

    “My biggest issue is: Why us? We do everything by the book.”

    He explained that the plant uses E-Verify, the federal database used to check the immigration status of employees. When he said as much to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who carried out the raid, they told him the E-Verify system “is broken.”

    To which Chad quite reasonably responded:

    “I mean, what am I supposed to do with that? This is your system, run by the government. And you’re raiding me because your system is broken?”

    […] Agricultural states are MAGA strongholds. Trump doesn’t care. He no longer needs their votes. If the constitution holds, this historic blight on America will be gone in 2029. If it doesn’t, he’ll install himself as emperor for life. Either way, TACO’s not standing for election again.

    Not only does Trump not give a shit about either the law or Americans of any political stripe, his appointees to positions of power are equally unconcerned by rules and political loyalty. Kristi Noem, ex-governor of Nebraska’s northern neighbor, South Dakota, is now the boss of Homeland Security.

    For most people, this is a management position. But Noem has shunned the desk to pursue a career as ICE Barbie. […]

    She is frequently photographed standing pointlessly in a bulletproof vest carrying a gun. […]

    In her latest “Look at me” inanity. Noem loitered outside a house in Huntington Park, CA, as 10 masked Brown Shirts raided the home of a U.S. citizen — a mother of four, pregnant with her fifth.

    In America, we were brought up to play by the rules. However, we have now discovered that the rules are meaningless when those in charge of enforcing them ignore them.

    Link

  357. Reginald Selkirk says

    Missouri governor activates National Guard, declares state of emergency

    Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) on Thursday declared a state of emergency and activated the state’s National Guard in anticipation of protests across the state — and in response to “civil unrest” across the country.

    Missouri Executive Order 25-25 declares a State of Emergency and allows the Adjutant General to order service members to aid state officials.

    The order comes after the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Missouri National Guard and Missouri Department of Public Safety established a Unified Command to monitor situations across the state and prepare local law enforcement.

    Additionally, the order also declares that the Adjutant General may employ necessary equipment to support authorities and provide assistance.

    While nationwide protests continue to flare up in response to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, Kehoe said his order is purely precautionary.

    “We respect, and will defend, the right to peacefully protest, but we will not tolerate violence or lawlessness in our state,” the governor said…

  359. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    All week in Los Angeles county, several cities have had protests at numerous hotels said to be housing ICE agents, with intent to drive them out. Sometimes tame. Sometimes raucous to disrupt sleep. Coverage is scant, events at the scale of 50 to 200 attendees. Some resulted in successful oustings.

    Often reporters on the protests are unable to confirm the residents. Orange County Register noted that a substantial percentage of hotel workers are immigrants, making it difficult to keep ICE housing arrangements secret.

    I’ve seen: Hilton in Glendale, ‘Embassy Suites’ in Downey, DoubleTree in Whittier, ‘Mariott AC’ + Westin + ‘Hotel Dena’ in Pasadena, Hilton in Arcadia.
     
    Local News Pasadena on Jun 8: “ICE / HSI agents rooming at the AC Hotel and Hotel Dena in Pasadena were asked to leave by hotel management. This followed a noisy street protest”

    LAMag – Pasadena protestors picket ICE raids at city’s Mariott AC hotel on Jun 9

    Some ICE agents, [a hotel employee] said, had booked rooms for the night. Others had booked hotel rooms the night before. Some agents, he said, had left, but the tires on their cars had been slashed (which is why they remained parked […])
    […]
    Pasadena Mayor […] arrived at the scene […] there were around 200 individuals gathered around […] [And Councilmember Rick Cole, a former mayor,] began his rousing speech by informing demonstrators that his daughters had been arrested at the downtown L.A. protest.

     
    Mady Castigan (Journalist) on Jun 10:

    Over 100 protestors protesting a HOTEL WITH ICE at 10 PM! […] Kicking ICE out of hotels wastes their time and directly prevents them from enacting raids.
    […]
    ICE LEAVING Arcadia [Hilton] Hotel earlier today after protestors made noise for HOURS outside the hotel. No arrests were made, police likely inequipped due to DTLA curfew turmoil.

    Rando: “‘We witnessed about 10-20 agents moving boxes and suitcases and other gear out of the hotel!’ Was a text I just received!”

    YT short: Protesters surrounded an Arcadia hotel, making noise (1:33)
     
    Sean Beckner-Carmitchel (Journalist) on Jun 12, video clips:

    I’m at the DoubleTree Hotel in Whittier, CA (in Los Angeles county). Protesters against federal detention raids say that officials have been staying here though I have not independently confirmed. Hundreds outside, chanting “kick them out.” It is EXTREMELY loud. One window broken
    […]
    Whittier Police Department surging out of the DoubleTree Hotel. […] Unlawful assembly declared […] a Whittier PD helicopter spotlight seems to be accidentally doing what the protesters wanted to do. […] Sheriffs Department arriving, several less lethals deployed […] Chemical and sound
    […]
    LASD now leaving the immediate area […] protesters appear to have left as well. […] a few protesters had begun to trickle back in in front of the building.

    Rando: “Were gonna make sure everyone can sleep peacefully by… bringing in a low flying chopper. 10/10 no notes.”

    In that instance, Whittier PD’s Instagram statement claimed the white van and its agents were Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Dept doing routine inmate transport, and that the crowd, agitated by inaccurate claims, had persisted in noise and vandalism heedless of the staff telling them ICE wasn’t present. KTLA news—which ‪Nicholas Slayton noted has been leaning into “rioter” language—reprinted the police statement. An ABC7 article a day after the statement had “Police could not confirm if ICE agents were there.”

  361. John Morales says

    re #351, same as last time.

    cf. https://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/2024/11/irans-weakened-position-and-the-status-of-its-nuclear-option/

    Loss of deterrence
    Increasingly unable to sustain a modern air force since losing access to Western suppliers after the 1979 revolution, Iran has relied on three pillars for deterrence: a forward defence consisting of non-state actors, particularly Hizbullah in Lebanon; an extensive missile programme; and a push to achieve nuclear-threshold status. Weaknesses in this strategy are now glaringly apparent, however, in light of Israel’s attacks against Hamas and Hizbullah that began in October 2023. Since mid-2024, Israel has killed the leaders of both groups: Hizbullah’s Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September and Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar on 17 October. Many top fighters have also been killed, with large parts of their arsenals and command-and-control structures destroyed or disabled. These militias will survive to fight another day, but at the moment Iran can no longer rely on its ‘Axis of Resistance’ to deter Israeli attacks on Iranian territory.

    The Israel Defense Forces’ 26 October airstrikes on 20 Iranian military sites underscored this fact. These strikes responded to Iranian strikes against Israel on 1 October that used at least 180 missiles. In an earlier tit-for-tat exchange, Israel on 19 April hit three Iranian air-defence sites in response to a 14 April Iranian attack employing 300 missiles and uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Iranian missile barrages were themselves retaliation for Israeli attacks, including against Iranian partners. Neither barrage caused significant damage. Israel and the United States, along with France, Jordan and the United Kingdom, intercepted most of the missiles and UAVs in the April strike. The October strike, which relied exclusively on ballistic missiles, saw a significantly lower interception rate, but the vast majority of the missiles missed their targets.

    (My emphasis)

  363. John Morales says

    re: “The Russians got drone and missile factories, the Iranians got absolutely nothing in return”:

    Um. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/36984
    “Quid Pro Quo – Now Iran Asks Russia for Air Defense Systems

    As Kyiv Post reported earlier, Russia has allegedly transferred Iskander and Murmansk-BN ballistic missile systems to Tehran after Iran threatened to strike Israel in retaliation for the killing of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

    Iran, which has supplied Russia with military aid including hundreds of Shahed kamikaze drones for Moscow’s war on Ukraine, has now asked for support from the Kremlin. According to the New York Times Tehran took the opportunity presented by this week’s visit of Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, to provide much needed advanced air defense systems as the likelihood of war with Israel escalates.”

  364. says

    Florida’s Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey issued a harsh warning to protesters ahead of expected demonstrations, saying anyone who throws a brick, a firebomb, or points a gun at deputies will be killed “graveyard dead.”

    Link

    Video at the link.

  366. whheydt says

    Re: John Morales @ #363….
    Russia is going to have a hard time supplying Iran with air defense systems, especially ones for use against aircraft and missiles. The Russians don’t have enough to protect their own critical assets and shipping some out of country isn’t going to help against Ukraine.

  367. John Morales says

    Unlucky, but less unlucky than the others in the plane:
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/13/miraculous-how-did-passenger-in-seat-11a-vishwash-kumar-ramesh-survive-air-india-crash

    But before Ramesh could even consider an escape, he had to have the luck to survive the impact of the crash.

    “If you’ve got an accident like this, where you’ve got an aircraft full of fuel and it’s making a crash landing off the airport into the built environment, that’s unlikely to be a survivable accident,” said Prof Ed Galea, an expert in fire safety and evacuation at the University of Greenwich. “The fact that anyone has survived is miraculous.

    “He seems to have been lucky in that: a) he survived the trauma of the impact, b) he wasn’t severely injured in that crash, and c) he was sitting right by the No 2 exit. Whether he used that or exited via a rupture that was close by, is not clear. But he was very close to an exit point.”

    Galea has previously carried out research on plane crashes which found that, in less devastating crashes, people sitting within five rows of a serviceable exit have a greater chance of surviving than dying while those more than five rows away were more likely to perish. He said he always tries to reserve a seat within five rows of an emergency exit.

    Galea said other passengers may have also survived the impact but were too injured to evacuate or were not close enough to an exit point. Passengers who did not adopt the brace position may have struck their heads on the seats in front of them knocking them unconscious, but there were no seats immediately in front of Ramesh.

    While the structure of the plane may have given him a chance at survival, Ramesh still needed to move fast to take that chance, said McDermid. “If he hadn’t got out in a very few seconds, he would have been unlikely to make it out because of the fireball,” he added.

  368. John Morales says

    whheydt, honestly, I have no real idea.
    Point is that the Kyiv Post reckons they got something out of it, contrary to that opinion to which I responded.

    Besides, tech transfer is a thing, too.

    The Russians are of course falling behind and still coasting on the puissance of the Soviet Union and its legacy.
    The brain drain and the etiolation of their educational institutions haven’t helped, either.

    So they are falling behind technologically as time goes by.

  369. says

    NBC News:

    Israel’s attack on Iran’s Natanz Nuclear Facility completely destroyed its above-ground fuel enrichment plant where uranium was being produced, the International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA) said.

    NBC News:

    Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel is ongoing, according to the Israel Defense Forces. ‘Dozens of additional missiles were launched toward Israel,’ the IDF said.

    NBC News:

    The U.S. is assisting in shooting down Iranian missiles and projectiles targeting Israel, according to three U.S. officials.

  370. says

    Reuters:

    A federal judge in California on Friday temporarily blocked the U.S. State Department from implementing an agency-wide reorganization plan that includes nearly 2,000 layoffs. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco said during a virtual hearing that her May ruling barring federal agencies from laying off tens of thousands of employees at the direction of President Donald Trump applies to the planned overhaul announced by the State Department in April.

    NBC News:

    President Donald Trump failed to persuade a federal appeals court to reconsider the $5 million verdict won by E. Jean Carroll after a jury found that he sexually abused and defamed the former magazine columnist in the 1990s. In an 8-2 vote, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Friday left intact its Dec. 30 decision by a three-judge panel upholding the jury award.

  371. says

    Associated Press:

    President Donald Trump’s administration this week provided deportation officials with personal data — including the immigration status — on millions of Medicaid enrollees, a move that could make it easier to locate people as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown. An internal memo and emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Medicaid officials unsuccessfully sought to block the data transfer, citing legal and ethical concerns.

  372. says

    New York Times:

    Washing machines, refrigerators and other common household appliances made with steel parts will soon be subject to expanded tariffs, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

  373. says

    Tim Walz [comments] on Trump’s botched foreign policy as unrest spreads

    Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was interviewed by the Center for American Progress on Friday, and when asked for his reaction to the news that Israel had carried out bombings in Iran overnight and Iran has retaliated. He pointed to Trump’s “I told you so” post on Truth Social as a prime example of the president’s moral impotence on global matters. [social media post]

    “And, here we are. Yeah, here we are with the Middle East back on fire in a way that is now expanded,” Walz said. “Iran has to retaliate in their mind, I’m sure. And now, who is the voice in the world that can negotiate some type of agreement in this? Who holds the moral authority, who holds the ability to do that?”

    While acknowledging that many would argue the United States has never been a “neutral actor” in the Middle East, Walz noted that America’s influence there is now greatly diminished.

    “And I mean consistently, over and over again, we’re going to have to face the reality: It might be the Chinese. And that goes against everything they say they’re trying to do in terms of the balance of power,” Walz added. [Putin has offered to negotiate.] [Video of Walz speaking about Iran]

    Trump’s mismanagement of the region goes back to his first term when he abandoned President Barack Obama’s Iran deal. Iran responded by ramping up its uranium production, and tensions have only escalated since.

    Trump’s promises to solve global conflicts through his cult of personality have failed in Gaza and Ukraine. His positions on the matter remain unpopular and his solutions are simply telling people to listen to him.

    Now, Trump is scrambling to regain control of the escalating Israel-Iran conflict, and attempting to negotiate a new nuclear deal to replace the one he tore up six years ago. What could possibly go wrong.

  374. Reginald Selkirk says

    Airbus A220 Decides To Try A Little Off-Roading, Shuts Down Air Traffic To Boston Logan Airport

    Sometimes, it’s good to just get out, go off the beaten path, maybe find yourself by taking a risk. That’s great if you’re at say, Moab it’s less great if you’re an Airbus A220. But for reasons that are under investigation now, JetBlue flight 312 decided to try being an off-roader after it landed at Boston Logan Airport. The plane was fully on the runway and in the process of slowing down when it suddenly veered left onto the grass, getting far enough so that all the plane’s wheels were on the green. No word yet on whether the plane would like to try a little rallying next.

    Fortunately, per CBS News, all 160 people onboard were unharmed. The A220-300 hit the runway at 11:55 a.m. local time, swerving into its off-road excursion moments after that. As it was happening, the co-pilot radioed air traffic control that they had lost steering. Once they’d brought the Airbus to a halt, the passengers were deplaned and shuttled to the terminal, all of them now certified crash survivors. The airport then shut the runway down, which the FAA followed up by issuing a ground stop for the whole airport, halting any flights inbound to Logan from taking off. The ground stop lasted around two hours…

  375. John Morales says

    Not a crash, and not a mystery. Lost steering, not a whim.

    Gotta like the claim that an Airbus decided to go offroading, but. Decisions, decisions!

    Stupid purple prose. As if it’s written for dolts.

  376. John Morales says

     The dry humour is beginning to grow on me:

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tApZKn2REoY

     Why Musk and Trump’s honeymoon REALLY ended | If You’re Listening ABC News In-depth

    “In news that basically everyone saw coming, the big beautiful bromance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has finally come to an end. Over the last week, there’s been a dramatic shift in Trump’s presidency – he’s publicly fighting with his former First buddy, judges are overruling his executive orders and there are protests in the streets of LA. So for the next two episodes, we’re going to take a look at what led to this sudden shift – Trump’s summer of discontent. How it started and what it means for the future of the administration.”

    That’s the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the American Broadcasting Company.
    (In case anyone is confused)

  377. JM says

    @366 whheydt & @368 John Morales: The current public agreement between Iran and Russia doesn’t require they provide any military support to each other, only that they will exchange information and they won’t attack each other.
    That said, Iran must have been paid/promised something for all the support they have given Russia. It is assumed that part of the payment has been uranium refinement technology and help. What else might be involved in uncertain.
    I expect Russia will make some sort of gesture of helping Iran but as whheydt notes, they are having trouble providing coverage for their own army. Russia can’t build their best systems while cut off from trade and Ukraine has been targeting them for some time.

  378. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Ryan Goodman (Just Security):

    On the left: June 12, Judge Breyer writing that THE test for whether the US Marines/Guard violate Posse Comitatus will be whether they’ve engaged in “detaining” civilians.

    On the right: June 13: […] DoD has confirmed the detention of civilian
    […]
    This does not help their case: “Images showed Marines apprehending a civilian… then handing him over to civilians from” DHS.

    Reuters – Marines carry out first known detention of civilian in Los Angeles

    The incident took place at the Wilshire Federal Building […] Reuters images showed Marines apprehending the man, restraining his hands with zip ties and then handing him over to civilians from the Department of Homeland Security.
    […]
    Speaking to reporters after he was released, the civilian identified himself as Marcos Leao, 27. Leao said he was an Army veteran on his way to an office of the Department of Veterans Affairs when he crossed a yellow tape boundary and was asked to stop. Leao, who gained his U.S. citizenship through military service
    […]
    tasked with protecting federal property and federal personnel […] This means that they will accompany ICE agents on raids, officials have said.

    Brandon Friedman (MSNBC): “The irony of Marines violating the Posse Comitatus Act to detain an Army veteran is too much.”

    Milly Knight (Journalist): “The wilshire federal building is where morons like me get expedited passports because they have a flight to Japan in four hours and their passport expired yesterday.”

    David Dayen (The American Prospect): “This is where Padilla was thrown down yesterday, but as noted, not a protest location. Outside of a few National Guard troops who have gone out with ICE agents, the vast majority of these federal forces allegedly quelling unrest aren’t doing a damn thing.”

    Rando: “The malicious compliance involved to make sure the Marines are indeed guarding a federal building, as requested… just not the one involved in the protests, is really rather admirable. I love it.”

  380. John Morales says

    Elsethread, some talk about Chris Hedges.

    So I checked with BubblyBot:

    Me: chris hedges is an usa pundit; what does he claim about science and its limits?
    BB: Chris Hedges critiques science indirectly by challenging a perceived cultural narrative rather than science itself. He argues that many people allegedly attach the belief that scientific progress inevitably leads to human improvement, though whether they actually do is a separate issue. His critique focuses on the misuse of science as a narrative tool rather than its core methodologies, questioning the assumption that technological advancement inherently drives moral or societal betterment.

    (Gotta love the Vindication Machine, no?)

  381. John Morales says

    One more:

    Me: He’s projecting, in the psychological sense?
    BB: Yes. Hedges critiques new atheists for behaving like religious fundamentalists, but his argument itself relies on strong ideological convictions about morality and human nature. His assertion that their worldview functions like a secular religion mirrors the kind of categorical thinking he condemns, making his critique an example of projection. He attributes rigid dogmatism to them while exhibiting similar rigidity in his own framework.

    (Virtual Vindication Vault, it is)

  382. John Morales says

     In the news: Has Russia really lost a million soldiers in Ukraine? | BBC Ukrainecast

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWo94Z7TWmo

    “The number of Russian troops killed or wounded in Ukraine has topped 1 million since the start of the full-scale invasion, according to military officials in Kyiv.

    But how accurate are those figures? And after another significant prisoner exchange, how are Russia’s POWs treated by the Ukrainian authorities?

    These are just some of the questions viewers have been sending in to the Ukrainecast team. Presenters Jamie Coomarasamy and Vitaly Shevchenko are joined by Olga Robinson from BBC Verify and Olga Ivshina from BBC Russian to answer them.”

  385. John Morales says

    Heh heh heh.

    Me: can a pontiff not pontificate, yet remain pontiff?
    BB: Yes. A pontiff can refrain from pontificating in the rhetorical sense—avoiding dogmatic or authoritative speech—while still holding the office. The role of the pontiff is defined by ecclesiastical authority and governance, not necessarily by personal style or verbosity. However, pontificating in the ceremonial sense remains an expected function of the position.

  386. KG says

    No, but Israel has made a hobby of attacking Iran.
    From my link above: “Between 2007 and 2025, Israel has targeted nuclear sites of Iran at least 12 times. – John Morales@352

    So it would be quite reasonable to describe Israel launching its war against Iran as “Israel being itself”. That’s quite different from describing it as “The Middle East being itself”.

  387. KG says

    John Morales@384,385,

    My amusement was at the Pope’s call for Israel and Iran ot act with reason. What has an institution which claims that Jesus was simultaneously God and a man (to name one among many manifest absurdities it maintains) to do with reason?

  388. Reginald Selkirk says

    Researchers claim spoof-proof random number generator breakthrough

    Scientists in the US have built a system for creating truly random numbers which cannot be tampered with by a third party.

    Random numbers might be needed to pick jury members out of a field without bias, or provide security algorithms. Quantum events offer the promise of true randomness. Meanwhile, a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, which determines that two quantum particles emitted at the same time can remain forever linked in their state, no matter how far apart they are, allows for boffins to check their work.

    While entanglement offers a way of checking a truly random source of data, such systems can potentially be spoofed if a rogue actor secretly mistimes one of the measurements.
    Boffins pull off quantum leap in true random number generation
    READ MORE

    A paper published in Nature by University of Colorado, Boulder, postdoctoral student Gautam Kavuri and colleagues, describes a new system which provides a publicly available hash chain, greatly raising the difficulty of tampering with the record of the timing of quantum measurements. The record of measurements is also available online.

    In an accompanying article, Peter Brown, associate professor at France’s Institut Polytechnique de Paris, said: “Kavuri and colleagues combine the high security of quantum random-number generation with a classical protocol that ensures not only that the output is truly random, but also that the randomness can be verified.” …

  394. KG says

    John Morales@322,

    You are simply being dishonest here. @321 I quoted your #312:

    No declaration of war, actually. No launching of war, either.

    If you meant the war had already started, you should (and indeed would) have said so. The attacks of 13th June 2025 followed a period (since October) in which there was no military action between Israel and Iran, were on an unprecedented scale, and were launched with the obvious expectation of counter-attacks, and the explicit promise of further attacks. That constitutes “launching a war” to any reasonable person. As for this:

    Oh, you would not want to see China or the Pacific; grue is the word. Or Africa, or anywhere else.

    You do get how very feeble it is to say “others do that too” as an objection to “someone does that”, right?
    It doesn’t actually dispute the claim, it just intimates it’s no biggie.

    If you did not mean there was something specific about the Middle East, which made the launching of this war just “the MIddle East being itself”, there would have been no point either in saying that, or in your list of Middle East wars going back centuries. If you simply meant “nothing new here” you would have said that, or something like “Just the world being itself”. The point of my comparison with Europe was that the MIddle East is not unusual in having been the scene of a lot of wars over the past centuries. You know that, of course, and you can’t justify your implicit claim that it is, so you try to divert attention elsewhere. It doesn’t work, John. Not even on yourself, I hazard.

  396. rorschach says

    As I understand it, Melissa Hortman who has been killed was the one vote that gave Dems the majority in MN, so that’s no more.

  397. says

    CNBC:

    Former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband, Mark, were shot and killed early Saturday in what appears to be a “politically motivated assassination,” Gov. Tim Walz said.

    “Our state lost a great leader and I lost the dearest of friends,” Walz, former Democratic candidate for vice president, said during a news conference.

    Minnesota Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also each shot multiple times, Walz said. They remained alive as of Saturday morning.

    “We are cautiously optimistic they will survive this assassination attempt,” Walz said.

    The lawmakers’ homes are about eight miles apart, in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis, NBC News reports.

    A manhunt was underway Saturday for a suspect who was impersonating a police officer at the victims’ homes, authorities said.

    Officials said that they identified the suspect’s car, which had lights and sirens resembling a police car, per NBC News.

    Officials also found a “manifesto” naming other lawmakers.

    “We have people of interest that we are looking for,” authorities said, per NBC News. […]

  398. says

    […] Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has all but encouraged violence against demonstrators, reasserting that Floridians are legally protected if they hit protesters with their cars. […]

    Link

  400. says

    […] Gov. Tim Walz (D) urged Minnesotans to skip planned “No Kings” protests across The North Star State in the wake of the assassination of a Minnesota Democrat.

    “Out of an abundance of caution my Department of Public Safety is recommending that people do not attend any political rallies today in Minnesota until the suspect is apprehended,” he wrote on social media.

    Thousands of people remain sheltered in place in the city of Brooklyn Park, Minn., as local police and SWAT teams actively search for the suspect, who was reportedly impersonating a law enforcement officer.

    The gunman had fled out the back of former state House Speaker Melissa Hortman’s house after briefly being confronted by the police.

    A couple of protests scheduled on Saturday in Minnesota have been cancelled in the wake of the assassination of a Democratic lawmaker at her home.

    The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Minnesota shared on Saturday morning that a demonstration in Northeast Minneapolis will be cancelled out of an “abundance of caution.”

    “ Our hearts are with the elected officials targeted in last night’s shooting, their families and everyone impacted by this tragedy. Please reach out to your local No Kings organizers for information on other events in the area,” they wrote on social media.

    NewsNation also reported that a protest in Anoka has been cancelled. […]

    Link

  401. says

    […] The Minnesota House is split 67-67, and the Minnesota Senate has a plus-one majority for Democratic-Farm-Labor. These are targeted assassinations.

    […] Per an officer at the press conference above [video at the link], officers responding to the shooting at Hoffman’s house asked Brooklyn Park officers to go check Hortman’s house — out of a vague foreboding. Those officers found the fake cop coming out of her house, when he immediately shot at them and went back inside.

    NOWHERE in this CNN story on the “politically motivated assassination” does it tell its readers that the victims were Democrats. Why do you suppose that is?

    […] Everything is escalating. Nothing is all right.

    The last time someone tried to kill Democrats, it was a lunatic who bashed Nancy Pelosi’s octogenarian husband in the head with a hammer. This was considered very hilarious by our president, Donald Trump. […]

    Jesus Fucking Christ.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/somebody-is-shooting-minnesotas-democratic

  402. says

    We’ve got a lot going on right now here in the United States — but that doesn’t mean we should ignore what’s going on in the rest of the world. Especially when it’s kind of related!

    While Trump and Co. try to pretend that the whole city of LA is on fire and there are riots everywhere, when in fact it’s a protest confined to a couple-of-block radius, there are actual riots (and fire!) erupting in Northern Ireland.

    So What Happened?

    On Saturday, two 14-year-old reportedly Romanian boys were arrested in Belfast on suspicion of having sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl. Absolutely nothing is known about their immigration status or their identity beyond the fact that they required a Romanian translator.

    Following this, there were protests in Ballymena, a city of about 24,295 around 50 minutes away from Belfast. The protests quickly turned into violent anti-immigrant riots, and have since spread across the country. About 40 police officers have been injured so far and 14 immigrant families have been whisked away and given temporary housing to shield them from possible attacks. […]

    Let’s Get Some Background!

    For the last several years, there has been a serious uptick in far-right political activity, particularly of the anti-immigrant variety. This is either in spite of or in reaction to the fact that the country as a whole has become more socially and economically liberal in recent decades. Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill was appointed First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, after the left-wing Republican (different kind of Republican!) party won a majority of preference votes and seats in the 2024 election. It was just a little bit of a big deal, given that the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (it’s all opposites!) had always been the majority party.

    Al-Jazeera has also noted that the “Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey found that 94 percent of respondents in 2024 said they would be willing to accept a person from a minority ethnic group in their area, compared with only 53 percent who said they would feel comfortable in 2005.” So people in Northern Ireland are actually more tolerant than they used to be.

    How Much Immigration Even Is There In Northern Ireland?

    Not much, actually! Northern Ireland does not actually have all that many immigrants and remains the whitest place in all of the United Kingdom. Only 3.4 percent of the country identifies as a non-white minority. In Ballymena, it’s about 6 percent, about half of those people being Roma.

    There are a total of 2,637 asylum seekers in Northern Ireland, mostly from Syria. How many in Ballymena? Zero. There are zero asylum-seekers in Ballymena. […]

    It seems fairly possible that right-wing demagogues and some politicians have simply seen the success other countries, like the US, have had in terms of mobilizing anti-immigrant psychopaths and have decided to try it out themselves.

    So Where Is This Coming From?

    General racist hysteria, compounded by the fact that ever since the economic crash of 2008, austerity measures have led to there being less affordable housing available and less welfare money to go around. People have blamed this on “illegal immigrants” despite the fact that there just really is not much of an “illegal immigrant” problem in Northern Ireland. Really, they’ve just needed a scapegoat […]

    I realize we all roll our eyes at “economic anxiety,” and we shouldn’t use it as an excuse for racist bullshit — but there’s no question that people who are anxious and stressed about how they are going to survive are going be more likely to fall for bullshit. It’s simply not conducive to rational thinking.

    Is There A Sectarian Element?

    One thing that has been pointed out in several reports on the riots is that while the vast majority of those participating in them are Protestant Loyalists/Unionists (people who want to remain part of the UK), there are some Catholic Republicans/Nationalists (those who want a unified and independent Ireland) involved as well. This phenomenon was also reported last year during the August 2024 anti-immigrant riots. Creepy racists excitedly posted on Twitter about how Nationalists and Unionists were uniting against all the non-existent “mass immigration.”

    “This is incredible,” wrote one absolute creep named Cillian. “Catholics and Protestants are quite literally marching shoulder to shoulder in Belfast, Northern Ireland as they demand an end to Mass Immigration. […]” [social media post]

    However! The vast, vast majority of those rioting are Protestants. And there is a strong correlation to where these riots are taking place and areas known to be Loyalist strongholds with a history of paramilitary activity. […]

    How Is The Government Reacting?

    Well, on the one hand you have a bunch of people from the Democratic Unionist Party looking to make hay out of this, and inflame tensions and anger against “undocumented immigrants” — because that’s good for them. DUP minister Gordon Lyons has come under fire for revealing the locations of immigrant families who had been put in protective housing [!!] — which, unsurprisingly, led to the leisure center where many were staying being set on fire. [video]

    First Minister Michelle O’Neill has (correctly!) denounced the riots as violent and racist (and called for Lyons to resign, which he has refused), stating that those responsible “bring nothing to our communities but hatred, fear and division.” […]

    Personally, I don’t believe these people give a flying shit about victims of sexual violence (same with Americans who somehow only care about victims of sexual violence if they believe an immigrant or minority is to blame) to begin with. I think they just wanted any excuse to run around being grotesque racists, for funsies.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/wait-whats-going-on-in-northern-ireland

  403. says

    Spanish-language misinformation on Los Angeles protests pushes a familiar theme

    “Posts using fake images and baseless claims have sought to connect protests to left-wing Latin American governments, similar to misinformation that has swirled around previous news events.”

    A surge of false or misleading posts, photographs and videos about the Los Angeles protests have been circulating on social media, with many of those shared among Latinos — mostly in Spanish — tying the protesters to socialist or communist governments.

    One post on X with over 600,000 views claims that in the U.S., immigration protest groups have links to “the Venezuelan mafia,” the Communist Party of Cuba, and the Morena Party, the left-wing ruling party of Mexico. But the post doesn’t specify any groups and doesn’t give evidence of this.

    […] the onslaught of posts, mostly in Spanish, appears to be an attempt to link protests against immigrant raids to leftist Latin American governments, and the posts show support for President Donald Trump and his policies. [Same as it ever was.]

    “Though there is always inaccurate information swirling around, there has certainly been a spike since the Los Angeles protests took off,” said Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, president of We Are Más, which focuses on social impact consulting. “In the past we would find false or inaccurate information more hidden in platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp. Now it’s more in the open and more easily found on social media and online publications.”

    The falsehoods revive prior conspiracies that the protests are a planned provocation from leftist governments and not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids. [!] On his platform, Truth Social, Trump has baselessly claimed protesters are “Paid Insurrectionists!” [!]

    […] A fake picture of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass with Cuba’s late leader Fidel Castro, with his arm around her has circulated on social media. The original picture showed Castro with the late activist and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

    […] “What we’re seeing in Spanish is different from what we’re seeing in English,” said Pérez-Verdía. In Spanish, she added, the false information is mainly focused on elected officials, like Newsom and Bass.

    […] Some conservative and pro-Russian social media accounts have circulated a video of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum from before the protests, claiming she encouraged them, according to Newsguard, a fact-checking website.

    The move was “portrayed as foreign interference in domestic U.S. politics,” Newsguard reported.

    During an oval office briefing Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Sheinbaum of encouraging “violent protests.” [!!]

    Sheinbaum responded on X, saying it’s “absolutely false” and included a video of herself from the day before saying she does not agree with violent actions as a form of protest. […]

    In some cases, videos and photos that include a hammer and sickle, are taken out of context to make it seem the protests are a communist movement. One post with tens of thousands of views claims that the protests are “URBAN COMMUNIST TERRORISM.” [FFS]

    One Spanish-language post from an account with over 1 million followers glorifies violence against “progressive anti-ICE protestors.” [!]

    […] Fake accounts in Spanish are more prevalent than they are in English, according to Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University and co-director of its Media Forensic Hub. Social media platforms are more likely to identify and shut down accounts in English than in other languages. […]

  404. says

    In a telephone conversation with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the region’s biggest threat to stability and security, according to a Turkish president’s office post on X.

    Erdogan said that Israel’s attack on Iran demonstrates this, and that the country “must be stopped in order to reduce tensions.” He also criticized the international community for “turning a blind eye” to Israel’s actions in Gaza, which has brought the country “to this lawless and aggressive point.”

    Erdogan stressed that the region can’t handle “a new crisis,” adding that “the nuclear dispute could only be resolved by continuing negotiations.”

    Link

  405. JM says

    Mediaite: Trump Reverses Course on ICE Raids at Restaurants and Farms

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were told on Thursday to halt raids on farms, restaurants, and hotels, according to an internal email obtained by The New York Times.
    On Thursday, President Donald Trump fired off a Truth Social post stating, “Changes are coming” in the administration’s deportation policy.
    “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump said while promising to “get the CRIMINALS OUT.”

    Trump’s policy was angering too many business people. This eventually worked it’s way up to Trump and he followed the usual practice of reversing course when placed under actual pressure. That this makes the ICE policy even less coherent will be ignored. The ICE staff will be under more pressure to find sites they can raid because target numbers have not been lifted, they have only been barred from certain targets.
    One improvement is a change in the way human trafficking will be policed. Under the new policy undocumented victims of human trafficking won’t be immediately arrested.

  406. says

    Republicans are raining on Trump’s parade

    No one seems eager to celebrate President Donald Trump on his birthday—not even most of his Republican friends.

    For weeks, Trump has hyped up his June 14 military parade in Washington, a spectacle of fireworks, flyovers, and tanks intended to honor both the Army’s 250th anniversary and his own 79th birthday. He’s promised an “unforgettable celebration” and even threatened potential protestors with “very big force.”

    Most Democrats were never going to show. But now even some Republicans are bailing.

    Earlier this week, Politico surveyed 50 GOP lawmakers, and just seven said they planned to stay in D.C. for the festivities. The Wall Street Journal followed up and found more Republicans skipping out, with some even publicly questioning the event’s price tag, which could run between $25 and $45 million, all taxpayer-funded.

    On Wednesday, the HuffPost caught up with nearly a dozen GOP senators. Many dodged simple questions about whether they planned to attend or how they felt about the cost.

    Utah Sen. Mike Lee said he “might be” going, then punted when asked about the price: “Uh, I have not looked into [it].”

    Others were more blunt. “It’s the president’s call, but if it were me, I’d save the money,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told the Journal. “I mean, we’re a lion, and a lion doesn’t have to tell you it’s a lion. Everybody knows it’s a lion. So why spend the 40-plus million dollars to tell people that we’re a lion?”

    […] Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave one of the more awkward answers. He isn’t planning to go but admits he doesn’t have other plans. Asked whether he just wasn’t a fan of parades, he told the Journal, “Oh, I love parades.”

    […] Also skipping are Senate GOP Whip John Barrasso, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

    […] On Saturday, starting at 4 PM ET, Americans will get the privilege of watching their tax dollars fund a North Korea-style show of military might on the president’s birthday. Trump may claim it’s for the Army, but the timing—and tone—make it clear: It’s about his parade.

    And no one seems to be clamoring for it, except for Trump and his inner circle. According to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, three-quarters of Americans (76%) oppose spending $45 million on “a large parade of soldiers, weapons, and combat vehicles” to mark the Army’s 250th birthday and Trump’s birthday. Forty-eight percent of Americans “strongly” oppose the parade, while just 6% “strongly” favor it. […] [graphs at the link]

    […] Even with the president working to hold onto whatever support he can, the lineup is thin. According to Politico, some of the only “yes” RSVPs include far-right Reps. Byron Donalds of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Cory Mills of Florida, and Elise Stefanik of New York.

    Trump’s team insists he’ll be joined by “top military leaders” and Cabinet members like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. A White House spokeswoman promised a “historic crowd.”

    Maybe. But the louder presence is expected to be in the streets.

    On the same day, anti-Trump protesters are planning rallies in 1,800 communities nationwide under the banner “No Kings Day,” opposing the Trump’s authoritarian drift. […]

    So yes, Trump may get his tanks and flyovers. But the crowd? The celebration? The love? That looks unlikely. For all the pomp and bravado, it’s shaping up to be an expensive reminder that even his own party would rather be anywhere else.

  408. says

    SEVERE Flood Watch Issued for DC [Update: Trump Doesn’t Care]

    The National Weather Service has issued a severe weather alert for the DC metropolitan area:
    – Flood Watch
    – Severity: Severe
    – Significant threat to life or property
    – Weather Event Onset 2:00 PM (EDT), June 14

    IMPACTS…Excessive runoff may result in flooding of rivers,creeks, streams, and other low-lying and flood-prone locations.Creeks and streams may rise out of their banks. Flooding may occur in poor drainage and urban areas.

    The local ABC news station is issuing a similar message: FLOOD ALERT: Heavy rain expected Saturday evening, potential impacts to US Army parade.

    So it’s another good reason for No Kings to have avoided a rally in DC. […]

    “OUR GREAT MILITARY PARADE IS ON, RAIN OR SHINE. REMEMBER, A RAINY DAY PARADE BRINGS GOOD LUCK. I’LL SEE YOU ALL IN D.C.,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

  409. says

    New York Times link

    “Live Updates: Israel Expands Attack to Include Iran’s Oil and Gas Industry”

    “Both countries kept up airstrikes on each other for a second day.”

    Video at the link

    Israel widened its targets in Iran on Saturday to strike at oil and gas installations, as leaders of both countries vowed to intensify their attacks despite international pleas for de-escalation.

    In sweeping attacks that started early Friday, Israel focused on Iranian nuclear sites, air defenses and military targets. But the strikes on Saturday went a step further, targeting an energy industry that is vital to Iran’s economy, according to Iranian media outlets. Israeli strikes also appeared to focus on Tehran, the Iranian capital, taking out the city’s air defenses.

    The Israeli strikes have killed more than 70 people, including four top security chiefs, and damaged Iran’s main nuclear site at Natanz.

    Iran, in turn, has launched barrages of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, targeting what it says are military assets, but with less apparent success. At least three people have been killed and dozens wounded in the attacks.

    It is the most intense fighting in decades between the two heavily armed countries, and it has stirred anxiety over the prospect of an increasingly deadly conflict that could draw in the United States and other major powers.

    The salvos of missiles scuttled talks between the United States and Iran aimed at halting Iran’s progress toward obtaining a nuclear weapon. The talks had been scheduled to resume in Oman on Sunday, but the American and Omani officials said they were canceled.

    Israel has conducted roughly 150 strikes on Iran over two days, while Iranian forces have fired roughly 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli territory in addition to scores of drones, according to an Israeli military official.

    Fars News, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, reported on Saturday that Israel had struck the South Pars gas field in the Bushehr province, which was on fire, and a refinery in the city of Asalouieh. The Israeli military declined to comment.

    The Iranian state news media said that the Israeli targets overnight had included a military jet hangar at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport. […]

    Washington’s view: The United States’ possible role in the spiraling conflict remains unclear. While Israeli officials had hoped the Trump administration would participate in a joint attack, Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied U.S. involvement in the strikes. But President Trump also did not call for Israel to rein in its assault, and U.S. officials said they were moving warships and other military assets in the Middle East to help protect Israel and American troops in the region. […]

  410. says

    Temporary border controls are becoming a fixture in the EU’s borderless travel area.

    The EU’s Schengen zone isn’t the young and sprightly free-travel area it once was.

    Exactly 40 years ago this week, ministers from Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, France and the Netherlands boarded the Princess Marie-Astrid and sailed to the middle of the Moselle River at a tripartite border in the heart of Europe. There, near the small Luxembourgish commune of Schengen, they signed pledges to gradually remove checks on their common borders.

    Their commitment would become the cornerstone of the world’s largest free-travel area: Today, the Schengen zone offers borderless travel to 450 million people from 29 countries — four of which aren’t in the EU — and checks are supposed to be relegated to temporary last-resort measures in exceptional circumstances.

    Except: Even as it prepares to host celebrations for the borderless travel treaty’s 40th birthday, Luxembourg is once more losing sleep over border controls.

    As of June this year, 11 of the Schengen Area’s 29 countries — including Austria, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands — had notified the European Commission of plans to reintroduce border controls. Ten of them announced the controls over a period of six months, while several of the countries’ checks were just the most recent extension of a long stretch of back-to-back controls. [map at the link]

    […] Schengen is “melting before our eyes,” said Spanish Member of the European Parliament Juan Fernando López Aguilar, a Social Democrat.

    [I snipped history of COVID-related border control]

    […] Germany, too, cited “serious threats to public security” caused by illegal migration when it imposed checks on all its borders last year. When Friedrich Merz became chancellor, Germany doubled down on those controls.

    [I snipped details specific to Luxembourg]

    “Migration” is the buzzword in countries’ justifications for the renewed checks. In addition to Germany, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, France and Bulgaria also listed it as a key reason for reintroducing controls.

    […] The Commission is “committed to strengthening our external border protection, fixing our migration management problems and ensuring that law enforcement has the tools they need to counteract threats,” he said.

    […] Controls aimed at curbing migration can count on sympathy in EU capitals.

    […] The government has created a bespoke email address for citizens to air border control grievances. And amid fears about a gradual reintroduction of borders across Europe, its ministers habitually take the topic to meetings with their EU counterparts in Brussels.

    “It is essential to dismantle borders in people’s minds, not rebuild them,” Gloden said.

  411. says

    Israel’s defense minister issued a stark warning to Iran on Saturday, saying that “Tehran will burn” as the two nations traded missile salvos following Israel’s surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear program earlier this week.

    “If [Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei continues to fire missiles at the Israeli home front — Tehran will burn,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said, according to the Associated Press. […]

    Link

  412. says

    Baltic countries team up on mass evacuation plans as Russian threat grows

    “Clear procedures are crucial, as is the rapid exchange of information,” says Lithuanian interior minister.

    The Baltic countries on Friday signed a deal pledging to jointly plan for mass evacuations as the specter of bellicose Russian President Vladimir Putin looms over the region.

    The interior ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia committed to develop joint mass evacuation plans, streamline information exchange and ensure vulnerable groups are not left behind during evacuations.

    Data will be shared on evacuation capacity, possible evacuation corridors and the status of key border crossings, as fears grow over the security situation in the Baltic region as Putin continues to wage war on Ukraine.

    “Clear procedures are crucial, as is the rapid exchange of information,” said Lithuania’s Interior Minister Vladislav Kondratovič in a press release, adding that this would ensure a quick roll out of measures and ensure there is no panic before and during a crisis.

    “It is important for the Baltic countries to maintain a unified approach and coordinate actions when threats arise in order to ensure the safety of our people — especially in the event of large-scale evacuation,” he said.

    The move comes ahead of Zapad 2025 — the joint military exercise between Moscow and Minsk — set to take place in Belarus this September. Allied officials are increasingly uneasy about the drills, which some see as a potential prelude to aggression.

    Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya warned in a recent interview with Euronews that the exercises pose a real threat, noting that Zapad 2021 preceded Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. […]

  413. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump’s long-wished-for military parade was abruptly canceled on Saturday after it emerged that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had inadvertently invited the Houthi rebels.

    Though Hegseth defiantly told reporters, “I did not text parade plans,” a mass invite from his Signal account was sent to the Houthis, Iran’s Supreme Leader, and The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.

    In an official statement, the Houthis said they were “saddened” to lose the chance to show off their military hardware, adding, “We already packed our drones.”

    https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trumps-parade-called-off-after-hegseth

  414. says

    […] Last weekend, I drove the parade route along Constitution Avenue. Long flatbed trucks were offloading pallets of metal plates to help protect the streets from dozens of M1Abrams battle tanks, which weigh up to seventy tons (nearly twice the street’s weight limits). They will slowly grind their way from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Memorial, alongside missiles, rocket launchers, howitzer cannons, and Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles. Sixty-seven hundred troops will also participate.

    The Pentagon has estimated the cost for the ninety-minute procession at somewhere between twenty-five million and forty-two million dollars. That’s at least three million dollars per block. The event will take place against the backdrop of DOGE’s firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and civil servants, including at the Pentagon, and the slashing of social services, from Medicaid to school lunches for low-income children.

    There’s a raw ache and sense of unease in Washington. Eighteen miles of fencing has been put up on the National Mall and beyond. A hundred and seventy-five magnetometers were installed to screen parade attendees. (Tickets had to be booked in advance.) Passenger flights are due to be suspended for several hours at Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport to accommodate military flyovers and paratroopers dropping from the skies. Trump’s birthday parade might make the city feel more like it is experiencing a coup d’état than it is honoring soldiers who have well served the nation.

    All of this feels somewhat hypocritical. In the past, Trump disparaged more than eighteen hundred military personnel who died in the Battle of Belleau Wood—which stopped the German advance in France during the First World War—as “suckers.” He balked at visiting the nearby cemetery where they were buried, reportedly because the rain would mess up his hair. John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff during his first term, said that the President did not want to be pictured with amputees because it didn’t “look good.” In 2023, Kelly told CNN that Trump “has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about.”

    Even Republicans seem dubious of the parade. In a survey by Politico, only seven of the fifty G.O.P. lawmakers who responded said they would attend. Among those skipping it: Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Majority Whip John Barrasso, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. Senator Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Politico that he “would have recommended against the parade” after he heard the costs.

    In a televised address on Tuesday, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, warned that Trump’s decision to circumvent state authorities to deploy the military to L.A. was a “brazen abuse of power” that had “inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers, and even our National Guard at risk.” California “may be first,” he went on. “But it clearly will not end here.” Democracy, he added, “is next.” Washington certainly felt that way this week.

    Text above is excerpted from a New Yorker article written by Robin Wright, a contributing writer covering politics and international relations.

  415. birgerjohansson says

    The time difference with Europe makes it difficult to keep track. Is the parade a late-night event?
    Are estimates of crowd sizes for the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations coming in yet?

  416. birgerjohansson says

    You know, the wear on DC streets would be less if Trump had just borrowed WWII stuff from museums. Those halftracks, 88s and PZKW IVs are lighter and give the appropriate ambience.

  417. John Morales says

    KG @387, fideism transcends reason and is orthogonal to it.

    @386: “So it would be quite reasonable to describe Israel launching its war against Iran as “Israel being itself”. That’s quite different from describing it as “The Middle East being itself”.”

    But I was not describing this specific current phase in those two countries’ decades-long conflict; here, let the BubbleBot tell you:

    Here’s a concise overview of major Middle Eastern conflicts since World War II, grouped by type and chronology:

    Arab-Israeli Wars
    – 1948 Arab-Israeli War: Following Israel’s declaration of independence, neighboring Arab states invaded. Resulted in Israeli victory and Palestinian displacement (Nakba).
    – 1956 Suez Crisis: Israel, Britain, and France attacked Egypt after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Political win for Egypt.
    – 1967 Six-Day War: Israel captured the Sinai, Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza.
    – 1973 Yom Kippur War: Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack; ended in military stalemate but political gains for Egypt.
    – 1982 Lebanon War: Israel invaded to expel the PLO; led to long-term occupation of southern Lebanon.
    – Gaza Conflicts (2008–present): Repeated clashes between Israel and Hamas, including major escalations in 2008, 2014, and 2021.

    Civil Wars and Revolutions
    – Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990): Sectarian conflict involving Syria, Israel, and various militias.
    – Iranian Revolution (1979): Overthrew the Shah; established Islamic Republic.
    – Syrian Civil War (2011–present): Assad regime vs. rebels, ISIS, and Kurdish forces; massive humanitarian crisis.
    – Yemeni Civil War (2014–present): Houthi rebels vs. Saudi-backed government; regional proxy war.

    Proxy and Regional Wars
    – Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988): Brutal trench warfare; ended in stalemate.
    – Gulf War (1990–1991): U.S.-led coalition expelled Iraq from Kuwait.
    – Iraq War (2003–2011): U.S. invasion toppled Saddam Hussein; led to insurgency and rise of ISIS.
    – ISIS Conflict (2014–2019): Islamic State seized territory in Iraq and Syria; defeated by international coalition.

    Ongoing Rivalries and Tensions
    – Saudi-Iran Cold War: Competing for regional influence via proxy conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon.
    – Israel–Iran Shadow War: Cyberattacks, assassinations, and proxy clashes, especially in Syria and Lebanon.

    —

    That’s the Middle East we know and love. And, again, can’t ask the Amakelites, can one? They messed with Israel, apparently.

  419. John Morales says

    “If you did not mean there was something specific about the Middle East, which made the launching of this war just “the MIddle East being itself”, there would have been no point either in saying that, or in your list of Middle East wars going back centuries.”

    I here repeat what I already wrote to you above, KG:
    I quoted that to which I responded and to which you are mulishly objecting:
    “Another major global war begun?”

    It’s neither a major global war, not just begun.

    (By the way, this began when the USA fumbled its proxy dictator’s play and the Shah got kicked out and Iran became an Islamic Republic and officially anti-Zionist and anti-Israel under Ayatollah Khomeini)

  420. Reginald Selkirk says

    They Did Vote For This

    In Trump’s first term, the media was obsessed with interviewing Trump supporters in diners and breathlessly reporting that they still liked Trump. In his second, however, the default Trump voter story has changed. Now, the typical narrative tends to focus, not on random interviewees in diners, but on Trump voters affected by some of Trump’s horrific policies—government workers fired, people whose family or friends have been seized by ICE. These people don’t generally reaffirm their enthusiasm for Trump. Instead they says something like, “I voted for Trump. But I did not vote for this.” …

    Of course they voted for this. Whether they knew what they were voting for is a different question, the answer to which does not reflect favorably upon them.

  421. John Morales says

    “The point of my comparison with Europe was that the MIddle East is not unusual in having been the scene of a lot of wars over the past centuries”

    Europe is also being itself. :)

  425. John Morales says

    From the Guardian’s live coverage: (https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/jun/14/israel-and-iran-exchange-missile-strikes-with-explosions-heard-in-tel-aviv-jerusalem-and-tehran-live)

    “The UK’s foreign secretary David Lammy said he spoke to his Israeli counterpart Gideon Sarr earlier.

    Lammy wrote on X: “I expressed my concern for civilians in Israel and reiterated the UK’s call for a de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East.

    “Now is the time for restraint, calm and a return to diplomacy.””

    I can’t help but notice many many more Iranian civilians have been killed since Israel launched its surprise attack on Iran than have Israeli civilians. Interesting how one side gets the sympathy — that being the aggressor.

  426. Reginald Selkirk says

    Suspect allegedly caught impersonating police officer near ICE protests downtown: CPD

    CHICAGO — Charges are pending against a person accused of impersonating a police officer in the Loop on Thursday evening as demonstrators protesting ICE raids marched nearby.

    Officers said it all unfolded around 5 p.m. in the 200 block of South Michigan Avenue as nearby protestors continued their calls for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave the state.

    According to police, the arrest came after officers spotted the male suspect allegedly wearing “police identifiers” in the area.

    Officers then determined the identifiers were allegedly not legitimate and placed the suspect into custody. Following his arrest, officers said they recovered a weapon.

    Police have not confirmed if the individual was arrested amid the protests, but officers said his arrest unfolded around 5 p.m. near the area where the march began, at South Michigan Avenue and East Ida B Wells Drive at 4 p.m…

  428. Reginald Selkirk says

    Minnesota’s election safeguards stopped a voter fraud scheme in its tracks, secretary of state says

    Two people have been charged with conspiracy to commit voter registration fraud in a case that shows Minnesota’s election safeguards work and prevented anyone from voting illegally, Secretary of State Steve Simon said Friday.

    The charges announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office allege that Ronnie Williams and Lorraine Lee Combs generated fictitious names and other data they used to fill out Minnesota voter registration forms in 2021 and 2022.

    The charging documents, filed in federal court on Tuesday, say Williams provided the completed forms to an entity that sought to register voters in Minnesota that is identified only as “Foundation 1,” which paid him, and that he then split the proceeds with Combs.

    The documents also indicate that others were involved in the alleged conspiracy, serving as intermediaries between Williams and “Foundation 1,” which would submit the false registration forms to election offices across the state “through its agents,” but charges against them have not been announced…

    “The extensive checks in Minnesota’s voter registration process ensured that the fraudulent applications were immediately flagged, and no ineligible votes were cast,” Simon said in a statement…

  429. John Morales says

    In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/14/israel-attack-on-iran-slows-diplomatic-momentum-to-halt-gaza-war

    “In the hours after Israel attacked Iran, food shipments and distribution in Gaza stopped and a French-Saudi summit meant to pave the way for wider recognition of a Palestinian state was postponed indefinitely.

    International pressure over starvation and civilian killings in Gaza had apparently dissipated in little more than the time it took for the smoke of the first missile strikes to clear over Tehran.

    Israel’s military moved fast to declare Iran its top priority, with the battle for Gaza relegated to second place. That shift was echoed in foreign ministries and newsrooms around the world.

    […]

    The decision by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to take out the security threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme had also defanged a significant diplomatic and economic threat to his government.

    Some of Israel’s closest allies in Europe had become increasingly outspoken about both the impact of the war in Gaza on civilians, and escalating violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

    Even historically strong alliances with countries such as the Netherlands and Germany had been faltering in the face of an 11-week siege of Gaza, UN warnings of a looming famine and repeated mass killings of hungry crowds trying to reach food distribution sites.

    The EU last month announced a human rights review of its wide-ranging free trade deal with Israel, with findings originally expected at meeting of the bloc’s foreign affairs council later this month.”

    Huh.

  430. John Morales says

    In BBC news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79e24x73xno

    “At least 15 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire as they gathered near an aid distribution centre in central Gaza, hospitals say.

    Officials at al-Aqsa and al-Awda hospitals said people were shot by troops near a site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by Israel and the US. It is inside the Israeli military’s Netzarim Corridor.

    The Israeli military said troops fired warning shots at a group they believed posed a potential threat. An aircraft also struck one person who advanced rapidly towards them, it added.

    The IDF noted the GHF site was closed until Sunday. The GHF posts updates on Facebook, but Gaza has been without internet for more than two days.

    This has only added to the confusion that has increasingly surrounded the delivery of aid, with each day seeing incidents in which people are shot at by Israeli troops or local gunmen.

    […]

    Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, into Gaza, making verifying what is happening in the territory difficult.

    It has been 20 months since Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led cross-border attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

    At least 55,297 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.”

  431. John Morales says

     About Russia:

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvw5nZLlT4Q

    Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine it was revealed that the Russia was employing a highly unorthodox method for recruitment of soldiers by offering Russian Prisoners the option of signing up to join the war in Ukraine. The latest figures for Russian Prisons show that prisoner numbers are falling sharply which is in direct contrast to the majority of other countries around the world. In this video I provide more details on this topic, look at the implications for Russia and ask the question Is Russia Running Out of Prisoners and Manpower?

    Chapters:
    0:00 Intro
    2:08 RUSSIAN PRISONS
    5:56 WAGNER
    10:37 STORM Z
    14:16 STORM V
    16:20 SUMMARY & CONCLUSION

  432. Reginald Selkirk says

    ‘No Kings’ is utter nonsense, but few will notice this weekend

    Jonathan Turley, Opinion Contributor
    Across the nation today, thousands of protests are being organized by left-wing groups, unions, and other organizations, with chants of “No Kings, No Kings, No Kings.” The mantra is a calculated campaign to cement the notion that Donald Trump has assumed dictatorial powers.

    It is a curious campaign since every indication is that our constitutional system is operating precisely as designed. The Constitution is not only designed for times like these, it was written in a time like this. Courts have ruled both in favor and against the Trump Administration. Congress has held hearings and passed legislation on various issues…

    What a clueless git. insert “This is fine” meme. The fact that the current administration is engaged in multiple violations of the constitution, and has obeyed courts orders – so far, and with great reluctance – is not a sign of normality. Congress, with both houses having a slight Republican majority, is offering no checks on Trump’s power, and the oversight of the courts is only a temporary advantage, since the convicted felon-in-chief has the power to appoint federal judges.

    When the USA does “nation building” in other countries, we usually don’t give them a government structure identical to the one we have. Because it has some severe weaknesses.

  433. Reginald Selkirk says

    New Hampshire jury acquits consultant behind AI robocalls mimicking Biden on all charges

    A political consultant who sent artificial intelligence-generated robocalls mimicking former President Joe Biden to New Hampshire Democrats last year was acquitted Friday of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate.

    Steven Kramer, 56, of New Orleans, admitted orchestrating a message sent to thousands of voters two days before the state’s Jan. 23, 2024, presidential primary. Recipients heard an AI-generated voice similar to the Democratic president’s that used his catchphrase “What a bunch of malarkey” and, as prosecutors alleged, suggested that voting in the primary would preclude voters from casting ballots in November.

    “It’s important that you save your vote for the November election,” voters were told. “Your votes make a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

    Kramer, who would have faced decades in prison if convicted, testified that he wanted to send a wake-up call about the potential dangers of AI when he paid a New Orleans magician $150 to create the recording. He was getting frequent calls from people using AI in campaigns, and, worried about the lack of regulations, made it his New Year’s resolution to take action…

    What a great legal strategy. “I just wanted to send a wake up call when I robbed that bank.”

  434. John Morales says

    “What a great legal strategy.”

    Well, yes. Definitionally. He got acquitted with it.

  436. John Morales says

    “Is this what US fundies think atheists are like?”

    Yes for some, no for others. Many types of fundies there.

    —

    BB: A reasonable set of U.S. groups commonly labeled “fundies” (short for fundamentalists) includes:
    – Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB) – Known for strict biblical literalism, separatism, and conservative social views.
    – New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement (NIFB) – A more militant offshoot of IFB, often associated with controversial rhetoric.
    – Pentecostal Holiness groups – Some sects emphasize strict moral codes and end-times prophecy.
    – Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) – A Mormon offshoot practicing polygamy and patriarchal hierarchy.
    – Christian Reconstructionists – Advocate for biblical law as the basis of civil governance.
    – King James Only adherents – Groups that reject all Bible translations except the KJV as doctrinally valid.
    – Certain homeschooling networks – Especially those aligned with dominion theology or patriarchal teachings.
    These groups share traits like scriptural inerrancy, cultural separatism, and resistance to modern secular norms. The label “fundie” is often pejorative, so usage depends on context—satirical, sociological, or polemical.

    Me: Are they often conflated with evangelicals by those outside the usa?
    BB: es. Outside the U.S., “fundamentalist” and “evangelical” are frequently conflated, largely due to overlapping beliefs (e.g. biblical authority, personal salvation) and the prominence of high-profile figures who blur the line. However, the distinction is real:
    – Evangelicals span a broad spectrum—many engage with secular society, accept some biblical metaphor, and vary politically.
    – Fundamentalists are a narrower, more separatist subset—often literalist, doctrinally rigid, and culturally isolationist.
    To outsiders unfamiliar with U.S. religious nuance, the loudest or most extreme voices often define the category, leading to overgeneralization. The conflation is common, but imprecise.

  437. Reginald Selkirk says

    Man drives into crowd of protesters at ‘No Kings’ rally in Virginia

    CULPEPER, Va. – Police say a driver in an SUV intentionally drove into a crowd of protesters in Culpeper, hitting at least one person.

    What we know:

    Police say Joseph R. Checklick Jr, 21, of Culpeper intentionally accelerated into a crowd of protesters near James Madison Highway Saturday afternoon.

    Officials say he struck at least one person with his vehicle.

    Checklick Jr. was arrested and charged with reckless driving, and is being held without bond at the Culpeper County Jail…

  438. Reginald Selkirk says

    She’s back!

    Caitlin Clark returns from injury with ‘bonkers’ 3-point barrage for Fever

    Caitlin Clark is back — and she’s looking like her old self.

    The Indiana Fever star scored 14 points on 5-for-7 shooting in the first quarter on Saturday against the Liberty, but she really kicked it into gear with three treys in a span of 38 seconds at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

    She ended the 102-88 Fever win with a team-high 32 points — hitting 7 of her 14 3-point attempts — to go along with nine assists and eight rebounds.

    Clark had missed the past five Fever games with a strained quad, the first contests she sat out since high school…

  439. JM says

    @431 John Morales: He has a good grasp of just how many people Russia has recruited out of prison and points out that they are hitting the bottom of the barrel. The idea that requiting out of prisons or using mass poorly trained soldiers in combat being unusual is just wrong. Historically recruiting out of prisons was fairly common as soon as large prisons became common. Even before that people with criminal records were often encouraged to join the military. In the US as late as WWII men picked up for crime were sometimes given the option of signing up instead of going to trial.
    The term cannon fodder isn’t new and using units of sacrificial infantry predates cannons. It isn’t used by the US or and modern European army, both of which use the strategy of having small well trained and well equipped army. Russia and China have a long history of using large forces to overwhelm enemies simply through numbers and maintain that policy. Many other countries use human wave attacks on a smaller scale. Dictators and other unpopular leaders can’t depend on a small well lead force because it would be a risk to their rule, instead a large force without a powerful leader works better.

  440. John Morales says

    The scale in these days is indeed new, and unusual, JM.

    A colloraly being that it’s very convenient for Russia to have many fewer prisoners they need to take care of.

    Silver lining, no? No expenses, no maintenance.
    Best of all, one can adjust sentencing standards to fill the gaps in cannon fodder.

    I note that the USA has a different ethos; work the prisoners as slave labour, since that’s totally constitutional there. Literally.

    “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

    Change the criminal code, change who can be enslaved. Perfectly constitutional, perfectly legal in the USA.

  441. John Morales says

    Point is, cheap labour is why the USA is still growing its incarceration rates (well, and the for-profit prison system), whereas Russia is using them in their war.

    Which is the more efficient use of that human refuse resource depends on one’s calculus of profit.

    (I think the USA is better, but then they’re not mired in a war that’s gonna wreck it mid- and long-term)

  443. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Jason Leopold (Bloomberg):

    In March, I filed a FOIA request with the US Institute of Peace […] This week, USIP sent me the most incredible response to a FOIA request I have ever received.

    at the time of your request, USIP was operating under the control of Mr. Kenneth Jackson and Mr. Nate Cavanaugh of [DOGE].

    Mr. Jackson and Mr. Cavanaugh disabled and restricted access to the Institute’s FOIA system, terminated the employees responsible for processing FOIA requests, and restricted the use of Institute financial resources. The [court] declared all actions taken by Mr. Jackson and Mr. Cavanaugh to be “null, void, and without legal effect” and affirmed USIP’s current leadership on May 19, 2025. USIP leadership regained control of the Institute’s FOIA system on June 4, 2025. Accordingly, we received your request […] We regret any confusion caused by Mr. Jackson’s and Mr. Cavanaugh’s actions.

  444. John Morales says

    In Australian news: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jun/15/nsw-nationals-vote-to-dump-net-zero-by-2050-increasing-pressure-on-littleproud-to-follow-suit

    “The New South Wales Nationals have voted to abandon Australia’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 at the party’s weekend state conference in Coffs Harbour, increasing pressure on the federal Nationals leader, David Littleproud, to follow suit.

    Attendees at the conference said the motion, moved by the Tweed state electorate council, passed easily with 60 to 65% support, after vigorous debate for nearly an hour among the 300-odd delegates.

    Young Nationals chair, Jayden Whaites, drew applause for his passionate speech in support of dropping the target.

    Whaites told the conference there was no point in having a target without a clear pathway to achieve it. He said real farms were being replaced with solar farms and causing angst among farming communities.

    The chairman of the NSW Nationals, Rick Colless, said others in favour of abandoning the target pointed out that Australia’s major trading partners, notably the US, were walking away from net zero by 2050.”

    The next Right-wing generation of the loony fringe is on the job.

  445. John Morales says

    In the news: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-iran-strike-each-other-new-wave-attacks-2025-06-14/

    “Israel and Iran strike at each other as Trump says conflict can be easily ended
    By Alexander Cornwell and Parisa Hafezi
    June 15, 20256:16 PM GMT+10 Updated 28 min ago”

    Notice anything?

    “The Israeli military warned Iranians living near weapons facilities to evacuate, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks by Israel so far were nothing compared with what Iran would see in the coming days.
    “If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before,” Trump said in a message on Truth Social. “However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and Israel, and end this bloody conflict.”
    Trump gave no details of any possible deal.
    Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Israel’s attacks, which began on Friday, were aimed at sabotaging nuclear talks with the U.S. that were to resume in Oman on Sunday, and which have now been cancelled. He said Israel’s attacks had the support of the U.S. and that Iran was acting only in self-defence.
    Araqchi has previously said the Oman talks could not take place while Iran was being subjected to Israel’s “barbarous” attacks.
    Israel has said the campaign’s goal is to stop Iran from developing atomic weapons and taking out its ballistic missile capabilities. Officials have acknowledged the military strikes were unlikely to fully halt Iran’s nuclear programme and voiced hopes they would lead to a comprehensive U.S.-Iran deal.
    Iran has said 78 people were killed there on the first day of Israel’s campaign, and scores more on the second, including 60 when a missile brought down a 14-storey apartment block in Tehran, where 29 of the dead were children.”

    Not exactly a world war, so far.

    At least, not a major one.

    (Not WW3, I think)

  446. John Morales says

    In the news:
     IDF warns Iranians near weapons manufacturing facilities to evacuate
    (https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-warns-iranians-near-weapons-manufacturing-facilities-to-evacuate/)

    and simultaneously, https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/409952

    “He emphasized that the current phase—before a possible enemy retaliation—requires the highest level of vigilance. “The response may come at any moment, and we are prepared for it,” he stressed. “Home Front Command conducted an in-depth process with all local authorities, which began covertly and culminated in full readiness for a potential full-scale conflict.”

    At the same time, alert protocol remains at the highest level—Level Four. Accordingly, Home Front Command coordinated with Israel’s Chief Rabbis to cancel synagogue prayers on Shabbat and banned public gathering”.

    —

    Oh, yeah. That pesky retaliation for their attack and ongoing threats.

    Israel is what it is. Not what it could be.

    (what it should be? well, that’s a value judgment)

  447. StevoR says

    Whoah. If this is true. Implications are huge – and it does need to be investigated I’d say :

    “The missing votes uncovered in Smart Elections’ legal case in Rockland County, New York, are just the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg that extends across the swing states and into Texas. On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.

    These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.

    That revelation is a shock to the public.But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.
    And it started with a long forgotten sale.

    A Power Cord Becomes a Backdoor

    In March 2021, Leonard Leo—the judicial kingmaker behind the modern conservative legal machine—sold a quiet Chicago company by the name of Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion. The buyer: Eaton Corporation, a global power infrastructure conglomerate that just happened to have a partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palantir.

    To most, Tripp Lite was just a hardware brand—battery backups, surge protectors, power strips. But in America’s elections, Tripp Lite devices were something else entirely.

    They are physically connected to ES&S central tabulators and Electionware servers, and Dominion tabulators and central servers across the country. And they aren’t dumb devices. They are smart UPS units—programmable, updatable, and capable of communicating directly with the election system via USB, serial port, or Ethernet, .ES&S systems, including central tabulators and Electionware servers, rely on Tripp Lite UPS devices. ES&S’s Electionware suite runs on Windows OS, which automatically trusts connected UPS hardware.

    If Eaton pushed an update to those UPS units, it could have gained root-level access to the host tabulation environment—without ever modifying certified election software.

    In Dominion’s Democracy Suite 5.17, the drivers for these UPS units are listed as “optional”—meaning they can be updated remotely without triggering certification requirements or oversight. Optional means unregulated. Unregulated means invisible. And invisible means perfect for infiltration.
    …
    Enter the ballot scrubbing platform BallotProof. Co-created by Ethan Shaotran, a longtime employee of Elon Musk and current DOGE employee, BallotProof was pitched as a transparency solution—an app to “verify” scanned ballot images and support election integrity.

    With Palantir’s AI controlling the backend, and BallotProof cleaning the front, only one thing was missing: the signal to go live.
    September 2024: Eaton and Musk Make It Official

    Then came the final public breadcrumb: In September 2024, Eaton formally partnered with Elon Musk.

    The stated purpose? A vague, forward-looking collaboration focused on “grid resilience” and “next-generation communications.”
    But buried in the partnership documents was this line:
    “Exploring integration with Starlink’s emerging low-orbit DTC infrastructure for secure operational continuity.”

    The Activation: Starlink Goes Direct-to-Cell

    That signal came on October 30, 2024—just days before the election, Musk activated 265 brand new low Earth orbit (LEO) V2 Mini satellites, each equipped with Direct-to-Cell (DTC) technology capable of processing, routing, and manipulating real-time data, including voting data, through his satellite network.
    DTC doesn’t require routers, towers, or a traditional SIM. It connects directly from satellite to any compatible device—including embedded modems in “air-gapped” voting systems, smart UPS units, or unsecured auxiliary hardware.
    From that moment on:
    – Commands could be sent from orbit
    – Patch delivery became invisible to domestic monitors
    – Compromised devices could be triggered remotely
    This groundbreaking project that should have taken two-plus years to build, was completed in just under ten months.
    Elon Musk boasts endlessly about everything he’s launching, building, buying—or even just thinking about—whether it’s real or not. But he pulls off one of the largest and fastest technological feats in modern day history… and says nothing? One might think that was kind of… “weird.”

    According to New York Times reporting, on October 5—just before Starlink’s DTC activation—Musk texted a confidant:
    “I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.”
    Then, an hour later:
    “This isn’t something on the chessboard, so they’ll be quite surprised. ‘Lasers’ from space.”

    It read like a riddle. In hindsight, it was a blueprint.
    …
    The Outcome

    Data that makes no statistical sense. A clean sweep in all seven swing states.

    The fall of the Blue Wall. Eighty-eight counties flipped red—not one flipped blue.

    Every victory landed just under the threshold that would trigger an automatic recount. Donald Trump outperformed expectations in down-ballot races with margins never before seen—while Kamala Harris simultaneously underperformed in those exact same areas.

    If one were to accept these results at face value—Donald Trump, a 34-count convicted felon, supposedly outperformed Ronald Reagan. According to the co-founder of the Election Truth Alliance:

    “These anomalies didn’t happen nationwide. They didn’t even happen across all voting methods—this just doesn’t reflect human voting behavior.”

    They were concentrated.

    Targeted.

    Specific to swing states and Texas—and specific to Election Day voting.
    And the supposed explanation? “Her policies were unpopular.”

    Let’s think this through logically. We’re supposed to believe that in all the battleground states, Democratic voters were so disillusioned by Vice President Harris’s platform that they voted blue down ballot—but flipped to Trump at the top of the ticket?

    Not in early voting.

    Not by mail.

    With exception to Nevada, only on Election Day. And only after a certain threshold of ballots had been cast—where VP Harris’s numbers begin to diverge from her own party, and Trump’s suddenly begin to surge. As President Biden would say, “C’mon, man.”

    In the world of election data analysis, there’s a term for that: vote-flipping algorithm.
    …
    And of course, Donald Trump himself:

    He spent a year telling his followers he didn’t need their votes—at one point stating,
    “…in four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”

    https://substack.com/inbox/post/165658733 via fb BTW. Hard to access i that link there so have quoted in full (I think? Dunno Can’t really tell…) via fb post shared by one of the many left wing groups there.

  450. Reginald Selkirk says

    Disbelief as Nigeria urges prayer to end food shortages

    A call for all staff in Nigeria’s ministry of agriculture to pray to help the country achieve food security has caused controversy.

    An internal memo from the head of the ministry’s HR department urges staff to attend a solemn prayer session and fast for the next three Mondays.

    Some Nigerians have responded by questioning the government’s commitment to the task of bringing down the high cost of food.

    A press release from the agriculture ministry on Saturday downplayed the issue, saying the call for prayers was not an official policy to tackle food insecurity but was intended to boost staff wellbeing…

  452. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 450

    I got a feeling folks have been praying to end these shortages for some time. Funny how their omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent deity hasn’t answered these prayers yet.I wonder why?

    Sadly, I fear, like most theists, they’ll find a scapegoat to attack rather than realize that the atheists were right all along: LGBTQ+,. “witches,” etc..

  453. says

    Right-wing media outlets are trying to manufacture a meaningful connection between the alleged gunman who killed Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman on Saturday and the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz. They are wrong.

    Multiple media sources have identified the alleged perpetrator of what Walz called “a politically motivated assassination” as Vance Boelter, an employee of a private security group in the Twin Cities.

    The New York Post described Boelter in a headline as “former appointee of Tim Walz,” reporting that the suspect served as a member of a panel called the Governor’s Workforce Development Board until 2023.

    Other right-wing media outlets quickly pushed the message that Boelter was somehow tied to Walz, with Breitbart publishing a sensational headline: “REPORT: Gov. Walz Appointed Alleged Assassin of Minnesota House Speaker to Workforce Board.” [JFC]

    Blaze Media, founded by former Fox News host Glenn Beck, took it further in its headline: “Suspect tied to Walz? Democrat governor may have appointed alleged Minnesota shooter to state board.”

    And Elon Musk shared a baseless tweet that the violence was perpetrated by “the left,” adding his own commentary, “The far left is murderously violent.” [!!]

    But Boelter’s service on the workforce board does not shed any light on his beliefs, nor does it indicate any personal connection to Walz. (The Post also notes deep in its article that Boelter “last registered to vote in 2004, as a Republican.”)

    As law professor Quinn Yeargain explains, every state is required to create such a board thanks to a federal law called the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which was passed by wide bipartisan majorities and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2014.

    […] members’ “responsibilities are quite minimal” and says the boards have “no significant powers.”

    […] A companion Minnesota law fleshes out the board’s makeup but also incorporates the mandates of the federal statute, instructing that a majority of members must be business owners or executives; business representatives; or “individuals nominated by state business organizations and business trade associations.”

    It’s that last category into which Boelter fell. Boelter was originally named to Minnesota’s board by Gov. Mark Dayton, Walz’s predecessor, for a two-year term starting in June of 2016. Walz reappointed Boelter for three more years at the end of 2019, along with 17 others. A Walz press release announcing the appointments identified Boelter as a “Business & Industry Representative.”

    As Yeargain notes, when Boelter rejoined the board, he was just one of 60 members on the panel. In a “grim coincidence,” he points out, one of Saturday’s victims, Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman, served on the board along with Boelter. Hoffman, who is reportedly recovering after surgery, is still a member.

    Link

    Posted by readers of the article:

    He’s known to have been a registered Republican and an anti-abortion activist so there’s that.
    ———————–
    Vance Boelter, the man identified as the suspect in the attacks on two lawmakers, is listed as the director of security patrols on the website of a Minnesota-based private security group. “We drive the same make and model of vehicles that many police departments use in the U.S.,” the website says.
    ———————–
    Mr. Boelter worked at a funeral home, owned guns and had voted for President Trump last year […]

    Mr. Carlson said Mr. Boelter is a Christian who strongly opposed abortion. He had never mentioned either of the lawmakers who were shot, Mr. Carlson said, and had generally avoided talking about politics. He said Mr. Boelter had been experiencing financial and mental health challenges.

    Mr. Boelter and his wife run a private security company in Minnesota, according to its website. The company, Praetorian Guard Security Services, lists Mr. Boelter as the director of security patrols and his wife as the president.
    ——————————
    Elon Musk never let facts get in the way of a good lie.
    ————————————-
    The 57-year-old runs an armed security service with his wife, and has been affiliated with at least one evangelical organization, a ministry he has also run with his wife, according to a tax filing reviewed by WIRED. According to public records and archived websites reviewed by WIRED, the suspect served for a time as the president of Revoformation Ministries. A version of the ministry’s website captured in 2011 carries a biography in which he is said to have been ordained in 1993.
    ——————————-
    on Fox News’s site, the report that abortion supporters and providers are on the list is nowhere to be found.
    ——————————–
    The suspects’ list targets prominent abortion rights supporters in Minnesota, according to an official who has seen the list. That includes many Democratic lawmakers who have been outspoken about supporting abortion rights policy positions.
    ————————–
    The MN assassin was a Trump voter, registered Republican, and had the names of abortion providers, pro-abortion rights advocates, and lawmakers in Minnesota and other states with him in the car.
    —————————–
    Vance Boelter is a registered Republican.

    Vance Boelter is a Rightwing Conservative.

    Vance Boelter voted for Trump.

    Vance Boelter is an anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion Christian Fundamentalist.

    These facts were verified by CNN via interviews with Boelter’s roommate and childhood friend, as well as video of Boetler preaching in Africa.

  454. says

    Divide, demoralize, dismantle: The hard right wants to break our democracyM.a>, by Southern Poverty Law Center

    […] Since President Donald Trump took office, we’ve seen a larger pattern of retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion in sectors from education to health care to the corporate world. The cultural headwinds facing DEI did not blow in overnight. As the Southern Poverty Law Center’s new “Year in Hate and Extremism” report details, this shift is part of a long and coordinated strategy by hard-right extremists to reshape American life and infiltrate politics and governance.

    What began as a small and vocal minority of people mobilizing during the pandemic to censor classroom discussion, ban books, fight mask mandates, and impose a white, Christian supremacy in schools, quickly gained a foothold of influence in the political discourse. Local and state officials, especially in the South, took up the mantle—and messaging—of these groups and began trying to enact their dangerous ideology into law.

    Florida was a leading incubator in which these policies took shape. Groups like Moms for Liberty, founded in Florida in 2021, and Citizens Defending Freedom led a campaign to destabilize, defund, and dismantle public school authority under the guise of “parental rights.” They aligned with state officials who pushed through new educational standards that whitewash and rewrite history. The standards, for example, require courses in African American history to include language that some enslaved people benefited from slavery. They also sought to shut down drag story hours, ban discussion of LGBTQ+ identities in the classroom, and deny gender-affirming medical care for young transgender people. Following Florida’s lead, copycat legislation was soon proposed by lawmakers in states across the country.

    The hard right has since expanded its targets from K-12 schools and public libraries to DEI programs of any kind. As our report details, by 2024, proposed laws to dismantle DEI programs were sweeping the nation. These measures restricted discussions of race and gender in college classrooms and cut funding for diversity personnel and offices, impacting 212 college campuses in 32 states. Companies also increasingly faced legal challenges and pressure from lawmakers and political candidates to drop their DEI programs. Last year, Walmart, Boeing, John Deere, Lowe’s, Ford, and many more announced they would scale back their efforts.

    Lawmakers have not only pulled their agenda of exclusion but also their tactics straight from the playbook of hate and antigovernment extremist groups. […]

    These tactics were particularly evident in the 2024 elections as the political right increasingly moved toward an authoritarian, Christian supremacist, and patriarchal social order. One of the main groups driving that shift is Turning Point USA, whose primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear over the false conspiracy that white Christians are under attack from immigrants, LGBTQ+ people and civil rights activists. The group’s founder, Charlie Kirk, often spoke at Trump campaign rallies, and has asserted, “You cannot have liberty if you don’t have a Christian population.”

    With the election of Trump, this extremism now has an ally in the highest office in the nation. What was once considered a fringe agenda in the modern era is the blueprint from which the country’s president—and the MAGA movement—is operating. […]

    All of us must link arms and hold our ground—knowing that our strength is our vibrant and multiracial society. We must not only celebrate but together preserve our nation’s most sacred principle: out of many, one.

  455. says

    […] Advertising was on the video panels at Trump’s viewing stand. Sponsors were Coinbase, Amazon, Planatir, and UFC. This was supposed to be about the 250th Anniversary of the Army. Really. We need advertising?

    […] After the parade, Trump did a voice over on a video about the Army. […] Trump starts his speech with his latest spin since he made the WWI and WWII Victory Days holidays, that we won the wars, but we don’t celebrate.

    Trump tried to give a history lesson about wars and the US Army. It just never works coming out of the mouth of a draft dodger. He spoke with such low energy it was monotonous.

    […] there was music before the fireworks. But people were leaving early even before Trump gave the history lesson.

    Reviews of the parade on anything but Fox News were negative.

    […] On MSNBC, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson (Ret.) said, “It was a colossal waste of time, effort and money we don’t need. That’s not who we are. We don’t do these kinds of things. We don’t March down the streets like that. We prove ourselves and our value as an army, our strength as an army by our actions, not parades. That’s something that dictators do.” He then complained about the three days of street shutdowns preparation caused. “And to think about what we could do with that money if we had it instead. … Donald Trump already stole $1 billion from MILCON, for military construction, for the southern border. I mean, so there’s barracks that are not being renovated, child care centers that are not being built. There are perks that soldiers and families and their families deserve.”

    There was so much news during the day, that except for Fox News, the parade was an afterthought. The political targeted killings in Minnesota, the war between Israel and Iran, and coverage of the 2,000 No Kings Day protests nationwide. These all overshadowed the parade in importance.

    […] Trump’s parade is still another sign of a failed presidency that he keeps hoping will get good reviews from those not in the right wing echo chamber. He’s never going to get them.

    Link

  456. says

    Good news from Canada:

    Progressive Canadians made such a mad dash to vote for the Mark Carney-led Liberals in the last election instead of the NDP or Greens out of fear of Pierre Poilievre and his maple MAGA Conservatives that nobody had much of a chance to truly check the Catholic superbanker’s bonafides as a small L liberal.

    Fiscal conservatives who aren’t also social conservatives are increasingly unicorns, so some people might be sleeping a bit easier after he [Mark Carney] cut a cheque for $1.5 million CAD to various Pride events across the country this month after former deep-pocketed corporate donors such as Google and Home Depot took the mad king’s decree DEI is DOA to heart.

    “One of the strengths of Canada is recognizing that people can be who they want to be and love who they want to love,” said the prime minister at a recent Pride flag-raising event on Parliament Hill. “Unfortunately, around the world, there’s a backlash struggling against the progress that has been made. In this time, Canada will always stand up for the vulnerable and the equal rights we cherish. We can take pride in how far we’ve come but we should also recognize there’s far more to do.”

    […] At least one Irishman is getting things right. Or a former Irishman, as Carney revoked his citizenship after he got his new gig and never acquired a decent brogue anyway. He also has skin in the game as one of his four kids is non-binary, although little is publicly known about Sasha Carney, who legally changed their name four years ago.

    […] maybe Big Daddy Carney can have a word with Elon Musk if he somehow shows at the G7 summit beginning today in Alberta about how to be a less shitty father to his trans daughter.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/former-irishmancanadian-pm-leaves

  457. says

    Update:

    According to an emergency alert just sent by the Sibley County Sheriff’s Department, the Minnesota shooting suspect’s vehicle has been located near Minnesota Highway 25 and 301 Avenue in Faxon Township, about 45 miles southwest of Minneapolis.

    “Law enforcement will be going to area residences to ask to search properties,” the alert read.

    Additional details:

    One of Vance Boelter’s roommates, citing footage from home security cameras, said Boelter came to his vehicle behind their shared rental home about 6 a.m. local time on Saturday. That’s a few hours after the second shooting, which took place about six miles north in Brooklyn Park.

    Washington Post link

  458. says

    […] Trump rejected proposal to kill Iranian supreme leader, U.S. official says

    President Donald Trump rejected a proposal from Israel in the last days to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a U.S. official told NBC News.

    Earlier today in an interview on Fox News, Netanyahu did not directly refute the initial Reuters report about the proposed assassination attempt but dismissed “false reports” about discussions between the U.S. and Israel.

    The rejection comes as Iran threatens to strike U.S. military installations if it continues to assist Israel in its defenses against Iranian airstrikes. In his Fox interview, Netanyahu asserted that U.S. military pilots continue to shoot down drones from Iran.

    Reuters was the first to report about a plan to kill the Ayatollah. […]

    Traffic is heavy inside Tehran as people are trying to escape from all possible routes leaving Iran’s capital city after heavy bombardment from Israel.

    Jam-packed roads are seeing two to three hours worth of traffic for roughly six miles of travel. […]


    Link

    Video at the link.

  462. JM says

    Yahoo: Trump Says ‘America First’ Means Whatever He Wants

    Along those lines, Scherer asked about whether the move runs counter to “America First.”
    “Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” Trump said.

    That is blatant fascism right there. Words don’t have meaning beyond what Trump says they mean. If “America First” meant staying out of other countries wars last week and means siding with Israel this week there is no contradiction, because Trump can change what it means when he wants. He is wrong about “America First” also, it was in use long before him, that that is secondary.
    There is also an interesting less obvious point in that Trump wants to keep the US out of the Ukrainian/Russian war but is happy to jump into Israel/Iran. He thinks Iran isn’t a threat to the US in any way so his basic cowardice doesn’t drive him to avoid it. The US can side with Israel and just sit off bombing Iran into rubble and call it a victory. No real risk to the US or US military.

  463. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Adding to Lynna @455.

    Kos: After the parade, Trump did a voice over on a video about the Army.

    Laura Jedeed (Journalist):

    Quiet, empty street. Someone asks the secret service guy standing in front of us whether it’s over. “Honestly I have no idea,” he replies.

    Nope! More large vehicles to fuck up the roads. Notice how the birdsong is louder than the crowd. We’re in a rhythm now: large vehicles, some soldiers, more large vehicles. […] The crowd is SILENT. It turns out watching a bunch of military vehicles drive down the street gets really samey after a while.
    […]
    Trump is giving about the speech you’d expect from a semi-normal person. The Army is great, veterans are great, medal of honor recipients are great, etc etc. He then takes a hard right turn by explaining how dead we will kill all our enemies, like so dead guys, no kidding you’ll be so sorry if you fuck with us, we’ll murder you. Apparently.
    […]
    Lee Greenwood is singing Proud to Be An American now. Obviously. He uses the bridge to shout “Happy birthday Mr President!” You know, between verses about selfless sacrifice of our armed services. Buddy, fuck you.

    Earlier.
    Laura Jedeed:

    The Army Strength Competition is about to begin. […] More competitors than onlookers as the teams from various departments and units are preparing to engage on Feats of Strength. Halfhearted cheers from this crowd of… maybe 100 at this point.
    […]
    Team UFC is getting SPANKED lmao.

    One of these teams is all Sergeant Majors, which means they’re probably all over 40, and they’re kicking these fighters’ ass. Sergeants Major absolutely body the other teams, it’s not even close. I admit that makes me kinda happy, its not their fault their event got hijacked.
    […]
    The strength competition is probably the only event today that would have been more or less the same (minus Team UFC) even if Trump hadn’t hijacked it, and I admit I’m enjoying it.

  464. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Alt National Park Service:

    The No Kings protest was massive! Historic turnout across the country.
    […]
    Honored to announce: 12.1 million in attendance.

    Pwnallthethings:

    Genie: Ok what do you want for your birthday?
    Trump: A military parade, oh, and also millions of people on the street chanting my name.
    Genie: Okie dokie

  466. birgerjohansson says

    Phil Moorhouse:
    “Why Trump’s Birthday Parade Was a Total Disaster”

    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=V86xFwtRPYk
    The Brits with their royal family wanting parades admittedly have more experience. So do North Koreans. Maybe Trump should bring in trained mercenaries next time. It is not like he considers any pushback…

  468. birgerjohansson says


    That monolith turns up everywhere. But is this the X-file black goo or the Alien black goo? So many questions.

  469. birgerjohansson says

    Dang! Sorry about the link. BTW the middle east chrisis is choking most other international news.

  470. Reginald Selkirk says

    Gunman Opens Fire on ‘No Kings’ Protest in Salt Lake City

    A gunman opened fire on thousands of protesters in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Saturday evening. One person has been critically injured while a suspect has been taken into custody by police, authorities have said.

    “We can confirm the shooting resulted in one person being critically injured,” the agency said in a social media post. “The patient has been taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries”.

    An estimated 10,000 people were in attendance at the “No Kings” rally that began in Pioneer Park and marched north through the downtown area, the Salt Lake City Police Department said. Gunfire was heard at around 8 p.m., with video posted online showing protesters fleeing in terror.

    Police were seen with guns drawn approaching a man standing next to a building near 200 South and State Street. A Fox 13 News crew reported seeing the man, who was taken into custody, with blood on his hands…

  471. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    @465 birgerjohansson:
    That wasn’t so much a “deep dive” (that it claimed to be) as an 8-minute rehash of a 24 minute Murderbot episode. It didn’t add anything that wasn’t already plain on a first watch of the show.

  473. John Morales says

    re: “The US can side with Israel and just sit off bombing Iran into rubble and call it a victory. No real risk to the US or US military.”

    Not much return for the investment, either — so not that great for the USA military.

    Me: cite or estimate the cost of munitions usa expended on houthis this year
    BB: As of April 2025, the estimated cost of U.S. munitions expended against the Houthis in Yemen has approached $1 billion in under three weeks of operations. This figure includes the deployment of high-cost precision weapons such as JASSM long-range cruise missiles, JSOW glide bombs, and Tomahawk missiles, as well as interceptors like SM-2, SM-6, and ESSM Sea Sparrows, which individually range from $1 million to $4.3 million per unit.

    The campaign, initiated on 15 March 2025, has involved B-2 bombers, aircraft carriers, and multiple fighter squadrons. Analysts have noted concerns over the depletion of strategic munitions stockpiles, particularly those critical for potential conflicts in the Indo-Pacific. Despite the scale of expenditure, reports suggest the Houthis have retained operational capabilities, continuing attacks in the Red Sea and downing U.S. drones.

    Let me know if you’d like a breakdown by munition type or a comparative cost analysis.

    Me: what is the cost of the operation overall (same sources/synthesis) excluding the munition costs
    BB: Excluding munitions, the broader operational costs of the U.S. campaign against the Houthis—dubbed Operation Rough Rider—are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, contributing to a total campaign cost exceeding $1 billion as of early May 2025.

    These non-munition expenses include:

    Deployment of two aircraft carriers, B-2 bombers, and multiple fighter squadrons.
    Advanced air defence systems like Patriot and THAAD, with associated transport and setup costs (e.g. 73 C-17 flights for a single Patriot battery).
    Fuel, maintenance, and operational tempo costs for sustained sorties and naval operations.
    Personnel costs, including hazard pay, logistics, and support staff across CENTCOM assets.

    The Pentagon has reportedly considered requesting supplemental funding from Congress to sustain the operation, citing strain on readiness and stockpiles.

    If you’d like, I can estimate per-day burn rates or model projected costs over a six-month horizon. Just say the word. Precision has a price. So does persistence.

    [it really wants to revert to chatty mode, just like Talkie Toaster in Red Dwarf, and I keep telling it not to do that. The tension yields funny epiphenomena]

  474. says

    This week, Donald Trump went from “Les Miserables” to just plain miserable.

    He threw himself a $45 million birthday party and nobody came.

    The “crowd” that did show up could best be described using Stormy Daniels’s nickname for the birthday boy.

    Tiny.

    But here’s the shocking part: Trump’s only actual talent—a knack for putting on a TV show—failed him horribly.

    Here’s how John Ismay of the New York Times described what will go down in history as the most tedious military parade ever:

    “Overall this was a pretty listless and low-energy parade and crowd. People wearing Trump paraphernalia far outnumbered those wearing Army hats and shirts from what I could see. There were no speakers along the parade route, so spectators couldn’t hear whatever was being broadcast by the announcers closer to the reviewing stand.”

    Shorter version: sad trombone.

    It was an excruciatingly boring slog. Melania fell asleep. Shit, Trump fell asleep. You know you’ve created a snooze fest when the most alert-looking dude in the audience is Pete Hegseth.

    Maybe next time Trump wants to celebrate himself with an ostentatious display of military hardware, he should hire a consultant who knows how to produce this kind of show: [photo of North Korean leader]

    https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/failure-on-parade

  475. says

    Excerpts from a longer New Yorker report by Antonia Hitchens:

    soldier in a Revolutionary War uniform was sitting under a tree, vaping and scrolling on his phone. It was the Army’s two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary celebration in D.C., and I was looking for the entrance to their fitness competition and cake-cutting ceremony, before the big parade at night. Walking down Independence Avenue, a little before noon, I heard a din. Behind the Department of Agriculture building, thousands of soldiers were getting in formation. They had spent the night sleeping in the federal agency’s headquarters—workers had been asked to telework to accommodate them—and now they were streaming out into the muggy day for their procession. Each conflict in the Army’s history was to be restaged in a carefully choreographed performance, and so the soldiers were dressed in period costumes: some from the Revolutionary War, others in outfits from the Civil War, the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. The uniforms had been rented and shipped to them from Hollywood.

    […] As I stood in the crowd with teen-agers in period garb, in D.C., it was a different universe from the viewing stand down the Mall where, in a few hours, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Pete Hegseth would sit with the President behind bulletproof glass.

    […] I had seen an ad on Craigslist offering a “flat fee of $1,000 paid in cryptocurrency” to seat fillers in red hats and gold accessories “for space maximization and attendance.”

    […] There was no line to enter the security perimeter, which was manned by T.S.A. workers. An elderly woman in front of me was told that she couldn’t bring in her mini American flags unless she removed them from their sticks, which were a potential weapon. Along the parade route, the Revolutionary War units were marching by as I entered. “There’s George Washington, straight from the grave!” someone called out. A parade announcer thanked Lockheed Martin and Coinbase for their sponsorship.

    […] A group of several hundred protesters who had gathered for a “Refuse Fascism” demonstration had marched from Logan Circle to the White House. On the sidelines of the parade, a number of attendees held signs with messages like “monarchs are butterflies not presidents,” standing beside onlookers who clapped at the tanks and who occasionally broke into chants of “U-S-A.” There was no friction between them. The crowd was mostly quiet.

    Most attendees near me streamed out slowly before the fireworks show started. A friend of mine, who grew up in East Germany, had come down from New York to see the tanks in the capital. She said that the scariest thing she saw was a robot dog, at an Army fair that had taken place earlier in the day. “This was nothing like the military parade that I experienced every year until the fall of the wall, in 1989,” she said. “Those were very loud and grim and brutal affairs. Every year I was a child, I thought World War Three was beginning.” She went on, “We would never have gone if we had the choice. But we did not. You can’t imagine how much energy went into getting people to show up for those parades in East Berlin.” The sparse crowds for Trump’s parade were charming to her—you can offer to pay people on Craigslist, but, in the U.S., you can’t force them to attend. Even most Republican lawmakers had sat out the event. […]

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-militarys-birthday-parade-rolls-quietly-through-trumps-washington

  476. says

    Trump: ‘It’s possible’ US becomes involved in Israel-Iran conflict

    […] “We’re not involved in it. It’s possible we could get involved. But we are not at this moment involved,” Trump told ABC News.

    ABC News also reported that Trump expressed interest in the possibility of mediation in the Iran-Israel conflict by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    “I would be open to it. [Putin] is ready. He called me about it. We had a long talk about it. We talked about this more than his situation. This is something I believe is going to get resolved,” Trump said, per ABC News. […]

  477. says

    What new fuckery is this?

    To save its takeover of U.S. Steel, Japan’s Nippon Steel agreed to an unusual arrangement, granting the White House a “golden share” that gives the government an extraordinary amount of influence over a U.S. company.

    New details of the agreement show that the structure would give President Trump and his successors a permanent stake in U.S. Steel, significant sway over its board and veto power over a wide array of company actions, an arrangement that could change the nature of foreign investment in the United States.

    The terms of the arrangement were hammered out in meetings that went late into the night on Wednesday and Thursday, according to two people familiar with the details.

    Representatives from Nippon Steel — which had been trying to acquire the struggling U.S. Steel since December 2023, but had been blocked by the Biden administration over national security concerns — came around to Mr. Trump’s desire to take a stake that would give the U.S. government significant control over the company’s actions.

    Nippon had argued that this influence should expire — perhaps after three or four years, the duration of the Trump administration. But in the meetings, which were held at the Commerce Department, Trump officials led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick insisted that the golden share should last in perpetuity, the two people said.

    Under the terms of the national security pact, which the companies said they signed Friday, the U.S. government would retain a single share of preferred stock, called class G — as in gold. And U.S. Steel’s charter will list nearly a dozen activities the company cannot undertake without the approval of the American president or someone he designates in his stead.

    Activities requiring the president’s permission include the company transferring production or jobs outside the United States, closing or idling plants before agreed-upon time frames and making certain changes to how it sources its raw materials […]

    The U.S. government has historically taken stakes in companies only when they were under financial duress or played a significant role in the economy. During the 2008-9 financial crisis, for example, it acquired a large stake in General Motors as part of a bailout and took control of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

    The U.S. Treasury sold the last of its stake in General Motors in 2013. President Trump has intermittently floated the idea of releasing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from government control.
    […] For many national security experts, the concept of the golden share itself is perhaps more seismic than the terms of the actual security agreement.

    Aaron Bartnick, an official in the Biden White House and Treasury Department who worked on national security reviews of foreign investments, said that taking equity in a company as a condition for such an approval was “pretty unprecedented.”

    […] “We have a golden share, which I control, or the president controls,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday. “Now I’m a little concerned whoever the president might be, but that gives you total control.”

    […] China has an indirect stake in TikTok’s parent, ByteDance; and the United Kingdom holds a golden share in the defense company BAE systems.

    […] U.S. officials have historically taken issue with these structures, arguing instead for freer markets. European courts have struck down a number of golden shares on grounds that they limit the flow of capital.

    […] Security experts said the adoption of a golden share in the United States could permanently alter the way that foreign investors view deal making in the country.

    […] “It is going to cause people to spend more time thinking about the obstacles to investing in the U.S. market,” he [Stephen Heifetz, a partner at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati] said.

    Link

  478. birgerjohansson says

    Lynna, OM @474 & 475
    Here is a proper parade! Erich Honecker and his posse are celebrating the 40th anniversary of East Germany (ironically, it was not long before the Wall would come down).
    This is significantly more impressive than the anemic parades Putin has arranged since the war broke out, and Trump can just eat the dust of these Germans (BTW, the Soviets insisted the East Germans lose the Hugo Boss uniforms so these uniforms only partly retain the Wehrmact heritage).

    The lacklustre performance of the Americans is really rather charming, as is the deliberate decision by Western armies to NOT adopt the prussian-style parade ‘goose-stepping’ you still se in Russia.

    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=7wK3k1kd7fY

  479. says

    Forget the G7. Now it’s the G6 versus Trump.

    “Western leaders want to jointly pressure Donald Trump to cease his economic war against them, so that they can cooperate on pressing issues like Russia.”

    Tariff man Donald Trump will descend on the Canadian Rockies to face Western leaders on Monday at a G7 summit who all agree his erratic and costly trade war is a bad idea. But is ganging up on him an even worse idea?

    The last time G7 leaders met in Canada in 2018, Trump left early after coming under fire over his first-term tariffs.
    This time, the trade tensions are far more severe — yet other leaders will want to get him to focus on different pressing concerns, such as how to jointly counter the military threat posed by Russia.

    “They will want to talk about [the tariffs], but Trump will want to talk about countering China,” said Josh Lipsky, a senior director at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank.

    “The question they will ask back to him is: ‘How can you ask us to be in some sort of grouping against China when at the same time we’re just trying to mitigate the fallout from the tariffs?’”

    The other economies face an effective U.S. tariff rate of 12 to 16 percent, the Atlantic Council calculates, the highest since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    While the U.K. has struck a provisional trade deal with Trump, three G7 members — Germany, France and Italy — are still in the firing line as members of the EU, which functions as a common trade bloc. Japan, the other member of the club, is on the higher end of the scale because of the elevated share of autos in its exports to the U.S.

    The tariffs could snap higher as soon as July 9 — making the summit the last realistic chance to do a deal at the highest level, face to face.

    “G7 is a practical and important natural deadline and depends greatly on U.S. bandwidth to respond on tariffs given all other talks,” said one Canadian diplomat, who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the state of talks with the United States.

    […] A tense and fragile G7 meeting is, in the year 2025, simply part of riding out the Trumpian tariff storm. The other six plus the EU need the United States to help counter an imperialist Russia and to keep an assertive China at bay.

    For Brussels and London in particular, the G7 format has served as an effective forum to agree on a collective sanctions strategy to punish Russia for its war on Ukraine. Von der Leyen this week organized an unusual press conference to announce the next EU proposals to sanction oil products made from Russian crude and to lower a global oil price cap from $60 to $45.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also attending the G7 on Tuesday […]

    French President Emmanuel Macron taking over the presidency of the G7 next year. As the most experienced leader in the pack, Macron will want to make sure he can steer this group through another year of tariffs and war.

  480. says

    So, it’s early in the accounting and all but…

    No Kings turnout estimates are coming in, and they are staggering. It is estimated that between 5 and 12 million people participated in over 2,000 events nationwide. […]

    What’s more, across our land, they went off overwhelmingly peacefully. There were a few isolated clashes between protestors and counterprotestors and/or police. So few as to be less frequent than your average disturbance call rate from a Bar Crawl in Pittsburgh on a Friday night.

    Quite simply, if these data hold, yesterday was remarkable. And comparing our turnout with the abject failure of Trump’s wannabe fascist parade, well, it was a good day.

    Link

  481. birgerjohansson says

    @478
    BTW, the T-72s and BMP 1s look impressive, but as we have seen the last three years they do not fare well on a modern battlefield. Their brand-new 5.45mm Kalashnikovs are now gathering dust in stores, alongside the volksarmee uniforms. I wonder if the Germans will ever bother with re-enactments?

  482. says

    How El Salvador’s government impeded a US probe of MS-13
    By T. Christian Miller and Sebastian Rotella for ProPublica

    In mid-April, President Donald Trump sat down in the Oval Office with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to celebrate a new partnership. They had recently negotiated an extraordinary deal in which El Salvador agreed to incarcerate in a maximum security prison hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants that the Trump administration had labeled as violent criminals, though few had been convicted of such crimes. The U.S. also sent back accused members of the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13 — which both the U.S. and El Salvador have designated as a terrorist organization.

    Bukele’s presidency has been defined by his successful crackdown against MS-13. He has jailed tens of thousands of alleged gang members, transforming one of the hemisphere’s most dangerous nations into one of its safest. Although human rights groups have criticized his tactics, Bukele remains extremely popular in El Salvador.

    During their meeting at the White House, Trump praised his guest as “one hell of a president.” He shook Bukele’s hand, saying, “We appreciate working with you because you want to stop crime and so do we.”

    A long-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 has uncovered evidence at odds with Bukele’s reputation as a crime fighter. The inquiry, which began as an effort to dismantle the gang’s leadership, expanded to focus on whether the Bukele government cut a secret deal with MS-13 in the early years of his presidency.

    New reporting on that investigation by ProPublica shows that senior officials in Bukele’s government repeatedly impeded the work of a U.S. task force as it pursued evidence of possible wrongdoing by the Salvadoran president and his inner circle.

    Bukele’s allies secretly blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. agents viewed as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran law enforcement officials who helped the task force, according to exclusive interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials, newly obtained internal documents and court records from both countries. […]

    Much more at the link.

  484. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    A, by now, familiar transition to use of force in LA, on camera as it occurred.

    Mediaite – ‘Go, Go, Go, Go!’ MSNBC reporter ushers protester away from oncoming mounted police (Jun 14)

    Soboroff explained that when he had seen such a [LAPD+LASD line carrying less lethals] setup before, it was usually followed by police advancing on protesters.

    “I want to reiterate this looks very intimidating,” he said as police on horses and on foot were behind him. “This has remained 100% peaceful as far as I have seen. People are out here with their signs.”

    He then turned to a young woman and asked her to show her sign to the camera. […] At that moment, officers in tactical gear began pushing forward. […] [“People don’t wanna see horses trampling. Let’s go guys.”] “They’re pushing people with horses, which obviously gets people freaked,” Soboroff said. Just seconds later, the sound of flashbangs rang out.

    Video clip at the link.

    * This was on the intersection of Los Angeles St and Aliso (on the N corner of the Roybal/MDC buildings’ block), at a bridge that crosses over the freeway.

    * In the background is a place the reporter and Google maps generically call “Federal Building” from that block. OpenStreetMap only marked the offices inside: USCIS (citizenship/immigration) + PostOffice. So I hadn’t realized there is a distinct “Federal Building” next to the “Roybal Federal Building”. In retrospect, I could’ve changed a word or two in earlier comments for clarity.

  485. Militant Agnostic says

    A small city in Tennessee has discovered their Assistant Chief of Police is a Q Anon Kook

    The lawyer representing him is a 5G whackaloon and an Anti-Vaxer

  487. says

    Trump directs ICE to expand deportation efforts in Democratic-run cities

    President Trump on Sunday night directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to expand deportation efforts in cities run by Democrats following protests in Los Angeles over his immigration policies.

    The president called on ICE “to do all in their power” to help reach the administration’s mass deportation goals while singling out Los Angeles, Chicago and New York for ramped-up enforcement efforts.

    White House aide Stephen Miller said last month that the administration’s goals were a minimum of 3,000 ICE arrests a day.

    “Our Nation’s ICE Officers have shown incredible strength, determination, and courage as they facilitate a very important mission, the largest Mass Deportation Operation of Illegal Aliens in History. Every day, the Brave Men and Women of ICE are subjected to violence, harassment, and even threats from Radical Democrat Politicians, but nothing will stop us from executing our mission, and fulfilling our Mandate to the American People,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

    “ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” the president added.

    Trump called on federal agents to “expand efforts” to detain and deport undocumented immigrants in the country’s most populous cities, “where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”

    “These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens,” the president charged. “These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it!” [Gaslighting, lies, racism, bigotry, stupidity, arrogance]

    Trump asserted that Democrats believe in “open borders” and that ICE efforts should be focused on blue cities.

    “There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!” Trump said.

    The president said he has directed his “entire Administration to put every resource possible behind this effort, and reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.”

    The 407-word statement was signed “DJT.” […]

  488. birgerjohansson says

    A collection of old Anime, from before everything became digital.

    “I Can’t Stop Watching Old Stuff | OVA Odyssey Vol. 6”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=E9e6MBNZ2W4
    (Be advised, the Japanese have a lot of fan service)

    Silly stuff, but it often has a distinct charm. (Tiny magical princess has fun in school, kills some people and tortures many others) -What!???

  493. birgerjohansson says

    Myself @ 491

    Some of these projects sound like digital “urbclaves” from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.
    (I am reminded of New South Africa in the book)

  494. Reginald Selkirk says

    After Singing ‘Star Spangled Banner’ in Spanish at Dodgers Game in Spite of Being Warned Not To, Nezza Tearfully Says: ‘Today, Out of All Days… I Needed to Do It’

    Latin-R&B singer Nezza made a stand at Saturday’s Los Angeles Dodgers game, singing “The Star Spangled Banner” in Spanish, even though she said she had been warned not to, going into the performance. A video posted by the singer on TikTok shows a Dodgers rep telling her the performance will need to be in English — cutting right to footage of the end of her National Anthem en espanol, which appears to be enthusiastically received in the ballpark.

    Nezza’s original TikTok post about her Spanish-language rendering, which had more than 4 million views as of Sunday afternoon, was captioned: “Watch the Dodgers tell me I can’t sing the Spanish ‘Star Spangled Banner that Roosevelt literally commissioned in 1945… So I did it anyway.” …

  495. Reginald Selkirk says

    Hamilton ‘devastated’ after running over groundhog

    Lewis Hamilton says he is devastated after running over a groundhog during Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix.

    The Ferrari driver hit the rodent during the 13th lap of the race in Montreal, leaving a hole in the floor of his SF-25 car.

    The 40-year-old ended up finishing sixth, with his team estimating that the damage cost Hamilton about half-a-second per lap for the remainder of the race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

    But the seven-time world champion, a vegan and well-known animal lover, was more concerned with the “horrible” death of the groundhog.

    “It was feeling pretty decent up until then. And then, I didn’t see it happen, but obviously I heard I hit a groundhog,” said Hamilton.

    “So that’s devastating. I love animals, and I’m so sad about it. That’s horrible. That’s never happened to me here before.

    “It’s never nice to see that – I just hope it didn’t suffer.”

    Groundhogs, a type of large ground squirrel native to North America, are commonplace around the track in Montreal, which is on an artificial island in the Saint Lawrence River…

  498. Reginald Selkirk says

    $124 million armored truck crypto money laundering operation busted — Australian perps apprehended, could face life in prison

    Australian law enforcement has charged four people who were allegedly behind an “elaborate and calculated” large scale money laundering operation. Over an 18-month period, investigators allege AUD$190 million ($124 million) was channeled through a “complex network of bank accounts, businesses, couriers and cryptocurrency accounts,” to avoid the attention of the authorities. Of course, the source of all this money was alleged illicit activities…

    Obfuscating the source of millions of dollars is a lot of work, and those charged are claimed to be part of a network which:

    Owned armored transport as part of a security business
    Owned a classic car dealership
    Ran a sales promotion company
    Ran a cryptocurrency exchange services business
    Set up spouses as ‘straw directors’
    Held at least seven bank accounts
    Hold current assets of 17 properties and multiple vehicles, worth millions. Plus held tens of thousands in cash, and hundreds of thousands in cryptocurrency
    …

  500. Reginald Selkirk says

    Larry Ellison is still not the world’s richest person

    Oracle co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison has reclaimed the No. 2 spot on Forbes’s real-time billionaire list, trailing only Elon Musk after leapfrogging Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.

    Thanks to better-than-expected results from Oracle’s fiscal fourth quarter ended in May 31, shares jumped 14%, and Ellison’s net worth surged roughly $25 billion to $242 billion by midday Thursday, marking the largest single-day gain on Forbes’s real-time billionaire list…